Jonathan Lethem On Plagiarism

tmalone writes "This month's Harper's Magazine includes an excellent essay by the novelist Jonathan Lethem titled 'The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,' in which he discusses the public commons of ideas and the absurdity of restricting other peoples' right of second use. 'Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work.' Taking issue with the idea that any work is 'untainted' by others' ideas, he declares, 'Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony.' Later on he argues that 'Contemporary copyright, trademark, and patent law is presently corrupted. The case for perpetual copyright is a denial of the essential gift-aspect of the creative act.' Lethem finishes up with simple request: 'Don't pirate my editions; do plunder my visions.' The best part of the essay is at the end when he provides a key to all of the sources he stole his ideas from."

Comments

well

[macadamia_harold]

All I have to say is, Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work.

Re:well

[kimvette]

I'd like to see what happens if that article is translated to Chinese then back to English, using folks who usually translate stereo manuals for the American market. :)

The /. headline is typically bad.

[Kadin2048]

The guy isn't talking about plagiarism; he calls the essay "a plagiarism" with (IMO) tongue planted in cheek. It's not correct to say that it's about plagiarism specifically, because to say that sounds like he's defending plagiarism specifically, when the issues covered in the essay itself are far more broad.

The essay is "on" creative influence, not plagiarism.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[truckaxle]

One man's "creative influence" could very well be one lawyer's "plagiarism". It is all a matter of degree.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[NetSettler]

One man's "creative influence" could very well be one lawyer's "plagiarism". It is all a matter of degree.

There are surely gray areas, but your remark suggests there is nothing but gray areas, and I don't think that's true. Under the law, copyright protects the form of a work, not an idea. It comes right out and says that plainly, in a way that law doesn't always do. Just to make sure there is no confusion. As such, "creative influence" insofar as it is an "idea" is generally protected.

The author of the article seemed to speak at times as if he were arguing against things that are in fact not in play. It is considered fair use to quote one another in the course of public dialog. (The right of fair use happens to be implementationally threatened by coercive DRM attempting to conform to the DMCA, but that's a slightly different problem. I have argued (but so far have not managed to convince any actual lawyers) that the legal concept of an easement (from Real Estate law) needs to be injected into Intellectual Property law in order to address the present state of affairs in that regard. For rights to be meaningful, having some way to enforce them seems useful. There are a number of mechanisms for addressing infringement, but there needs to be a counterbalancing force to address fair use. That the US Government Copyright FAQ does not even mention "fair use" in the set of questions is perhaps telling in and of itself.)

It is trivially true that as you morph an idea from a single source, there is a point in which the idea is still so much the original that the new form carries with it no serious value and cannot legitimately be called its own work. So in this regard, your remark is technically correct.

However, another way of interpreting copyright might be not to regard it as a right of use, but a standard we hold ourselves to before we call something a contribution. That is, if I take a play you wrote, change a word or two, and then offer it back to the public, odds are the public will say "this wasn't a material contribution". Forget copyright issues, my obligation to say I have contributed something is higher. If I'm a writer, even a good one, and call a press conference every time I type a period or comma, eventually people will get tired. It's not a novel, or even a chapter, until a chunkier contribution has been made. And copyright just enforces that same notion, but between people instead of internally within them.

So maybe it is just a matter of degree after all. But maybe degree matters. Maybe the whole point is, as in Aristotle's Virtue Ethics that at either end of the spectrum is an "unreasonable extreme", and that there really is no well-defined, uniquely determined midpoint, but that the goal is to seek a balance in spite of that fact, so that one doesn't slide to one of the endpoints. To say that any contribution, no matter how trivial, that includes another's work is ok is to create spam. To say that any contribution, no matter how large, that includes another's work, is infringing is to create a society that doesn't grow through interaction.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[jacobw]

The guy isn't talking about plagiarism; he calls the essay "a plagiarism" with (IMO) tongue planted in cheek. It's not correct to say that it's about plagiarism specifically, because to say that sounds like he's defending plagiarism specifically, when the issues covered in the essay itself are far more broad.

That's an interesting point. However, I'd argue that the guy isn't talking about plagiarism; he calls the essay "a plagiarism" with (IMO) tongue planted in cheek. It's not correct to say that it's about plagiarism specifically, because to say that sounds like he's defending plagiarism specifically, when the issues covered in the essay itself are far more broad.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[zotz]

"However, another way of interpreting copyright might be not to regard it as a right of use, but a standard we hold ourselves to before we call something a contribution."

I did not want to quote your whole post, but this comment applies in general to it.

We need to keep the concepts of plagarism and copyright seperate in our thinking.

I have been going back and forth with Dabido in this thread:

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221042&cid =17920100

and this has come up.

If someone tries to pass their work off as yours, you can use copyright law to try and put a stop to it. Now you might be quite happy not to have a copyright and would not care if people made and sold copies of your work, etc. but not like they fact that someone wants to take credit for your work.

(Somewhat like people who use BSD or GPL for software or BY or BY-SA for works in general or who place their works inthe public domain.)

I am ignorant here. If I were to place my work in the public domain and someone claimed it as their own, could I bring some sort of action based on plagarism? Are there laws in any of your countries that you are aware of that specifically deal with plagarism outside of copyright? (If no, perhaps we need them?)

As to calling things contributions, perhaps it might help to name the contributions we claim where we can. We should not denigrate even the smallest honest contributions. And a small contributor today may be a large contributor next year.

all the best,

drew

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[The_Wilschon]

One man's "creative influence" could very well be one lawyer's "plagiarism". It is all a matter of degree.

There are surely gray areas, but your remark suggests there is nothing but gray areas

His remark does nothing of the sort. "One car could very well be a green car." in no way suggests that all cars are green. It merely states that it is possible that there exists at least one car which is green.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[stubear]

"It is trivially true that as you morph an idea from a single source, there is a point in which the idea is still so much the original that the new form carries with it no serious value and cannot legitimately be called its own work. So in this regard, your remark is technically correct."

One major problem with your hypothesis. Copyright does NOT protect the idea, it protects the expression of the idea. I am free to create a cartoon mouse but if I call him Mickey and substantialyl copy the look of the Disney creation then I've crossed the boundaries of influence and inspiration to outright infringement. Your argument and the article both miss this essential point about copyright. Inspiration and influence are everything in art and culture. Illegal distribution and downright infringment of one's work is the death of it.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[NetSettler]

We need to keep the concepts of plagarism and copyright seperate in our thinking.

Under normal circumstances, I'd agree. However, the article (and I admit I read about half of it in detail and then barely skimmed the rest) didn't seem to me to be about plagiarism, which is (I assume) why the subject line upthread is "The /. headline is typically bad." It really seems to be an article about information-sharing, not about plagiarism. He cites numerous well-known authors with apparent (but seemingly ill-founded) concern that they have plagiarized, but I would say that the fact that those various authors were not discredited is illustrative of the power of both fair use and established/approved literary techniques such as homage, parody, etc.

The examples he uses really seem to me to illustrate that the existing system is in balance already... or has been until recently. (None of my remarks should be taken as an endorsement of the new trends introduced by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).)

As to calling things contributions, perhaps it might help to name the contributions we claim where we can. We should not denigrate even the smallest honest contributions. And a small contributor today may be a large contributor next year.

To the extent that your remark can be construed as an affirmation of the age-old line "one man's trash is another man's treasure", I certainly don't mean to detract from it. But I still have some concerns that your suggestion is not strong enough to really solve the problem. (My remarks here ran longer than I wanted, and I edited them down a bit. I hope the result isn't incoherent as a result.)

The problem is not that people can't or shouldn't start with small contributions and grow them to big ones. The problem is that referring to something by its history or pedigree is not the same intellectual activity as referring to something by class. One can trivially, but uselessly, describe a pedigree system as a class system, by saying that every pedigree names a class, but it defeats the ability to do generalized reference to something because each name is so heavily overloaded that short names start to have no meaning. As I was reading one of the books in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game trilogy, there was reference to a hierarchically oriented net that sounded like the idea that kids grew up posting in their town and if they gained enough stature, they were allowed to post nationally, and so on. There are obvious disadvantages of this when some governments are repressive, but just because something has disadvantages doesn't mean it's got no advantages. There's some value to saying that people should not post their first grade homework for world-wide scrutiny on usenet.

And note that I'm not trying to say that textual size implies importance. It probably tends to be correlated, but it's possibly different. A remark like "Fixed a big security hole." might be accompanied by a one-line change and yet the change might be a substantive contribution. But most small changes are not of that kind. And documenting that you only did a small change doesn't fix that--rather, it invites people to so overwhelm people with documentation that you can't tell it was just a small change. That's how lawyers have learned to address requirements for disclosure: don't withhold, but instead drown the opposition in so much disclosure that they can't find the thing they care about.

So I'm leary that encouraging "disclosure" as a standard for saying you made a contribution is, while a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[NetSettler]

One man's "creative influence" could very well be one lawyer's "plagiarism". It is all a matter of degree.

There are surely gray areas, but your remark suggests there is nothing but gray areas

His remark does nothing of the sort. "One car could very well be a green car." in no way suggests that all cars are green. It merely states that it is possible that there exists at least one car which is green.

It would seem appropriate in the context of a discussion of citation and intellectual property at this point for me to cite someone else on the point I want to make. In that spirit, let me draw your attention to the point in his trial where Sir Thomas More, a fictionalized amalgamation of several historical figures including a real person of the same name, in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons says: ``The world must construe according to its wits; this court must construe according to the law.''

In case the point of my quote is not clear: It's certainly true that one is free to construe as you say, but a lawyer is not similarly free. A lawyer is bound by the rules of law in what he construes, and the law is clear that the notion that creative influence (ideas) is not the same as copyrightable matter. I've argued in another post that this article didn't seem to really be about plagiarism as much as copyright, which is why I've confined my remarks to that area. But when I said that not all areas are gray, I meant under the law, on the grounds that we were talking about lawyers in action.

Plagiarism is probably more vague, exactly because it's not really codified per se in the law (that a quick web search turned up, anyway--many law sites don't index it and the Wikipedia says it's buried in tort law on reputations). But that's an entirely subjective area, and if you assume "ability to file a lawsuit" supports the claim at top of this post, then the sad truth of the American system seems to be that One man's mere existence in the world could very well be one lawyer's "plagiarism" since you don't have to do anything at all to get a lawsuit filed against you. (Indeed, Michael Crichton comes uncomfortably close to making this claim in his Next novel... not to be confused with his next novel, which I assume won't be named Next).

Groundless lawsuits are filed all the time by people with money against people with no money, and a great deal of the law operates by monetary intimidation rather than pursuit of justice. It would be sad if that truth about how courts operated infected the language we use out of courts about truth and justice. It would be a shame if you could anything in the ordinary world is ambiguous merely because that thing might be the subject of a lawsuit. (That's effectively what the Intelligent Design and Global Warming discussions have done, and it hasn't improved the world's understanding.) One must reasonably draw the line somewhere, and I think it rational to say that plagiarism is not defined operationally by someone's ability or willingness to file suit alleging violation.

Re:The /. headline is typically bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would lawyers care about plagiarism per se? Aren't they more concerned with violations of an author's rights?

This essay seems to think that plagiarism and copyright violations are the same thing, when they're not. Most of the examples are uncopyrightable phrases or ideas whose copying doesn't even rise to unethical plagiarism.

The idea that artists borrow from one another is old hat. There is no story here.

Don't forget that

[Anonymous Coward]

Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony.

Perhaps Shaw said it best

[justthinkit]

The problem:
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. - George Bernard Shaw

Leading to this accepting attitude adjustment:
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. - GBS

Re:Perhaps Shaw said it best

[z-j-y]

I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

that's what he thinks.

Re:Perhaps Shaw said it best

[Hognoxious]

There is only one thing worse than being George Bernard Shaw.

Is this a real revelation?

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

I mean: doesn't this essay actually mean that we cannot invent anything really new and novel?

Right but that doesn't fall in line with Disney's

[gd23ka]

take on intellectual property. Try to publish a cartoon featuring a mermaid or a
bunch of talking mice and their _ligitation_ department _will_ open fire on you.
Plunder my vision.. indeed.

Straw men considered highly inflammable

[ThurlMakes7]

Here's the straw man, nicely summarized by kdawson -

Taking issue with the idea that any work is 'untainted' by others' ideas

Um, have you ever heard anyone express this idea? Me neither, it's completely absurd. (Even Emily Dickinson, who locked herself in a room for thirty years, acknowledged her influences.)

So Latham parrots the standard Structuralist argument, that we're just vessels for other people's words. "Language speaks us," etc.

So, the theory goes, when we open our mouths its "society" or "our ancestors" talking, and we're just ventriloquist dummies, capable of not much more than rearranging someone else's stuff. Structuralism was big in the fifties but had gone out of fashion by the seventies, and the only place it lives on today is in American lit-crit departments.

Yes, all culture is derivative, but we still know originality when we hear it and see it. You can mix and mash-up day and night and still not come up with anything that shows the spark of originality or genius. Everyone recognizes this except structuralists.

There big problem today is in rewarding that spark of originality, when it's so easy to copy bits. But Latham's argument is dishonest: he makes the problem go away by making "originality" go away. He just wants it all for free. Bwaah!

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[PopeRatzo]

ThurlMakes7, read this article again a few years after you've graduated or dropped out and get back to me.

And no, "we" don't always know originality when we see it. Many need to have it explained to us. This is why people like you take lit-crit classes and learn words like "structuralism". Trust me, it's my business to recognize y'all. I get paid well to read your papers and give you grades so you can go about spending your parents' money thinking you're smart.

Jonathan Lethem (please learn to spell the man's name before you mention him in the context of "crit-lit") isn't trying to say our ancestors speak through us, he's saying that we can only give back what we've taken in. Some of us can do it in original ways.

As someone who's actually read Lethem's novels, I'd highly recommend them to any of you who like to read. And don't worry too much about originality or influences. Just love what you love.

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[Znork]

"but we still know originality when we hear it and see it"

Or we know originality when we dont hear and see the sources.

As the patent office has been so apt at demonstrating, a failure to find the sources and an unfamiliarity with the subject is easily mistaken for originality.

It's not really eveb a question of derivatives or plagiarism, it's merely the fact that when you have five billion monkeys banging along from more or less the same starting point, quite a lot of them are bound to hit the same keys by pure chance. And the human mind combines and extrapolates much less randomly than pure chance.

Great minds may think alike, and these days we have a lot of great minds, and a far more level starting point with the rapid and free flow of information.

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[ThurlMakes7]

Thanks for illustrating my point so well Pope Ratzo. It's Lethem who's a product of structuralist lit-crit classes, not me, and here we finding him regurgitating one of his grad class essays for Harper's to argue the case that Everything Is Regurgitated.

And no, "we" don't always know originality when we see it. Many need to have it explained to us.

Uh huh. See that thing flying over your head at 30,000 feet? Consider it educational. More speed, and less haste when reading and replying will give you a chance to spot this.

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[ThurlMakes7]

As the patent office has been so apt at demonstrating, a failure to find the sources and an unfamiliarity with the subject is easily mistaken for originality.

Very true, that's a great example.

But art and engineering are quite different. I don't need to know how "original" the gcc is, I couldn't care less. Its value is measured in lots of utilitarian ways: low number of bugs, maintainability, compile speed, etc. The same goes for a bridge or an airliner.

It does matter for art, though. A derivative culture devoid of originality isn't a healthy one.

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[phatlipmojo]

It's Lethem who's a product of structuralist lit-crit classes, not me.

So you don't actually know what you're talking about, then?

For that matter, it doesn't even sound like you read the essay; he's not saying anything of the kind. It's more of an on-the-shoulders-of-giants position that a there-are-really-only-3-stories position.

(Funny quip about everything is regurgitated. Though having giggled at it, I can't help wondering if you're actually mixing the author up with Jonathan Safran Foer.)

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[Selanit]

The parent poster said:

Taking issue with the idea that any work is 'untainted' by others' ideas.

Um, have you ever heard anyone express this idea? Me neither, it's completely absurd.

Absurd it may be, but that doesn't stop people from suing one another over such 'taints.' I direct your attention to the case of Alice Randall. In 2001 she published a novel "The Wind Done Gone," a parodic re-telling of "Gone With the Wind." Margaret Mitchell's estate sued Randall, alleging plagiarism. Her book was too similar to Mitchell's; it was, in fact, "tainted." The case was eventually settled out of court.

And again, consider Kaavya Viswanathan. Last year she published a romance novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life." Then it was alleged that substantial portions of the novel had been adapted from Megan McCafferty's novels "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings." The publisher recalled "Opal Mehta" and canceled Viswanathan's contract. Viswanathan claimed she had internalized McCafferty's work so thoroughly that she reproduced the passages unconsciously and unintentionally. Regardless of whether the "plagiarism" was intentional or not, Viswanathan's gained a reputation as a plagiarist that's going to follow her for years. You might say she's "tainted."

And finally, may I point out that Shakespeare ripped off basically everything he ever wrote? He plundered everything he could lay his hands on. Macbeth came straight out of Holinshed's "Chronicles." In Midsummer Night's Dream, the play that the rustics put on mid-way through derives from Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Romeo and Juliet was taken from a contemporary poem, "The Tragical Historie of Romeus and Juliet" by Arthur Brookes. Yup - all "tainted."

This is what Lethem is talking about: our greatest artists routinely rip off their predecessors. That's just how it works. Or rather, how it always has. These days, we're more likely to see a corporate lawyer drive a copyright through the heart of the next Shakespeare. Lovely.

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[smallfries]

Yes, all culture is derivative, but we still know originality when we hear it and see it. You can mix and mash-up day and night and still not come up with anything that shows the spark of originality or genius. Everyone recognizes this except structuralists.

So your argument isn't even against the points that Lethem raises in his essay (which you have at least read, haven't you?). The nub of your argument seems to be that everything that is a copy, but out of the huge number of possible works only a few are interesting? So it's not that an author is necessarily a creator, as much as a "finder" of interesting works you could say? At which point you should see why the other responses to you have stated that you either didn't read, or didn't understand the essay. Go, on, give it a second shot.

PS Nice use of irony, given that your entire post was a strawman to Lethem's argument. You may graduate yet...

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[Lemmy Caution]

You mangle the intellectual history of critical thinking to the extent in a way that is embarrassing to watch for those of us who know something about it. It's comparable to talking about the internet as "tubes."

I understand that geek philistinism is largely a product of a kind of inferiority complex, but that's no excuse for bluster.

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[PopeRatzo]

At least you've gotten his name right this time. You're showing growth. Still not enough for a passing grade, but growth nonetheless.

Re:Straw men considered highly inflammable

[alienmole]

For someone who allegedly gets paid to grade student papers, you have a remarkably sophomoric discussion style. If you were confident in your intellectual abilities and your ability to argue your case, you wouldn't need to resort to such pettiness. Not to mention that the discussion would be more interesting.

Yawn

[Talgrath]

How is this news? This is not a new argument in the literature world, it's just Structuralism; which is pretty damn absurd. The idea that there nobody ever makes anything new or exciting is, I think, an insult to everyone who is an artist; sure, art isn't developed in a bubble, but it does have (at the least) some originality in it. If art doesn't have originality in it of any sort, we call it plagiarism; or at the very best, a hack.

Annotated bibliography

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing he calls a 'key', others would call an 'annotated bibliography'. The thing he points out by providing his key is that any creative work has sources that could be cited just as you would cite the sources for a scholarly paper or court case.

Wow, great article.

[88NoSoup4U88]

Whereas it's not usual around here ;) I read the article, and I think he makes some excellent points.
The Slashdot headline is a bit misleading as it isn't only about plagiarism, but more about the influence of external factors/one's environment on the output of an artist:

Whereas the author cites a few real cases of famous writers of the past literally copying other people's work, he makes a good case that most of that has unknowingly been used: The author's quote :

...Most artists are converted to art by art itself

seems to be very true.

From my personal experience I can say that the previous quote, and the article's explanation of how one gets influenced by his/her environment to produce an artwork, is very true (in my case, that is).
For me my big inspirations were architecture and games, which both formed me into my hobby/work I do nowadays (leveldesigner).

Other influences (of particular my gaming-past) only became apparent when the other day, I finished a gamedesign document (of a GPL-ed game I am working on) and showed it to some co-developers, who almost immedeately recognised and pointed out the various game elements/style from my most beloved games of the past, which I'd unknowingly woven into the total design. (to name a few; Lazy Jones, Jumpman, various NES/SNES classics)
Whereas I didn't anticipate on creating clones of those games, I'd somehow formed my idea around it (and -enhanced- it), by the external imprints of the past.

It's a shame that nowadays people/companies are becoming overeager to try to squash any sort of infringement on their work (I'm not talking about blatant copyright infringements), whereas most of the times the artists only builds on the existing intellectual property, thus imo enhancing it for people who are interested in views from third-parties (one could compare it to Mods for games).
To point out the computer-art bit some more; I'd like to think that the GPL is a prime example of how proper 'plagiarism' can take place, and create several new/enhanced products, as GPL-ed code is still attributing the initial authors/source, and on top of that there is the obligation to release the source too; Making the whole art-foodchain bigger and better.

Now if only the big media conglomerates would start to see that, for example, Dangermouse's "Grey"-album (which mixed the Jay-Z's "open-sourced" beats of his "Black"-album, with the Beatle's "White"-album) was an excellent example of how different age-groups can get exposed to the oldies: Thus, in the end, making more sales.

Getting paid

[digitalhermit]

I don't mind people copying all the docs I've written.. Most are GPL anyway. But I remember one particular guy... One day he writes me and asks all sorts of questions about printing in Linux. He asks for examples, he asks me to explain how the print system works. At first I started answering him then I just point him to my online docs. I don't hear from him again. Months later I'm browsing another site and find an article about Linux printing. It sounds vaguely familiar. Sure enough, the bastard had pretty much taken my emails and the structure of my docs and submitted it for pay as his own to an online documentation site. Not a single reference to my docs, even though he cut/pasted whole sentences. Bastard.

Re:Getting paid

[Oligonicella]

"I don't mind people copying all the docs I've written. ... Bastard."

Thought you didn't mind?

Re:Getting paid

[CrackedButter]

Think about it in a different way, who ever paid for it got suckered. Had they done their research they would have found your documents and used it as allowed under the GPL. You were doing it for free anyway. I know that's not the point but I'm trying to be positive here about it.

Re:Getting paid

[sjwest]

Sounds like a 'Journalist' - I write docs with a very liberal creative commons license and that seems to scare that sort of person away since they cant sell the copyright it as it not all there own work.

That worked well for me here and scared the journalist off back to restaurant reviews or something and im not kidding.

Re:Getting paid

[digitalhermit]

I don't mind them copying my docs and putting them up on their site with proper credit. I do mind people taking my words and claiming credit for them.

Re:Getting paid

[Anonymous Coward]

they cant sell the copyright it as it not all there own work.

You hardly need to worry; professional writers don't generally steal from the barely-literate.

Re:Getting paid

[zotz]

"I don't mind people copying all the docs I've written. ... Bastard."

Thought you didn't mind? I think his problem might have been one of minding plagiarism and not copying.

Copyright wise, couldn't you take a Shakespeare sonnet and claim it as your own and sell copies?

all the best,

drew

Re:Getting paid

[zotz]

"I write docs with a very liberal creative commons license..."

Which license do you use? Links to your work?

Speaking of things like that...

I have ponderd only granting interviews under a copyleft type license, say something like Creative Commons BY-SA.

That might be interesting.

all the best,

drew

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search

Re:Getting paid

[sjwest]

I use

Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 You are free: * to Share -- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work * to Remix -- to make derivative work

It seemed to scare my restaurant writer from an it reporting career and off back to restaurant reviewing.

Re:Getting paid

[zotz]

I use

Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 You are free:
        * to Share -- to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
        * to Remix -- to make derivative work

I use BY-SA for a lot of my stuff as well... What do you think of the idea of granting interviews under copyleft terms?

all the best,

drew

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search

Re:Getting paid

[sjwest]

What do you think of the idea of granting interviews under copyleft terms?

I'm for it but whether Journalist would agree to it would be another point.

To be honest i'd dont really trust journalists. If you need a writer with a english degree to tell you 'THIS IS NEWS' and a man called Rupert Murdoch to approve it then theres more to news than that.

Re:Getting paid

[zotz]

What do you think of the idea of granting interviews under copyleft terms?

I'm for it but whether Journalist would agree to it would be another point.

To be honest i'd dont really trust journalists. If you need a writer with a english degree to tell you 'THIS IS NEWS' and a man called Rupert Murdoch to approve it then theres more to news than that.

I would imagine it would come down to who wanted what more. Do you want to be interviewed, or does the person want to interview you?

all the best,

drew

Re:Getting paid

[Hognoxious]

i'd don't trust peoples what cann't write a fukking sentense propely.

My own essay on plagarism

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar in tone and context, I wrote an essay yesterday where I discuss the public commons of ideas and the absurdity of restricting other peoples' right of second use. 'Artists and their surrogates who fall into the trap of seeking recompense for every possible second use end up attacking their own best audience members for the crime of exalting and enshrining their work.' Taking issue with the idea that any work is 'untainted' by others' ideas, I declare, 'Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony.' Later on I argue that 'Contemporary copyright, trademark, and patent law is presently corrupted. The case for perpetual copyright is a denial of the essential gift-aspect of the creative act.' I finish up with simple request: 'Don't pirate my editions; do plunder my visions.' The best part of my essay is at the end when I provide a key to all of the sources I stole my ideas from."
awww.crap...was that too obvious?

The article

[Konster]

The article itself is a massively wordy orgy of bullshit and bananas, written by a person that's clearly trying way too fucking hard to write. The writer violates a basic concept of writing, and writing well; get your point across with as few words as possible.

Language as art is a wonderful thing; trying to couch it as something that it isn't in a really wordy...wordy...wordy...essay isn't art, and you lose the point of your essay in the process, which is another way of saying you talk too much without saying anything new or interesting or anything of value.

Really, this article applies to writing doctorates (snicker) and people overseeing those efforts. The rest of the world won't care...or worse yet, hope a well written version of the bullshit will appear in Reader's Digest.

Re:The article

[Anonymous Coward]

The writer violates a basic concept of writing, and writing well; get your point across with as few words as possible.

Hahahaha. OH, ow.

None, absolutely none of my English teachers in my education taught anything remotely like that. It was always some other subject that liked brevity. People in my classes could substitute reading with length. This was reaffirmed when one of my teachers (who graduated from Havard, and had a snooty attitude) let us read some of his essays. He would get to the point, and then repeat it, then offer a little evidence, repeat that, recite the evidence again as supporting his argument, and then summarize the evidence again as supporting his position.

I really wish it was as you say, but dealing with people day-to-day reaffirms me that many people don't know how to get to the point.

Re:The article

[Anonymous Coward]

The article itself is a massively wordy orgy of bullshit and bananas, written by a person that's clearly trying way too fucking hard to write.

I haven't even the read article, I came across this part in the /. blurb:

Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony.

looked up stereophony in a dictionary and got this:

"STEREOPHONY -noun, reproducer in which two microphones feed two or more loudspeakers to give a three-dimensional effect to the sound"

WTF? And just yesterday I read a post-mortem article about Anna Nicole Smith, in Salon, that had this to say about her "She was entropy porn at its finest."

Re:The article

[88NoSoup4U88]

The writer violates a basic concept of writing, and writing well; get your point across with as few words as possible.

You could have shortened your post to "This article sux0rz!!!oneeleven!!"

Re:The article

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that some parts of that essay are a bit too verbose and "artsy", and I glazed over a bit towards the end, but complaining about that aspect is sort of like complaining that the movie "Memento" goes backwards and forwards in time. Duh. It was written that way on purpose, and you seem to have missed it entirely.

The article was clearly written with a larger goal in mind, a point he wanted to make on the subject of artistic borrowing. A sort of surprise ending. He wanted the reader to finish the article body and be thinking, "hey that was a pretty well-written essay", and then read that stuff at the end and realize with surprise that large chunks of it were deliberately copied from other sources.

Then you (the reader) are supposed to realize that most halfway decent art is a similar mix of new and old stuff. Thus the form of the essay (overly flowery writing) is an essential result of its intended function (to show that borrowing quotes from famous authors makes writing more interesting).

I'm not saying he succeeded. I'm not saying it was the best way to tackle the subject. But I think I get what he was aiming at. It was a creative attempt to provide a concrete example of his argument via the body of the essay itself. I hate college literature-type terms, so I'm not going to say that it's meta-this or neo-post-that. But we've all read something where the form matches the function - like a haiku. Same here, only he had to use a lot more words to get his scheme across. He wanted to defend plagiarism by making his essay a collage of high-falutin quotes on art he'd heard, and he did.

Get the point, chief? Or was that too long for you?

Re:The article

[xIcemanx]

Amazingly enough, sometimes there are more complex and intricate ideas that can't really be expressed through a dumbed-down Reader's Digest "That's Outrageous!"

It's a stretch, I know. How about this - go start working your way up by reading TIME & Newsweek; come back when you're mature enough to handle Harper's & The Economist

Re:The article

[smoker2]

Yeah, JRR Tolkien was the worst offender !

Re:The article

[dubl-u]

The article itself is a massively wordy orgy of bullshit and bananas, written by a person that's clearly trying way too fucking hard to write. The writer violates a basic concept of writing, and writing well; get your point across with as few words as possible.

Sigh.

Imitation and flattery

[true_hacker]

Isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery ? And besides, i feel that it is really difficult to classify something as plagiarism or 'inspired by' or something like that. What do you guys think?

Gladwell on "Plagiarism"

[rubberpaw]

As has been pointed out, this essay isn't particularly unique. It's just stating the rather obvious point that lots of people are inspired by other people, and that when we make things, we often reshuffle bits of stuff we like. This practice is so common that it's not too interesting to point out. The article is clever, interesting, perhaps, but I wouldn't mod it insightful. The idea of creative reuse is the very basis of formal study of literature, music, and art-- why else spend hours, weeks, months reading, viewing, sampling, and arguing about the greats if not to enjoy them and learn how they work?

The Harper's article really isn't that much about plagiarism, and it also doesn't really address the questions of copyright very thoroughly-- he dismisses it as "rapacious" and makes some aside references to Jefferson.

A few years ago, in "Something Borrowed", Malcolm Gladwell looks at the personal story of a psychiatrist whose personal memoir is "plagiarized" by a playwright who writes a semi-successful play about the psychiatrist and her clients-- without consulting the psychiatrist or clients. Gladwell looks into issues about copyright, intellectual property, and the creative commons, but he also looks at the public and emotional effects in the lives of the psychiatrist (who feels "violated" by this appropriation of her life), and the playwright (who feels heartbroken, confused--devastated by the stigma and bad press). It's an awesome article.

It's actually worse than you think

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/01/29/disney_hijack ing_ali.html

The linked story points out that Disney is trying to trademark characters from the Grimm Bros. in New Zealand.

plagiarism sucks

[sentientbeing]

Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work. Unlike cases of forgery, in which the authenticity of the writing, document, or some other kind of object, itself is in question, plagiarism is concerned with the issue of false attribution.

Within academia, plagiarism by students, professors, or researchers is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud and offenders are subject to academic censure. In journalism, plagiarism is considered a breach of journalistic ethics, and reporters caught plagiarizing typically face disciplinary measures ranging from suspension to termination. Some individuals caught plagiarizing in academic or journalistic contexts claim that they plagiarized unintentionally, by failing to include quotations or give the appropriate citation. While plagiarism in scholarship and journalism has a centuries-old history, the development of the Internet, where articles appear as electronic text, has made the physical act of copying the work of others much easier.

Plagiarism is different from copyright infringement. Where both terms are appropriate, they emphasize different aspects of the transgression. Copyright infringement is a violation of the rights of the copyright holder, which involves the loss of income and artistic control of the material when it is used without the copyright holder's consent. Under the copyright laws of the United States, copying a small portion of a text, placing in appropriate quotation, and citing the original source, for a review or criticism is considered fair use. On the other hand, plagiarism is concerned with the unearned increment to the plagiarizing author's reputation.


Thats what I think anyway..

Re:plagiarism sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Copied completely, in full, and unattributed from Wikipedia....

Copyright Originally Covered 14 Years, Unless...

[BoRegardless]

...the author was still alive when the copyright was allowed to then extend for another 14 years.

Then came the 'corporate authors', publishers if you will, and Disney has lots of money to spread around to PACs and other politically influencial uses such that they simply purchased a change in U.S. law allowing them to "keep" something they were not entitled to have at the time various copyrighted items were created.

That was changing the law 'after the fact'. But the political monies were acceptable as we have established proper procedures for use in Washington D.C. when we need to go to get laws changed, so it is no longer a crime, as long as we "follow the laws".

The laws don't allow bribes to be given directly to lawmakers, so we give them to ex-lawmakers who are now middlemen who accept the monies (& their former staff who often seem to move with them), who then go to 'seek favor' from the current lawmakers which will in turn some day become ex-lawmaker/lobbyists.

So bribery is not a crime once you institutionalize it by giving it a new name "lobbying", but plagarism is still plagarism and you can get kicked out of school or a job because of it?

Jonathan Lethem's Harper article "'The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism" was thought provoking in many ways.

The Real Danger

[TooOldEngineer]

The real danger from legal action against picayune infringements and the corrosive effect of DMCA on ISPs and the electronic publishing community, is the ever-present threat of action will create a cultural minsdet of self censorship including in the engineering and scientific communities) that will permanently damage our ability to build new ideas. Everything in human culture and human scientific knowledge is built upon a foundation of the pre-existing work of others. Perpetual copyright enforced through physical mechanisms, backed by the threat of overwhelming legal punishment, could turn a society into a feudal, static backwater. That said, pure piracy for profit and uncreative plagiarism are still morally wrong and should be punished. But that doesn't mean legal action should become the primary profit center for IP holders.......

when acknowledged, it's not stealing, dammit

[quixote9]

Et tu, Slashdot? Stop using RIAA's language. That makes your brain buy into the worldview. Lethem is absolutely right that creation is a gift. Yeah, you gotta get paid because you gotta eat, but creativity is priceless. You could never really be paid what it's worth. Academics deal in nothing but ideas, and they've worked out ways of handling this. YOU CITE YOUR SOURCES. And once you've done that, you're not stealing anything. As a matter of fact, you're boosting the citee (assuming you're not just tearing them to shreds.)

Re:when acknowledged, it's not stealing, dammit

[Anonymous Coward]

Since citation indices are now computed by fixed formulas without regard to the actual content, it doesn't really matter if the citation is for the purpose of tearing your article to shreds (unless this leads to a significant number of authors deciding not to cite you, but that shouldn't be a problem as long as your work is good enough on its own that the criticism is merely one point of view, exaggerated).

You're missing the point of the GPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people don't mind sharing their work. What they do mind is having someone rip off their work and make money from it without even giving them the credit they deserve. The point of the GPL is that, if something started out free, it stays free. Everyone gets treated fairly and it's easy to follow the trail back to the original creator.

An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

An idea is not a possession. But, a book is. Or, whatever. It's impossible to claim ownership of or rights to an idea -- it's literally impossible to own the unownable -- so all the arguments about copyright and ideas are off the point at best, and FUD at worst.

However, it's obvious we can claim ownership of books, or any other object that records language, whether that language is spoken, sung, mathematical, algorithmic, or musical. In every instance, someone will possess the very first, original, version of such a work. That person -- barring prior legal arrangements -- owns that work and possess all rights inherent in it. That means no one has the right to copy any portion of it without permission, and that permission comes from the work's creator. (Fair use, etc., are elements of the prior legal arrangement that the creator must accept by virture of living in a country with copyright laws.)

If the work's creator sells a publisher the right to make copies in return for royalties, then anyone who purchases a copy from the publisher only acquires those rights sold to him by the work's creator via the publisher.

None of this is to argue that a work's creator has any ownership of or rights to the ideas in his or her work. A work is specifically intended to create and manipulate the thoughts and emotions of others.

Nor is it an argument to support the current abuses of copyright. The effective way to deal with abuse of an equitable law is to constrain the abusers and eliminate the abuse, not to challenge them with another kind of abuse. (Two can always play at that game, so success today mght be replaced by defeat tomorrow.) If you don't think the copyright law is equitable (assuming you've read it) then it's fair game for change, too.

But, let's try to keep things grounded appropriately. Copyright law isn't there to keep you from stealing ideas. It's there to keep you from stealing and misusing actual physical things. And, no one would deny that all creative, academic, scientific, journalistic, etc., draws on the ideas and effortrs of others. That's called culture. But, copying chunks of something that you did not create and claiming them as your own is always that particular kind of theft called plagiarism.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"In every instance, someone will possess the very first, original, version of such a work. That person -- barring prior legal arrangements -- owns that work and possess all rights inherent in it."

OK, and this is so as long as they keep it private or secret as it were.

I think your theory breaks down when you get to publishing as we do it today.

Now, if at every step in the chain, transfers were made with negotiated contracts, the original author might be able to retain those rights except as released via contract. Sort of like trade secrets are handled these days perhaps.

Other than that, once published and in the hands of the public, while the author might still have control over that original physical copy, the work itself is now out in the public domain in the absence of copyright law.

Copyright law is the government stepping into the free market and granting monopolies to the authors. I think this is thought to make the market better as it takes away the need to have a contract with every person you sell a book to for instance.

Now, to go back to your views and ask a question:

If it shouldn't be like I write but should be like you write, wouldn't that mean that something like the joke police at the office water cooler would be warranted? That people would have no legal right to tell jokes they heard on the radio last night? (Or are jokes one of those things that we do not grant copyright monopolies on?)

all the best,

drew

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>" at every step in the chain, transfers were made with negotiated contracts.."

The transfer to a publisher is a matter of contract. The publisher cannot transfer to you any rights it did not acquire from the work's creator. That means a purchaser does not have the right, for example, to make and distribute multiple copies of a work unless the work's creator transferred those rights, via the publisher.

There is no place for anyone to acquire those rights other than by transfer from the work's creator.

>"Copyright law is the government stepping into the free market and granting monopolies to the authors. I think this is thought to make the market better as it takes away the need to have a contract with every person you sell a book to for instance."

The purpose of copyright law is to encourage the production of creative works by guaranteeing that a work's creator has a chance to derive financial benefit from his work, and to protect that work from alteration and distortion. It is not a grant of monoploy. It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something. Very few people could devote a career to, say, writing novels, if anyone could grab the first copy off the printing press, start copying it and compete with them for sales. Very few of us would devote a career to any kind of creative work if we had no way of keeping others from altering our work and marketing it under their name. E.g., if it wasn;t for copyright law, you could copy Picasso print, slap your name on them, and sell them as yours. Or, I could grab all off Slashdot's code, open a site called Slashdot, start selling ads, and the current proprietors could do nothing to stop me. In those circumstance, I doubt Picasso would have painted or that Slashdot would exist.

>>"...are jokes one of those things that we do not grant copyright monopolies on?"

Repeating or reciting something you've read is not copying the physical object on which language encoding that joke was originally placed. (I suppose a comedian could go after another comedian who stole his material, but I'd consider it an abuse of law if that same comedian came after people repeating his jokes in the office. Remember, abuse of the law does not mean the law is bad. It means the abuser is bad.)

Your reference to "public domain" presupposes the notion that, in the absence of law, anything that anyone makes would be owned by everyone else, not by the person who made the thing. If you'll think about that, you will understand how invalid that is. Being in the "public domain" is a status granted and regulated by the law of man, not of nature.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"The transfer to a publisher is a matter of contract."

Yes.

"The publisher cannot transfer to you any rights it did not acquire from the work's creator."

In the absence of copyright law, it is not the publisher who would grant me any rights exactly. It is the act of publishing. And since you gave him the right to publish...

If you didn;t like that outcome, you would be free to insist that a printer get a signed contract with each book transfer that would bind the purchaser or some such.

"The purpose of copyright law is to encourage the production of creative works by guaranteeing that a work's creator has a chance to derive financial benefit from his work"

Yes.

"It is not a grant of monoploy."

Oh, but it is. I am not saying it is a particularly bad example if done right, but it is one none the less.

"It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something."

This is not so and most of human history bears this out.

"Very few people could devote a career to, say, writing novels, if anyone could grab the first copy off the printing press, start copying it and compete with them for sales."

Any yet many people are now making careers writing Free Software under just such conditions. I think we are going to start seeing the same thing in other fields as time goes on. People are already writing the licenses in anticipation of this and some are writing the works and using the licenses.

"E.g., if it wasn;t for copyright law, you could copy Picasso print, slap your name on them, and sell them as yours."

No, we could easily have a law against plagiarism to stop that. You don't need to mix the two concepts to make your point.

Copyright law only needs to stop you from copying a Picasso print with his name on it and selling the copies.

"Or, I could grab all off Slashdot's code, open a site called Slashdot, start selling ads, and the current proprietors could do nothing to stop me."

Sort of like what you can get from here:

http://www.slashcode.com/about.shtml

you mean?

"In those circumstance, I doubt Picasso would have painted or that Slashdot would exist."

Who knows what any particular individual would have done? Certainly copyright law is premised (in some places at least) on the thought that more will create in the presence of copyright pretections afforded them by law, and I do not need to argue for or against that.

Still you ignore history as there still exist in this world many works of art from the days before there was nay copyright law.

Also, look into the fashion industry today. I hear that in many countries if not all, they operate without the benefit of copyright protections.

"Repeating or reciting something you've read is not copying the physical object on which language encoding that joke was originally placed."

So what, all we have to do to be cool in your view with respect to copyright is to pull a Fahrenheit 451?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

Just get everyone to memorise a chapter of any book we want to copy. Have them recite it while another person copies it down. Publish the new "version" and all is ok? Certainly not with any copyright law I am aware of today. What is your take on this?

"Your reference to "public domain" presupposes the notion that, in the absence of law, anything that anyone makes would be owned by everyone else, not by the person who made the thing."

You are incorrect here. It maintains that anything anyone publishes becomes "public domain" in the absence of copyright law. Not anything anyone makes... anything they publish...

"Being in the "public domain" is a status granted and regulated by the law of man, not of nature."

We obviously disagree on this point big time.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"And since you gave him the right to publish..."

Nope. I sold him -- not you -- limited rights to publish and market the book. You don't acquire that right when you buy the book.

>>"It is not a grant of monoploy."

The law can't grant what already exists.

>>"It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something."

This is not so and most of human history bears this out."

I can't imagine how you could dispute my statement. How is it possible that if I create something that has never before existed that, at the moment it is created, someone other than me can own it? Do I have a right to the meal you cook this evening? I see nothing in human history to dispute that. Just the opposite, in fact.

>>"Any yet many people are now making careers writing Free Software under just such conditions. I think we are going to start seeing the same thing in other fields as time goes on. People are already writing the licenses in anticipation of this and some are writing the works and using the licenses."

If people can make a career from free sofrtware, it is because they have found a way to derive income from their code, something that is made possible by copyright law. No software license would be worth anything if it wasn't buttressed by copyright law. The rights RMS transfers in his license, for example, are broad but, still, limited. If copyright law did not protect RMS, licensing his code would be pointless and futile.

Re: Slashdot -- The point is not that I can get the code. The point is that their transfer to me of the right to acquire the code does not include the right to launch a duplicate of Slashdot unless Slashdot says it does.

Production of art: Of course, art predates copyright law. That does not invalidate the purpose of copyright law or its effectiveness. It seems obvious that if we relied on the creative muse, rather than financial gain, as the sole spur for creative work, we'd have very little popular culture at all. (You don't believe all those people singing on the radio do it because their muse inspires them, do you? People need money to live. Even artists.)

Fahrenheit 451: The recitiation of the work is one thing, but writing it down and passing it on is another. Recitation does not create a physical copy. Again, you don't get that right unless the author transfers it to you. Buying or reading a book isn't enough.

>>"We obviously disagree on this point big time."

Yes. What's mine is mine, until I or the law say otherwise.

Have you noticed that you've failed to demonstrate how rights to a work can be acquired by a means other than transfer from the work's creator?

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

Here we go...

"Nope. I sold him -- not you -- limited rights to publish and market the book. You don't acquire that right when you buy the book."

Sorry, you are right, you sold him the right to publish, you did not give him the right to publish. But please, let's try not to nitpick if it is obvious we are in agreement and speaking loosely. Asking to tighten up on the language is not a problem.

However, you are wrong in the next part. In the absence of copyright law, if you publish your own work, the pubic has just these rights to copy it and make derivatives that you claim they would not aquire on publication. Since you sold the right to publish, when the person who has the right to publish publishes, then the public gats the same rights on publication that they would have gotten had you published yourself.

You are of course free to not poblish and so keep your property.

"The law can't grant what already exists."

So? Since it doesn't already exist, it is copyright law that grants it.

"I can't imagine how you could dispute my statement. How is it possible that if I create something that has never before existed that, at the moment it is created, someone other than me can own it?"

Please listen carefully to where I agree with you and where I disagree with you. It is not helpful for you to act like I disagree with you in those places where I actually agree with you. Unless, of course, you are a troll. At hte moment of creation, when you finish writing the great american novel in your garret in paris, it indeed belongs to you and only you. Should you keep it locked away in your steamer trunck until you die, it will pas to your estate and thence to whomever your will or the law says. If they do the same, the same will be the case. Once you publish though, the public gets certain by your very act of publishing. it is copyright law which steps in and overrides this natural law for a period of time.

"Do I have a right to the meal you cook this evening?"

Please, if we want to make headway here, let's not equate the physical with the non-physical. I am sure we all know that if I make a copy of your poem, you still have your original. Likewise, I am free to make a copy of your meal for myself. What I cannot do is take your copy or your meal.

"I see nothing in human history to dispute that."

Honestly, are you looking hard enough or with an open enough mind?

"If people can make a career from free sofrtware, it is because they have found a way to derive income from their code, something that is made possible by copyright law."

Actually, no. People could still make an income from coding even where they could not obtain a copyright to the code they write.

"No software license would be worth anything if it wasn't buttressed by copyright law."

I am not sure that we could not write softwae contracts/licenses that would not depend on copyright law for teeth, but I cartainly agree with you that all of the current Free Software licenses I am aware of depend on copyright law to function.

I also agree that Free software of the copyleft type would be dealt a fairly hard blow by copyright laws being done away with. It is copyright that gives the source code requirement of the GPL its teeht for instance.

"Re: Slashdot -- The point is not that I can get the code. The point is that their transfer to me of the right to acquire the code does not include the right to launch a duplicate of Slashdot unless Slashdot says it does."

I am not sure what you mean by a duplicate of slashdot. If you mean another site calling itself slashdot but with a misspelled domain name like slashdat.org, then no, it is not copyright law which would deal with this. More like trademark or business name I would guess. If you mean something else, please explain.

"Production of art: Of course, art predates copyright law. That does not invalidate the purpose of copyright law or its effectiveness."

I have no desire to invalidate copyrig

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[Dun Malg]

The purpose of copyright law is to encourage the production of creative works by guaranteeing that a work's creator has a chance to derive financial benefit from his work, and to protect that work from alteration and distortion. ... It's a recognition of, and protection of, the existence of rights that occur naturally when we create something. I love to hear your substantiation of the assertion that there is a natural right to control one's intellectual creations. Before copyright, the very idea would have been considered ridiculous. Imagine a tribe of stone-age folks: Thag tells a story around the campfire about the moon god. He mostly just makes it up as he goes along. It's a good story. A couple weeks later, Grod is delivering obsidian arrow heads to the tribe in the next valley and stays overnight. At the campfire, Grod tells Thag's moon god story, adding a few embellishments. Where does the "natural right" of Thag to control the story occur? Thag has lost nothing. Where would one even get the notion that there is any property right to something as insubstantial as a story? Copyright is purely an outgrowth of the publishing industry, and is wholly unnatural.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"In the absence of copyright law, if you publish your own work, the pubic has just these rights to copy it and make derivatives..."

1. No. I'm saying that copyright law has nothing to do with the creation of rights. All rights in a work emanate from the work's creator. Whatever rights anyone else has regarding that work must come from the work's creator. No other source exists. The rights do not exist until the work is created.

2. In other words, a monopoly -- posession of all rights inherent in a work -- comes into existence when the work is created and that monopoly of rights is possesed by the work's creator.

3. The act of publishing is the act of transferring limited rights in return for royalties. I stated early on that copyright law is part of the prior legal arrangement that applies, and also transfers certain limited rights . But, the rights transferred to the publisher do not transfer to the book's buyer unless the author says they do. That's why the act of publishing involves specific limited rights. All other rights remain with the work's creator. I.e., an author can sell rights to publish in Europe, and retain rights to publish in North America. As I understand it, your argument means that an author could not specify that because everyone has all rights to his work once it is published anywhere.

4. Re: Slashdot -- I mean an exact duplicate. Slashdot uses a license that gives me certain specified rights to their code. I don't have the right to use that code to stand up an exact, competing, clone of Slashdot unless they say so. Absent that grant, I presume their lawyers would contact me about copyright violations.

4. I'm not defending or attacking copyright law. I'm explaining how, and why, all rights to a work are originally sourced to the work's creator. I don't need copyright law to explain that. So, if someone recites an entire book, that's fine with me. If they start copying it, that isn't. If copyright law says the recitation is forbidden, then that's an area where I don't agree with copyright law.

5. If I publish in the absence of copyright law, then I am constrained only by the terms I impose on the publisher. Rather than the public acquiring more rights, they would acquire only those rights I specifiy. For example, absent copyright law, there would be no fair use unless I said so. (Importantly, if publishing meant giving up all rights to a work, then how can a member of the public be assured that the book they are buying is the actual, unaltered, work written by the author? )

6. >>"...Rights transfer when the author publishes. " Only those rights that the auther specifies ( or accepts via prior legal arrangement, i,e., copyight law). That is, you do not have the right to copy and distribute copies of my book unless I transfer that right to the publisher who in turns transfers it to you. If you want to convince me otherwise, you need to show me another source for those rights, other than the work's creator.

7. My point about money is simpy that we all need to support ourselves. Yes, people used to live without money. But, clearly, that's a lifestyle we've abandoned. (Remember, money is only a means of exchange. So is simple barter. Using money is barter, once removed.) Michelangelo had patrons who supported him. Potboiler authors get royalties. It's all the same thing. Michelangelo might have been a better artist than a typical potboiler writer, but he didn't work for free, either. The "creative impulse" may motivate some people, but even they need to be compensated.

8. >>"...people could still make an income from coding even where they could not obtain a copyright to the code they write.."

The fact that we might imagine a scenario in which a develoepr could draw income from his work if copyright law did not exist (maybe with a rich patron; see Ubuntu) does not change the reality of what's happening today.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

I'm not talking about " something as insubstantial as a story." As I've said, ideas cannot be possessed.

If Thag carves his story on a boulder, then Thag owns that physcial representation of his story. Not the story. If Grod starts making duplicate boulders without Thag's permission, Thag has the right to bop him on the head with a big stick. Thag doesn't need copyright law to understand that.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[Anonymous Coward]

Thag tells a story around the campfire about the moon god. He mostly just makes it up as he goes along.

This is your example of an intellectual creation? Of course Thag won't care about something he made up almost instantly and gave away for free. No, let's say Thag has spent weeks or months crafting his story. During that time, he depended on berries he received from other caveman, in exchange for a promise that he would pay them back with the proceeds from his story. Thag travels from cave to cave, telling people his story in exchange for a fee. One audience member, Bob, asks for Thag's permission to retell the brilliant story, in exchange for giving Thag a cut of the profits. Thag agrees. Another audience member, Grod, retells Thag's story, but gives Thag nothing. In fact, Grod travels from cave to cave so fast that Thag barely receives any money at all, and Thag is unable to pay off his debt, while Grod lives it up. You consider that moral?

That has lost something: The fruits of his creation.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[Danse]

If Thag carves his story on a boulder, then Thag owns that physcial representation of his story. Not the story. If Grod starts making duplicate boulders without Thag's permission, Thag has the right to bop him on the head with a big stick. Thag doesn't need copyright law to understand that.

You're intermingling copyright and plagiarism. If Thag carves his story on the rock, and it is seen by Grod, and then Grod starts carving it on other boulders, then no, Thag has no rights whatsoever to stop him in the absence of some sort of copyright law. Now, if Grod starts making copies on other boulders and claiming that he created the story, then that would be plagiarism, and while there may still be no law against it, there is a much more intuitive ethical position against it, as it is a lie.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

I find your position a bit over the top and certainly not in keeping with history as I mentioned.

You also argue against my points about how things would work in the absence of copyright by sometimes explaining how they work with copyright.

I appreciate your responses though and perhaps we will finally come to some better understanding if we keep going.

"1. No. I'm saying that copyright law has nothing to do with the creation of rights. All rights in a work emanate from the work's creator."

No, this is not so. One right you do not have naturally when you create a work is tghe right to stop others from copying it after you publish it. This is how the world worked for thousands of years.

"2. In other words, a monopoly -- posession of all rights inherent in a work -- comes into existence when the work is created and that monopoly of rights is possesed by the work's creator."

Nope, see 1.

"3. The act of publishing is the act of transferring limited rights in return for royalties."

Nope, the act of publishing is the act of making something public that was private. At that point, all bets are off. Copyright law steps in and alters this fact.

If you don't buy this, please explain how people publish Shakespeare's works today without paying royalties to his descendants.

"4. Re: Slashdot -- I mean an exact duplicate. .... Absent that grant, I presume their lawyers would contact me about copyright violations."

You have every right to do so as per copyright law and the licesne if ti is the GPL. Their lawyers may indeed contact you but it would not be about copyright violations but about other laws you would be violating.

"4. I'm not defending or attacking copyright law. I'm explaining how, and why, all rights to a work are originally sourced to the work's creator."

But I maintain that you are incorrect in thinking that the right to prevent others from copying after publishing is a natural right that comes into existance on creation of a work. What you get is the right to the physical copy of the work. The right to keep the work secret. The right to reveal the work privately under terms that you negotiate with those you reveal the work to. You don't naturally get the right to prevent people making copies should you choose to publish. (I knowthis is the heart of one of our main disagreements.)

"5. If I publish in the absence of copyright law, then I am constrained only by the terms I impose on the publisher. Rather than the public acquiring more rights, they would acquire only those rights I specifiy."

Wrong. In the absence of copyright law, you could try to do what you say by distributing privately with contracts and perhaps non-disclosure agreements or trade secret agreements at each transfer. Should you choose to publish instead, then you would have no right to stop members of the public from copying your work.

"For example, absent copyright law, there would be no fair use unless I said so."

Can you give any example of anytime or place in history where there were no copyright laws in effect and things worked like this?

"(Importantly, if publishing meant giving up all rights to a work, then how can a member of the public be assured that the book they are buying is the actual, unaltered, work written by the author? )"

They might not be able to. Although perhaps laws of fraud might let them.

Do you really believe that copyright laws are put in place to take rights away from creators?

Can you give any reasons why fashion designers and auto body designers don't get copyrights.

Can you explain why inventors get such a shorter time of protections for things that they patent than authors get for works they write?

"6. >>"...Rights transfer when the author publishes. " Only those rights that the auther specifies ( or accepts via prior legal arrangement, i,e., copyight law)."

Wrong. Please give examples from history.

"If you want to convince me ot

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"You consider that moral?"

Yes indeed. And even reallocate would seem to from what I can gather of his writing in this thread, and until I read your post, he wasthe most over the top person I had ever encountered when it comes to copyright.

Reallocate would say that you can tell the story, you just can't make physical copies.

However, I do consider your proposition that caveman Bob would ask for permission to retell a story amusing.

Please. Give us examples from history where the world functioned as you propose.

However, if you think it is imoral. I suggest that nothing is stopping you from doing the moral thing as you see it. Each time you tell a joke, send some money to the creator or his heirs. Each time you use the number zero, send some money to an arab charity. Each time you use some geometry (fudge here, I think you get the point, I don't wish to do the research now, I am not well) send some money to a greek charity. Don't watch or purchase anything by Disney, etc. where they waited for a work to pass into the public domain before making their adaptation. I could go on.

Honestly, the world you guys envision would be stagnant and repressive.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

If I make something and you copy it without my permission, that's wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

Getting away from silly rock analogies, if I write a book, publish it, and you buy it, you have those rights I transferred to you via the publisher plus whatever rights copyright law says you have. No more. This is not hard to understand.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

I'm in fundamental disagreeement. I see no way for anyone else to acquire any rights to any created work unless those rights pass to them from the work's creator. If we could acquire rights in some other way, we'd need to identify another source of those rights. That doesn't exist. Individual members of society do not have some kind of a priori right to do as they wish with a work created by someone else simply because they have access to it or a copy. (It's specious to tak about the rights of "society" or "the public" since both are only convenient descriptions for any number of individuals acting independently.)

Such a work is not a special case. It is the same as anything else that someone makes: a table, a pair of shoes, a piece of jewelry. Other people do not acquire rights to a work just because it becomes visisble and available to them.

If the world operated without copyright law for most of its history, I'd just point out that the world existed without any law for most of its history. Offering that argument to support your position is logically inconsistent since you'd also need to argue that murder and all other crimes only became unacceptable once a law against them was enforced. In any case, previous, or current, human behavior is no indicator of rights we come by naturally.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"I'm in fundamental disagreeement."

We are indeed in fundamental disagreement.

I find your position very radical and over the top. I imagine you might feel the same way with respect to what I have written.

"I see no way for anyone else to acquire any rights to any created work unless those rights pass to them from the work's creator."

How do you imagine a person has the right to control what another does with information that is in his memory no matter how it came to be there>

"That doesn't exist. Individual members of society do not have some kind of a priori right to do as they wish with a work created by someone else simply because they have access to it or a copy."

Stop setting up straw men and arguing against a position I do not hold. Once again. When a person takes something that he has made and kept private and then makes it public, it is now public. That is my position re natural rights. That is also how things went until copyright law came into effect.

"If the world operated without copyright law for most of its history, I'd just point out that the world existed without any law for most of its history."

This point and the explanation that follows is basically on point. That said, it takes extra explanation if you want to dispute such history.

You also fail to address how the world can possibly function if your view is correct. Like I say, I find it so over the top it amazes me.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"How do you imagine a person has the right to control what another does with information that is in his memory no matter how it came to be there."

I don't imagine that. Information -- or ideas in someone's head -- is, as I've said several times, impossible to copy. So, the entire discussion centered on copying ideas is moot, because it is talking about something that cannot be done. Ideas are completely free, always.

I've been addressing something else: Who has rights to the physical property created when someone encodes a representation of ideas on something? Yes, ideas are tansferred (not copied) when someone reads such a work and creates similar ideas in his own head. But that is is phenomenon that is separate and distinct from transferring ownership of or rights in the object itself.

If, as you argue, the act of publishing makes a book available for the pubic to do with as it pleases, how, then, can an author sell only limited rights to his publisher? The publisher is part of the public. Why doesn't the publisher acquire all the rights that, if I read you correctly, everyone else does? If an author does have the ability to transfer limited rights to a publisher, why, then, does he not have a similar right to transfer limited rights to the buying public?

>>"You also fail to address how the world can possibly function if your view is correct. Like I say, I find it so over the top it amazes me."

It is how the world operates today. The notion that all rights to a created work pass to everyone who buys a copy of it is not commonly recognized in law.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[Danse]

If I make something and you copy it without my permission, that's wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

Then we have an astoundingly different idea of right and wrong regarding ideas made public. In fact, you seem to disagree with the founders of the US who created copyright law. They didn't believe there was any natural law granting anyone ownership of their ideas or the expressions of those ideas. They thought that such a right, granted for a limited time, would serve the public interest, and so created it. Ideas, by their very nature, are spread easily and quickly from one person to another. You can't really rid yourself of an idea once you have it, and you can't say that any idea is truly your own, as it was developed through your encounters with countless other ideas. So then, since nature seems to be entirely against the protection of ideas, why then do you believe in some natural law governing the copying of ideas?

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"Then we have an astoundingly different idea of right and wrong regarding ideas made public."

No, we don't. I'm not talking about ideas.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[Danse]

No, we don't. I'm not talking about ideas.

Yes, you are. Just because you write an idea down, it doesn't suddenly become something more than an idea. Only copyright law gives it any greater status.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

Symbols on a page, bits in a file, etc., are not ideas. Neither is the page or the file.

You cannot "write an idea down". The only thing you can write are words and numbers. Those are not ideas.

You cannot own an idea. Nor can you share an idea. Ideas are thoughts in our heads. We can use language and other symbols in an attempt to cause other people to have similar thoughts, but no ideas pass from one person to the next (unless you believe in telepathy.)

Structuring an argument around notions of copying, sharing, or owning ideas is simply constructing an elaborate metaphor.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[JesseMcDonald]

Information -- or ideas in someone's head -- is, as I've said several times, impossible to copy. So, the entire discussion centered on copying ideas is moot, because it is talking about something that cannot be done. Ideas are completely free, always. I've been addressing something else: Who has rights to the physical property created when someone encodes a representation of ideas on something?

First, physical property usually isn't created by encoding (representations of) ideas into it. All the physical ingredient involved in creating the final product are typically already owned. So who owned the physical property before it was encoded with a representation of these ideas? (Hint: Probably not the author/artist to whom you are attempting to reassign ownership.) Changing the form of a physical object does not normally affect its ownership. Why should the ownership of a physical object change just because its form was altered to represent a particular set of ideas?

If, as you argue, the act of publishing makes a book available for the [public] to do with as it pleases, how, then, can an author sell only limited rights to his publisher? The publisher is part of the public. Why doesn't the publisher acquire all the rights that, if I read you correctly, everyone else does? If an author does have the ability to transfer limited rights to a publisher, why, then, does he not have a similar right to transfer limited rights to the buying public?

True, the publisher is part of the public and would normally not be prevented from duplicating any work they had access to. The trick is that prior to publication they don't have access to the work -- you have the only copy(s). You can thus make their access to your unpublished original contingent on a voluntary contract in which they agree pay you royalties (or whatever). You aren't granting them limited rights. They have the same rights as anyone else, but unlike the others they are bound by their contract with you. Obviously you could try to extend the same contract to the entire buying public, but that is (IMHO) unlikely to be effective unless the distribution of the work is rather exclusive to begin with. (Compare to the areas in which NDAs have historically proven effective.)

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"...physical property usually isn't created by encoding (representations of) ideas into it. All the physical ingredient involved in creating the final product are typically already owned. So who owned the physical property before it was encoded with a representation of these ideas? (Hint: Probably not the author/artist..."

If I create a manuscript on a stack of paper that I own, then I own the manuscript and exclusively possess all rights to that manuscript. Unless you propose that other individuals have an a priori right to that manuscript, that is.

When I decide to publish that manuscript, I transfer certain limited rights to the publishers, who in turn transfers certain limited rights to the purchaser. If, for example, I do no stipulate that retail buyers will have the right to make and distribute multiple copies of the book they buy, they do not have that right. To argue that they do is to propose that rights in the book come from some source other than the book's auther, which I categorically reject. (And, I don't think you can demonstrate otherwise, unless you make that a priori claim.)

Re: Publishers -- You are very wrong about publishing. If you want to argue that publishers "have the same rights as anyone else" to any published work other than those for which they've contracted (as you've argued) why, then, aren't publishers copying their competitor's bestsellers and undercutting them on price?

I think any publishers would be surprised to know that they have not bought limited rights in a book. That's what the contract spells out: What the publishers has the right to do and what rights have been retained by the author. For example, an author might grant a publisher distribution rights in the U.S., but retain distribution rights elsewhere. You seem to be arguing a position that would nullify the publisher's legal obligation to distribute the book only in the U.S. as soon as the first retail copy rolls off the press.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[JesseMcDonald]

If I create a manuscript on a stack of paper that I own, then I own the manuscript and exclusively possess all rights to that manuscript.

(Obviously.)

When I decide to publish that manuscript, I transfer certain limited rights to the publishers, who in turn transfers certain limited rights to the purchaser. If, for example, I do no stipulate that retail buyers will have the right to make and distribute multiple copies of the book they buy, they do not have that right. To argue that they do is to propose that rights in the book come from some source other than the book's auther [sic], which I categorically reject. (And, I don't think you can demonstrate otherwise, unless you make that a priori claim.)

What are you transferring rights in? The manuscript? But the purchasers aren't getting the manuscript; they have no need of any rights in it. "Rights in the book"? What "book"? The sequence of words embodied in your manuscript? No, that can't be right -- you said you aren't claiming to own ideas. The sequence of words that make up a novel are just as much an idea as the plot. The physical object bought by the purchaser, then? But as you've already stated that you don't own the ideas in other people's minds, specifically including the case where these ideas were created based on reading your manuscript, it would appear that you're attempting to say that "(unowned ideas, or ideas owned by A) + (property owned by A) --> (property owned by B)", which doesn't correspond to any theory of natural rights that I'm aware of. On what basis are you making such an extraordinary claim?

All the publisher -- or any other person -- needs is the right to observe the manuscript, to create ideas based on their representations in the manuscript. It can then encode representations of those ideas into its own property (publication). The right to merely observe the manuscript is implicit in both publication and purchase, and sufficient to create unlimited duplicates; no additional rights are necessary.

Re: Publishers -- You are very wrong about publishing. If you want to argue that publishers "have the same rights as anyone else" to any published work other than those for which they've contracted (as you've argued) why, then, aren't publishers copying their competitor's bestsellers and undercutting them on price?

I think any publishers would be surprised to know that they have not bought limited rights in a book. That's what the contract spells out: What the publishers has the right to do and what rights have been retained by the author. For example, an author might grant a publisher distribution rights in the U.S., but retain distribution rights elsewhere. You seem to be arguing a position that would nullify the publisher's legal obligation to distribute the book only in the U.S. as soon as the first retail copy rolls off the press.

The answer should be obvious: the legal system known as copyright. The debate, though, was over moral rights and natural law, not the technicalities of a legal system whose very legitimacy depends on those underlying principles. You are making a circular argument.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"What are you transferring rights in? "

Whatever I decide. I hae the exclusive right to decide what anyone can do with that manuscript or with any copies that I may authorize. If you buy my book, you have only those rights I say you do, plus those outlined in copyright law. E.g., unless I say you have the right to make multiple copies, or republish the book with your name as author, you don't.

>>"The right to merely observe the manuscript is implicit in both publication and purchase, and sufficient to create unlimited duplicates..."

Absolutely not. That's is merely one way to copy something, among many. Memorizing a book and then printing 5000 copies from memory is equivalent to printing 5000 copies on an offset press.

>>"The answer should be obvious: the legal system known as copyright..."

Copyright law does not create rights, it only recognizes and protects rights, of everyone involved.

Until someone can demonstrate that people other than a book's author have a claim -- of any kind -- on that book absent acquiring rights from the book's author, and identify the source of thos rights, I'll accept my argument as reflecting reality. Lots of people assert that the mere act of making the book visible via publishing conveys fulls rights to everyone to do with the book as they please, but that's only an unsubstantiated assertion.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"But as you've already stated that you don't own the ideas in other people's minds, specifically including the case where these ideas were created based on reading your manuscript, it would appear that you're attempting to say that "(unowned ideas, or ideas owned by A) + (property owned by A) --> (property owned by B)", which doesn't correspond to any theory of natural rights that I'm aware of. On what basis are you making such an extraordinary claim?"

If I get his right, I think he is saying that if he puts his words down on his physical object then he gets all rights to that object including some rights that I don't believe exist and find to be fantastic. (As in unbelievable.)

He things you can read his words and are free to recite them including in public. (This would imply that he thinks there is no right to control public performance. I guess he is not a playright.)

The thinks you have no right, after having memorised them so that you can recite them, to write down what you have memorised on paper which you yourself purchased. I can't actually figure this thinking out.

If I have misunderstood anyhting, I would appreciate clarification to the above statements.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

I'm not talking about " something as insubstantial as a story." As I've said, ideas cannot be possessed. Once again, this is wild. Probably because it seems so inconsistent.

A story is a sequence of words. Unless you have some other definition as to what a story is. Do you instead mean a plot?

If Thag carves his story on a boulder, then Thag owns that physcial representation of his story. Not the story. If Grod starts making duplicate boulders without Thag's permission, Thag has the right to bop him on the head with a big stick. Thag doesn't need copyright law to understand that. Why? You cannot seem to explain this. Thag only owns his boulder with some words on it according to you. If not, what else does he own? If Thag does not own the story and if Grod makes the copies on his own boulders and not boulders to which Thag has any claim, how can Thag have any rights to Grod's boulders? You yourself maintain that he does not own the story! What is it about Grod's boulders that Thag owns then?

What if in the first instance, Thag can't find a suitable boulder of his own and uses one of Grod's boulders without Grod's express written permission? Who owns what in that case in your world view?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

If I make something and you copy it without my permission, that's wrong. Copyright has nothing to do with it.

Getting away from silly rock analogies, if I write a book, publish it, and you buy it, you have those rights I transferred to you via the publisher plus whatever rights copyright law says you have. No more. This is not hard to understand. It is not hard to understand what you are saying. It is just hard to believe that you say it with conviction considering how wrong it is.

So, is it your contention that copyright laws remove rights from authors that they would otherwose have in the absence of copyright laws?

If so, why is it that authors are not calling for copyright law to be done away with? If they would have more rights without it that is.

You yourself have said that there would not be as many making works without copyright laws. How do you explain this strange circumstance.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

Then we have an astoundingly different idea of right and wrong regarding ideas made public. In fact, you seem to disagree with the founders of the US who created copyright law. While I also find him to have an astoundingly different idea of right and wrong regarding ideas made public when compared to myself, I think you may just be incorrect on the founders of the US creating copyright law.

However, if the two of you are both living in the Us / US citizens, the Us constitution is the governing document for you both when it comes to copyright.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

This is getting tiresome.

As I've said repeatedly, I'm talking about symbols (language, etc.) affixed to or encoded in some sort of medium. It can be gibberish for all I care. The combination of symbols and medium is property.

Thag owns the border with the words. He also has exclusive rights in that rock. Other people acquire rights in that rock only be transfer from Thag, who is their sole original source. Whether the marks Thag put on the rock constitute a story, represent ideas, or are just idle doodling is immaterial.

As I've also said repeatedly, to argue that other people acquire rights in Thag's rock apart from a transfer from him requires the identification of another source of those rights and a transfer mechanism. I've never seen anyone convincingly demonstrate such things exist, apart from arguing that "society" has these kind of rights as if by magic.

If Thag uses one of Grod's boulders without Grod's permission, then he's stolen Grod's rock. Whatever Thag does to the rock, Grod still owns it. (If I shoplift a writing pad and write in it, do I now have rights to the pad?)

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"You cannot "write an idea down". The only thing you can write are words and numbers. Those are not ideas."

I see a little clearer a part of this confusion. So maintain that it only exists in the mind.

So, you really need to explain yourself better in these sorts of discussions and / or make a better effort to understand what the others you are discussionwith are saying so as to try and give clarification.

Really. to do otherwise is a big waste of time. I would hope that is not your real intent.

So. An idea or a a thought cannot be shared. Why? Is it only the expression of the idea that can be shared? Wouldit surprise you to hear me say that I think in words andthat my ideas come to me in words? To my way of using the words, I have never been able to picture anything in my mind while awake. I dream visually but I daydream in words.

So, when I speak my ideas, I am basically getting my body to put the words in my head out into the world as vibrations in the air. And why exactly deos that not qualify as sharing my ideas?

Now, if you think you can indeed own the words, why do you only own the ones you fix and not the ones you just speak? That would make little or no sense in your world according to the principals I have seen you put forth here recently.

"You cannot own an idea. Nor can you share an idea. Ideas are thoughts in our heads. We can use language and other symbols in an attempt to cause other people to have similar thoughts, but no ideas pass from one person to the next (unless you believe in telepathy."

So, let me get this clear. You do believe that you own the words and symbols that you put out in public or write down. (As a sequence, not jumbled up individually.)

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

[Thag tells a story around the campfire about the moon god. He mostly just makes it up as he goes along.]

"This is your example of an intellectual creation? Of course Thag won't care about something he made up almost instantly and gave away for free"

Honestly, whoare you to say that someone will never care about something they create on the spot in a period of sudden inspiration while interacting with others.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"...is it your contention that copyright laws remove rights from authors that they would otherwose have in the absence of copyright laws?"

In a manner of speaking, in return for protection of more, and more valuable, rights. Copyright law is a "previous legal arrangement" that all authors must accept by virture of living in the country with the law.

  >>"If so, why is it that authors are not calling for copyright law to be done away with? "

It's obvious. Copyright protects and enforces the ability of authors to control and profit by their work. In the years before copyright law became common, theft of authors' work, forgeries and the publication of bogus work credited to known authors was common, by publishers and others.

That's it. I'm done. This exchange has become an eighth-grade debating class. No one has explain where all those other people get their rights in my book.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

The difference between ideas and words has always seemed self-evidently clear to me. Ideas cannot be shared because no way exists for thoughts in my head to get into your head. As I've said, I can use symbols in an attempt to cause you to form similar thoughts, but that's not the transfer of thoughts. It's the creation in one place of thoughts that originated in another. We never know how close those thoughts are to ou'rs. That's all communication, literature, art, and all the rest really do.

>>"You do believe that you own the words and symbols that you put out in public or write down. "

If I use some sort of medium to preserve or convey my words. The "owning" part is less important than my rights to the language in that object. If I publish a book, for instance, anyone who buys it obviously owns that copy, but I retain all rights to the language contained in it that I haven't transferred to them.

Like I said, I'm done. It's tiresome just going back and forth over nitpicks without addressing the fundamental issue: If "society's" members have rights to the work of an author, how do they get it and what's the source of those rights?

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[JesseMcDonald]

We appear to be arguing conclusions, which is pointless. Let's back up a bit. Of the following, which do you not agree with?

1. Property rights: Exclusive control over a particular combination of space and physical matter, defined in terms of (though not necessarily limited to) the logical interaction boundaries of the physical object. Violations are various subtypes of theft, infringement on the owner's exclusive control over the physical matter, and trespass, unwanted presence inside the object's space.
2. Homesteading: The means by which unowned land (i.e. natural resources) becomes owned. In essence the first person to make use of the resource becomes its owner.
3. Title-Transfer Contracts: The means by which property changes hands. A title-transfer contract is a voluntary agreement to transfer property matching a specified description at a given time when certain conditions are met. (The time and condition can be "now" and "unconditionally", of course.)
4. Ideas: Representations of abstract concepts (potentially) encoded in the form of a physical object; e.g. synapses in the brain, ink on paper, electrons or magnetic domains in a computer memory, light in fiber-optics, pressure waves in air. In accordance with the definition of "property rights" above ideas are not independently ownable, although of course the underlying physical object can be owned.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"This is getting tiresome."

it is indeed. And I note you do not try and dealwith examples which I feel will be difficult to explain in your view.

You want to know how people get the right to copy an authors words. They get it when the author chooses, of his own free will, to make his words public. You may not like this fact, but that is the answer.

You never try to answer how an author, who recites a short poem to others around a camp fire, somehow then gains the right to control what they do with those words that are in their head for the rest of their lives. Including, in your words, the right to go around bopping them on the head if they violate his supposed rights.

You never address how writing down your words gives you rights to them that speaking them don't. Does a person who only speaks in public never get any rights to his works? I know this is how copyright law seems to work in that you have to fix your works to get copyright, but you are not talking copyrights, but rather what you think are natural rights.

You also never answer the question of what happens if one person puts his words down initially on the property of another.

You say that you don't get to control if another sings your song in public. This would indicate that you do not own the words. And yet you say you can control if they write those words down. This would indicate that you do own the words. (OK, certain rights to the words that would allow one and not allow the other.) This is not explained.

But, honestly, feel free not to respond. It has gotten old. I think part of the issue though has been the serious misreading of the terminology being used on each side early on.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

I never said anything about owning words. I've said you own the object that is created when you write the words on it, and that you -- and no one else -- have all rights to the object. That includes the right to copy ir or otherwise manipulate it.

Obviously, if someone steals the thing on which they write, then they write on a stolen object.

Consider: If I own a blank stack of paper, why would I not continue to own it just because I write somethng on it? Why would I own the blank paper but not the new combination of the paper and the words?

If somone recites words from the work, that is not copying it. No object has been created. If someone memorizes the work and then transcribes it from memory onto another object, that is copying.

You, and many others, seem to be arguing that others acquire rights in an author's work at the moment they see the author's work. I don't see how that is possible. All rights originally belong to the author. How can the mere act of allowing other people to see the work, or a copy of it, transfer rights to them against the will of the author? That sounds like magic to me, if not wishful thinking.

If that's true, why don't publishers gain all those rights when they first read an author's manuscript? Why do they bother signing contracts and paying royalties? How are publishers different from everyone else? It isn't that copyright law restrains them, because copyright law applies to everyone, not just publishers. If your argument holds, why aren't publishers suing to invalidate copyright law?

The concept of the transfer of limited rights in an object from one person to other people is common. I know of no other instance in which rights are transferred at the moment other people see the object.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

Homesteading is historic reality, but I don't necessarily agree that the first person to settle on a piece of land becomes its owner.

I don't agree that ideas are "Representations of abstract concepts (potentially) encoded in the form of a physical object". A representation of a thought is just that, a representation, not a thought. An object underlying an encoded form of that representation is just that, not an idea. It's very akin to someone being angry, and writing a note that says "I'm angry." The note is not the emotion, or the idea, of that person's anger.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[JesseMcDonald]

Homesteading is historic reality, but I don't necessarily agree that the first person to settle on a piece of land becomes its owner.

How else would you assign first ownership? If you don't exclusively assign ownership to the first user then you must either prohibit unowned resources from becoming property (on what basis?) and/or take things that are already owned by one person and reassign them to someone else (most people call that theft). Anyway, the details of homesteading are somewhat beside the point...

I don't agree that ideas are "Representations of abstract concepts (potentially) encoded in the form of a physical object". A representation of a thought is just that, a representation, not a thought. An object underlying an encoded form of that representation is just that, not an idea. It's very akin to someone being angry, and writing a note that says "I'm angry." The note is not the emotion, or the idea, of that person's anger.

I don't think we're speaking the same language here. As I understand things, to use your note example, the concepts of "anger", "emotion", "person", "self", "to be", etc. are all ideas. The words "I'm angry" -- not the written form, not even a particular pattern of synapses, just the words in the abstract -- are a thought, an idea constructed from less complex ideas. Of course any idea which exists in reality must have some physical representation, e.g. synaptic patterns in the brain, patterns of ink on paper, the shape of some physical object or group of objects. In turn, the abstract concept of the shape of a physical object can itself be an idea (see: geometry). Consequently, even if the words themselves are unintelligible, the patterns of ink on paper which make up your note create new ideas in an observer's brain. Patterns of ink on paper create corresponding patterns of synapses in a neural net; both represent the same abstract geometric idea. The note, one physical representation of an idea, begets a pattern of synapses, another representation of the same idea. From the synaptic patterns yet another representation can be created out of new paper and new ink: a "duplicate". Only the abstract pattern, the geometric idea, is actually employed in creating the duplicate. The note was merely the means of representing, and communicating, that idea from one neural net to another.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"How else would you assign first ownership? "

Beats me. One point of contention would be proving someone was the first occupant. How long do you need to stay in one place to be an "occupant"? Is all land owned by the first people to ever spend the night on it? What's the extent of the "land" in question? If a neolithic family built a hut in the middle of Manhattan, do their ancestors now have a claim?

Interesting, but I don't see the relevance.

  >>"I don't think we're speaking the same language here."

I see an idea as forever trapped inside one person's brain. Their existence does not depend on words or language. (An infant certainly has ideas, but has no language skills, so he cries or smiles or giggles.) Because it is impossible to transfer ideas directly from one brain to another, we depend on words and language to communicate, even with ourselves. (When people say they think in words or pictures, they are describing how they use language and art to comprehend their own ideas.) Language and communication, art, etc., -- all use of symbols -- are our way of getting around the fact that each individual's ideas are ultimately non-portable. We hope our language can generate in others the same ideas and emotions that prompted us in the first place. (I think it is likely that a universally telepathic species would not develop spoken language, at least as we know it. They'd certainly have much less incentive.)

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[JesseMcDonald]

I see an idea as forever trapped inside one person's brain. Their existence does not depend on words or language. . . . Because it is impossible to transfer ideas directly from one brain to another, we depend on words and language to communicate, even with ourselves. . . . Language and communication, art, etc., -- all use of symbols -- are our way of getting around the fact that each individual's ideas are ultimately non-portable. We hope our language can generate in others the same ideas and emotions that prompted us in the first place.

Very well -- I'll accept that definition of "idea" for the purpose of this debate. I would argue that words, symbols, language, art, etc. are ideas of a sort themselves, at least to the extent that we can actually understand and use them -- perhaps they have a sort of dual nature, both physical and mental, in order to bridge the gap between the two domains -- but I'll let that pass for the time being. However, I don't really see how this definition advances your argument. My position on "copyright" follows naturally from the definitions I gave for property rights and contracts; it is these points which you must address if you wish to counter my conclusions.

As for the techicalities and corner cases you raised relating to homesteading, I realize that these questions exist but they really don't matter as much as one might think. The common law already addresses most of the details of homesteading, including cases of abandonment, unknowing trespass, etc. In most disputes the basic principle that the party with the earliest claim has priority is sufficient to decide one way or the other. Some things obviously establish a claim; other things obviously do not. In between there is a grey region where human judgement is necessary, taking into consideration the individual circumstances of the case. Over time, as more disputes are successfully resolved, the body of precedence grows and grey areas grow correspondingly more clear.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

Well, as I said, the homesteading thing doesn't seem to me to be especially relevant to the issue at hand. I wasn't trying to refute your point, just pointing out some questions that came quickly to mind.

As I read your other definitions, they support my argument, which, to restate, isn't about copyright law.

I'm not sure why this is apparently so difficult to convey, but:

1. You can't own an object until it exists. You can't have rights in an object until it exists. (Yes, there is the presence of previous legal arrangment. That's what I see copyright law as -- recognition and protection of existing rights, not their source -- and we have no choice but to accept those arrangments by virtue of our presence in the state.)

2. The person who creates an object takes sole possession of the object when it is created, as well as all rights inherent in its use, manupulation, duplication, alteration, etc., including tranferring any symbols,etc., fixed in or on the object to other objects.

3. Barring theft, others can own the object, or acquire rights to it, only by transfer from the object's creator. There is, quiete literally, no other source of those rights.

4. The encoding of words, music, code, etc., on a medium creates an object. Hence, the statements listed above apply. Specifically, those who acquire copies of a duplicate object that is produced, in effect, under license by the object's creator (as happens under a publishing contract) acquire only those rights specifcally transferred to them by the original object's creator, via the publishing mechansim. (And, as stipulated by the previous legal arrangment of copyright law.)

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"If somone recites words from the work, that is not copying it. No object has been created. If someone memorizes the work and then transcribes it from memory onto another object, that is copying."

This is one of your fundamental ppoblems...

If someone has never seen your object and you don't own the words themselves, then when they write down what they have only heard, they cannot have copied your object in any reasonable of the word.

"You, and many others, seem to be arguing that others acquire rights in an author's work at the moment they see the author's work."

Read this carefully. No, not at the moment they see the author's work. At the moment the author publishes his work. If he does not publish it but keep it private, someone seeing it would not have those rights. Trade secrets work something like this. As long as you keep it secret, it is protected, if you let the secret out, it is not protected.

"If that's true, why don't publishers gain all those rights when they first read an author's manuscript?"

Because it is an unpublished manuscript?

Now, in the face of your radical position, I would claim that if things indeed worked like you imagine, you have no right to make anything public that you do not intend to share freely as that would constitute polluting the minds of the public with your works which would forever prevent them from writing down those words, or a derivative based on those words.

Now, we have been talking writing.

If someone was standing on a street corner in a tourist town and reciting one of your poems that he has read in a book, would it be illegal / imoral for a tourist making a video tape of his vacation to pause and tape this person?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"f someone has never seen your object and you don't own the words themselves, ...."

I own the object that is the combination of the medium and the words, and all rights to it. That includes the right to allow or prevent others from copying my words onto another medium.

>>"...no, not at the moment they see the author's work. At the moment the author publishes his work. If he does not publish it but keep it private, someone seeing it would not have those rights."

It seems you are still using the act of seeing somethng as the act that gives you all rights in it.

>>"Because it is an unpublished manuscript?"

No. Because they sign a contract to buy some of the author's rights.

In any case, the world is full of published manuscripts. You are arguing that I am fully within my rights to pull a book off my shelves, make 10,000 copies listing me as the author, and put them up for sale. After all, it was already published, which you say is "the moment" at which we all acquire rights to that book.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

By the way, my position isn't radical. It's the commonly accepted position. An opinion that rights to a work pass to everyone else upon publication is certainly the radical stance.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"It seems you are still using the act of seeing somethng as the act that gives you all rights in it."

Read this even more carefully this time:

Read this carefully. No, not at the moment they see the author's work.

"In any case, the world is full of published manuscripts. You are arguing that I am fully within my rights to pull a book off my shelves, make 10,000 copies listing me as the author, and put them up for sale."

Stop purposefully mixing up issues. I have made it abundently clear that I am not talking about listing yourself as an author of a work you are not the author of. If you are having an honest debate here, go back and see that this is so and please try to remember that.

As to making 10,000 copies and putting them up for sale under the name of the proper author... presently, if the book is still in copyright, no, if copyright has expired, yes. If there were no copyright laws, yes.

"After all, it was already published, which you say is "the moment" at which we all acquire rights to that book."

How hard is it for you to remember that I am making these statements supposing that there were no copyright laws. Are you doing this on purpose?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"By the way, my position isn't radical. It's the commonly accepted position. An opinion that rights to a work pass to everyone else upon publication is certainly the radical stance."

What country are you from?

Can you point to links where this view is held and expounded?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"ard is it for you to remember that I am making these statements supposing that there were no copyright laws."

Because you haven't been qualifying your assertions in that manner.

In any case, my argument has no dependencies on copyright. With or without copyright law, my position would be the same.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

I'd point to any copyright law. They recognize and enforce the rights I've been explaining.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

Why did you not bother to adress your mixing up plagerism and copying?

Please do so.

"Because you haven't been qualifying your assertions in that manner."

It is how it started and how it continues, I have been trying to be careful to indicate when I mean with copyright law. The other way around is a bit much.

"In any case, my argument has no dependencies on copyright."

Yes, but when you ask me directly if something would be legal?

So, if there was no copyright law of any kind, you maintain that it would still be illegal to make those copies?

In that case it it would seem it must have been illegal to make such copies before there was any copyright law. Can you point to any successful cases on this issue before the first copyright law?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

Once again then:

["By the way, my position isn't radical. It's the commonly accepted position. An opinion that rights to a work pass to everyone else upon publication is certainly the radical stance."

What country are you from?

Can you point to links where this view is held and expounded?]

Please answer the question.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"Why did you not bother to adress your mixing up plagerism and copying?"

Huh? Plagiarism is copying. Someone copies someone else's work and claims it as their own.

Re: copyright -- You try to counter my statements by reference to copyright law. I only state that my argument has no dependencies on that law. From my point of view, copyright law is peripheral to all this.

>>"if there was no copyright law of any kind, you maintain that it would still be illegal to make those copies?"

    I haven't been discussing legalities. But, wrong? Yes. A violation of another's rights? Yes. If the law says it is illegal, then it is. If not, the law is wrong.

>>"...it must have been illegal to make such copies before there was any copyright law. Can you point to any successful cases on this issue before the first copyright law?"

I don't understand that. If you mean a legal case, then obviously that would have been impossible in the absence of any relevant law. But, the existence or nonexistence of a law has no bearing on whether or not behavior is right or wrong, or deprives others of their rights.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

I suppose you'll go through the text of the law and nitpick out-of-context zingers. Remember that copyright law could disappear and my argument would stay the same.

By the way, you've never explained the source of the rights you say we all get when someone publishes a book. Where do they come from? Do people who buy the book get more rights than people who don't even know the book exists? What about people who borrow it from a library?

Why doesn't a prospective publisher acquire these rights when he first reads a copy of the manuscript made by the author? If he doesn't, why does the rest of the world acquire these rights as soon as the publisher starts making copies? It's the same thing. Or, is there something special about copying with a printing press? If the publisher does gain these rights upon reading the manuscript, why do publishers bother to sign contracts and pay royalties? Why would an auther ever show a manuscript to a publisher or anyone else, if that mean losing rights to it?

That's not a strawman. You argue that rights transfer upon publication. Publication enables people to see copies of a work. So does submitting a manuscript to a publisher.

Stallman wrote emacs. He published the code. Does that give people who've never heard of emacs the same rights as you seem to argue that everyone acquires when a book is published? Why shouldn't I slap my name on emacs, repackage it, and start selling it? I'd respond to the inevitable lawsuit by making your argument, which invalidates both copyright law and Stallman's license. After all, you are claiming that rights pass from a work's creator to the public at the moment of publication.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"Huh? Plagiarism is copying. Someone copies someone else's work and claims it as their own."

Perhpas so, but plagiarism can still be wrong while simple copying was not.

If plagiarism must always include copying, then it is more than just copying, it is copying and then claiming authorship.

You putting in the claiming authorship angle muddies the waters of the discussion. That was the point I attempted to make. Do you grant that at this point?

"I haven't been discussing legalities. But, wrong? Yes. A violation of another's rights? Yes. If the law says it is illegal, then it is. If not, the law is wrong."

You are right here, I mis-remembered your statement there.

So, to answer it properly:

Yes, without copyright law, and leaving out the claiming it as something you wrote, you would be fine making copies of a book on your shelf and selling them. As many as you wanted to try and sell.

In fact, this is done all the time today with works that have expired copyrights. Or so I am led to believe.

"I don't understand that."

Right, sorry, also based on the same mis-remembering of your one statement/question.

So, to try and get back on a proper track:

What about the case of a playwright and a repertory company.

Do you think it would be wrong for a repertory company to put on someone else's plays without permission or compensation?

I am trying to understand your position.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"http://www.copyright.gov/title17/

I suppose you'll go through the text of the law and nitpick out-of-context zingers. Remember that copyright law could disappear and my argument would stay the same."

So, from that link, am I to imply that you are from the US?

Not at all, and I am not from the US, but from what I have been lead to believe, your countries founders and you constitution do not support your views.

If you have contrary evidence, I am happy to learn.

"By the way, you've never explained the source of the rights you say we all get when someone publishes a book. Where do they come from?"

They just exist, they are natural rights.

I have a natural right to tell my family a joke I heard at work when I get home at night. That seems basic enough to me.

"Why doesn't a prospective publisher acquire these rights when he first reads a copy of the manuscript made by the author?"

Well, let's assume there is no historical precedence for a minute. He would not get the right because I would not let him see it without a contract. It is my secret work. I have not published it.

Look, let's just leave the middle man out for a bit to make things cleared.

Let's assume authors publish their own works. One's they freely choose to publish. The ones they want to keep secret, they keep secret. When an author puts his sorks out in public, the public hasthe right to do what they will with them other than lie about them. (Unless we need to give the right to lie.)

"Stallman wrote emacs. He published the code. Does that give people who've never heard of emacs the same rights as you seem to argue that everyone acquires when a book is published? Why shouldn't I slap my name on emacs, repackage it, and start selling it?"

You can't leave off with the "slap my name on it" part in your examples. Why? Do you need that part for your argument to hang together?

No, you do not have the right to 'slap your name on it' as I have said numerous times. That would be plagiarism, or to use the language above, lieing about the work.

But Stallman believes you should have the right to make copies and derivatives of it and has written the GPL and released his work under that license to ensure that you have just such rights in the face of copyright laws which say that you don't. (Speaking for myself on what I believe his actions and writings to mean and not for him.)

I am giving out just such rights to you and anyone else who should care to excercise them on many of my works as well. This trend is a growing one.

"I'd respond to the inevitable lawsuit by making your argument, which invalidates both copyright law and Stallman's license."

Good luck in trying to invalidate copyright law. Let me know how far you get. In your estimation, is copyright law legal and / or moral?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

Plagiarism: You can't plagiarize unless you copy.

>>"...you would be fine making copies of a book on your shelf and selling them. As many as you wanted to try and sell."

Obviously, I think that would be wrong, and I would do everything to stop you. Copyright law came into being to protect the rights you would be violating, not to create them. (Unless you want to argue that laws actually create and destroy rights, which is a very slippery slope.)

>>"...would be wrong for a repertory company to put on someone else's plays without permission or compensation?"

Yes.

My position is simple: The source of all rights to such a work is the work's creator, even those rights of the public that are protected by copyright law. I contend that there can be no other origin for those rights.

Don't waste time think of "Gotcha" examples. It won't change my position.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

I'm from the U.S., and see my views as being firmly aligned with the views of the Founders. But, that's really irrlevant. I wouldn't change my opinion if the case was otherwise.

A joke is not an object. A book of jokes is. You can tell every joke in that book. You can't start printing your own copies of it.

If an author publishes his own work, he still transfers to the public only those rights he chooses to transfer. The bit about publishing seems to me to be a red herring. Contracting with a publisher is nothing more than transferring the limited rights the author chooses to transfer.

I don't get the point about lieing about a work. Claiming authorship of something you didn't write is more than a simple lie, it's fraud. Plagiarizing is simply a form of copying. Can you legitmately make use of fair use and still plagiarize? Of course. Is it plagiarism if you copy an entire work and claim it as your own? Of course.

I know all about the GPL. Claiming Stallman's code as your own would violate the GPL, and my argument, as well. I think Stallman's position is rooted in beliefs much like mine. If not, why would he need to craft a license to specifically transfer to people rights that would otherwise not be theirs? You are arguing that they acquired those rights as soon as he released the code.

Your argument does invalidate copyright law, because you say all rights to a work belong to the general public upon publication.

And, yes, as I have repeatedly said, copyright law protects our rights. It's just fine with me.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"Plagiarism: You can't plagiarize unless you copy."

I don't actually know. If I claimed to have written MacBeth, what is that called in the absence of my making any copies of it. In any case, that is beside the point and I think we both know it. The point is that it is entirely possible to copy without plagiarism and yet you constantly put the plagiarism aspect into you examples when I have said over and repeatedly that I do not claim anyone has the right to plagiarise, only to copy. Why are you doing this?

"Obviously, I think that would be wrong, and I would do everything to stop you."

I know you think it is wrong. That much is clear now. What right would you have to try and stop me if I were making copies of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I wonder?

"My position is simple: The source of all rights to such a work is the work's creator, even those rights of the public that are protected by copyright law. I contend that there can be no other origin for those rights."

See, this is what confuses me, if I understood you correctly, you have previously said that it is within my rights to recite / quote a work, that the problem would arise if I tried to make copies.

Please elaborate furhter on your position then.

You have also said that you don't own the words. Now, unless you were playing word games, please explain in light of that.

If you don't have any ownership rights in the words in the order they are in, how does this work. Or were you being tricky and meant that you didn't own the words as in an alphabetical listing of all the words in your work, but you do have ownership rights in those words in that particular order.

Now further, can you explain by what magic you get the rights when writing these words down but you do not get those rights when speaking those words for the first time should you do so in public nad they not be recorded? (I think I have that as you position, if it is not, please clear up that misunderstanding as well.)

"Don't waste time think of "Gotcha" examples. It won't change my position."

That is not at all what I am trying to do. I am trying to get you to clarify what to me are inconsistent position so that I can be confident that I at least correctly understand what you are saying.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"A joke is not an object. A book of jokes is. You can tell every joke in that book. You can't start printing your own copies of it."

A single one liner written down on a single piece of paper is an object as much as a novel written on many pieces of paper is an object. If you dispute this, please give your metrics as to where the line is crossed.

How can I not put on a play, but I can tell jokes?

"I don't get the point about lieing about a work. Claiming authorship of something you didn't write is more than a simple lie, it's fraud. Plagiarizing is simply a form of copying. Can you legitmately make use of fair use and still plagiarize? Of course. Is it plagiarism if you copy an entire work and claim it as your own? Of course."

Plagiarism is actually a red herring that you keep throwing in the mix. Let us confine our discussion to copying without claiming authorship shall we? I have never said that plagiarism was OK.

"I know all about the GPL. Claiming Stallman's code as your own would violate the GPL, and my argument, as well."

Here you go with the same red herring again, give it up already. I am talking strictly claiming it is his code and copying it while giving him the credit. If that is not totally clear by now, I doubt I will ever be able to make it clear.

"If not, why would he need to craft a license to specifically transfer to people rights that would otherwise not be theirs?"

Oh, just as a guess... Because of copyright law. But I tell you what, it is easy enough to find his email address, why not send him your theory for his evaluation and comment.

"You are arguing that they acquired those rights as soon as he released the code."

No. Listen up carefully. I argue that they would have those rights in the absence of COPYRIGHT LAW. Since we have copyright law, they don't have those rights and hence the GPL.

"Your argument does invalidate copyright law, because you say all rights to a work belong to the general public upon publication."

Well, gee, so does yours since you saythat it takes the rights an author has in his works and places them into the public domain after a time.

I think I am fine, as a basic concept, with it as it is a temporary creation of rights for a particular purpose. I also have the right to build whatever I please on my land, and yet zoning laws abrogate this.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>" If I claimed to have written MacBeth, what is that called .."

Whatever it is, it isn't plagiarism until you produce a work with chunks of MacBeth in it, and claim it as your own.

>>" it is entirely possible to copy without plagiarism and yet you constantly put the plagiarism aspect into you examples when I have said over and repeatedly that I do not claim anyone has the right to plagiarise, only to copy. Why are you doing this?"

Because you keep asking questions about plagiarism. As I've said, it's peripheral.

>>". What right would you have to try and stop me if I were making copies of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I wonder?"

None. I didn't write it.

>>"...you have previously said that it is within my rights to recite / quote a work, that the problem would arise if I tried to make copies."

Your right to quote a work is protected by that previous legal arrangement known as copyright law. The right to quote a specific work, obviously, does not exist until that work exists. Hence, all rights to a work originate with its author. It's not possible for them to have any other origin.

>>"I am trying to get you to clarify..."

I think I've been very clear. I've stated my postion over and over and over. You keep bringing up peripheral issues -- words, Shakespeare, plagiarism -- that are not relevant.

To continue with the example of a book: A book is a physical object. At some point in time it does not exist. At another point of time it does. The person who creates that unique entity -- that particular combination of language and medium -- owns it and has all rights in it. The only way for anyone else to legitimately possess that copy of that book is with the author's permission. The only way for anyone else to have any rights to do anything with that book is with the author's permission, i.e., a transfer of rights from the author.

What's not clear about that?

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>" please give your metrics as to where the line is crossed.

How can I not put on a play, but I can tell jokes??

Whatever copyright law says is fair use.

>>"I am talking strictly claiming it is his code and copying it while giving him the credit. If that is not totally clear by now, I doubt I will ever be able to make it clear."

No. You've said that the act of publication means the general public has full rights to do with it as they please.

>>"Oh, just as a guess... Because of copyright law..."

Copyright law gives Stallman the protection of his rights that he needs to even dream of making the GPL enforceable. Absent copyright law, his license would have no meaning or standing. Stallman uses copyright and his license to protect his rights against people who argue, as you do, that all rights tranfer to the public upon publication. After all, Stallman's license is essentially the same as a publishing contract. In it, Stallman transfers limited rights to others and retains all the rest.

>>"I argue that they would have those rights in the absence of COPYRIGHT LAW."

And I thinks that's wrong. Copyright neither creates or destroy rights.

>>"...since you saythat it takes the rights an author has in his works and places them into the public domain after a time."

That's actually a validation of copyright. If I wanted to invalidate cppyright, I'd argue against the entry of works into the public domain. Remember, I've said copyright protects everyone's rights, authors and the public. The public has a right to expect works to pass into the public domain after a certain period of time. That, and all the other copyright protections of the public's interest, is not relevant to the issue of where those rights originate.

But, again, talking about copyright law is only a diversion from my point.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"Because you keep asking questions about plagiarism. As I've said, it's peripheral."

Ah, no, you keep giving as examples, plagiarism instead of simple copying. That has muddied the waters for a good time. You just did it again recently.

"Your right to quote a work is protected by that previous legal arrangement known as copyright law."

No, once again, we are discussing things in the absence of copyright law. Please, give your position relative to this state of affairs unless I specifically ask for how it works with copyright law.

So, if there were no copyright law, would a person have the right to quote from the book of another? Verbally? As written works?

"I think I've been very clear. I've stated my postion over and over and over. You keep bringing up peripheral issues."

You may think you have been, but it is far from clear what your position is.

"To continue with the example of a book: A book is a physical object. At some point in time it does not exist. At another point of time it does. The person who creates that unique entity -- that particular combination of language and medium -- owns it and has all rights in it"

You problem arises when you maintain that he has rights to the combination of words absent as physical entity. I have tried to explore this. Asking about reciting, singing songs, and what not. Trting to see if you think someone owns the words / ordered sequence of words seperate from the physical entity. I thought you had said no. Now it seems you are saying yes. Your actual position is entirely unclear.

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"Whatever copyright law says is fair use."

Oh, come on! Stop giving your reasoning with respect to copyright law. You have already indicated that if copyright law did not exist, your position would not change. It is entirely not helpful then to argue what copyright law says and doesn't say in this context.

How many times do I need to say I am talking in the absence of copyright law. And I am talking simple copying, not plagiarism? Would you like me to go back and count?

"No. You've said that the act of publication means the general public has full rights to do with it as they please."

In the absence of copyright law, yes, with copyright law, no. Is it that tough for you to get this?

The license was written in a time and place where copyright law is in effect.

"And I thinks that's wrong. Copyright neither creates or destroy rights."

Yes, I know what you think, but you fail to answer in that context many times.

"That's actually a validation of copyright. If I wanted to invalidate cppyright, I'd argue against the entry of works into the public domain."

I don't see how you get there logically. If I make a model plane, when do I rightfully lose my rights in that like you indicate I will in my written works.

Now, in my world view, I don't think this is a valid example, but it would seem to be one in yours.

Would the creator of a dance step, who records the new dance byway of diagrams in a book and a video showing the dance, get rights to stop others from dancing that dance?

How about a person who defines a new genre of music?

One last question here that I have asked before but I don't recall you touching...

What about patents. Inventions. Do people have the same rights in these as in works that fall under copyright.

"But, again, talking about copyright law is only a diversion from my point."

But you seem to keep answering in that context. Why?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

>>"No, once again, we are discussing things in the absence of copyright law. Please, give your position relative to this state of affairs unless I specifically ask for how it works with copyright law."

I've repeatedly said copyright law has no bearing on my side of the discussion. It does not have anything at all to do with creating rights. So, any questons along the lines of "Do people have the right to do X without copyright...?" are just beside the point. They have the same rights with or without copyright. So, my answer to all your questions about copyright is this: It doesn't matter.

And, you do not get to determine what I can discuss and when

>>"you maintain that he has rights to the combination of words absent as physical entity..."

I have not claimed that. I've claimed he has the right to determine who can make copies of his work, or portions of it, or otherwise manipulate it. Reciting a work does not involve manipulating or copying the object that is a work. So, if you want to split hairs, reciting a work from memory is one thing, copying a work from memory is another. Copyright law allows a musician, poet, playright, etc., to require receipt of prior permission before a work is performed. Peronally, I've no problem with that, but it isn't part of my argument.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[reallocate]

I''ve said copyright does not give anyone rights. Therefore, people must have fair use rights. The specific definition, the metrics, of fair use is a legal issue.

>>"In the absence of copyright law, yes, with copyright law, no. Is it that tough for you to get this?"

Yes, because you seem to be saying people acquire rights via copyright law, which I reject.

>>"Would the creator of a dance step, who records the new dance byway of diagrams in a book and a video showing the dance, get rights to stop others from dancing that dance?"

I'd say yes, but I don't know what copyright law says. Regardless, either they have that right or they don't, and nothing in copyright law can change that.

>>"What about patents. Inventions. Do people have the same rights in these as in works that fall under copyright.
"

Different discussion that I don't want since this one is very tiresome.

>>"But, again, talking about copyright law is only a diversion from my point."

But you seem to keep answering in that context. Why?"

Because you keep raising edge cases using the word "copyright" and asking me about them. It's hard not to talk about copyright if you keep bringing it up. All I've ever said about copyright is that the law doesn't create rights and has no bearing on my argument. How many times can I say that? Stop asking me silly questions aboout dancers and model airplanes. Look at what I've already repeatedly said for my answer and figure it out yourself.

I will ignore any further response. You've not answered my challenges to your argument and I'm bored with this.

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"I've repeatedly said copyright law has no bearing on my side of the discussion."

Come on. You just said copyright law says talling a joke is fair use. Does fair use exist in your world view outside of copyright law? Are you afraid to state clearly what your position is versus the rights you claim? What?

"They have the same rights with or without copyright."

OK, so to go with what you have said. Even without copyright law, it is OK to recite a joke from memory but not a play. If you have not said that, you have not made yourself very clear, if you have, where is the line in your view.

"And, you do not get to determine what I can discuss and when"

No I don't, but if you want to have an honest and open discussion, it would be helpful if we could try and work with one another in at least understanding clearly what our respective positions are.

">>"you maintain that he has rights to the combination of words absent as physical entity..."

I have not claimed that. I've claimed he has the right to determine who can make copies of his work, or portions of it, or otherwise manipulate it. Reciting a work does not involve manipulating or copying the object that is a work."

And yet you just said you could not put on a play. OK, how about simply recite a play? Are you being technical and maintining that putting on a play is more as a matter or these rights than reciting that same play?

all the best,

drew

Re:An Idea Is Not A Possession

[zotz]

"The specific definition, the metrics, of fair use is a legal issue."

How could it possibly be a legal issue if the law has no bearing on rights?

"Different discussion that I don't want since this one is very tiresome."

Fine.

"Because you keep raising edge cases using the word "copyright" and asking me about them."

Please give examples of the first instance of each case. I don't recall doing so at all. Only in response.

"I will ignore any further response. You've not answered my challenges to your argument and I'm bored with this."

I think I responded to a similar statement a day or two ago saying that as far as I was concerned, you should feel free to do exactly this.

all the best,

drew

I'd like to plagiarise him a bit

[Perey]

Amen, Mr Lethem. When I finally get around to writing my essay on this subject, I'll be sure to respectfully reuse your ideas.

(I was prompted to write one by a discussion with [fantasy fiction-reading] friends on the merits or otherwise of fanfiction. They've loudly defended the author's absolute, unassailable right to control of their own creation, drawing a definite [if fuzzy-edged] distinction between things in the 'public consciousness' [for which read, old 'folklore' and such stories] and things traceable to a modern author. Me, I plan to write about how people can have the perfectly good and natural desire to take something they read and retell, expand, or otherwise build upon a work. Basically, modern copyright is killing off the ancient art of the storyteller [one who retells, interprets, and sometimes performs another's story, rather than composing their own 'original']... and fanfiction is, to a degree, the somewhat ignominious remnant of this art.

Copyright pollution anyone?

[zotz]

Hmm. Your post convinced me to start this off even though I don't think I am ready to.

I have been thinking lately about "copyright pollution" where the copyrighted works of others gets in our heads and pollutes them to to point where what then comes out of us is "tainted" as it were.

Now this should not really be that much of an issue in a sensible legal environment, but I think we may not be in such an environment now and I also think that those forces causing that environment to deteriorate for a good while now are still at work trying to make it worse.

Are we getting to the point, or will we get there in our lifetimes, where an artist cannot afford to pay attention to, watch, look at, read, etc. any works that are not in the public domain or that carry a free license of some sort? Sort of like where people say we are today with respect to software patents.

all the best,

drew

http://musicians.opensrc.org/DrewRoberts

Any laws against Plagiarism where you live?

[zotz]

So as far as you know, there are no laws in your country against plagiarism?

Which country are you from? Would people from other countries please chime in here?

all the best,

drew

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search

Lethem (offtopic)

[jefu]

For what it is worth, Jonathan Lethem is an excellent writer and well worth reading. His works range from weird science fiction ("Girl in Landscape") to the just plain weird ("Gun, with Occasional Music") to more or less straight fiction ("Fortress of Solitude").

Another Political Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Plagiarism, Plagiarism, Plagiarism... Oh wait, maybe this story isn't about Biden after all. It's hard to tell sometimes...

"the sources he stole his ideas from"

[jhp64]

The best part of the essay is at the end when he provides a key to all of the sources he stole his ideas from.

It isn't that he stole his ideas — he stole the actual words and sentences. The whole thing is, as he puts it, a collage assembled from other peoples' writing.

What plagiarism is NOT!

[redelm]

Plagiarism is essentially quoting without [proper] attribution. Passing [especially] words and [sometimes] ideas off as one's own. It is perfectly acceptable, and usually highly desireable to include others' work with attribution into a new synthesis or even a survey.

The author knows this full well (even if he can't express it), as shown by the very extensive citations!

Re:What plagiarism is NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

This isn't an example of how to correctly write "a synthesis". The author's point was that he could have easily left the citations off, and he still would have created an original work of art, and it would have been OK.

Citations are not necessary in literature or other similar arts. Many famous novels are essentially like this essay, except WITHOUT the citations at the end. That was the point.

IOW -- knowledge is a network

[redelm]

... and the links must be preserved.

Plagiarism...

[Elbowgeek]

Using the ideas set forth by others in order to bolster an argument in a paper is one thing - that's not plagiarism. What people get cheesed off at is taking whole paragraphs from another source and passing them off as their own.

I'll bet if one of this dude's co-workers presented an idea to their boss that he himself had worked hard on - effectively taking credit for another's ideas - said dude who is now ranting about all this plagiarism jive would have a fit.

Here's an idea - someone submit an article to a major publication with major bits of his work lifted word for word and see how long it takes for a lawyer to contact you ;-)

RTFA

[AdonaiElohim]

Judging from a lot of the comments so far... are people really incapable of seeing what the author was trying to do here? Read the thing. Do you really still need it spelled out for you? Then read on. It's an essay about the universal practice of taking uncredited quotes from previous artists... MADE UP LARGELY of quotes from previous artists. It's a literary game. An attempt to prove a point. A clever idea imperfectly executed. He is trying to literally show the reader that almost anything you see or hear, Disney or not, probably contains many echoes of previous works by great artists. Get it?

There is no bright line.

[tepples]

Under the law, copyright protects the form of a work, not an idea.

In the case of music, for instance, where is the line between idea and form? George Harrison got sued and lost for subconsciously copying two motifs totaling 9 notes from "He's So Fine" by Ronald Mack into his own "My Sweet Lord" and adding different lyrics.

Re:There is no bright line.

[NetSettler]

Under the law, copyright protects the form of a work, not an idea.

In the case of music, for instance, where is the line between idea and form? George Harrison got sued and lost for subconsciously copying two motifs totaling 9 notes from "He's So Fine" by Ronald Mack into his own "My Sweet Lord" and adding different lyrics.

This is a fair example to raise for discussion, and I'm happy to engage it.

Here is how I break down that situation:

First, there are certainly always "edge issues" for anything small. Can one copyright a fortune cookie? A haiku? What is fair use when you want to quote part of a fortune cookie? None of these are easy issues, but I think the practical answer is "notwithstanding copyright, don't bet your fortune on copyrighting something so tiny that people are likely to reproduce it". So from the side of the person who did originate the work, I think they should enjoy flimsy protection not because I don't value a crisp statement but because I think there's too much societal good in being able to compose sentences. Another way of sayng what I'm saying is that I am fine about the idea of saying that anything shorter than x words can't be copyrighted. It's not chunky enough. And that saying this is so is not enough to refute the goodness of copyright.

In a sense, music has this problem all over because, like some forms of digitized computer stuff, there just aren't that many ways to do certain things. Computer Science people have no business copyrighting (or patenting--a separate can of worms) small things like xor or an assignment statement. A trivial exhaustive search would find certain alleged "protected works", and that should be proof of obviousness (while for patents it's taken as infringement, which seems inane in small search spaces).

The idea of copyrighting a few notes, therefore, seems silly to me. Though obviously there's nothing silly about the dire consequences of the present system, which admits the possibility. I just don't think the problem is copyright or law. I think it's courts and lawyers and maybe even juries. We've taken all the judgment out of judging, and told people to be ultra-literal and that using their hearts and minds is not allowed. Something wrong there, and no wonder we get to odd rulings. So that suits like the one you describe occur seems more like an abuse of the courts and/or ineffective counsel than really a material breakdown in the copyright system. The core value of copyright seems to me to be that, Jabberwocky notwithstanding, people mostly don't memorize long written works and so don't accidentally regurgitate them. Music, by contrast, is often memorized and integrated in a way that makes it possible to regurgitate accidentally. As a consequence, I'd easily be swayed by an argument that music should be under different forms of protection than written works. I've made similar arguments for software patents.

I've argued that software copyright neglects some basic concepts, one of which is something I call convergence issues. (And perhaps there's an analogy to music.) There is work that is done for "best practice" reasons and work that is done for "creative" reasons, but copyright law does not distinguish. If I assign to you to write a paper on Truth and you turn in the same essay as your classmate, you should get an F. But if I assign you to write a program that tests truth of the combination of booleans, you should get an F if you don't get the same answer as most of your classmates, since there's a convergent solution. Programming is an engineering discipline, and we value convergence in engineering tasks. While writing is a divergent discipline, and we value individuality. Yet copyright sees the two the same, and that matters if you're going to claim that "having converged" is the test of "infringement".

We want the choice by a computer to use a square box or rounded-edge bo

Re:There is no bright line.

[k_187]

"The question, therefore, is whether defendant took from plaintiff's works so much of what is pleasing to the ears of lay listeners, who comprise the audience for whom such popular music is composed, that defendant wrongfully appropriated something which belongs to the plaintiff." 905 F.2d 731 at 734

Thus, if the intended audience's "untutored judgment" (328 F.3d 848 at 856) would confuse the two, the works are substantially similar.

Re:There is no bright line.

[tepples]

Thus, if the intended audience's "untutored judgment" (328 F.3d 848 at 856) would confuse the two, the works are substantially similar. "The two works"? What happens in a case where the copying is subconscious, where the author of the allegedly infringing work had forgotten the existence of the other work? Take Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976). If you were in Harrison's position, in what way would you have handled it differently?

Re:There is no bright line.

[k_187]

Well, as your link states, Harrison was boned. While copyright allows for independent creation, access + substantial similarity == infringement. Intention to copy has nothing to do with it.

Re:There is no bright line.

[tepples]

Well, as your link states, Harrison was boned. What would you have done to avoid being boned?

Re:There is no bright line.

[Kadin2048]

What would you have done to avoid being boned?

Hire more lawyers than the other guy. Or buy him out.

Brilliant

[Anonymous Coward]

I damn near had an epiphany when I read this, and I'm glad Harper's chose to post it on their website so soon after it was published.

I would take issue with some statements

[DescData]

"The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains gloriously immune to any overall commodification. The closest resemblance is to the commons of a language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. That a language is a commons doesn't mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole"

I would take issue with this statement. The society is the author of language and it does have rights. Charity is how we pay our debit to society. The debit is real and it should be payed.If a society does not demand payment, is it not completely functional.

"Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul--let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances--is plagiarism"

No, using ones culture properly is not plagiarism. plagiarism is the word we use for improper use of the work of others that is not yet in the public domain.

There is no bright line.

[tepples]

Copyright does NOT protect the idea, it protects the expression of the idea. I am free to create a cartoon mouse but if I call him Mickey and substantialyl copy the look of the Disney creation then I've crossed the boundaries of influence and inspiration to outright infringement.

Define "substantially".

Bright Tunes is dangerous.

[tepples]

The idea that there nobody ever makes anything new or exciting is, I think, an insult to everyone who is an artist; sure, art isn't developed in a bubble, but it does have (at the least) some originality in it. If art doesn't have originality in it of any sort, we call it plagiarism; or at the very best, a hack. But how can an author distinguish originality from subconscious copying before publishing the work and opening oneself up to a lawsuit that could be the next Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs?

Tainted like George Harrison

[tepples]

I have been thinking lately about "copyright pollution" where the copyrighted works of others gets in our heads and pollutes them to to point where what then comes out of us is "tainted" as it were. You're not the only one. George Harrison and Michael Bolton got burned by this too. Look up Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton.

Re:Tainted like George Harrison

[zotz]

I have been thinking lately about "copyright pollution" where the copyrighted works of others gets in our heads and pollutes them to to point where what then comes out of us is "tainted" as it were. You're not the only one. George Harrison and Michael Bolton got burned by this too. Look up Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton. Yes, well, I knew about George but not about Michael. Thanks for the info.

all the best,

drew

Cryptomnesia

[tepples]

I don't mind them copying my docs and putting them up on their site with proper credit. I do mind people taking my words and claiming credit for them. But how do people know whether the words that they write are original, that they have never been published before? See Cryptomnesia on Wikipedia.

Fiction vs Non-Fiction Schism

[redelm]

... or form over function! Fiction is intended for entertainment, form is everything. Any ideas "borrowed" from elsewhere will be exposed and discussed in such criticism as the work attracts. But are entirely secondary to the presentation.

Non-fiction is intented for enlightenment. Form is entirely secondary, the ideas/content/plot is primary. The origin/web of those ideas must be preserved.

Lethem, meet Sokal, meet Brockman meet Lehem...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

I think Lethem's article is very good, and it reminds me of Sokal's hoax on Social Text. The articles have completely different purposes and diametrically opposed philosophies, but they share a similarity - using the tools of their target to expose their target.

With Sokal, he used the language of post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas in order to demonstrate how ludicrous post-structural theory's mis-appropriation of scientific ideas really is.

Here, Lethem is using/abusing the practice of attribution to demonstrate the destructiveness of copyright in the realm of ideas, and the inherent inter-relatedness of ideas in creative arts.

In this way, he is similar to John Brockman who wrote a book that was composed of a paragraph on each page, and each paragraph was usually a composite of several statements from other people's writings (often Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Weiner, TS Eliot, et al) That Brockman is now a literary agent for scientists only brings the whole thing to a big circle.

RS

But outside academia?

[tepples]

Academics deal in nothing but ideas, and they've worked out ways of handling this. YOU CITE YOUR SOURCES. If I'm writing an instrumental song, then how do I know what my sources are?

Re:But outside academia?

[quixote9]

You acknowledge them to the extent that you know them. And you make whatever effort you need to, to remember where you got things, which is probably the same thing you'd hope other people would do for you. If it's so minor, or so pervasive that you can't identify it, well, isn't that the whole point to creativity being a social value?

All I was trying to say was that it might be an idea for the rest of the world, and I include RIAA and MPAA even though they think they're a different order of being, to see how the people do it who've been at it for centuries. Sure, nobody's going to start citing chapter and verse of obscure journal articles, but the general principle does apply.

Re:But outside academia?

[tepples]

You acknowledge them to the extent that you know them. And you make whatever effort you need to, to remember where you got things, which is probably the same thing you'd hope other people would do for you. Unless "other people" happen to include the counsel representing the publisher of the one source that you could not remember. This is how George Harrison got burned: look up Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music. Is there a way to write music and prevent another "My Sweet Lord" case from happening to me?

Copying from memory is still copying

[tepples]

Repeating or reciting something you've read is not copying the physical object on which language encoding that joke was originally placed. Tell that to George Harrison.

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[reallocate]

Harrison did more that stand up in a room and sing a song. He made, distributed and sold a record -- a physical thing -- that sounded pretty much like another song. If all Harrison did was recite song lyrics, I doubt he'd have been sued.

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[tepples]

Harrison did more that stand up in a room and sing a song. He made, distributed and sold a record -- a physical thing -- that sounded pretty much like another song. But if you were in his position, how would you have prevented yourself from accidentally copying an existing song?

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[reallocate]

I'm not assuming he "accidentally" copied anything. Frankly, I've alway doubted that neither Harrison, nor anyone else involved with that recording, failed to recognize that it used another song's melody. These were professionals, steeped in the music of the 1950's and 1960's.

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[tepples]

I've alway doubted that neither Harrison, nor anyone else involved with that recording, failed to recognize that it used another song's melody. These were professionals, steeped in the music of the 1950's and 1960's. If a less experienced musician, say someone with a home studio and a MySpace page who had just signed up for Magnatune or Sellaband, were accused of doing the same thing, how would you suggest that the less experienced musician handle the situation?

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[reallocate]

Get a lawyer.

Experienced or not, if you produce a record that copies someone else's melody, it seems to me that your only possible defense in a lawsuit is that you did not do so deliberately and that you were unware that the melody was duplicated. That might be easier for an inexperienced musician to argue. If I was on the other side, however, I'd argue that inexperience as a performing musician does not necessarily have any bearing on how much music someone has listened to. It only takes hearing a song once, so I'd go after an inventory of the music he owns, what songs were playing in his friends homes when he was there, what he might have heard on the radio just before he wrote the song at issue; I'd check into what kind of music his parents played when he was a kid, etc. I'd do what I needed to do to show that he could have consciously copied that melody. For example, he'd have a weaker case for arguing that he didn't recognize the duplicate melody if I could show that his parents played the other song several times a day, or if records from his ISP and/or browser history showed he downloaded the other song two days before he wrote his.

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[tepples]

Get a lawyer. See my sig: 'If your answer to Ask Slashdot is "ask a lawyer", then the question is "what should I know before talking to a lawyer?"' At upwards of $200 per hour, I want to make the best use of my attorney's time.

if you produce a record that copies someone else's melody, it seems to me that your only possible defense in a lawsuit is that you did not do so deliberately and that you were unware that the melody was duplicated.

Would most publishers accusing a less popular artist who made little or no profit on an infringing work be willing to settle the issue for significantly less than the statutory damages of $750 to $30,000?

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[reallocate]

>>"Would most publishers accusing a less popular artist who made little or no profit on an infringing work be willing to settle the issue for significantly less than the statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 [copyright.gov]?"

Who knows?

I've lost your point.

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[tepples]

The point is that people have been scared away from writing music due to cases like Bright Tunes. What can songwriters do to protect themselves in general, so that they don't run an unacceptable risk of being bankrupted by damages and legal fees?

Re:Copying from memory is still copying

[reallocate]

Beats me. The plight of wannabe musicians doesn't interest me.

So _that's_ the sound of points being missed.

[wavedeform]

What everyone seems to be missing is that this essay is pretty much all "plagiarized" . The section titled "KEY: I IS ANOTHER" lists his sources and discusses his methodology.

He's making his point by putting together other people's words (and ideas) to craft his message. Very clever, in a meta sort of way, IMO.

Lethem's test

[Coward Anonymous]

Mr Lethem's first novel, "Gun, with Occasional Music" will have been published for 14 years in 2008. Will Mr. Lethem release the novel into the public domain in the spirit of the original Copyright term set by Congress? In other words, will he practice what he preaches?

Probably Bach

[YetAnotherBob]

He seems to be the base of most of western music. He was an enthusiastic user of his own (and others) for variations, but we really don't know who the earlier sources were.

Re:I agree

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you a troll? Perhaps the running joke isn't funny, but a TROLL?

You misunderstand

[YetAnotherBob]

A language is something that cannot be exclusivly owned by one person. It must be common to many people to be useful. Try to have exclusive use of any language, and that language will dissapear. That is the message the Author assumed you would realize without his having to explain. And he is right, it should be a self evident fact. If no one else knows 'your' language, it's just gibberish. If many others know it, you no longer can control it. Without control, there is no ownership (and thus no property).

Some computer languages have existed with a very narrow following that were 'owned'. In every case I know of, they lose out to common languages. And this in a relativly small group of users who have a very narrow range of expression. Widen the group, widen the range of requried expression, and the ownership problems increase geometricly.

Re:You misunderstand

[DescData]

You're right, the author did say that language is "possessed by no one", but he went further: "not even by society as a whole". You haven't address the posability that a language can be owned by a society.

Can a society own something? Concider a hunting party. Such a party owns the game as a whole until it is divided.

My question was about post-1923 sources

[tepples]

True, the works of Bach are the foundation of tonal music as Europe and its ex-colonies know it. But how can I know what sources first published between 1923 and the present I may have copied into my own work, so that I don't get boned like George Harrison did with "My Sweet Lord"?

Every artist is a cannibul

[kn0tw0rk]

every poet is a thief
all keen with inspiration
and sing about their grief."
  - U2

In a word, no

[j_w_d]

In a longer manner, creativity is as much about recominbing familiar elements in novel ways as it is about completely new invention. Some people practically have a seizure when the lightbulb flashes upstairs and they find they have "thought of a new thing." With others the lights are on all the time. Whenever they open their mouths their listeners are going, "oh wow!" while they just say "of course, its obvious, isn't it?" And of course, it IS obvious, once they've pointed it out.

The first sort is desperate claim credit, while the latter scarecely notice their own creativity. The first sort exist in a dark landscape lit by rare lightening flashes, while the latter see the same terrain brightly lit. The first sort want copyrights extended perpetually, while latter don't really care much. The first sort tend to make an issue of being artists or scientists. The latter are actually productive and don't live by labels, titles, degrees and such.

not just copyright

[hany]

I have been thinking lately about "copyright pollution" where the copyrighted works of others gets in our heads and pollutes them to to point where what then comes out of us is "tainted" as it were.

I have same fealing about laws in general in so called "modern free-market driven democracies": I think it is alredy a fact that growing up in such a country to the age of 18 means you are for sure a criminal - breaking multiple laws in the past 18 years thus beaing under constant threat of being jailed (if not alredy in there).

And it looks like intentional product of those who set-up such "law mine field" because - to quote (with mistakes and without proper attributions, what a thief I am :) - "government in free society has no power over citizens, it has power only over criminals".

Already happens.

[Kadin2048]

Are we getting to the point, or will we get there in our lifetimes, where an artist cannot afford to pay attention to, watch, look at, read, etc. any works that are not in the public domain or that carry a free license of some sort? Sort of like where people say we are today with respect to software patents.

We are already there. I know several published authors of poetry and fiction, who intentionally do not read anything else that's even remotely close to their own genre of work, because of the fear that they will internalize it and somehow incorporate it into their own work later on, unwittingly. In their case, their fear is driven less by the possible legal repercussions than of the career / artistic suicide that being labeled as a plagiarist would be; as was the case a while back with that Indian girl who wrote the YA novel that had some suspiciously close passages to other novels, it's possible to make yourself a literary untouchable, without actually violating copyright per se. Sometimes those MFAs can be more vicious than the J.D.'s, particularly where "ethical" lapses are concerned.

This sort of firewalling would be tougher, I'd imagine, for a non-fiction writer, since it's nearly impossible to be a decent historian if you don't keep current on what others in your field are doing; the same is true for other fields. Unless you are writing about a topic specialized enough to be all your own, or you are basically just reporting research that you have done from primary sources, you're going to have to begin with things that others have written, and that brings with it the risk of plagiarism, whether intentional nor not.

I've also read several interviews with well known authors where they report the same thing. I think Steven King might have been one of them; IIRC he said that he doesn't really read much other horror fiction, and when he does, it's only when he's taking a break from his own writing for a while. During the actual creative process, reading anything that might be "inspirational" could be dangerous, since the line between what is acceptable and what is unethical is so grey, and dangerous.