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Dead Musicians Signing Media Rights Petitions
epeus writes "Following from the Gowers coverage and the Musicians' ad in the FT, Larry Lessig admits he was wrong about term extension: 'If you read the list, you'll see that at least some of these artists are apparently dead (e.g. Lonnie Donegan, died 4th November 2002; Freddie Garrity, died 20th May 2006). I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire. I'm not yet sure how. But I guess I should be a good sport about it, and just confess I was wrong. For if artists can sign petitions after they've died, then why can't they produce new recordings fifty year ago?'"
Yeah! FInally after all these years!!!!
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
Oh no! The dead have risen and they're voting for copyright extension
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
i wonder what the net worth of these 4500 "artists" are ?
then compare it with the net worth of 4500 Wallmart shop employees or 4500 Ford car plant workers who wont be getting paid either for work they did 50 years ago
perhaps the music industry needs a close audit to see where those 4500 poor, poor starving musicians are going wrong
if you have nothing to hide as they say...
I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire.
I don't see why Lessig is so surprised. Not only can the dead sign petitions, but they can vote, too. America has lead the way in the legal frontier of corpse-rights and suffrage, at least as far back as the 1800s.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Dead artists can't say no.
They're using every means possible to ensure their copyright gets extended. If copyright is not extended it will have a huge negative effect on the record companies / British Phonographic Industry (BPI), RIAA groups and content distributors, beyond that of royalties paid.
Content in the public domain waters down the argument for requiring ALL content to be 'protected'. If half of the worlds music was public domain, lobbyists would have a hard time persuading lawmakers to put restrictions on ALL devices. This has been evident with the RIAA continuously argue why DRM is required for ALL music to prevent copyright infringement. These arguments usually fail to recognize the existence of non-copyrighted music (Creative Commons, Public Domain etc), and certainly make no provision for it in their argument or 'industry drafted bills' (e.g DMCA). This results in systems like the Zune wi-fi sharing system which applies DRM when transferring songs, whether the media requires protection or not, and with total disregard for other licences such as 'copyleft' which may expressly forbid it.
We've seen from the Napster and Gokster cases in the 'war on file sharing' argued that "file sharing is always infringement of somebody's copyright", and fails to recognize the legal uses of file sharing systems. Again, if half of the worlds music was public domain, the argument agaisnt services like Bit-torrent is significantly watered down. Services like Youtube and Google Video have already been targeted, and we've seen media companies desire to shutdown the service altogether. Although Youtube and Google video are exceptional in that they've been careful to prevent copyright infringement from the start, and the result has been for the media companies attempts to re-define infringement. (i.e teenagers lip-sinking etc). Again their aim is to prove the majority of content that is free is infringing copyright and the services providing it should be shut-down.
We are seeing the music industry / BPI "pulling out all the stops" to prevent an extension of copyright. They're using artists that have done very very well out of record company who may 'win the hearts and minds of the people' (Cliff Richard), and now their padding their 'stats' with dead people. It is certain they are lobbying politicians as fast as they can.
The BPI (and RIAA) have responsibilities "in the collection, administration and distribution of music licenses and royalties" which relies on a vast library of content being under their control. Music that is currently in their control placed in the public domain erodes their breadth of responsibility and will ultimately affect their cut of the royalties.
This argument is not about the artists getting more money, it is about the BPI and RIAA retaining their value and ability to "fight the crime of music theft".
They cannot fight the "crime" if half the time it is perfectly legal to copy and share.
Of course, I'm from Chicago. The dead regularly climb out of the ground to vote up here...must be something in the water...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
>>> "We are seeing the music industry / BPI "pulling out all the stops" to prevent an extension of copyright"
should read: "We are seeing the music industry / BPI "pulling out all the stops" to ensure an extension of copyright.
I'm sure you get what i mean.
...phoned me yesterday to speak about this ! "Imagine there's no limit to copyright", he said. "So, sign the petition", I replied. I hope he will follow my advice. ;)
-- Rastignac was here.
Makes me wonder how 2pac or Biggie would feel about this. I guess we'll find out on their next albums!
... called "Decomposing Composers".
Although in this case I think they're recomposing composers.
If you post it, they will read.
hahahahahahah!
I hope this is a polemic to show why the view is wrong and I'm just missing it...
Things should pass into the public domain. Everything should which is not based on tangable property. Tangable property should be taxed on death (possibly up to 100%).
If you think about how the world would look if we all had eternal rights to our property there would be about 100 people who would own everything and the rest of humanity would die, although a revolution would probably be inevitable anyway and then maybe some more sensible rules could come in.
It is also not judical theft, it is the state acting in the best interests of the population, in exactly the same way it does with people's other rights from the state of nature. They have a legitimate right to do this.
Instead of signing petitions, why don't they just release a couple new albums like 2Pac? It's totally paying for the henny and the hos in the afterlife.
The ethical rule is this; if you make something, it belongs to you, and you can do what you want with it - and that includes handing it down to your kids to help them in their lives.
You always can do with your ideas whatever you want: you can keep them in your head, you can publish them, you can tell your kids about them.
You want something completely different: you want the power of the state to create a market place for you where there ordinarily wouldn't be one. There is nothing "ethical" about that; it's an artificial construct and a compromise between the rights of the people (which copyright infringes on) and the desire to encourage creation of new, useful content.
The ironic thing about whiners like you is that if your rule were implemented, you wouldn't be able to create anything at all since inventors of basic ideas and creators of basic content are using license enforcement to restrict others from building new stuff. Expiration of copyright is fundamentally necessary for intellectual property to work--if stuff didn't fall into the public domain, others couldn't derive benefits from ideas that build on the old ideas.
Or, to put it bluntly: your ethics are screwed up, and so are your economics.
You confuse copyright with ownership. Not a surprise that muddling these terms is exactly what the "intellectual property" mafia has been doing for yours.
The painting is yours as property and will belong to you forever, your heirs will inherit it, etc.
The copyright enters the public domain, i.e. after n years someone else can take a photo of your painting and publish it in a book without paying you for doing so. Someone else can sing your song without paying you for it.
The ethical rule fails here because copyright is not a limit on what people can do with your property, but what they can make with their own hands and work.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I found the cure for cancer the other day.
I won't be patenting it though, i'm just going to keep it secret and pass it down to my kids.
Gotta keep something like this in the family.
"if you make something, it belongs to you"
Copyright, however, isnt about the possession of the object, it's the right to prevent anyone else from possessing a copy of that object.
If you're a carpenter and make a great chair it doesnt pass into the public domain, but you cannot prevent your neighbour from making a chair just like it, nor do you have the right to prevent anyone who purchases the chair to pay another carpenter to copy it.
"It's basically judicial theft."
Except it's the other way around. Preventing the neighbour or customer from making a chair just like the original means you're depriving them of the right to do what they wish with their property.
The value of copyright does not come out of nowhere; it derives its value by depriving others of value and rights. From an ethical point of view it's just the same as other taxation methods; you're depriving one group of people to give to another. Wether that's good or bad is arguable, and mostly a question of public utility.
Remember that corporations meet almost every criteria for being psychopaths that doesn't involve age or sexuality (Jokes about getting raped at the pump notwithstanding).
Pathological lying, conning/manipulative, shameless, parasitic lifestyle, irresponsibility? I consider it extremely unlikely that they wouldn't know that a member was dead (seeing as he wouldn't be showing up for recording and all), and even then, so what? If the signatures were genuine, no dead person's name could possibly be on the list. Yet another in the media industry's endless stream of manipulative lies. Naturally, when called out, they will shamelessly deny any previous knowledge. Parasitic lifestyle? We hear every day how the Internet makes the recording industry obsolete. Irresponsible? Like forging dead people's signatures?
Corporations are psychopaths. But they aren't psychopathic because they enjoy being evil - If they don't act like this, the shareholders can sue (If you don't [obviously wrong action], it's bad for profit = lawsuit). If this nonsense is to stop while it's still possible to get corporations back under control, the law needs to change. Seeing as it's 4am, I leave it to the rest of you to propose the changes.
This is the case now. No one is going to take away that picture/piece of software/song, ie the thing you actually created. You'll still own that and be able to do what you want with it.
The only thing that'll you lose is the ability to stop other from making copies.
As to whether that's a good thing, consider the fact that if copyright had always been indefinite then most of the literature, software, music around now wouldn't exist.
The object doesn't, the copyright does.
Copyright is on the non-physical aspect _because_ it is non-physical. It's an added extra that rewards craftsmen who do not work with stuff you can kick.
It's not theft. It's your part of the bargain.
Every act of creation of non-material goods such as stories, paintings, programs and songs is thought to be based on works of others. You did not create it yourself, you learned from others. Society grants you the right to get money for it, for the most part of your live, but not longer. In the end, the creation flows into the public domain because, into the culture it came from. This is thought to help others create more and new things.
Don't confuse "IP" (i hate that therm) with physical property. It is not the same. Sure, you can give it to your kids. And you can give the money you earned with it to your kids. But why the hell would it make sense to provide a free income for your kids for the rest of their lives because you wrote a nice song once?
And furthermore, in reality, it is not the children (o think of them, nice try that argument of yours) who in most cases get the money. It is the investors in 5 or 6 record companies. What is ethical about paying them money for 95 years?
Because granting someone a copyright is a violation of everyone else's right to free speech. Nations that value both kinds of rights often try to find a balance.
Play Command HQ online
I wonder if the general public will be outraged enough by this to do something about it. Its obvious to everyone here that the labels are evil, but I wonder if the public at large understands it as well, and if not, if obvious lies and manipulation are sufficient to show it to them. Of course, you would think the Sony root kit would have done the same thing, and it doesn't seem to have made a real difference.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
...and also lynch him.
thaaaanks
We regain the right to do with our posesion as we wish.
The material does not even have to be in the public domain for it to "water down" the argument for all content to be protected. Works released under licences such as Creative Commons, which allow (sometimes with restrictions) copying and sharing while still retaining copyright, also water down the argument. In fact they add something new to 'pot'. If DRM is mandated (such that players will only play DRM protected content) then the DRM 'system' will have to handle the situation where the rights owner does allow copying, sampling etc. This would, of course, include putting no restrictions on content which is in the public domain either because the copyright has expired or it has been deliberately placed in the public domain.
i'm not up on right wing american talk radio slang, so forgive me but, what is 'judical theft'? Does it mean that it is well reasoned and fair theft that is in the best interest of society?
The problem with owning a song or book is that it fails to recognize the fact that the artist did not create something ex nihilo. Each artist is bequethed a heritage of material and inspiration from those who have come before, kinda like scientists. They then make their contributions and it is passed onto the next generation. For example, Shakespeare took his story ideas from other authors and many subsequent authors have used him for source material.
IMo, you cant own information anymore then you can own your children. And trying to circumvent this self-evident truism only hinders growth, be it spiritual, economic, or scientific.
If this is an Advert in the UK Edition of the FT, then the appropriate action to take would be to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority. ASA rulings are usually considered newsworthy in a minor way, and would raise awareness of the issue.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
For the good of society.
It's basically judicial theft.
No it's not, since it doesn't deprive you of anything. The only judicial theft going on is the theft of my right to do what I want with property I own, including making a copy of it.
I am trolling
I could be wrong, but I think you've conflated property rights with the ethical imperative to help others.
If I make a song, and I decide to keep it in the family, I've not caused harm to others - either by my action or by my inaction.
If I invest a cure for a terrible disease and I keep it in the family, I've caused others harm by my inaction - by not offering them the cure when I could have done so.
I would agree that for some knowledge, there is an ethical imperative to share that knowledge, and I think this is the case when harm is prevented by sharing. However, it does not count as "harm" to prevent someone from listening to a song, seeing a film or having a copy of the latest Oracle database.
"It's basically judicial theft.
The ethical rule is this; if you make something, it belongs to you, and you can do what you want with it - and that includes handing it down to your kids to help them in their lives."
Uh, no. If you make something, it belongs to you, yes, and you can do what you want with it. But if you make a car, and it belongs to you, obviously if someone steals it you don't have it anymore, and you can't use it or pass it on to your kids. If, however, you write a poem, novel, or a piece of sheet music, you can still hang on to it forever, and it is still yours, and you can pass it on to your children, but once you make zillions of copies and sell them (i.e. publish it), what then? What's to prevent someone from copying it themselves? In the absence of copyright law, nothing. You can appeal to people's sense of ethics, but history shows that often doesn't work, and there is a grey line regarding what constitutes copying a work versus merely being inspired by it. Anyway, people haven't stolen your copy from you if they make their own copy, either from the paper expression of it or by listening to you reciting the material or playing it, and writing down their own copy from what they heard. They are NOT stealing from you, they are duplicating what you made. It would be like seeing your car, and then manufacturing their own, identical version. They have not stolen your car.
Now, you can call it "judicial theft" that under copyright law your work will eventually pass into the public domain, but in actuality it is a simple bargain. A contract of a sort. You'd like legal protection against people attempting to make copies of your work? That's fine. In the interests of encouraging you to publish your work, you can get a period where you, exclusively, can make and optionally sell copies of your work. The public (via law) is giving you that right and will enforce its protection using the judiciary and police. In exchange, after a reasonable period of time (to be defined), the same law says that you must turn the work over to the public domain -- i.e. the exclusive period has limited duration. Copyright is not "judicial theft", it is this bargain. You get something (exclusive copy rights), the public gets something (the eventual end of those rights).
Don't like it? It's simple. Keep the work to yourself (i.e. don't publish it), and it will forever remain under your complete control. Put your original in the attic, and your kids can keep it and admire it forever.
To put it simply: if you don't like the ethics of copyright law, then don't enter into the bargain by publishing your work.
And if you want to enter into the world where, due to application of strict ethics, people can't use any of each other's good ideas to develop their own, because it's "wrong", well, that would be a pretty stifling environment in which to try to operate.
The internet is a scary place sometimes. I read a comment on another site by some idiot who said "How will Stallman and Torvalds like it when the copyright protection that underpins the GPL runs out after 50 years - it will be a different story then. Typical socialist attitude to intellectual property: what's yours is mine but what's mine is my own."
If you're willing to agree to that, I'm willing to abolish the public domain.
> Tangable property should be taxed on death (possibly up to 100%).
Wouldn't that mean that in a couple of generations, the State would basically own everything?
If you get the urge to examine your thoughts in this matter, I'd like to point you at Milton Friedman's book "Capitalism and Freedom". He describes how economic freedom (e.g. private property rights and ensuring economic power is kept out of the hands of State) is vital to political freedom. If you can read this and still think that 100% tax at death is the right idea, I'd be very interested to understand your view.
Though in art, the original nearly always has considerably more value than copies or reproductions (and often only becomes valuable after the artist's death). Music is a little different, often the copies (ie arrangements) become well known and therefore more valuable. Take for example Pictures from an Exhibition by Mussorgsky. Almost everyone knows it as an orchestral piece, as orchestrated by Ravel, many do not even know that in its original form it is for piano. In music, 'borrowing' themes from other composers, and adapting them, is very common and is an important part of how music evolves.
So-- you're up for paying royalties for the use of Aristotle's works? Or Shakespeare's plays? Should we be paying to take photos of the Sistine Chapel? How about churches coughing up for the use of the King James bible? Maybe we should go back and find all of Edgar Allen Poe's relatives, start paying them royalties to offset the effects of "judicial theft" over the years (especially those football-playing bastards in Baltimore!).
We may not be able to track down the heirs of Aristotle, but what about Mark Twain? How about Thomas Jefferson?
The idea of perpetual copyright seems wonderfully logical when you apply the (incredibly recent and very inappropriate) label of "intellectual property" to them. But when you start looking at older works, particularly those of nearly immeasurable cultural value, it becomes apparent that, at some point in time, copyright protection is neither reasonable nor appropriate.
The fact you can copy something a zillion times with no effort doesn't make a difference to the ethics of ownership.
If I make a beautiful carved wooden table, then it's mine, I invested a lot of time and money to make it. It can't be copied - but so what? it's mine, and no less or more mine because of it.
If I make a beautiful song, then it's mine, I invested a lot of time and money to make it. It can be copied at no cost whatsoever - but so what? it's mine, and no less or more mine because of it.
The *properties* of an object make no difference to who it rightfully belongs to. The fact than an object has properties which might well make it absolutely easy to pass it widely into the public domain does not mean that it is ethically right to do so.
"If you own something you have the right to gift it to whoever you want whenever you want. If the government takes it at gunpoint then you never really owned it. And if you can't own the fruits of your own labour, there's no incentive to produce. Easier to wait for someone who did produce to die and then pick through the remains of their estate with all the other vultures. And doin't believe what you read about the gap between rich and poor: capitalism, based on ownership, makes the poor richer than any other system. Fact.".
What a n00b!
...Cyber space virtual reality where you never really die and someone else really does own all your base.
Intellectual property rights are man created and man enforced where they can reasonably be enforced.
However, the value of the intellectual property only goes as far as the ability to share it, via licensing or some other method of "regulation" of the value exchange flow.
You can have all the intellectual property in the world but to yourself it is value less, it is only upon sharing it that it becomes valuable or has value.
With this in mind the apex of debate is regarding at what time does the IP rights constraints become to constraining to others on the path to human advancement that it falsely limits human advancement even effecting the author/inventor life and living environment?
Maybe some see creative works of non-invention as something that doesn't apply to this but the fact is that such creative works being constrained of the past would have, for example, nearly eliminated all science fiction of today. Today all science fiction contains enough elements of works previously done that it would be virtuallyt impossible to write a decent story. The same applies to alot of music.
Intellectual property right are intended to benefit the creator of it, but not to give them a permanet monopoly on it.
As a human character, right and duty, we build upon and with the works of those before us. If we did not then we could not evolved our environment, society, technology, medicine, shelter, transportation etc.. We'd still be living in caves and hunting for food.
Now what if technology could reach the rate of advancement that itself would provide solutions fast enough that we could live much longer, healthier, etc. And this would certainly effect any living "creator"
This cannot happen with IP rights constraining such forward movement!
You can copyright the design of a chair. This Side Up successfully sued imitators. You can make crate furniture, but not copy exactly a This Side Up design.
The classic British furniture designers made and sold design books. These were protected by the copyright of the era.
It wasn't their copyright term they were trying to extend...
> For the good of society.
Who decides what is good? what happens if what is decided as good is harmful to members of that society?
Wasn't segregation justified in this way?
> No it's not, since it doesn't deprive you of anything.
Of course it does; if anyone can make a copy of the item for free, how can you recapture the time and money you invested in creating it?
And given that, you would have to stop creating these things - since you can't feed and clothe yourself doing it - and change jobs.
If there's one single action which will devestate any industry, it's removing the ability to make money from that industry, because people working in that industry are then obliged to change professions - and that entire industry basically disappears overnight.
> You always can do with your ideas whatever you want: you can keep them in your head, you can publish them,
> you can tell your kids about them.
This is not true if copyright is taken away. You then cannot make money from your creations, because anyone else can make copies of them for free.
> You want something completely different: you want the power of the state to create a market place for
> you where there ordinarily wouldn't be one.
In what sense?
It seems to me if I create something, it belongs to *me*. If I invest time and money making a beautiful carved wooden table, it's *mine*. If I invest time and money making a beautiful song, it's *mine*. The fact that some of the things I make have *properties* which lend them admirably to being placed in the public domain is utterly irrelevent. Ownership of an creation is held by the person who created it, regardless of its properties.
So it seems to me I'm using the power of the State to prevent theft.
> The ironic thing about whiners like you is that if your rule were implemented, you wouldn't be able to
> create anything at all since inventors of basic ideas and creators of basic content are using license
> enforcement to restrict others from building new stuff.
Whereas if anything which *can* be copied for free is legally permitted to be copied for free, production of such things will almost cease. How can I make songs or films or software, when they cost me time and money, when I cannot recapture those costs?
> The ironic thing about whiners like you is that if your rule were implemented
and
> Or, to put it bluntly: your ethics are screwed up, and so are your economics.
If you need to attack me, you are insecure in your arguments.
I find it depressing that /. readership mods views they disagree with as flamebait and troll.
It should be clear from the post that I'm making a serious point, which means I'm not trolling or angling for a fight.
When debate - which inherently means the positing of disagreeing views - is modded as flamebait, you have ossified.
Cliff Richard is the face of the multi-national companies who want to destroy fair use, remixing, amateur music and anything they cannot control. Therefore lets boycott Cliff this Christmas, refuse to listen to his crappy contrived whining. The last thing we want to do is to "incentivise" Cliff Richard to produce new songs.
My little Linux and tech blog
>...there would be about 100 people who would own everything...
Welcome to Britain, please turn the lights out when you leave.
My little Linux and tech blog
His "rains" souds like "oys"..
FRA: STFU GTFO
If I carve a table, I have a beautiful table. If you make a copy of it somehow, I still have my table but so do you. I don't have anything less than I had before. I still own the table. I still have my ideas. But what god-given right grants me exclusivity to all these? Why can't anyone else have an identical table, or a picture of said table, or plans of making it, or similar table painted different colours? If I didn't know they do, I'd have no slightest idea I lost anything after most careful examination of all my property. A strange crime, when I lose nothing but you gain something, isn't it?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Go Dead!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
...if the dead musicians also signed the petition to decrease their royalties?
My new blog
Not everything is property. Consider air. Consider untreated sea water. Why? Partly because some of these are difficult to enforce, but also partly because property requires society to enforce it.
Society will only enforce something if it is in their interests to do so. Certainly rival goods such as a physical painting, a program that hasn't been distributed, or a physical copy of an artist's work are enforced as property because protecting rival goods is good for society, as well as the individual.
But with non-rival goods it's not the same. Furthermore, it's a muddy area whether it is even theft when the act of copying leaves the original. More prosaically, this "theft" can create new demand. Charging for pirated goods is theft in my opinion since this directs funds that are intended for the copyright holder towards the counterfeiter, but it is the misrepresentation that makes it theft: you are buying a forgery. Accordingly, I have always argued that punishment should be proportional to money made, rather than some projected level of damages, that according to research simply doesn't exist.
Property is a positive right; a priori, you only own yourself; less if you are a theist. The rest you have as a result of being willing to defend your property, and because society sees the common interest in preserving incentives so as to allow long-term freedom. The ability to plan, for example. The inability to create derived works is a restraint of freedom, so the reason why property is protected begins to fail with time, and more so as time moves on. Eventually, the value to culture of having a work freely available far outweighs the value of the incentive, so society stops enforcing the right.
Wikileaks, no DNS
> If I carve a table, I have a beautiful table. If you make a copy of it somehow, I still have my table but
> so do you. I don't have anything less than I had before.
How do I recapture the time and money I spent making the table if other people make copies for free?
I cannot.
And since I cannot, I can't make the table in the first place, because I need to make money so I can feed myself and rent my flat and buy clothes.
So, what, the State owns it but everyone, even those pesky Chinese, get to use it to?
Doesn't 'ownership' usually imply that there are people who aren't allowed to use it? Like if I own something, it's not everyone else's, and if the State owns it, no-one outside of the State gets to own it? I mean, usually the arguments about State-ownership come when the State decides not to allow people something, and that's nothing like public domain where no-one by default has rights to it so no-one can control it.
And anyways, ownership of intellectual property is a tricky beast because it copies itself into memory whenever it's accessed.
So private property might well be vital to political freedom, but copyright is a kludge provided by the state to shoehorn intellectual property onto private property rights, which worked okay right up until intellectual property and private property stopped being the same thing.
Dead people do NOT sign these petitions ... but they do have a strong tendency to die AFTER it was asked of them
> So-- you're up for paying royalties for the use of Aristotle's works? Or Shakespeare's plays?
In fact, with regard to Shakespeare's plays, what happens is that the publishing company publishes the plays and makes a profit, but Shakespeare's descendents (to whom the plays rightfully belong) get nothing.
Shakespeare worked hard to make those plays; and despite handing them down to his family, his family gets nothing.
What would be wrong with a part of the money I spend buying a book of a play going to his family?
One of the biggest problems with the recording industry is that the artists sign over their copyright holdings permanently instead of leasing them. Right now the transfer of copyright is complete and permanent.
The lease should end when the contract does. The artist or artists would then have the option to renew their contract and lease, sign a new contract / release indie, or release it into the public domain.
With a lease, you can be assured that there isn't an abuse of the power that record labels have now. A simple law could make these current types of contracts obsolete and illegal. Artists should also be able to reference this law and get their copyrights returned to the rightful owner.
This kind of thing is being done with the LOTR Trilogy and The Hobbit. The movie rights were leased to Miramax for a short period. If they do not finish the movies within that timeframe, they cannot release them.
Lets face it, record labels themselves are an obsolete business model. There are many ways to do self promotion now and you don't need to include a 3rd party publisher. A simple website, some iTunes tracks and a live tour are you really need to promote yourself. All labels really do is publish little plastic discs. They don't need exclusive rights to your material to do that.
...if 2Pac can do it...
If copyrights don't expire, you probably couldn't even make a table - there'd be copyrights on screws, on table legs and anything else you may want to make. For copyright to work for the next generation, it's important that the copyright of this generation expire. By endlessly extending copyright, you're doing a great disservice to future generations.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
You make that sound as if it's a problem, but I'd guess that things would look much better if everybody who's just in it for the money quit making tables.
> You make that sound as if it's a problem, but I'd guess that things would look much better if everybody
> who's just in it for the money quit making tables.
Let's say I'm not in it "for the money".
Let's say I make tables because I love working with wood.
Don't I *STILL* need to sell them for money?
How can I spend all day carving if I don't have any cash?
And if I spend all day carving, how else am I going to make money other than selling the things I make?
If you are talking about the US, then you are wrong. The ninth and tenth amendments is the reason why you are wrong.
When the wealth remains in the family, then the heirs to the estate either spends it, uses it in such a way that they make more money and spends the money elsewhere, or they use it. When it is spent, others have a chance to become wealthy off of it. When the government takes it at gunpoint however, it is usually given to those that either caused their own disability or are simply too lazy to work.
__________________________________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
That would make sense only if the state is unable to sell things.
"Amazing isn't it, I guess they want to keep up the payments on the cooling and heating bills for their coffins."
Above from my post to the cc-community list.
You know it has to be for some valid reason like this don't you?
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Except this is 50 years ex post facto. If anyone can copy your table after 50, would that make you go back and uncreate it? I mean, after 50 years, if you haven't turned a profit on your first table, either by selling it or appreciating its exclusivity, you're not going to. I think we can count on two hands the number of songs that are still making money after 50 years. And most of the people who made them are dead. So the question isn't "Do I have enough incentive to create this table?" because removing copyright extension takes no rights from you, it just doesn't give you extra rights. So the argument here is that artists will arise from the dead, build a time machine, and then go back and stop themselves from entering the recording business, because their kids and grandkids are only making thousands instead of tens of thousands.
Doesn't copyright last until after the death of the last co-author?
Because GPL projects tend to have a lot of contributors.
Another flaw in your reasoning is that the statement "If I make a beautiful carved wooden table, then it's mine" isn't true. The defining trait of capitalism is that the workers sell their labour to a capitalist, and now the corporation owns the table you just made.
So what are you, a Marxist, a troll, or both?
In addition, this whole attitude redefines the meaning of culture; without freedom of expression, culture is sapped to the point that works are so boring that they cannot possibly contain others' IP, for they contain no meaningful IP themselves.
Wikileaks, no DNS
If you make something physical, that object belongs to you. You paid for the materials, you did the work. If you show it to someone, and they like it, they might decide to build one themselves. The one they build does not belong to you, it belongs to them.
Intellectual property is very different from real property. Here's another example:
Let's say you tell someone that you have this ESP-like feeling that the numbers 17 35 8 7 22 and 19 are going to be this week's lotto numbers. You go ahead and play those numbers, and guess what...the person you told them to figures they might play them as well. You both win. Now the jackpot is divided between the two of you. Do you think you should have the right to sue them because it was your idea to play those numbers? If you didn't want them to play those numbers, why did you tell it to them?
Music is pretty much the same way. If you don't want to share it with the world at large, you can write it and keep it a secret. Record it, play it to yourself when no one else is at home. No one is going to "steal it" from you. However, you want other people to listen don't you? You want to make money off of it? Well, once they listen, it becomes part of their culture. They might get it stuck in their heads. They might be whistling it while they work. They might like to sing along with it when they hear it on the radio. They'll reference the lyrics when they think they would bring something to the conversation. The music is now theirs. It's part of them. By letting them hear it, you gave it to them.
Any rights you have to prevent them from singing it in public (like Happy Birthday in restaurants), or to otherwise copy it, is purely artificial. Nothing is being taken from you. You still have the guitar you used to compose the music (unless you sold it), you still have the original recordings (unless you threw them away), you can still play them yourself. The only reason people can copy your song is because you let them have it in the first place. So choose. Keep your song secret and profit from it, or give it to the community.
You want both? Well, if you're a good musician, society wants to encourage you to write more songs. So we'll give you the artificial right to control what is now our song for a set number of years. They should be small enough that you can't really live off of that one song for the rest of your life. After all, that defeats the purpose of encouraging you to write more songs, doesn't it?
Do you want to profit from the song after the copyright has expired? Feel free. Society has this strange "celebrity complex." If you perform the song in public, the people who like the song will pay to be near you, to see you there, next to them, singing it live. Society has taken nothing from you. You definitely gave something to society. Stop trying to steal it back from us, while at the same time keeping our money.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Shakespeare worked hard to make those plays; and despite handing them down to his family, his family gets nothing.
Shakespeare earned money from his plays and the performances. Why should his family continue to profit from something done 600 years ago? You know, my grandfather's company built a major highway 60 years ago. Perhaps I should set up a toll booth and charge every car that drives down it today?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Great, so Windows 2050 gets to use Linux 0.1 code with free reign. Wow, that's devastating I tell you, devastating!
~What would be wrong with a part of the money I spend buying a book of a play going to his family?~
Your entire argument boils down to "copyright must continue to exist, since it takes time and money to produce something".
Therefor, what's wrong with giving the family money is simply : they didn't invest time and money to produce the original work. Ergo under your system, they have no right to an income.
Taking that line further, you're essentially arguing that a work should be copyrighted up to exactly the point where original time and money has been recouped. Then it enters public domain (since you have no other arguments for copyright ?). Or are you saying that this step should be delayed a bit, because investing time and money should also "naturally" lead to turning a profit ?
Err, I'm only in my second year of law school, so everyone should take this with a grain of salt. However, if the trustee of his estate is empowered with the right to endorse certain things on his behalf, my half informed judgment is that this isn't a problem. The endorsements you make are probably an asset that can be allocated to trustees upon certain executory conditions, the least problematic of which is endorsing an organization that legally represents your interests as an artist.
> Except this is 50 years ex post facto. If anyone can copy your table after 50, would that make you go
> back and uncreate it? I mean, after 50 years, if you haven't turned a profit on your first table, either
> by selling it or appreciating its exclusivity, you're not going to. I think we can count on two hands
> the number of songs that are still making money after 50 years.
It's still theft to take something which belongs to another person. I don't think it's right to argue taking something without permission is not theft is the item has no value. It is still a violation of that person's property rights.
> And most of the people who made them are dead.
Plenty of people live in houses which were made by people who are now dead.
If something has value, and it belongs to you, you can pass it down to your children, and it then rightfully belongs to them, and the theft is then against their property. The fact they didn't make the original item is irrelevant; it belongs to them.
We're not talking about stealing the table. We're talking about copying the table. There's a large difference. If someone copies the table, all you lose is the uniqueness of your table. You still have your table.
> Shakespeare earned money from his plays and the performances. Why should his family continue to profit
> from something done 600 years ago?
If I had an ancestor who built a house and my family lived in it for six hundred years, would it be wrong for my family to continue to benefit from it after such a long time? so that the house should now be in the public domain?
Why is this wrong for a house but right for a song or film or play?
I think it is because the song or film or play has a *property* such that it *can* be copied for free, and so we *do*, because by and large we lack an understanding or knowledge of what property rights really mean. We're selfish, we benefit from the theft, and we lack the knowledge to prevent us from acting in that way, despite the fact it's not actually in our best interest or indeed ethical.
> Another flaw in your reasoning is that the statement "If I make a beautiful carved wooden table, then
> it's mine" isn't true. The defining trait of capitalism is that the workers sell their labour to a
> capitalist, and now the corporation owns the table you just made.
Making a table requires three things;
1. tools
2. the raw wood
3. the skill as a carpenter
All three must be provided.
If you as an individual buy the wood and the tools and have the skills to work the wood and you make the table, it belongs to fully to you, for you have provided the tools, the materials and the labour.
If you're *employed* as a carpenter, someone else has provided the tools and the materials and is now providing the labour, by paying your wages. You do *NOT* own that table, because it rightfully belongs to someone else - the person who paid for the wood and the tools and the labour to have it created.
> So what are you, a Marxist, a troll, or both?
I'm civil, which is more than can be said for yourself.
I haven't seen the ad first-hand, not being in the UK.
Is it signed "Lonnie Donegan" or simply "L. Donegan"? Because there was also a Lawrence Donegan, bass guitarist with a couple of reasonably well-known UK bands in the 80s, and as far as I know he's still alive and kicking. After his music career was over, he went on to become a Guardian journalist. Not that the P2P thieves would give a damn, but he'd probably appreciate the occasional royalty cheque.
Designs and registered designs are different entities from copyright. They are different categories again. I think the full set in the intellectual property field is:
It's feasible that "moral rights" could be added to that list too.
the layman's guide to computer science
Lets face it, record labels themselves are an obsolete business model. There are many ways to do self promotion now and you don't need to include a 3rd party publisher. A simple website, some iTunes tracks and a live tour are you really need to promote yourself. All labels really do is publish little plastic discs.
Labels also lend bands money so that they can rehearse and eventually go into a studio and cut tracks. Unfortunately they do this lending on incredibly unfavourable terms, and without making it clear that the repayable advance is what it is - ie. a loan. I met an artist from a reasonably well-known but not very financially successful band who was still repaying his advance years later.
I think there's a business here in loaning money to artists, in exchange for some eventual rights - eg. a proportion of ticket sales at concerts or merchandising sales. The banks/lenders would evaluate each band as a business, based on the band's ability to repay the loan (ie. how good/popular they are!). None of this requires the abnormality of copyright either - in fact most banks would want the music released as far and wide as possible in order to gain the maximum possible audience, so they get the quickest possible payback from ticket sales.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
The grandparent is right. Consider something for a moment. What if the patent on the wheel was still in force? What if every ancient story was still copyrighted? What would the world be like?
As for passing it on to your children. It is by no means guaranteed that your kids or grandkids are as clever as you. It is not in the interests of society at large to sandbag them over someone who is more clever and ambitious, but rather have them struggle their way to the top. This is how the modern meritocracry works and society as a whole benefits from this darwinism; as opposed to the old nobility systems that more or less reflected who had an ancestor swinging a sword for the right cheiftan at the fall of the roman empire. This is also Warren Buffet's argument in favor of the death tax.
The classic British furniture designers made and sold design books. These were protected by the copyright of the era.
What were protected by copyright, the designs or the books? You certainly couldn't reproduce the book full of designs, but to be of any use at all as a book, you'd need to be able to make objects following the designs within it.
I appreciate that you can protect a design, I'm just not sure that that's an example of a design being protected in the way you mean. (I'm also not entirely sure what you actually mean, as your sentence structure is ambiguous)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I know this is irrelevant and does not demean your point in any way, but I thought I'd mention it anyway: You can't take photos of the Sistine Chapel. I was there a couple of months ago and the place is run more like a prison than an art gallery.
You're not allowed to talk in the chapel (art appreciation is obviously a lone endeavor). You are not only not allowed flash photography, you're not allowed anything with a lens pointed at the ceiling. And considering it is a ceiling most of the works are obscured in darkness. Using a zoom lens would have been really useful: you're just in danger of being "escorted from the premises" by an guard with a stick up his arse. The ceiling is so far up that you hurt your neck looking at it - but naturally sitting or lying on the floor is verboten, because that would only allow you to view the majesty of the piece.
The guard shouts out every 15 seconds "silence! ssh! no talking!" and so on. He is obviously the loudest thing in the room by a long way. The room was packed when I was there and it was obvious from looking at the people in the crowd that every single person was seething was hatred for this authoritarian wanker.
As you can guess it really spoiled my day.
the layman's guide to computer science
"This is not true if copyright is taken away. You then cannot make money from your creations, because anyone else can make copies of them for free."
Funny how people in industries who can't get copyrights on their creations still make money.
"In what sense?
It seems to me if I create something, it belongs to *me*."
OK, so it belongs to you, keep it to yourself. Only reveal it to people under contract and with non-disclosure agreements. Keep it as a trade secret. Just don't make it public.
"So it seems to me I'm using the power of the State to prevent theft."
Ah, nope, you want the state to give you a monopoly. I just hope your are not one of those "thieves" who tell other people's jokes around the water cooler. I trust that every joke or story you have ever relayed has been your own creation or that you have tracked down the creator and paid for your use.
The world cannot function as you envision. (I know that if you were to try my suggestion that it would be tough too. That is why short term copyrights may be worth while, but unending copyrights can't work.)
I also find it odd that artists can't live with the same length of protection as inventors. I have never seen a person pushing for unending copyrights try to explain that.
"How can I make songs or films or software, when they cost me time and money, when I cannot recapture those costs?"
Well, some of us have figured out some ways to do so and are working on more besides. If you want to enter into negotiations for a contract under which I will reveal this inside information to you, please contact me with an initial offer.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Copyright law is there explicitly because the legal system recognize that there is no such thing as "intellectual property". I.e. copyright law is needed because "intellectual property" isn't property, and as a result, copying an idea or expression of that idea isn't theft.
Yes, I know the RIAA wants you to think it is, but it isn't. Copying without permission is copyright infringement, not theft.
The difference being that copyright in modern legal systems is explicitly there to give a temporary monopoly to a creator of a work to promote the advances of the arts and science by granting a (time) limited set of rights that you as a creator would not otherwise have.
Copyright is in any case a "recent" legal construction - it's original intent was to enrich people friendly to the British Crown by handing out artificial monopolies, and now we see corporations trying to move copyright back to that from it's more recent goal of promoting the arts and sciences.
I'd also like to point out that most great art through history was made without any form of copyright protection at all. Artists still created works, and still made a living, in much the same way as all but a tiny minority of the most successfull make most of their money now: By selling originals to wealthy patrons or by performing.
I haven't had mod points for a very long time, so I've forgotten a few of the categories. But I think the problem comes from the lack of good alternatives. There is no "unfunny", "uninteresting", "obvious", "ignorant" and so on. People want to choose a negative mod for your post and only have one or two to choose from.
Please note I am not implying you fall into any of those categories. I didn't go up to read your parent post, so I'm only addressing your point here, not whether you received valid moderations. For all I know, they maybe were flame bait! :-)
the layman's guide to computer science
If you build a house the value of that house is from the raw materials and labor required to build it. If someone comes by, memorizes the blueprints and makes an exact copy, you haven't lost much. The house still retains the value of those raw materials and labor. You might lose property value if there is a duplicate house made by cheap labor right next door but that's beyond the scope of my point.
If you write a song, the entire value of that song is locked into the initial creation of it. Since there are no raw materials, reproduction is arguably free. If anyone is allowed to copy the song for free it loses value, it hurts the author. You can't compete in a marketplace with identical products that are free.
No it's not theft. The song is still there, the house is still there but the song is worthless now, the house isn't.
I'm perfectly civil, I'm just trying to find out where you're coming from and what you're trying to hide; why you're defending capitalism with a reasoning based in 18th century reality. That's before capitalism, by the way.
'This a poor craftsman who would only ply his trade for money. Those of us who want quality goods have learned to avoid people like that like the plague. They tend to be, as Mike Holmes of Holmes on Homes fame says, all "lipstick and mascara" and put no heart or soul into their work. HoH is a TV show that shows the ultimate result of work done by people who only want time (very little) and money (very much). Trust me, it isn't pretty.
The results of "Time and Money"-think show strongly in the music of today and are the true reason people are beginning to realise they don't want to buy the music. It isn't because they don't want to, but it is because people have woken up and realised the quality of work has become sub-par.
By that argument, laws against slavery is "judicial theft" too then, as it prevents me from exploiting my property in ways I can't afford if I have to hire people to do it.
You don't have a right to make a profit - only to try.
Copyright deprives the public of free speech in order to give someone an artificial monopoly to enable them to profit from it.
That artificial monopoly is ONLY there as a temporary incentive to promote the arts and sciences. It is a monopoly granted by the public to get something back, and it is the peoples full right to decide what rights are to be given and for how long. That is the only thing that prevents copyright from being a massive infringement of the right to free speech - it is a voluntary trade off.
If you create a table, it's yours. Absolutely. If you then sell me that table, you do not have the right to tell me that I can't sell that table to someone else, or that I can't make more tables and sell them. It's yours, yes, until you give it away. As a creator of music, books, or other "recorded creative works", you have something that the table-maker doesn't, which is a "created right"[1] that says that you can maintain a monopoly on your work after giving it away, which creates a situation that is exceptionally strange under natural law.
[1] Despite the common usage of terms like "copyright", or the UN and EU's "declarations of rights", you can't just "create" or "declare" rights. What rights there are, simply are, and anything else that you set aside for yourself or someone else isn't a right, it's a privilege. Thus "copyright", which claims to extend your "right to property", can't operate without impairing my right to make use of my own property. It's the same as if the courts declared that you have the right to a free sandwich. Sure, you can say that, but it's contrary to what the universe says, which is that you can't have a free sandwich without taking away my lunch.
In a world where media can be copied you make money by performing, or embedding ads (as in Waynes World).
Look, I like a good RIAA-bashing as much as the next slashdotter, but it would kill the industry. No-one in any position of importance is going to pass a law like that.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
...maybe some people want to maintain their work's integrity after death?
Oh wait. This is a corporate conglomerate of music labels designed solely for the purpose of making money off copyrights. Never mind.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
> You don't have a right to make money. You certainly have a right to try, but if you fail that is your
> problem - maybe your business plan depended on rights you don't have.
You are correct to say there is no right to be successful in business or industry.
However, there are other rights - such a private property - and violation of those rights will, as a consequence, make it impossible to be successful in certain types of business.
There is no right to be successful in those businesses, but there are other rights, and violation of those rights is ethically wrong - and it just happens to be one of the consequences is the impossibility of certain types of industry.
So the fact there is no right to be successful is irrelevant.
> The difference being that copyright in modern legal systems is explicitly there to give a temporary
> monopoly to a creator of a work to promote the advances of the arts and science by granting a (time)
> limited set of rights that you as a creator would not otherwise have.
It is wrong to say the holder "would not otherwise have" this right.
Ethically, it belongs to him - he invested the time and money to make it; it is *his property*.
The problem is that the song belongs to the public.
Copyright is basically a trade whereby a person doesn't keep their story/song/etc locked up in their head, and instead releases it to the public. In return, the artist is allowed a monopoly over the reproduction of said story/song/etc for a limited period.
At best, the artists in question are attempting a breach of contract by taking the monopoly part of the trade, and then failing to accept the release of the art into the public domain. It's generally accecpt that it's unacceptable to steal in such a way, so why should we let these artists get away with such theft?
Don't take the above poster too seriously. He doesn't.
You still have your table; but you no longer can sell it.
You need to sell it, because you spent the last year doing nothing else but make it and now you have to pay your rent and buy food and clothes.
Owning the original table is no use at all if it cost you money to make and you need to recapture that investment.
> Copyright is basically a trade whereby a person doesn't keep their story/song/etc locked up in their head,
> and instead releases it to the public. In return, the artist is allowed a monopoly over the reproduction
> of said story/song/etc for a limited period.
I think a lot of people have a lot of *different* ideas about what copyright is, or should be.
I take the libertarian point of view; what you make belongs to you.
The artist invested the time and money to make the song; it belongs to him.
He then sells copies at n USD/each.
It's entirely straightforward. No monopoly, no limited period, no public ownership.
It's just like owning a factory making coke and you sell to the public at 50c a can.
There's *no difference* because it happens to be that songs can be copied for free. All that means is a transaction cost has been eliminated.
>If I had an ancestor who built a house and my family lived in it for six hundred years, would it be wrong for my family to continue to benefit from it after such a long time? so that the house should now be in the public domain?
>Why is this wrong for a house but right for a song or film or play?
Here's the logical mistake in your reasoning: That house was built one time, and you and your family owned it the entire time. If your family built another house the same, or sold "your" house, then you would no longer benefit from it.
This is actually identical to works of art, although you argue it is not. If your ancestor created a song, which only your family sung, you would be able to enjoy it, but nobody else would (unless you sung it to them). Assuming they didn't record it (which you have the right to tell them they may not) that song remains your family's forever. It will remain in your family longer than the house will, considering the house will eventually fall to ruin naturally. Like the house, over time it might change as family members make additions or adjustments, but it remains the family's.
So, I'm not getting you. Where's the issue? Is the issue that you want to make money from the song?
Did you notice the house doesn't make you any money as long as you keep handing it down to your children? Not even a cent? Sure it goes up in value, but that's just a price tag, it really hasn't made YOU any money. Unless you rent or sell it. Of course, you're welcome to make performances of your family's private song for money as well, effectively renting it to people, which still doesn't make it any more public domain.
You wanted to make a lot of money, I suppose, then? Well, you could build another house and sell it. Or make another song and sell it. Or you could take the family treasures and poach them to the highest bidder, the house going to one person, and the song going to a record company. All the people in your family would consider you a thief, but it is your right.
>I think it is because the song or film or play has a *property* such that it *can* be copied for free, and so we *do*, because by and large we lack an understanding or knowledge of what property rights really mean. We're selfish, we benefit from the theft, and we lack the knowledge to prevent us from acting in that way, despite the fact it's not actually in our best interest or indeed ethical.
I think there is no distinction between material goods and art. The only difference is in the amount of time required to make more of each. None of them are free to copy (although some think they are, I challenge someone to show me a method of recording that uses no material goods or labour). But that is reflected in the price. Houses sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and take several months, even years to build, and involve hundreds of labourers. Consumer compact discs take a few minutes to build, and sell for several dollars. Mike and ike's take less than a second to build, and sell for below a penny.
Be assured, the recipe behind a popular candy like Mike and ike's has as much, or more, thought behind it as "Happy Birthday". And, the original blueprints, land purchases, greasing of city officials, etc required to make the cookie cutter house most buy today took more thought and effort than Michael Jackson spent on his "Thriller" album.
I lack no knowledge about my selfishness. I simply justify it. I justify making a copy of a song the same way I justified using my friends design to build myself a speaker system. Both involved the same effort from me to build them. Both items required extra thought and effort to the original creators of them. The difference is the friend that built his first set of speakers is content to be proud of being the original creator and of having the first of the item. The person that made the music is rather selfish and, unlike the friendly speaker designer, feels he deserves more. Normally in society we disdain the
For example, the Beach Boys' song "Good Vibrations" is currently being used here in a very annoying ad for an appliance store called the "Good Guys". They substituted in lyrics and made an atrocious jingle out of it. Personally, I would have listed that as the eighth deadly sin.
* This argument really doesn't apply to record labels.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Frankly, I am greatly in favor of far more aggressive inheritance tax. Why should you be given benefits over other people because your ancestor built a house? Why exactly does your blood line have anything to do with your rights as a human?
This is where the capitalist fantasy of equal opportunities to success falls apart. As long as inheritance so massively dictate someones access to money, education and a proper childhood, there will never be anything of the sort.
And in fact, if you look to England, if it had not been exactly for reform of the inheritance tax system, large estates would still have owned almost all of London (and in fact most of England) - until the 1500's at least, that was the case. It was only with reforms to inheritance tax that the large estates started getting split up, with the result being massive development, as the owners could no longer afford to keep the estates intact because the rates of returns they generated from the land was so low. After all they had enough money, and so had no incentive to do much with the land.
If you go around London, you might notice the names of many of these estates - London is one of very few cities in the world where place names are very often the names of developers, estate owners or their wives and family. Names in London including Russell,Cadogan, Portman, Grosvenor, Southampton, Berkeley, Cavendish, Leicester, Montagu, Sloane etc. almost all refer to the original or early estate holders.
Some of the larger estates (most notably Grosvernor and Portman) STILL owns large percentages of the land in the most expensive parts of London, and the families profit mainly not from their own work but from essentially being handed anything from millions to billions worth of property on a platter because of DNA.
In this case, forcing the estates hands in this way achieved two important things for society: 1) it required the owners to seek ways to profit from the land to generate sufficient revenue to allow financing inheritance taxes to keep the estate together, 2) it forced those that couldn't profit from the land to sell off parts to people prepared to try harder.
Without it, London would still be a backwater today.
You need to sell it, because you spent the last year doing nothing else but make it and now you have to pay your rent and buy food and clothes.
Well then this person is an idiot, isn't he?
I want to sit around in my pajamas all day and make macaroni necklaces; where's my god-given right to get paid for that? Huh? To get paid for something, I have to do something that someone else is willing to give me money for.
Copyright is a state-granted monopoly to encourage the creation of creative works - it's for the public's benefit, not the artist's benefit.
... this petition was initiated years ago. It read:
It may be possible in the future that it will be necessary to extend copyright. If you sign now we will take care to pass over your signature when this condition arises.
Indeed this petition was originally written in ancient egypt about threethousand years ago. And I am the only beneficiary. Take my word for it.
Anonymous Coward
> Music is pretty much the same way. If you don't want to share it with the world at large, you can write
> it and keep it a secret.
Okay, so lets imagine I build a lovely house. Beautiful. Big, couple of wings, Victorian style, set in acres of lovely land.
> Record it, play it to yourself when no one else is at home. No one is going to
> "steal it" from you. However, you want other people to listen don't you? You want to make money off of
> it? Well, once they listen, it becomes part of their culture. They might get it stuck in their heads.
> They might be whistling it while they work. They might like to sing along with it when they hear it on
> the radio. They'll reference the lyrics when they think they would bring something to the conversation.
> The music is now theirs. It's part of them. By letting them hear it, you gave it to them.
I have some friends over. They love my house. In fact, they keep talking about it. They can't get it out of their heads. It's become part of them. By letting them come over, I've given my house to them.
Clearly, this is rubbish. It's my house, not theirs. I spent a bucket load of money building it.
But let's imagine my house could be copied as easily as a digital song.
Would we mind then that other people made copies?
Well, not really - because the cost to me is clearly so low; I still *have* my house, even if they have identical copies.
But this is the rub; it still cost me a *bucket load* of money to make that house. If I actually made my living by creating beautiful houses and then selling copies, and people, through the State, passed a law saying they could have copies for free - I've just been robbed blind.
As far as I can see, what your argument (which I think well describes the majority view) comes down to is that it seems so harmless to copy a song or a film, that it's impossible to feel that it's wrong.
But if it's the uniqueness of your tables which causes people to buy them off you, how will you make money from your tables once anyone can copy them freely?
> Well then this person is an idiot, isn't he?
So all the people who make films and songs are idiots?
If you feel this way, you need to throw away all your movies and songs, because they couldn't exist.
> I want to sit around in my pajamas all day and make macaroni necklaces; where's my god-given right to
> get paid for that? Huh? To get paid for something, I have to do something that someone else is willing
> to give me money for.
If property rights exist, then it is possible to make things which can be copied easily and sell them.
If property rights do not exist, then it only possible to make large, complex, heavy things which cannot be copied (which is in effect an enforcement of property rights).
That depends on whether you owned it in the first place. A lot of your argument henges on property rights.
The current state is that you lose ownership of your copyrights X years after you die. I think 50 years after creation (whether you live or die) is a good expiration time. Even if you want no expiration times, it's reasonable to expire ownership of property (including land) that is no longer maintained by the owner. This prevents the situation where ownership is unclear or abandoned, hence, property that is unusable by anyone as long as the uncertainty or neglect continues.BTW, you have an opinion that is not popular here on
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Sure, the copyright enters the public domain after n years, but then a museum or gallery or monopolistic corporation buys the artwork and claims it as their intellectual property, so you can't take photos or publish it without paying them. Even if the original artist's been dead for centuries.
Just try taking photos in an art gallery in front of a security guard if you don't believe me...
|>
Here be Dragons
... and they're signing petitions
I know I'm repeating what others have said, but it's worth another try.
Anything you use in your life was only built because someone copied an idea from someone else, millions of times over. As Newton said, "if I have seen farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants". You want to make it illegal to stand on their shoulders. I (and you) should be paying to lease a patent to the inventors of language, the wheel, writing, textiles, as well as the inventors of the millions or billions of improvements to those fundamental ideas to bring them to where they are today. Your point of view is very clearly crazy.
In fact, though, from a libertarian point of view, I can copy a song in my house and give it to my friend, who can take it to their house and listen to it, and give a copy to their friend, ad infinitum. There is no effect on the outside world. The only way to prevent that would be to have publicly accessible cameras in everyone's house. That seems to conflict pretty strongly with the libertarian "freedom from central authority/outside force" philosophy.
And for good reason. There is too much of this to even keep with it all. And it's not as if you can do anything.
... if half of the living names on the petition did not actually sign it.
Copyright infringement is not a violation of private property rights.
Let's say you have a bird-feeding house on your lawn. You made it yourself, it looks nice and all. I come by, see the house and am very interested by it. I observe it from the road (not stepping on your lawn or anything), then I go back home and make a copy of your bird feeding lawn for my own house.
I didn't infringe on your private property rights, I didn't steal your bird-feeding house (and you can still use yours), yet I do have a bird-feeding house much like yours.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Since you haven't yet been modded Troll, I'll reply...It would make little difference to Torvalds and Stallman if the copyright on Linux and GNU tools ran out in 50 years. So 50 years from now people could use Linux 2.6.18 without restriction.... do you really think it's going to matter to anyone but a few retrocomputing fans? Linux 24.9.12 will still be under copyright, since it will contain copyrightable works produced in the interim.
This is what I'm talking about. You can't seem to discern the difference between the physical product and the actual physical one. They can't literally get your physical house out of their heads? How can they stand the weight?
Oh, you mean they can't get over the design of your house. You've shown it to them, so that part of it is now theirs. They can go back and spend their own *bucket load* of money to build a house using the design ideas they liked so much. Oh, they have some fantastic method of making a copy for free (and getting free land to put it on)? That's great for them. They still haven't taken anything from you that you didn't voluntarily give to them.
But let's imagine my house could be copied as easily as a digital song...If I actually made my living by creating beautiful houses and then selling copies, and people, through the State, passed a law saying they could have copies for free - I've just been robbed blind.No, it means you chose a piss-poor method of making your living. Unless you want to argue that we "robbed the scribes" blind when we invented the printing press. My god, they made their living copying books by hand over the course of years, and now we can make millions of copies cheaply and very, very fast!!! Technology made their profession obsolete. Change professions. If they made copying houses easy, you can't make a living selling copies of houses. Deal with it, and find another way to make money.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Do they really want us to believe that today's musicians will record more music if they get 95 years of copyright? Is there a musician (who doesn't write his own songs -- compositions get life ) for whom the deciding factor on recording a song is the infinitesimal chance that her song will be commercially viable after 50 years?
The risk that a musician is so dispirited by only getting 50 years of copyright on the recordings of her work is wholly theoretical. No one can point to such a musician. That musician, btw, isn't tomorrow's artist -- it's all recording artists since the term of phonogram monopoly was set at 50 years. Every song recorded for for the 20th century was produced with that incentive (or less).
However, there are two very real, non-theoretical groups of musicians for whom the existing term of 50 years is too long:
* Samplers and remixers. This is a non-theoretical, concrete and visible group of working musicians. They are unable to incorporate other works from culture into theirs without paying -- and not just paying, either. It's nearly impossible for an artist outside of the label system to clear samples from the labels' catalogues. That's because the labels give preferential treatement to one another in a mutually assured destruction dynamic (if EMI doesn't license its samples to Sony, then Sony can refuse to license to EMI). The effect of this for samplers and remixers in the UK is that they have to either:
1. Be criminals
2. Not make art
3. Sign up for the deal the labels offer, assign copyright in their works to the labels, and take the crummy "recoup"-based payment scheme the labels offer.
Talk about creating a buyer's market for what musicians have to sell!
* The other group of musicians harmed by the overlong term is those whose work is forgotten -- orphaned by society. In these cases, either the label still holds the copyright but won't reissue the musician's work (Universal's Decca warehouse in London holds the entire, unreleased catalogue of roots music, back to steel cylinders, and Universal hasn't even catalogued that collection, let alone made plans to re-release it); or no one knows who hold the copyright, because the deal was done so long ago.
At a recent Future of Music conference, Alanis Morrisette's attorney said that in his research, over 80% of all music recorded is not in the stream of commerce. In Eldred v Ashcroft, the US Supreme Court fount that *ninety eight percent* of all copyrighted works are "orphans".
For these musicians, alive or dead, there is a fate worse than penury: obscurity. Their works -- the art they cherished and midwifed -- have been eliminated from the historical record. We have piled their recordings up in a huge bonfire and burned them in slow motion.
Finally, there's another non-hypothetical, real, visible group of artists for whom term extension is directly harmful: composers.
People who write songs get a much longer term of copyright than those who perform them. When Elvis goes into the public domain and his records are re-issued, the black songwriters whose work he performed *still* get paid by the reissuers. Right now, these composers are hostage to Elvis's label: if they don't re-release, the composers don't get a cheque. But the elimination of the majors from the equation makes it possible for a much more diverse population of entrepreneurs to arrange for such a re-release.
It's pure sophistry to wring your hands about some theoretical economic situation that will arise for musicians in 2056 when their present-day copyrights expire; that would be fine if there weren't great groups of concrete, present-day musicians crying out to have this happen.
The holders of today's 50 year copyrights fall into three groups:
* Holders of commercially non-viable copyrights (almost all of them fall into this category) -- this group receives direct harm from term extension
* Giant corporations that non-negotiably forced their artists to assign all copyright t
I cannot.
And since I cannot, I can't make the table in the first place, because I need to make money so I can feed myself and rent my flat and buy clothes.
That, sir, is neither my nor society at large's fucking problem. How do you get paid for something that seems inherently unprofitable? Well, either you find a way to make money off it, or you do something lese for money. The world does not automatically owe you something just because you worked hard at some arbitrary task.
Now, as it happens, we as a society decided a long time ago that all this writing, music, and such are a great boon for the cultural commons. In order to encourage the expansion of our common culture, we decided to add a little incentive to the process. We decided to allow the creator, for a limited time, to abridge the rights of others to freely share via copying the work, thereby giving him the means to make a little cash off the monopoly. This scheme has been twisted by publishers over the years via legislation and prpaganda into a de jure "ownership" of the work, and fools like you have bought into it, actually believing that artifacts of our common culture (music, literature, etc) can somehow belong to anyone.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
> Frankly, I am greatly in favor of far more aggressive inheritance tax. Why should you be given benefits
> over other people because your ancestor built a house? Why exactly does your blood line have anything to
> do with your rights as a human?
Because we love our children.
We work hard to pay for their upbringing and education and then, when we die, we hand to them what we have created with the sweat of our brow. Coming between a parent and their children is something we - rightly - reject on an emotional level.
Speaking more intellectually; one of my rights as a human is to do what I wish with what I own.
Here's a question; if it is considered acceptable to set aside this right when someone dies, why is not acceptable to set aside that right while someone is alive?
Something you said;
> Why should you be given benefits over other people because your ancestor built a house?
Can I not equally ask then; why should you be given benefits over other people because you have more money than they do?
Why does being dead or alive have anything do this with this?
If it is acceptable to take from a man because he dies on the basis that others need it more, surely it is acceptable to take from a man while he is alive, because others need it more.
If that is held to be true, then we have in practical terms obliterated private property and any incentive to work; because any work we do will be taken from us until we are all equal wealthy.
It seems to me violation of property rights always ultimately leads to asserting there should be full redistribution of wealth.
Since (apparently) most slashdotters don't believe in God, I will make a God-less argument here. Humans are (apparently) the product of some random occurence with no absolute direction or motivation. We just happened. Thatt bright idea in your head is just as random as the first random occurence that created the first cell, which unpredictably went on to create the human race. There is no concept of ownership in the universe. It is a construct we create for order in society. Other animals fight for ownership, and the strongest one wins. Humans legislate. So yes, even that idea in your head, once you let it out, doesn't belong to you anymore. Even that crappy song. There is no right or wrong involved here. In fact, in Darwinist terms, if someone can take your idea and spin millions with it, we should applaud them, and not you, because you are obviously too dense to recognize a good thing. Survival of the fittest huh. I mean, people who actually design stuff, dream up ABS, create an airbag, the petrol engine, the transistor and so on are only given 17 years, and some whiny musician thinks he should be able to have it for eternity. Its ridiculous.
The fact remains, despite his protestations, that people do in fact continue to work, to produce and so on. If he's really that pissy about it, he can always move to Galt's Gulch with his homies and ride Midas Mulligan's magic railroad 'till the end of time. But he won't, because he doesn't really believe that wealth redistribution entirely removes any incentive to work; he's just bitching. Also, he's completely blind to any form of coercion which doesn't say "the State" on it. Mmm, libertarians.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Beware the troll who quotes his own opinions and thinks he is one of Many.
> So, I'm not getting you. Where's the issue?
Well, all the stuff you just talked about had nothing to do with the issue in hand, which could be why you don't see where the issue is.
> Did you notice the house doesn't make you any money as long as you keep handing it down to your
> children? Not even a cent? Sure it goes up in value, but that's just a price tag, it really hasn't made
> YOU any money.
The money you made from it is the rent you didn't pay because you owned the house.
> You wanted to make a lot of money, I suppose, then? Well, you could build another house and sell it.
You couldn't do this if your house, like a song, could be copied for free and this was legally permitted.
That is the issue here.
It isn't fucking property in the first place, and "ethics" have nothing to do with that. You cannot own an idea, a song, or a story. You can own the copyright on a song, but a copyright is simply a legal fiction. The song itself is a cultural artifact that belongs to everyone.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It's my assertion that it would be very hard to come up with a work which is 100% original and that if you did produce such a work it wouldn't be very popular due to it being so different to everything else.
Most innovation is incremental. It comes about by refining and improving earlier innovations.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were based on other plays.
Similarly Beethoven based his earlier works on those of Haydn and Mozart.
These are the things which would be lost if it was possible to go back in time and implement the OP's idea of a permanent copyright.
As far as I can see, you've argued that since there is no God and everything is fundamentally meaningless, that the issue of ownership is meaningless.
In abstract, I agree. In practical terms, the issue of ownership is obviously meaningful.
> In fact, in Darwinist terms, if someone can take your idea and spin millions with it, we should applaud
> them, and not you, because you are obviously too dense to recognize a good thing.
Do you mean me as in *me*, personally, e.g. was this an insult?
Please try not to mod down the parent post just because you disagree with it (as I do). Of course, if you have other reasons to mod it down, go for it.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
> BTW, you have an opinion that is not popular here on /. You got modded down because you didn't lace the
> comment with provisions, niceties, and "I know the reason for this, but..." clauses. Basically, tread
> carefully in future.
Certainly not! why should I be all nice-nice because I hold view A and other people hold view B? it makes no sense. If people holding view B are nasty to people holding view A *because* they hold view A, they're a bunch of tossers and deserve all the directness they get.
Anyways, I don't think this is the reason. I think people mod down because there is a human instinct to be unpleasent, suppressive, towards that which is considered different and wrong. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't really capable of thought and instead hold a unreasoned, learned belief system, and anything different to that is by definition wrong - and they are then unpleasent and suppressive towards that difference.
People mod annoymously, so any superficial pressure to behave reasonably because other people are watching is removed. Only people who genuinely think for themselves, rather than merely reacting emotionally, are capable of modding reasonably (or indeed of being functioning adults).
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Well, yes. Yes, copyright does revert to the public domain after a period of time. Says so in the Constitution, and with good reason. If culture can't build on what came before, it's going to be a mightily controlled, impoverished culture. (Lawrence Lessig explains here.)
You're equating intellectual property with actual property, which is a common but unfortunate mistake, encouraged by the dishonest lobbyists we're talking about. See, there's nothing inherently property-ish about knowledge. If I teach you a song, I don't stop knowing it. If I give you my fire, I can still keep my own. Intellectual property is a virtual sort of property, invented specifically to encourage people to create by giving them a government-created monopoly for a limited period of time. There is no natural right to intellectual property; the government is not taking anything away. It is giving the artist a limited-time monopoly, not for the benefit of the artist, but for the benefit of the culture at large. (Really, it's in the Constitution.)
In fact, it's much like patents, which don't last nearly as long as copyrights. In exchange for publicizing the details of your invention, you get a short-term, government-sponsored monopoly on it. Are you saying that the light bulb, the bra, the syringe, the hammer, the bikini, the internal combustion engine, long underwear and a method of making potash would not be part of common cultural knowledge, and we should have to pay the descendants of the inventors who would have every right to not let us manufacture light bulbs, bras, etc.? What, exactly, is the benefit of having our culture's know-how locked up and controlled in that manner?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yawn. Don't you ever get tired of being wrong? If you want the rich to remain rich and the poor to go fuck themselves, just say so. But don't dress it up in this dishonest crap about helping the poor people.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
> Anything you use in your life was only built because someone copied an idea from someone else, millions of
> times over. As Newton said, "if I have seen farther than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of
> giants". You want to make it illegal to stand on their shoulders.
No.
I want to make it illegal to take from others what belongs to them.
If you want to use something someone else made or developed, go talk to them and buy a license.
If you spend a year, funding yourself, paying your rent, bills, etc, doing maths research and develop a fabulous new theorum - that theorum *belongs to you*. If someone else wants to use it, they pay for it - which is to say, they are contributing to the cost that was needed to develop it.
If it's asserted this shouldn't be paid, no one is going to do any form of work which can be copied for free. That would devestate our economy.
> I (and you) should be paying to lease a patent to the inventors of language, the wheel, writing,
> textiles, as well as the inventors of the millions or billions of improvements to those fundamental
> ideas to bring them to where they are today. Your point of view is very clearly crazy.
None of those inventions would have been MADE in the first place if people had known they would never be compensated for what it cost them to invent.
We have got used to the fact we have already stolen so much from so many that we consider it the normal state of affairs and indeed consider that we would not be where we are now had we not.
If you haven't seen it, download it for free.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. The State doesn't take away a natural right to intellectual property; the State explicity invents a limited-time right in order to provide an incentive to the creative artist. Without the State's intervention, they can make copies to their heart's content. It's only with the intervention of the State that any intellectual property rights appear at all.
Don't pretend the right to intellectual property is the same as the right to physical property; it's not, and it's an important difference.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
While you are, of course, entitled to your own opinions, please don't conflate your misguided ideas with the Libertarian view. I'd advise checking lp.org and googling around to find that you've been strenuously arguing against the Libertarian position on copyright.
- fader
So, when I (a programmer) leave my current company, I get to demand all of my code back? I can't permanently transfer copyright on code I write to the people who commission me to write it? I can't permanently transfer copyright to the FSF on GPLed code that I write?
I appreciate where you're coming from, but the idea isn't going to fly. Copyright doesn't just pertain to music and films, and I don't see anything special about them that would warrant treating them differently to other forms of copyrightable works.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
And the rights granted under copyright law are not "property". Without the time limited monopoly granted by copyright law as a limitation of free speech you wouldn't have any property-like rights to prevent copying at all.
It is wrong to say the holder "would not otherwise have" this right.
Ethically, it belongs to him - he invested the time and money to make it; it is *his property*.
Ethics is entirely subjective. Using it as an argument as to what belongs to whom only works when you talk to someone who agrees with you about what is ethical or not.
Legally on the other hand, it clearly is NOT property. Historically as well, it has never been considered property by society at large. On the contrary, the history of copyright shows very clearly that it has been assumed by most people that there was no natural property right to prevent copying, and that there were no ethical issues with doing so.
Indeed, patents arose from the same idea - that there is no inherent right to prevent copies, even of a physical object - so in addition to copyright, government also granted a temporary monopoly to give an economic incentive to publicize the internals of machines that would otherwise be hard to copy, so that once the monopoly expired, it would be easier to copy. Hence we have patents.
A similar protection was granted for trademarks. That is perhaps the one case where an ethical consideration comes in. Trademarks have two justifications: 1) That it would be unfair for someone to take advantage of the work someone else has put in to make a brand well known, 2) That it would cause consumer confusion, possibly leading consumers to pick inferior products if people could use others trademarks at will. Even in this case, property rights were only part of the consideration, and the original ethical aspects relates as much to the consumer protection issue as to protecting the trademark holder.
Further, your argument that something is ethically the creator's property just because "he invested the time and money to make it" is quite obviously flawed. No right arises just because one has spent time and money on something: If I spend time and money to make public land look prettier, the land doesn't suddenly become mine, and I get no other special rights to it. In fact, if I spend time and money to do just about anything, it only gives me ownership within the confines of a very restricted set of circumstances:
The idea that using your time and money to create something somehow automatically makes it yours certainly has no basis in the legal or ethical frameworks most of us live under and by. It might do in your ethical framework, but don't expect the rest of the world to care.
If anything, contrary to your view, the ethics of restrict
> This is what I'm talking about. You can't seem to discern the difference between the physical product and
> the actual physical one. They can't literally get your physical house out of their heads? How can they
> stand the weight?
Having something "stuck in your mind" is a metaphor for not being able to stop thinking about something. You mean it literally in the sense of a song repeating, I mean it in the sense of being obsessed with something.
> Oh, you mean they can't get over the design of your house. You've shown it to them, so that part of it
> is now theirs.
No, it isn't. It's theft. You might have spent six months designing a new form of buttress and they've just gone and made their own, having seen your copy.
> They still haven't taken anything from you that you didn't voluntarily give to them.
Showing someone a design is NOT the same as *giving them* the design.
Hearing a song is NOT the same as giving someone the right to own a copy.
> But let's imagine my house could be copied as easily as a digital song...If I actually made my living by
> creating beautiful houses and then selling copies, and people, through the State, passed a law saying
> they could have copies for free - I've just been robbed blind.
> No, it means you chose a piss-poor method of making your living.
If I spend my time and money making a song, the fact it *can* be copied for free means I've chosen a stupid way to make a living?
What about the fact that I spent my time and money creating the song? doesn't that mean it belongs to me?
Does the fact this work *can* be copied mean it is acceptable *for* it to be copied, when doing so violates the ownership of the author?
Moreover, if this IS taken to be so, absolutely NO ONE will produce ANY form of work which can be copied for free, because they could never recapture what it cost them to produce it.
So - no more films, no more songs, no more plays... excepting in so much as there might be other ways to still make money from them (cinema showing, theatrical performances) which permit money still to be made.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
He admitted he's essentially a ruthless MOFO, who's willing to do anything to win.
It makes me want to puke.
Maxim
First of all, you knew this was coming. Copyright was only supposed to last for a limited time anyways. "I was counting on continued extensions" is not a defense, because a smart person would prepare for something like this, since it's easy to work around if you're smart.
If you're making the exact same table for 50 consecutive years, then yeah, you're screwed. But in all likelyhood, either:
A) You've made a crap-ton of money over 50 years on the world's most popular table design
B) You're not selling well at all, in which case you should have switched designs a while ago anyway
C) This is but one of many table designs you make. About 10 years in, you took some profits and reinvested them into making new types of tables.
The only people making profits off stuff 50 years down the line are mega-bands like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones (and maybe U2 eventually). Most music/movie/book copyright holders don't get benefits off their work after 5 years. Most music is either never profitable or is only profitable for a short time (when it's the hit-of-the-month on the radio, or dumb thriller #274). The rest is only really profitable over 10-20 years (hits with a generation that gradually make less money). Only extremely popular music and movies are going to be making money 50 years down the line. And the people making those movies and music are likely either dead, rich, or still producing. If Disney lost Snow White or Cinderella, it still has Lion King and Pirates of the Carribbean for 50 years to help support it making more movies.
> Of course it does; if anyone can make a copy of the item for free, how can you recapture the time and
> money you invested in creating it?
> By that argument, laws against slavery is "judicial theft" too then, as it prevents me from exploiting
> my property in ways I can't afford if I have to hire people to do it.
No, because people are not property. Contracts must be voluntary and well-informed. Slavery is not such a contract, since it is not voluntary.
> That is the only thing that prevents copyright from being a massive infringement of the right to free
> speech - it is a voluntary trade off.
> That artificial monopoly is ONLY there as a temporary incentive to promote the arts and sciences. It is
> a monopoly granted by the public to get something back, and it is the peoples full right to decide what
> rights are to be given and for how long. That is the only thing that prevents copyright from being a
> massive infringement of the right to free speech - it is a voluntary trade off.
So, if I spent ten years making a massive work of art, I pay for my rent, clothes and food during that whole time, it belongs to "the people"?
And if I keep it - which is to say, I have permanant copyright - I'm infringing their right to free speech?
Explain how, please. *I* spent the money making it. On what basis does ANYONE else say it belongs to them? how can my retention of that violate their ability to say what's they want to say?
The crux of this problem is that you're treating ideas and creativity as property -- intangible ethereal things as tangible physical things. Please try to ignore the fact that lawyers and the media are hung up on this terminology of "intellectual property". No one owns an idea - it's not possible, just as owning a thought isn't possible and I'll prove it to you:
I just had a thought about pink elephants dancing in a tutu. Whatever you do, if forbid you to think about pink elephants dancing in a tutu. It's my thought, my idea - you're not allowed to have it! But I'll bet the first image that popped into your head was of a pink elephant in a tutu. There's nothing I can do to keep you from thinking (short of killing you) and it would be impractical to try and do so. Such are ideas and creativity.
Getting back to the table, here we have a person who's spent a lot of time and energy in the process of transforming his/her idea of a grand table into something tangible - a real table. This person has put this effort into the table for primarily one of two reasons: 1. He/she hoped to sell it and make a profit on it, or 2. He/she did it for the sheer enjoyment of expression and is not expecting recompense for the effort. Your argument hinges on #1, so we'll stick with that.
There is nothing in law that says you have a right to make a profit in a business venture. If that were the case, then we'd never see an out of business sign. If I come along and see the table for sale and think it's an absolutely gorgeous table, but the creator is asking an outrageous price (in my opinion) for it, I can go home and make my own version of the table for the cost of materials and effort. If I have a photographic memory and am equally as skilled as the original artist, then I could reproduce exactly the same table. At this point, I've effectively copied his/her table. If I then try to sell my table, I could be getting into legal troubles assuming his/her table is copyrighted and someone actually notices both.
But the GP's point was that if I waited 50 years before I built my copy of the table and the original table creator hadn't sold his/hers yet, they're not going to - at least not at that price, but certainly it doesn't seem likely. Add to that the fact that they're probably not likely to sell it for enough money to cover the last 50 years of living expenses, and you've got yourself a failed business venture. Certainly after 50 years, my duplicate table would not be considered infringing by any rational person (the original artisan excepted).
Copyright is a limited grant by the government to a monopoly on your creative expression, not on the idea the spawned it. Copyright concerns itself with implementation of an idea, not the idea itself. Patents on the other hand used to be the same, but have since run amok and act like they cover broad ideas and generalities now, particularly in software and processes. However, patents cost a substantial amount of money to apply for and (though unlikely) have the potential of being turned down. Copyright is free, automatic, and getting to be perpetual (I think they still can run out, but I'm not sure after how long).
This is why your argument fails, and why copying is not stealing. Stealing implies the denial of something rightfully yours. Copying does not deny you anything you had a right to in the first place. You didn't have an exclusive right to the idea. You also didn't have a right to profit in your business venture. The only limited right you are granted under copyright is to prevent another from benefiting economically from your work without your permission. A copy for non-commercial personal use (especially if I performed extensive effort to duplicate your work without direct access to the original) is so gray in terms of the fair use clause that you'd probably never make it out of court with a smile on your face.
So for the benefit of society, please stop spreading the RIAA (and others')
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
I think they should just charge "Property Tax" on "Intellectual Property". Then when you do your taxes, you have a choice as to how much you are going to value your "Property" at. If you value it at $100, then when you sue someone, you can only sue for $100 in damages. If you value it at $300,000,000, then you have to pay taxes on $300,000,000. Of course at any time you should be able to abdicate rights to the "Property", and then you would no longer have to pay taxes on it.
Even better, it won't matter to retrocomputing fans. It'll only matter to those who want to use the code in their own proprietary software.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Your are confusing many aspects of property and this is the source of your erroneous analysis.
First, prior to the industrial revolution, there really was no "property" in your beautifully carved table. The remedies for wrongs against property were driven by this absence. Torts such as Trespass, Trover and Conversion were the way in which I protected my goods and chattels from the criminal. All of these were driven by the idea that "land" was property and all the things on the land were only able to be protected in terms of the legal notion of property derived from the land.
It was the English legal philosophers of the IR such as Blackstone and Locke that really laid the foundation for our ideas of "private property" from which your "ethics of intrinsicness" are so derived. I am not suggesting that there was some kind of Star Chamber that decided this should be the way of things but there was this entire mercantile class that were building a whole bunch of "accrued captial" in plant and factories and business that were largely unable to be protected by these traditional concepts of property. In addition the extraordinary growth of the time lead to a very protestant idea that it was our "duty" to expoloit the resources at our disposal and it is this kind of idea that lead to concepts like "adverse possesion" (squatting) where one could gain title to property (incuding land) if one could show that one had been "using" it for a number of years (usually 12) and that the actual owner had neglected the property. However at the same time the concept of property was tied to a number of other principles for example "exclusion", the requirement that for property to be found in a thing one must be able to "exclude" others from its enjoyment. Further the idea of actual "loss" as a result of having your "property" taken from you is fundamental to these ideas.
So to return to your table. It's now 1805 and you are enjoying the benefit of this now not so new "private property", so you build a table and if someone comes and steals it from you then you can have the state go looking for the thief. Note the difference between the punishing of the theif and the compensation for the loss of the table, even then these were two separate actions. One based on public policy (the punishment) and the other based on the loss you suffered (remedy). If your table is still in the possession of the theif you might get it back if they have sold it on you might be able tofollow the chain and get it back or you might get some equivalent amount of money to replace your table. All happy?
This property proved very effective at supporting the growth of the western economies in addition it was expanded in a number of directions, one of which was to extend the ideas of property to the output of intellect. And here was the first defect. The problem is that the intrinsic attribute about your table (other than the table itself) in which you have a right is the "creation" of the table in the first place. In other words, if someone makes a copy of your table and fails to acknowledge that it is a copy of your design then you have a remedy for fraud. Similary if you are a table maker of repute and someone else makes a table in your style and claims that it is one of yours then the remedy is one for "passing off" (funnily enough) one of those old Torts that were around since before the new fangled "private property" even existed.
The problem is that you are trying to find property in the "concept" of your table. This is a defect. For example, even the framers of the US constitution recognised that patenting mathematics was a bad idea and so there is a specific exemption gainst that. Do you think that the framers even thought of recorded music??? Computer software (which by any freakin' rational definition is purely mathematics anyway)???
You are entitled to claim authorship of all your creations, tables, books, maybe even a business process, certainly a piece of software but this reality does not infer property. There are severa
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
read before you post, you tool. He was quoting a website on the "scary internet", not asserting an opinion.
:x
When a songwriter dies, his wife, children or other surviving relatives have a legal expectation to continue to earn a little royalty income from his songs. In most cases involving famous songwriters, the songwriter has formed a corporation and/or publishing company with a staff of employees who maintain the catalog of songs and continue to market them. Songwriters write songs with the idea that they will continue to bring in money for their spouses and children for decades after they die.
What's wrong with that?
One problem with the current reality of Internet file sharing is that successful songwriters have far less certainty of being able to provide for their loved ones in the future. I think that's very unfortunate.
Will I finally be able to use a video card with Linux 24.9.12?
I happen to believe that we need to find a balance between the incentives offered to artists and our progression as a society. The only way we move forward is by making advances each generation, this applies not only to technological advances but to cultural advances too. Our understanding of ourselves through our culture changes and is built on the advances made by those before us. If those advances are prevented from entering our common "tree of knowledge," it makes our progression as a species that much harder. As far as providing incentives to artists, I feel that there needs to be a time frame within which the artist or the assigns can attempt to make money with a work, but there's no right to make money and if it hasn't happened for a while, then it probably won't happen. My proposals are thus: 1. All works that are copyrighted must be registered -- no automatic copyright. There should be some nominal registration fee, such as $1. This allows people who want to use a work to find the creator or assign of that work. (It helps prevent the argument that if one can't find out who owns a work, then one can use it for free since they're not out anything because that person wouldn't know who to give the money to anyway). 2. Each year the re-registration fee goes up. I think the cost should be $2^(n-1) where n is the year of the registration starting at year 1. So, at the 14 years that the constitution discusses, the cost would be $8,192 which would be a pretty good cutoff for all but corporations. However, even corporate icons such as Mickey Mouse would be released in a generational time frame (at year 31, the cost is over a billion). This isn't that unfair considering Steamboat Willy ripped off Steamboat Bill.
OTOH if property rights exist it's legal to draw a circle and live off lawsuits against everyone who tries to create a car, a clockwork or any of thousands of things that use a wheel. And while you do nothing with your drawing of a circle, nobody else is allowed to do anything with it either.
And if you didn't manage to sell your table for 50 years, you're doing something wrong. If you did sell it, you don't have it. You may start making a copy. Why can't I, then?
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
This may be the most beautiful thing I have ever read.
May I vote for you?
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
How is this theft? When these artists recorded their songs 50 years ago, copyright was even shorter! They knew exactly how long their works would stay out of public domain. Anything extra these people have received is purely a free ride. The offspring are not royalty, and as such are not entitled to live forever off of their parents via extensions. We kicked that system the fuck out at the founding of this country for good reason.
Wait, I see, you're only concerned with the market effects on the original creator. Look, if it makes you feel better, you can mail a check to Sophocles every time you read Oedipus Rex, to Shakespeare every time you read Twelfth Night or watch She's All That, and to Aesop every time you read a fable. But please do explain why I'm morally required to do the same.
I should also like to point out that nobody here is arguing for the abolishment of copyright. Copyright was abolished for a time in France, and the result was utter higgly-piggly, publishers going out of business and authors moving to another country. What the people here are arguing for is a limit to copyright terms. Unless you're ready to make philosophy students mail their drachmas to long-dead Aristotle, you don't actually think copyright should last forever. At that point, we're just arguing over terms. So stop pretending that your fellow Slashdotters want to abolish copyright. They don't. Copyright encourages artists, enriches culture, and provides the protections against exploitation that the free software ecology depends on. When abused, it creates a stagnant culture, destroys history by making orphan works rot away when no one knows or can know who owns the rights to them, and cripples technology by making it bow to corrupt interests such as the RIAA.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
> You always can do with your ideas whatever you want: you can keep them in your head, you can publish them,
> you can tell your kids about them.
This is not true if copyright is taken away. You then cannot make money from your creations, because anyone else can make copies of them for free.
It's not true under our current copyright laws, either. Yes, you can write your "creations" down, and you can tell your kids and friends about them. But to make a living from them, you have to distribute them to interested people. And with the distribution channels controlled by a very small number of corporations, the only way you can distribute your creations is to sign your rights to your creations over to those corporations.
At least that's how it was during most of the 20th century. We now have a new distribution mechanism for "intellectual" (i.e., non-physical) creations: the Internet. But there is a battle going on to prevent you and me from using this distribution method. One of the current name for it is "network neutrality", which is an attempt to fix the laws so that the owners of the communication channels can control in detail what is easily distributed via the Internet.
Another method of restriction our distribution ability is the common practice of most ISPs of having a "no servers" rule for retail customers. This prevents you from creating your own web site to show your creations to the world. Instead, you must upload your creations to a commercial web site (preferably the ISP's), and they'll put it online for you. But this gives them control.
And in some cases, the fine print gives them ownership of your creations. Thus, several years ago there was a bit of a fuss when people using msn.com as their ISP found that msn.com was taking material (mostly photos) from customers' web sites and email, and using them in advertising. When challenged, they pointed to the clause in the contract saying that anything stored on their servers belonged to msn.com. They backed down, at least until the fuss died down. But most ISP contracts still contain language like this. If you store your creations on a commercial web site (or even an email server), there's a good chance that you have legally handed the rights to the server's owner.
Another legal problem right now is that the companies that own the Internet's wires can legally restrict the distribution of copyrighted material. In most of the world, everything you create is copyrighted automatically at the time of creation. If the corporations that control the Internet's backbone lines can find a good way to detect copyrighted content, they can control distribution based on that. Right now, this is a difficult AI problem, so it isn't much in effect. The only serious use of this so far is that some ISPs have successfully blocked material coming from competitors. But this is a big sword hanging over our use of the Internet. When the corporations develop good tools for recognizing and classifying copyrighted material, they will be able to institute strict controls similar to how the recording industry has blocked individual access in the past. Then they can demand control of distribution rights for your creations.
We do have an example of this sort of blocking in the software biz: Try buying a computer with a non-MS OS in a retail computer store. So-called "independent" software developers have mostly written for DOS/Windows, because that has been the only way they could sell to retail customers. This happened because the retail channels were mostly blocked to any software running on any OS other than Microsoft's (and Apple's, as a concession to "prove" that it wasn't a monopoly). Right now, if you're a software developer, your software must run on Windows, or most of your potential customers won't be able to run it. And MS does have a history of demanding that successful developers "partner" with them, or there's a good chance that your software will mysteriously stop working at random times, and yo
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The issue hear (sic) is the attempted extension of 50 year copyright on recordings; so-called "mechanical copyright". Mechanical copyright is usually held be the company financing the work, record labels and production companies. Song writers still retain copyright for life + 70, I think that needs shortening but it's a seperate issue.
Your point holds absolutely, but those would be patents, not copyrights. There actually are expired patents on the lightbulb, the bra, the zipper, long underwear, and plenty of other everyday items invented since the 19th century; I suppose the OP wants us to pay licensing fees for those as well.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Really? It would kill the industry? You say that as if it were a bad thing... if we could only wish it so... *sigh*
shana
And so does everyone, which is just as central to the argument for not letting someone pass on vast quantities of wealth to their children, as it invariably through history has been one of the main factors in depriving other peoples children of the opportunities you want to secure for yours.
Speaking more intellectually; one of my rights as a human is to do what I wish with what I own.
That is very clearly not true in a long number of circumstances. For one, you are not allowed to take a gun and shoot someone else, no matter how much you own the gun and the bullet. Yes, it is an extreme example, but it clearly shows that your "right" doesn't exist in anything remotely as simple form as you stated it. Try restating it - I'm interested in seeing if you can manage to come up with a version of this "right" that doesn't still have long lists of exceptions and that will restrict it sufficiently to not allow interfering with other peoples rights.
Here's a question; if it is considered acceptable to set aside this right when someone dies, why is not acceptable to set aside that right while someone is alive?
As I pointed out above, that "right" doesn't exist in that form anyway. But assuming it did, my answer would be that any such right to (partially) do what you want with something extends to you only. Once you are dead you don't exist. You can't exercise any rights any more.
Inheritance law is not there to protect your rights. When it comes into play you don't exist anymore. It is there to protect society by creating an orderly handover of assets that otherwise would be up for grabs by anyone by being left without an owner.
In fact, many countries have legal systems that specifically does not recognize your right to divide your estate as you see fit. Norway, for example, has a legal system that very strongly favor equal distribution amongst the children of a deceased, to the extent where overriding equal distribution in a will is difficult and to some extent impossible. Dividing up personal effects can be done fairly arbitrarily, but dividing up property of any significant value can not. Courts can even go back and undo transactions happening in the last few years before your death to ensure fairness.
The argument for this arrangement is exactly that you don't have any claim to the assets after your death, and so for you to attempt to control how they should be distributed after your death is an attempt to control assets you no longer own, and that the right to decide the distribution of those assets rests with society as a whole. In this case, wills are allowed to control what specific assets are allocated to whom, but only to the extent where the value of those assets are fairly evenly distributed between your direct descendants.
More cynically, current inheritance laws are there because it benefits people with wealth, who controlled society when current forms of inheritance law were created. For physical objects there is certainly a "natural rights" or ethical argument about it: People will recognize that someone close to the deceased would have a greater claim at least to objects that have a personal connection to the deceased, and some will recognize the economical rights granted by current laws. However in the latter case, the argument has more to do with wanting to benefit. In other words, it's a selfish argument more than an ethical one.
More recently, corporation law in large part came about for much the same reason, because it became untenable for society that businesses closed down or failed due to property issues when it's original owner died.
Can I not equally ask then; why should you be given benefits over other people because you have more money than they do?
Of course you can, and it's a reasonable question. Why indeed? What gives you the right to benefits not granted to someone else?
However
I thought they could. Hasn't 2Pac been producing new songs in the past consistently since his death (or am I wrong about the meaning of "newly discovered archival recordings")? How long has he been dead now? The last time I checked (a few years ago) he had put out and album or double album about every two years since his death. Pretty prolific, huh?
It kind of makes one wonder who copyrights are making money for. Certainly dead artists are not enjoying their profits. Or do spirits really need bribe money like in Chinese ancestral religion?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
I *wish* /Slashdot/ had _some way_ of *emphasizing* words with 'font formatting' constructs!
...not use 'em.
And, worse for the monopolistic corporation, if THEY make photos and sell them, anyone has the right to copy the photos; no new copyright is created, at least in the United States. (emphasis mine)
This article, however, is all about how copyright law differs around the world. The whole point of the Gower report is that copyright in the UK is currently not the same as in the USA, and Gower reckons that's fine while the artists think they should be entitled to the same copyright terms here as they are in the USA.
It's not at all clear that anybody in the UK has the right to copy photos of old paintings. Certainly all the UK galleries etc claim that they own a normal copyright on the reproductions they make. If this is true, well, you can expect US law to be "harmonized" with it soon enough...
Thankfully many of us have spent dozens of hours practising zombie destruction in computer games like dead rising and are well-versed in their destruction.
Everyone knows the best way to kill zombies is with a keyboard and a Sega Dreamcast strapped to your back.
(Coincidentally, I actually did dress up as a character from Typing of the Dead for Halloween)
Yes, you're right, but you're not responding to the point the GP made. If anyone can copy, perform and sell a song that you just wrote, that takes away your incentive to write the song in the first place. The whole point is that copyright provides a limited-term monopoly to prevent against exactly the situation you describe. Note that the GP said that anyone can do what they will with the work "after n years".
Copyright terms of length zero lend themselves to abuses which will disincentivize creative work, and thus impoverish the culture. Copyright terms of length infinity lend themselves to abuses which will lock up creative works forever, and thus impoverish the culture. The point, as it has always been, is balance.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Despite their attempts at discouraging me, I've gotten some pretty nice pictures out of recently-published art books, which have been featured prominently, even saying where they came from, but I haven't been contacted by anyone about them.
I went to the Art Institute in Chicago and didn't get so much as a raised eyebrow by anyone for any photos I took. If I'd used a flash, they would likely have complained, but I took close to a hundred pictures there without getting any complaints from security. Where did you get hassled?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I whole-heartedly agree with you there, I believe copyright should be capped after a while, 50 years seems a bit excessive to me, but I guess it's better to have a large window, just in case people are still making a good buck from it. But as soon as you die all your IP should become instantly null and void, after all if you make great unique table designs, it doesn't mean your children, or your great-grandchildren can. I am highly pro-copyright, but for it to work there has to be a natural cycle to things. That includes expiry.
If I had an ancestor who built a house and my family lived in it for six hundred years, would it be wrong for my family to continue to benefit from it after such a long time? so that the house should now be in the public domain?
The concept of a "public domain" is completely irrelevant to physical objects. Certainly I see no reason why people should be forbidden to build houses that look like your house. Equally, it is quite obvious that you have the right to keep other people from living in your house without your permission.
Now let's apply that to Shakespeare in an intellectually honest manner, by comparing like with like and physical objects with physical objects.
If a 16th-century ancestor of mine had bought a copy of a new Shakespeare play, then obviously he could have passed that on to his children, and it might have become my property, and my family could continue to own it and to benefit from hiring it out to exhibitions and the like forever. The fact that the play printed in it had long ago entered the public domain, the fact that anyone who merely wanted to read or perform the play could download the text from the internet and do whatever they liked, would in no way detract from the benefits I would gain from owning a copy. The fact that all Shakespeare's works are in the public domain has not caused 16th-century copies to lose a penny of their value!
And, guess what? It's just the same with 20th-century music. Do you seriously think that the market value of an original vinyl recording of an early Beatles song would be affected in the slightest by the audio of the recording in question entering the public domain?
Funny how your argument stops working as soon as you stop comparing apples and oranges, isn't it?
You most certainly can prevent your neighbour from copying it, in exactly the same way as with artistic works: don't publish. If you never let your neighbour see the chair he can't copy it.
I wouldn't have argued against that metaphor had you not tried to argue that because they had seen your house, the actual, physical house was now theirs. Of course that's not true, because the actual physical house didn't become physically stuck to their heads. You got the design vs. actual house confused.
No, it isn't. It's theft. You might have spent six months designing a new form of buttress and they've just gone and made their own, having seen your copy.What's your point? What was stolen? Do you still have the design? Can you build more? Do you still have the buttress? Nothing was taken from you, you still have everything you had before.
If you don't want others to compete with you by using your design, you need to learn to keep it a secret. Trade secrets can be a part of your business strategy depending on your business. I'd diversify so that I don't lose everything if I lose that secret, but it's up to you how you deal with your business risks.
If I spend my time and money making a song, the fact it *can* be copied for free means I've chosen a stupid way to make a living?If your business strategy is being able to sell copies of that song forever, when anyone can make a copy for free, yeah, that's a damn stupid way of making a living. That's exactly the same as me deciding to copy books by hand, competing with printing publishers for a living. That profession has been deemed obsolete. I can't make money off it.
Doesn't mean that you can't find other ways of making money out of that song. Go perform it. Get hired to make movie or play soundtracks, so that you get paid for the actual service of making the song. Be creative.
Moreover, if this IS taken to be so, absolutely NO ONE will produce ANY form of work which can be copied for free, because they could never recapture what it cost them to produce it...So - no more films, no more songs, no more plays... excepting in so much as there might be other ways to still make money from them (cinema showing, theatrical performances) which permit money still to be made.Now at least you're looking at it from the right perspective. That's why we as a society allow you the artificial right of being the only one able to copy the song you produced, which is now rightfully ours, for a limited time. Because we want you to produce more works for us, we accept copyright as a means to encourage you to produce more. If the copyright term is too long, that becomes counterproductive, we get no benefit from it, so why would we give you this right?
I'm not against copyright. I understand the reason we have it, and the reason why it must be limited. Limited to a much shorter period than we now have. Enough so that it is possible to profit from it (but by no means guaranteed. If you make a crappy song and lose money on it, but think you could recover costs if you had copyright for just a little longer, tough luck. Song wasn't good enough.
I'm not even against you making money from your work after the copyright expires. Sell autographed albums. Go on tour. Offer the public something *new* that will make them want to give you the money.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
If I purchase a book, the book becomes my property. Yet by law, I am not allowed to make a copy of said book until the copyright expires on it. In fact, copyright restricts private property rights by restricting what you can do with your own property.
You completely missed the point. Re-read: "By that argument, laws against slavery is "judicial theft" too then, as it prevents me from exploiting my property in ways I can't afford if I have to hire people to do it."
"Property" in that statement refers to "land". The point being exactly that the fact that you have invested time and money in something does not give you any rights to infringe on the rights of others. Thank you for making my argument for me.
So, if I spent ten years making a massive work of art, I pay for my rent, clothes and food during that whole time, it belongs to "the people"?
No. The specific instance of your work of art, be it a physical book, painting or sheet music, belongs to you. However, the moment you choose to share it with anyone in public, whoever you share it with have a right to share it with whomever they please other than as restricted by law. You have no property right to the expression of that work. What you do have, is a time limited monopoly on some forms of expressing that work, to give you a better chance of making some money off it, granted to you by the public as an incentive to put effort into your work. If you don't believe you get sufficient protection from whatever copyright terms are currently allowed for by law in your country, then that is your problem and something you should take into account when you start your work. You have no inherent rights to prevent anyone else from doing things with your work once published beyond those provided by copyright law.
Welcome to reality.
You are actually also only given that right for creative works, which undermine your earlier "money and time" argument even further. In the US a further step in this direction was made when the Supreme court in 1991 overrode what was called the "Sweat and brow" doctrine in Feist v Rural, by finding that mere time and effort was not sufficient to make a compilation of facts copyrightable - there must be a creative element.
The point being, that the court recognizes that the purpose of copyright protection is to promote creativity, not to protect your investment of money and time, and so copyright protection is granted by society only when it does actually coincide with our goals of giving an incentive to create creative works.
Nobody forces you to create. And you don't have any rights to restricts what others will do to their property, even if that means copying what you have done with your property, beyond what society has agreed in the form of laws, and which society can change.
And if I keep it - which is to say, I have permanant copyright - I'm infringing their right to free speech?
You miss the point. If you tell no-one, you legally don't actually have any rights at all. There is no copyright on an unpublished work, so if someone else creates a work that is exactly the same as yours and publishes it, they will have copyright to their work, and you would actually in the future have the burden of proving idependent creation (plagiarism cases often centers on "independent creation").
Assuming you mean that you do publish the work, and got "permanent copyright":
It places restrictions on free speech, how could it not be an infringement? The restrictions on free speech we generally accept fall clearly in two classes: Either they are "action speech", i.e. screaming "fire" in a crowded theatre is an incitement to action, and the limitation is not on the speech itself but on the venue, or they are about restricting speech which is false (i.e. libel and slander), in which case the restriction is post-facto (i.e. it can't be libel or slander until it's published - the crime is the damage to someones reputation, not the speech itself).
Copyright restricts speech purely on commercial ground
I don't want people to tell me what to do with my own stuff. Copyright basically says the stuff you own doesn't really belong to you. Because of this copyright is anti-private property.
Because we love our children. We work hard to pay for their upbringing and education and then, when we die, we hand to them what we have created with the sweat of our brow.
Speak for yourself. Many people believe that what is right and proper is to work hard to pay for your children's education and upbringing so that they will be able to support themselves by the sweat of their own brows, without having to rely on their parents providing for them.
My parents are, I am glad to say, still alive and healthy. But I want them to spend their remaining money on themselves. I don't want them to save a single penny of it for me to inherit; I would be ashamed to receive any significant inheritance. Their responsibility to me ended when I graduated from university and got a well-paid job, and it is now my responsibility to earn my own wealth, instead of expecting to benefit from an inheritance I never did a thing to deserve.
Coming between a parent and their children is something we - rightly - reject on an emotional level.
Do you mean "children" as in minors, or "children" as in offspring? Because I think you are trying to use the latter semantically but with the emotional force of the former, which is a clever but dishonest rhetorical trick.
I share your reaction to the prospect of taking away parents' wealth while they are still struggling to pay for their children's education. But the situation changes completely when those children cease to be dependents. Far fewer people have any objection to the concept that grown adults, who should be working to support children of their own, might be prevented from receiving wealth that they have not personally done a stroke of work to earn. Please be clearer in your statements as to what you are actually arguing.
It's not the place of copyright to prevent people from being dicks. Once a work is in the public domain, it's in the public domain. Just like anyone can do a magnificently wanky remake of La Boheme in which Mimi comes back to life at the end and enjoy eternal, grating popularity among high school theater geeks, or anyone can use "O Fortuna" for every fucking movie trailer ever, if someone is going to rape your childhood, don't look to copyright to help.
I should also point out that copyright even as it stands is no protection against commercial abuse. Consider The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie. (The book itself is pretty stunning, and purposely draws extensively on the public domain.) Or I, Robot, or the upcoming adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "The Golden Man", called Next.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
> Tangable property should be taxed on death (possibly up to 100%).
/. holds some quite contradictory views.
It struck me earlier that
A great many people here despise President Bush...and yet here we are, saying we ought to give him everything we own when we die?
To do what with it? pay for another war? more Medicare? put off social security reform for another ten years?
The State is incompetent, because everything it does is a political football. The less money they have, the less harm they do.
Were these musicians hiding out in Millyways perhaps?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
> Doesn't 'ownership' usually imply that there are people who aren't allowed to use it?
Not per se, I think.
Ownership means that an individual has provided the resources required to obtain a service or good.
Having done so gives that individual the right to do what they wish with that item.
The thing is of course that typically, we buy things because we want to use them and since we, culturally, like to own our own items, it tends to be that everyone buys their own, so we each have an individual copy which we use just for ourselves.
For example, I could buy a toaster and share it with my neighbours, but I don't. I like to use it myself, just as they like their own. Similarly, we could share a car, but it would be awkward, because we want to be in different places at the same time (since we work in different jobs).
So it appears, superficially, that ownership means other people can't use it. Actually, I think that's much more a personal choice which is made seperately from ownership.
> And anyways, ownership of intellectual property is a tricky beast because it copies itself into memory
> whenever it's accessed.
That's irrelevant. If I create a song, and you hear it and reproduce it from memory, it's just the same as having walked off with my sheet music.
> The crux of this problem is that you're treating ideas and creativity as property -- intangible ethereal things as tangible
> physical things. Please try to ignore the fact that lawyers and the media are hung up on this terminology of "intellectual
> property". No one owns an idea - it's not possible, just as owning a thought isn't possible and I'll prove it to you:
This all sounds good and well until consideration is given to the economics of the matter.
If I have 30k USD in my bank account, and I spend that money over the course of a year, paying for my rent, food, heating and clothes, and I spent that time developing a wonderful new idea - a fantastic math theorum, say a new data compression method - then if that idea does *not* belong to me and anyone else can use it for free, I've been robbed blind; because I paid for that new method and other people are using it for free.
Now, so far, so good. I might even risk to say that we are in agreement so far. I think the disagreement comes next; in that I say this method - and the revenue derived thereof - belongs permanently to this person, and you say it should, after a while, this method and so the revenue derived thereof - should be taken from this person, so that no one has to pay for it any more.
Certainly all the UK galleries etc claim that they own a normal copyright on the reproductions they make. If this is true
Why wouldn't it be true? If you record yourself performing Beethoven's Fifth, you own the copyright on that recording regardless of the fact that the music itself is public domain. Similarly if you reprint a work by Shakespeare, etc.
I can't imagine that the reproductions that galleries sell are any different in that respect.
Also, as far as photographing the paintings goes, the people running museum/gallery is within their rights to disallow photography on their premises - or blowing your nose, speaking too loudly or too quietly, eating milk chocolate (but not dark), or anything else that doesn't fall foul of anti-discrimination laws (eg banning the use of a wheelchair will likely be illegal). You have no inherent right to be in the building, and they can ask you to leave if they want.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The Open Rights Group is running a Release The Music campaign, with a petition against term extension that you can sign. There's also one asking for the right to privately copy CDs to iPods.
Are Slashdot readers as good at signing petitions as dead musicians?
I'm not sure why the Slashdot editors trimmed the ORG petition off my original submission - do they prefer whinging to doing something politically influential?
> OTOH if property rights exist it's legal to draw a circle and live off lawsuits against everyone who tries to create a car, a
> clockwork or any of thousands of things that use a wheel. And while you do nothing with your drawing of a circle, nobody else is
> allowed to do anything with it either.
If you draw a circle, property rights mean that you own that circle that you've drawn.
You put in the time and effort to make the drawing; it belongs to you.
It does not mean you own ALL circles.
By letting them hear it, you gave it to them.
Worse, you put it in their heads without getting their permission. If we continue to pretend that thoughts are just like chairs, they should sue your ass for trespassing. Depending on the quality of the song, maybe for dumping garbage on their property, too.
> How is this theft? When these artists recorded their songs 50 years ago, copyright was even shorter! They knew exactly how long
> their works would stay out of public domain.
That fact something is a law does not mean it is right.
Segregation was law.
> The offspring are not royalty, and as such are not entitled to live forever off of their parents via extensions.
They were given something by their parents. We come along and take it. Isn't that theft? do you envy their success or luck so much you justify theft by it?
Have your parents given you anything? how would you feel if the State came along and took it from you? I think you would be deeply outraged, and rightly so.
Society as a whole, via the representatives it elects.
what happens if what is decided as good is harmful to members of that society?
Then the law is imperfect. That's not really avoidable.
Wasn't segregation justified in this way?
It can't have been, unless you're saying segregation is actually good for society.
Of course it does; if anyone can make a copy of the item for free, how can you recapture the time and money you invested in creating it?
If I dig ten holes and then fill them in, how can I recapture the time and money I invested in doing this?
If there's one single action which will devestate any industry, it's removing the ability to make money from that industry, because people working in that industry are then obliged to change professions - and that entire industry basically disappears overnight.
Which is why we have copyright laws. Having copyright expire doesn't make arts completely unprofitable, in fact to the overwhelming majority of authors it will make no difference at all. What proportion of books are still being sold after ten years, yet alone the current life+70? (Feel free to substitute painters, composers, filmmakers etc. for authors)
I am trolling
No. If you are an employee then the code you wrote is a work for hire and the company owns the copyright from day one. You have no rights to reclaim/reassign/etc.
Enjoy throwing things ?
You're not a libertarian. Your vaunted right to go kick down the door of anyone who used one of your ideas is a state-provided monopoly based on no natural law. Ideas spread like fire; the State puts restrictions on how they do so to extract greater public utility.
A real libertarian view of intellectual property would be that the State has no business telling you what to say or not to say, and if you kick down my door because I'm singing a song you wrote, you're initiating force against me and I'm morally obligated to shoot you in the face.
The State does not merely secure intellectual-property rights; it creates them. If you want the State to guarantee you and your descendants a cushy life forever, say so. But don't pretend you're being some kind of rugged, manly individualist when you do.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The case I referred to is US case law (not even Supreme Court case law), on Wikipedia here; I have no idea what the law is for Australian works.
Hey, do you guys refer to December as being "summertime" there, or does "summer" still mean June-July-August but mean cold and snowy? I'd always wondered that.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Except 'our' side doesn say the right should be "taken from this person" after a time, at all. We (most of us) do support a limited right being given for a time, and then reverting to the public. If that's "taking", then so is you repossessing rental property after the rental period. It's not theft to recover your own property (the natural right to copy being the property we are talking about), after the period you granted that right to another expires.
"Whahhh!" says the citizen - "He said I could walk across his land this one time, and after I did, he won't let me do it again. He's "taken" my 'accessright'". "Boo-hoo-hoo" says the state, "I incarcerated him for the time the court allowed, and now he wants out just because his 28 year sentence is over. He's "taken" my 'Incarcerationright'".
Rights are controlled, transferred or restricted only for limited times all the time in law. If something had to be "taken" to support reversion to the previous right holder, then every limited time right entailed a theft somewhere. Congratulations, you've just proved that property is theft, so please rename yourself P. J. Proudhon, or turn yourself in for having violated his copyright.
Who is John Cabal?
Has anyone checked with the living musicians whose names appear in the ad to determine if all of them know that they signed it?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
24.9.12? Why will you be using a development version?
My new blog
Or, yeah, you could just sell the tables, priced to pay for labor and materials (if your tables have sufficient utility, they will be bought).
If you can't get enough money to support yourself on table-making, then you need a more profitable job, and table-making needs to just be a hobby.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
Here, I'll say it again. Copyright isn't there to benefit you. It's there to provide an incentive for creativity, which benefits society as a whole. The government has no interest in extending an eternal gravy train to you and all of your descendants, no matter how much you wheedle and cajole us about how hard you work. Copyright's function begins and ends with securing sufficient incentive to you to enrich our culture with delicious works; no more and no less.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Elvis isn't a zombie, he hates the undead.
Disclaimer: If I disagree with you I'm probably trolling...
I suppose you disagree with the idea that facts cannot be copyrighted.
Oh, very well then. You own that table you built. You do not own all tables, or even all tables with that shape.
There's *no difference* because it happens to be that songs can be copied for free. All that means is a transaction cost has been eliminated.
Then why are you saying that there should be a difference?
If you make and sell hammers for a living, your customers give you money, they get a hammer, and the trade is done. If they want to make changes to the hammer, that's up to them. If they want to make another identical hammer for themselves, that's their own choice. If you want to make more money, you make and sell more hammers. If you want to have money for when you're too old to make hammers, you save it whilst you can.
You on the other hand, are arguing that songs should be treated differently, purely because they're easier to copy. It would be as if the hammer-maker only made the first hammer, went around forbidding anyone else to make hammers, and kept demanding that everyone should keep paying them for that first hammer forever and ever.
Don't take the above poster too seriously. He doesn't.
So what are you, a Marxist, a troll, or both?
Judging from his other posts, I think the answer is pretty evident:
Whiney troll
Stallman, at least, would most likely be perfectly happy if copyright was abolished entirely now! Sure, it would effectively turn all GPL software into BSD software, but it would also turn all proprietary software into BSD software! Once the source code for any proprietary system (such as Windows or Half-Life 2) escapes into the wild, it would be fair game for anyone to use.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Actually, he wasn't. This is part of his little game... Read here: http://slashdot.org/~CPMO/journal/155166
This little group plays a game of mentioning their "real" meaning within quotes, and then disagreeing with it. They assume that because they normally get modded down, that they MUST have something insightful to say, so they are trying to cheat the mod system. Read it, and you'll see. It's his own blog.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Actually it's not. Authors have the ability to terminate a rights transfer in the US after 35 years. 17 U.S.C. 203. This right is non-assignable and falls to the author's widow/descendants on his death. Whether this has much practical effect is another matter...
Perfect! You've illustrated exactly the reason estate taxes exist here in the US: we specifically noted the example of the British nobility, and sought to prevent the same thing from happening here.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
LOL (literally)! That's the most incredibly amazing idea on this subject I've ever heard! Either start lobbying about it or email it to the EFF RIGHT NOW!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No, you're the idiot because you seem to have incredible difficulty understanding this fact:
The people who made those films and songs did so with full knowledge of the state of copyright law at that time. If that was unsatisfactory, then they shouldn't have made it in the first place. If it was satisfactory, they have nothing to complain about now. Either way, they have no grounds to retroactively change the agreement!
This petition is nothing but bullshit motivated by petty greed. Did I make it clear enough for you?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And it requires a massively intrusive police state along with a vast prison system and court docket to criminalize table copying. Almost everyone would be a criminal at some point, if copying ideas becomes a felony for all intents and purposes.
All art is based on building on previous ideas. Crafts as well. God knows science is based on godless socialist sharing. IP will bring the growth of our culture to a crawl.
Oh, but they all are derived from YOUR circle. They infringe on your rights to the shape you invented.
Sorry, but taking current approach to copyright - when Milka-purple color is copyrighted, when silence is copyrighted, when single-click is patented, when 'rotary transportation device' patent has been granted, when guitar tabulatures, lip-syncs, subtitle translations and thumbnail miniatures are infringing, in the above example you could sue God for making the Sun round.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
The reason that wouldn't work is that most any theorem you can make needs to use other people's results in its proof. (Certainly mine did.)
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
The catch here is that this is what the record labels are trying to do these days. If the musicians/artists are producing "work-for-hire", then the labels own the copyrights right away and the artists get fucked.
This poo is cold.
It's only peripherally relevant, but here are some guys shooting I Am Legend in Columbus Circle. The guys herding people away from where they were setting up shooting were pretty polite, and didn't seem to care that I was taking pictures of them.
The bit about The Bean is pretty odd, but when you think about it, you can't photograph currently-copyrighted paintings and such in a museum and use them for commercial purposes. The thing that surprises me is that the city bought the work, but the artist retains the copyright on it, which seems like an incredibly strange deal. Chicago really struck a pretty bum deal.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I've seen a lot of comments arguing about "intellectual property" and I just want to straighten something out right now: there is no such thing as "intellectual property". Ideas and property are nothing alike; ideas can be copied infinitely at no cost. Property cannot be copied infinitely at no cost. No one can own an idea.
The state (of the people, by the people and for the people) may temporarily grant someone exclusive _rights_ to the copying or use of an idea, but this is nothing like property rights. Property rights are in place because multiple people can't use a piece of property at the same time. Copyrights (and patents) are in place to encourage the advancement of new and useful ideas and art (go ahead, look it up, it's in the constitution).
Don't believe me? Go ask a lawyer about so-called "intellectual property". The first thing she will do is ask you "are you talking about copyrights, patents or trademarks?". You'll notice that none of those has anything to do with property. Don't use the phrase "intellectual property"; it's deceitful language used by manipulative people to try to get you into the frame of mind of treating ideas as property.
Nathan's blog
Truly, +5 Insightful is not enough for that idea.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
That is if they were on a death support system for tax reasons, I've read that is possible in some sort of encyclopedic work, the title seems to elude me though ;o)
We'll I'm off - So long and thanks for all the fish
Your position on copyright is the opposite of what you think it is. Copyright has nothing to do with ownership of a created work, rather it has to do with rights to regulate behaviour of people, and these rights override and contradict ownership rights, which is what makes your statement contradictory .
If you create a table, you own it. Check. If I create a copy of a song, I own it (the copy). Check. In both cases, we're talking about a physical object (table, file containing a copy of a digital performance of a song). This object was created entirely by me or you, from material I or you own (wood, nails, hard disk, computer, cd), etc.
So if the world really followed your position logically, then there would be no problem. People would be making all the copies of songs they would wish, since they're the ones making the copies, using their own time, tools they bought, etc. The original author of the song isn't needed and not involved in those acts.
But copyright doesn't work on the principle of "I made it, I own it". Copyright works on the principle that authors retain several rights over others, even after the work has been sold. So I can make something, but I don't own it because somebody else has rights on something that's physically completely different, somebody who might be dead for the last 70 years. It's so bad that even though I've never seen the original work (song), I've never heard the original performance of the song, the original performers etc, I can't copy a third or fourth generation performance by a third rate band to improve it.
It's like if you saw a bicycle in the street and had a creative moment, then went to your garage and built a bicycle of your own just from that fleeting glimpse. Oops, you're copying. But you built it, you made it. Nope, it's copying.
Copyright contradicts your principle of "I made it, I own it" by introducing the principle that "you made it, but I still own it" for certain types of works. If you're going to take a position one way or the other, make sure you're arguing what you think you're arguing, not the opposite.
Only an economist could come up with tortured logic like that. No money was made. Money might have been saved, but it was not made.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
You are a tedious little turd. Aspie much?
After all, I am strangely colored.
A tedious troll at that. The best trolls post once, maybe twice, and get a 200 comment shitstorm in response.
After all, I am strangely colored.
You're seriously asking me what harm an infinite-length copyright term could do? That's a remarkably low bar to set. We'll examine the effects of automatically-renewed copyright terms of long, but not infinite, length here in the United States.
(Bear in mind that to seriously argue for infinite terms, you'd have to show harm to the culture that wouldn't occur if terms were only five hundred years long, for instance. And "it enriches their descendants" doesn't count; we have copyright to promote science and the useful arts. Congress can hand me a stack of Benjies for no particular reason, and that'd be "good" for me, but that doesn't make it good public policy, and it absolutely doesn't promote science and the useful arts.)
If you'd like an example of how current culture always makes use of the past, and how that past has been taken out of the hands of creators, there's an excellent presentation by Lawrence Lessig.
If you'd like numbers, see Public Knowledge's statistics that of the 3 million registered copyrights from 1923 to 1943, only 2% of them were commercially used in 1998. I think tossing 98% of our culture from that period down the memory hole is a terrible thing to do. (The Lessig presentation has a bit about the role of a noncommercial life for many works--most of the books on Project Gutenberg aren't sold any more, but that doesn't mean they're not useful. Better to have them there than nowhere at all.)
If you'd like anecdotes, you can start with Save The Music's overview, then read anecdotes from researchers who had to change or abandon projects because there was no way to clear rights for orphan works, archivists and documentarians who can't use materials from companies that went out of business many years ago, or old folks who can't get their wedding photographs repaired if their kid tears them, or the Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers of America--hardly a bunch of Napster-licking college students--collecting anecdotes where the early pulp heritage of SF can't be reproduced or even preserved because early magazines folded, and no one knows who owns the copyright.
An Orphan Works system--or requiring copyright registration again--would address most of these concerns. But ironclad copyright of a century or more, let alone eternal copyright, is destructive madness which serves to enrich a few corporations at the expense of our culture at large, by locking up (until they turn to dust--essentially throwing away) any works which aren't commercially exploited any longer.
So, yeah, there's my evidence; the losses are far from being simply theoretical. Your house analogy is ridiculous for reasons pointed out elsewhere in this thread; no one short of Jack Valenti thinks that intellectual property should be administered the same way as physical property. You can read some of the Founders' thoughts on that. (As I keep saying, copyright is for the benefit of the culture at large; it rewards creators as an incentive to this end. It is, for this reason, a convenient abstraction, similar to physical property in name only.)
(Also, your distinction between "artistic" and "non-artistic" isn't the right one; you're thinking of creative and non-creative works. See Feist v. Rural; it's not your efforts that are copyrighted, but your creativity, once fixed in a tan
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Cool, thank you for rational argument against copyright. I also agree the copyright restricts my personal property rights.
Would it help if we gave you 50 years in which nobody else can legally make copies of your table. Then you can put a year into making it and you still have 50 years to recoup your investment. You win because your ability to create something that people would pay for earns you money. Society wins because they have another nice table to choose from. We can call the system copyright.
The question is what should happen in 50 years? You had a chance to recapture your investment. Now what is the case to keep people from copying the table?
Wait, wait... you think poor people are poor because of all the taxes they pay? The problems started rolling in with the New Deal? You think rich people spread their money evenly around, but the government drops it in a pit under Cheyenne Mountain somewhere? Did you even know that the repeal of Prohibition was part of the New Deal? That the New Deal was supported by business interests during the Depression, as well as Ronald Reagan himself?
Bah. You know, there's a place where citizens roam free, unburdened by taxation or regulation or government of any sort. You can ever buy firearms without some gun-grabber looking over your shoulder. It's called Somalia, and I suggest you give it a try; you seem like you might like it there.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Allow me to hypothesise here. Let's just say for arguments sake that you're wrong, and that my theory that they mod irresponsibly comes from their inability to mod and post in the same discussion is right. I could take most of that paragraph and turn it around on you. I think that last paragraph could be called an unpleasant, (possibly) suppressive, reaction to the opinions of others. Your view could be considered (still in the hypothetical situation here) an unreasoned learned belief system. Not to mention you disagreed very directly to my belief that the moderation system is the problem, so it is "wrong" to you, and it provoked an unpleasant and (again, possibly) suppressive response.
I'm not trying to put you down, or anything like that. What I'm trying say is, take your own advice. Think about your opinion and seriously consider others. As it stands, my opinion brought upon and unpleasant response. Instead of reasoned debate with other people, you seemed to dismiss their arguments altogether, implying they "aren't really capable of thought and instead hold a unreasoned, learned belief system". The funny thing is, as I demonstrated before, they could easily dismiss your ideas the same way.
Amen to that, but they just won't listen to you if you keep the aggressive tone. I've expressed some unpopular views here at slashdot, and it took me a while to fully realise that people only listen when you don't get on your high horse, however much they deserve it.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
| As to whether that's a good thing, consider the fact that if copyright had always
...
..." Interesting and informative.
| been indefinite then most of the literature, software, music around now wouldn't exist.
Fact? This is speculative at best.
Well, it's hardly speculative in at least one modern example: Most of Disney's best-known works are openly and obviously based on previous works. But Disney routinely uses their copyright to block similar work by others.
Just try making your own version of "Snow White" and see how long before you get nasty letters from Disney's lawyers.
Fact is that a copyrighted work based on early public-domain works can very easily be used to block further work derived from those same public-domain works. This is especially easy if the more recent copyrighted work is a commercial success, in which case a court will easily believe that you copied the modern work rather than the public-domain works.
Actually, I just did a quick google on the topic. One hit started with "Disney threatened to sue a British stonemason for copyright infringement over a plan to carve Winnie the Pooh into the headstone of a stillborn infant.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I am not arguing that there is no God. Hell no. I am just starting with a premise.
I did not mean you are dense. I meant that in "survival of the fittest" terms, if one cannot monetize your brilliant idea, then one is not very clever. So Bill Gates would be cleverer than the guy he bought DOS from. which is probably true.
However, if you agree that the issue of ownership is a practical issue, then it stands to reason that there are limits to it. I mean, we are taxed (at least I am). But I earned it. The government obviously thinks they can do better with the money I earn.
I tend to lean to that analysis. That 'economic' ownership is useful as a motivator for humans to improve their lives directly, and the lives of others indirectly. As soon as ownership begins to impede progress, it has gone too far.
Which is why, incidentally, I support higher estate taxes. You don't really need those things in death, and your kids should be able to have some of your stuff, but so should society, because, well, we can.
Speaking more intellectually; one of my rights as a human is to do what I wish with what I own.
...
That is very clearly not true in a long number of circumstances. For one, you are not allowed to take a gun and shoot someone else, no matter how much you own the gun and the bullet. Yes, it is an extreme example,
Heh. My immediate thought on reading that sentence was that I just got home after driving my car for half an hour. If that guy was right, then one of my "rights" would be to drive my car (that I own) anywhere and in any manner that I like. I could drive across people's lawns, run down dogs and children and old ladies, etc.
But in fact, I can't even drive down the freeway at 120 mph. Jeez, my rights to use my own property are so restricted by this fascistic government
Where do people come up with "rights" like the right to do what you wish with what you own? That's so outragious that you'd think anyone capable of typing the sentence would be smart enough to see the problems.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
> the shareholders can sue (If you don't [obviously wrong action], it's bad for profit = lawsuit)
What law is this? In a reasonable system, they would just sell their shares and "take their business elsewhere". At least in this case the company can put some bounds on how much money they'll lose if they make their shareholders mad. (Of course, someone else is always willing to buy the shares... so they probably won't even lose that much money.)
My other car is first.
Moreover, if this IS taken to be so, absolutely NO ONE will produce ANY form of work which can be copied for free, because they could never recapture what it cost them to produce it. So - no more films, no more songs, no more plays... excepting in so much as there might be other ways to still make money from them (cinema showing, theatrical performances) which permit money still to be made.
This is demonstrably false. People have been making music and performing plays for thousands of years even though they can be more or less easily copied. Long before the invention of copyright. They're still doing it today. To give one example, the fashion "industry" is thriving despite not having copyright. People are producing all kinds of work and releasing it directly in to the public domain and allowing it to be used with Creative Commons licenses.
Times change, and culture adapts. Other people have rightly pointed out to you that culture comes from all of us. The idea that every innovator can control all future use of their innovation, if implemented as law, would stifle future creative output. We're all standing on the shoulders of others. I think it is very shortsighted to imagine whatever "new" work you have created does not rely on the input of countless thousands of others, and that if they or their descendants could lay claim to the parts that "belong" to them, you would never be able to afford your derivative.
That's right. It also isn't "piracy" which is armed robbery at sea. You'd think the FBI, as a law enforcement agency, would know that, but I still see "FBI Anti-Piracy Notice" at the beginning of my DVDs. Grrr...
Well, with a painting, the original - if famous enough - will not only still be worth money after your death, but will probably increase in value and accrue additional value over time. See for example the Mona Lisa, copies exist in plenty, but the original is still worth the big bucks. What if everyone who published an article about it or an encyclopedia reference etc etc had to pay DaVinci's great great great great great grandchildren. How is that useful to society?
Code doesn't work quite so well, but then again little is overly useful after a decade or two has passed. An alghorithm might be, but as a programmer myself I hardly expect that if I came up with something unique and with strong future use, that my great-grandkids would be able to leech on it for perpetuity.
As for music... well digital copies more or less should apply just as the do to the Mona Lisa, but if the artists keep their orginals I'd quite imagine those would be worth a lot of value over time. I know many who would pay a pretty penny for some of the original Pink Floyd vinyl etc
And also, if you were going to choose a song for radio play at 4am you could pick something out of copyright and pay zip, rather than choosing something IN copyright and paying a license. (For radio play read any commercial use - if people could choose free or paid they'd go for free in many cases. E.g. if someone wanted to play an old Cliff Richard track to a public gathering and they had the choice of a free '58 song or a royalty-laden '59 song, which would they choose? As the years roll past there'd be more and more choice of useable material with nothing to pay.)
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
The principle of "False in unum, false in omnibus" should apply here.
All signatures must be validated (after all, they are probably copyrighted).
I'm sure a company such as... say Microsoft would be able to work out a
DRM-style system to prevent signatures being "pirated".
Who's to say that all the living signatures are genuine anyway?
the law, or laws, are mentthioned here -c orporatelaw.html
http://www.business-ethics.com/resources/article_
I only of this once but I belive Henry Ford was sued by the shareholders when he gave money away.
They claimed it didn't help the bottom line and I believe they one.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
In most cases I haven't had a problem taking photographs in an art gallery or museum, though flash photography is usually discouraged or banned and you will be chucked out, though not of course lose your camera or picture. Still pays to be careful, however, since it does vary from place to place, and I have seen photography explicitly disallowed with or without a flash.
When visiting Edinburgh a few years ago, the room with the Scottish crown jewels in had signs forbidding photography, and a security guard inside who kept barking "use and lose it" threatening to confiscate the cameras of any visitors who he thought might be taking a picture.
The funny part really was that nearly all the visitors had photographic equipment (photography being permitted everywhere else on site), and I couldn't help but wonder at his threats when it was obviously trivial to take photographs without the guard realising, and also to wonder how he would get on if he actually had tried to physically take someone's camera, as opposed to merely threatening it (theft? criminal damage, potentially, if he damaged it or deleted pictures?) and especially if he had tried to confiscate a camera only to find that no picture was taken, that he had merely mistakenly thought the camera was being used?
To sum it up, bad example. I had to go through this with my parents, and it was truly a horrendous experience (probate, not historic societies). And after all that I had to fight an aunt who claimed she had more right to it than I did, as son...not unlike some of the nasty fighting going on in the music industry right now.
It seems to me if I create something, it belongs to *me*.
Well, that may "seem" to you, but you haven't made an argument for it, that's not the way the law works, and that's not how things have worked historically.
Whereas if anything which *can* be copied for free is legally permitted to be copied for free, production of such things will almost cease.
That's merely your unfounded assertion.
In fact, most of the great works of art in history have been produced without copyright protection, and the US, on its way to becoming a world power, was ignoring foreign copyrights and patents completely. Evidence mostly suggests that copyrights (and patents) harm growth, innovation, art, and culture.
And, maybe you can tell us: what have you produced that's worth shit?
So it seems to me I'm using the power of the State to prevent theft.
There is no theft because there is no property in the first place. The law doesn't recognize copyrights and patents as "property"; they are temporary monopolies granted by the government, with a specific aim in mind. The US Constitution protects your property, but lawmakers could reduce copyrights and patents, or even abolish them, if they concluded that society doesn't benefit from them anymore, without conflict with the US Constitution.
If you need to attack me, you are insecure in your arguments.
I'm quite secure in my arguments; I'm merely annoyed that people like you keep blabbing on about copyright law without understanding even the legal basics or history.
Well, I suppose the question of what it would take for an idea to be 100% original could make for an interesting philosophical conversation. As far as how popular this 100% original idea would be, I again think that's speculative.
You're right in that most work (artistic and otherwise) is based, in part, on work that has preceded it. This incremental innovation is not only built upon works that are currently out of copyright, however, and copyrights do not prevent it in any way. In film, for example, most of the schlock that's currently being released is completely derivative. And don't even get me started on TV.
The question here isn't ideas, it's the work itself. Why should I be able to make money off the actual work of another? Why is the person who did the work (or that person's family) not entitled to make money off my use of his or her work? Why should I be able to use a recording of a Beatles song in my sneaker ad just because a certain amount of time has passed since the composer wrote the song and the musicians recorded it?
When AKC was backing PAWS (the legislation that would have ultimately made breeding companion animals illegal in the US), they had a dozen obviously-astroturf "breeders for PAWS" letters on their site. I took the trouble to track down each and every one of the purported authors. About half were single-pet owners with NO knowledge of animal husbandry, and one had been dead for five years.
With two such disparate industries both engaging in "I see dead people", one must grow suspicious of endorsements of any sort.
(Even if you weren't already. In my experience, the more-famous the endorser, the shittier the product, whatever that product may be.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
And if the labels were banks, they'd be prosecuted for usury -- at a level even the mob never engaged in.
It occurs to me that prosecution for usury and racketeering may be a much better angle to pursue than the copyright issue.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/ban02.htm
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Ah, yes. The Grover Norquist model of governance: Gut the State, run it into the ground, then say that the idea of the State was inherently doomed from the beginning.
Look, just because government run by an incompetent megalomaniac for the benefit of his cronies at the expense of the people turns out bad, that doesn't mean government is incapable of being well-run. It means that we shouldn't have an incompetent megalomaniac who runs the government for the benefit of his cronies at the expense of the people in charge. The problem will not be addressed by enriching the mighty few while leaving the incompetent megalomaniac in charge. Is that so hard to understand?
(Also, the President doesn't spend the money. The House of Representatives does the budgeting, and that's no longer controlled by the President's party.)
Indeed, the State can do less harm the less money it has. I encourage you go to to Somalia and meditate on that thought until you understand that perhaps harm can be done by actors not wearing nametags reading "The Government".
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I been had!
Damn, that's self-referential. I especially like the later journal entry, the one written as a press release decrying CPMO while providing some rather glurgy quotes about how clever they are.
I know it's meant to game the moderation system and not the comments, but my response really was the same as it would have been, with "you" replaced by "he". I thought there was something odd about that when I was replying to it...
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
You're still missing the fundamental fact that ideas cannot be "owned". Hardware patents draw out this particular fact very well by requiring the patent holder to submit into the public domain the details of how to create the object. The concept and implementation are disseminated in exchange for a time-limited monopoly on the implementation and sale of said concept.
If you want to own an idea, you must never tell anyone about it or show an implementation of it to them. Once you do that, the idea is set free and cannot be stopped. You also cannot claim first rights to an idea if you never tell anyone about it and someone else comes up with the same idea but does tell someone about it, or gets a patent for it. Prior art only covers publicized ideas since there's no way to prove that you had the particular idea first -- anyone could claim they thought of something after the fact.
So this gets back to monetization of an idea. Since natural law provides no such protections against "stealing" ideas, human law has provided limited protections for the betterment of society. These protections are limited in nature for good cause because unlimited protections would quickly stifle innovations given that most innovation is built off of previous ideas. If you lock up all the ideas, then no one can afford to come up with new ideas without breaking the law or paying exorbitant amounts of money to license them.
Economics are coming into play when you consider the chilling effects of unlimited copyright and/or patent terms. As has been stated many times before, copyright and patents are time-limited monopolies granted by the law/government. It is not possible for the government to have on the one hand anti-trust laws that prevent unfair monopolies and on the other hand grant unlimited copyright and patent terms effectively granting the same. As others have stated as well, there have been attempts at no copyrights and very long term copyrights (as we have currently) and neither is a viable solution to balancing personal economics with national economics.
I could hold an entirely different discussion about why I personally don't feel that inheritances benefit the greater society either and so that aspect of your argument I'm not really considering, but I'll hold off on that for another day. Suffice it to say that most things, including copyrights, patents, alcohol, and other things, should be used in moderation to achieve the best overall benefit for the individual and the community.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Because I seem to recall Shakespeare having a particular suggestion about what to do with all the lawyers. Maybe we can extend that to the economists as well?
I'd disagree, isn't a contract something where two or more parties freely agree upon. As they say a meeting of the mind.
"even though they were aware of the terms and willingly agreed to them (by publishing the music) before."
In copyright there is no way to agree upon. The "Contract between society and an artist" (or anybody else publishing something) is a metaphor not a factual description.
What's an artist going to do if she does not like the copyright provisions? Can she renegotiate them? Can she set the default terms of expiration? At best she can set them shorter.
And not publishing is no real alternative. It is not only the livelihood of an artist to publish his or her work, it is also a large part of who he or she is. So writing a book and only showing it to friends and family or only those that sign a contract to not copy the work is not a very good solution, because they are not practically enforceable.
Beware, I'm not saying that copyright should be extended and extended, practically indefinitely. I'm just saying that arguing it is a contract an artist willingly entered into is as wrong as arguing you became willingly (by birth) a citizen of your state or country.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
... and I believe they one
And Henry Ford zero?
If Elvis signs this petition, now, does that proove anything?
This is the UK we are talking about not Chicago