Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Copyright Lobby Out of Touch
Ontheright writes "The BBC is featuring a story on
how the U.S. copyright lobby is increasingly out of touch with the rest of the world. The article focuses on a recent report designed to highlight the inadequacies of IP protection around the world by arguing for a global expansion of the DMCA and elimination of copyright exceptions. Michael Geist penned the article, which specifically calls out the United States for expecting the world at large to adopt its non-standard standards for copyright law."
The U.S. copyright lobby exists for one purpose: to give distributors sole custody of intellectual property "rights." In the past, pre-copyright, there was no intellectual property -- there was only marketing material that provided an artist or creator access to the market so they could sell their true product: live productions of that marketing material. Shakespeare wrote for acclaim, but it was his live performances that produced his income. He was also paid by wealthy patrons of the arts who wanted to see more from him. For centuries, this is why art was created. Those who didn't want acclaim but still wanted to produce art would do what we all do for incomes -- they got jobs in creating something for someone else.
For 200 years, copyright was considered the only way to protect your creations, but what came out of copyright is the worst-case scenario for amateur artists: instead of copyright protecting your creations, it only protected the monopoly networks of distribution, what I would call distribution cartels.
Now, 200 years later, we have a majority of opinion that believes that people wouldn't create if their intellectual property wasn't protected. But this isn't true. I created the Global Unanimocracy Network"> of blogs and forums in order to prove that you could generate an income for your talents without the need for copyright. All my writings are now public domain -- I freely encourage others to copy my writings and posts and repost them under their own name, on their own sites, for their own income. Why? Because it generates interest in the niche topics I cover, and eventually people find their way to my site. I make a decent income through advertising and individual support for my future writings. People pay me so that I will write more in the future. Even better, my network of blogs has also gotten me writing gigs for other sites that pay me to write content for them in a "ghost writing" type of deal.
If you are a musician, you have two options: record a record and use it as marketing to get people to your shows (as my brother's band Maps & Atlases has done), or go and get a job as a studio musician creating music for commercial ventures (movies, TV shows, muzak, etc). The idea that you can spend 2 weeks or 2 years creating one record and then reap 70 years of income is ridiculous. Does a plumber go to school for 2 years to learn how to fix toilets only to get paid for 70 years whenever you flush that toilet? No, they continue to work. Does an architect spend 2 years designing plans only to get paid forever by those who live or use the building that came forth from the plans? No, they keep designing. Artists are no different -- they should continue their labors in order to continue to reap incomes.
Right now, copyright has placed in the hands of powerful mercantilists the monopoly of distribution. The FCC decides who can transmit over public airwaves, and this blocks amateurs from the airwaves. Yet those days are coming to an end as the airwaves are growing less important as the Internet is available in more and more places (for example, I have a consistent WiFi connection to the net in my car at about 200kbps via T-Mobile's EDGE network). As the Internet finds its way to more parts of the country and the world, the public airwaves will be less utilized and way less efficient. The copyright lobby knows this, and they're trying hard to restrict future growth in "piracy" and non-licensed distributors. Yet for amateur artists, the non-licensed distributors are the best way to get the word out about their real product: continued labor to make new and unique art.
A friend's band, 38 Acres, now tells their audience and online visitors to freely copy their albums for friends. They make a decent income selling unique performances, and they also make an income selling their T-shirts and hats and posters. People who "pirated" t
The copyright model dates back to the guild systems which Europe coined ages ago.
It's ironic that a country built by entrepreneurs escaping the guild systems is now the central figure in locking down the one product and resource which could be shared at virtually no cost.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
What's so surprising about Americans using non-standard procedures? 110 volt electricity, miles per hour speed measurement, Fahrenheit temperature scale,... should I go on? America has always distanced herself from international communities, standards, and practices.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Let's all keep in mind that the US had been changing it's copyright law to match European law for a while - for instance, the insane lengths of time and the "Life +x years" are European "innovations". Of course, the US content providers just used this as cover for their own agenda, but the rest of the world is hardly a shining beacon of copyright justice.
So now it's the US pushing a stupid agenda instead of Europe? Sounds more like the European copyright snowball they launched at the top of the hill is now an an avalanche they can't control. I'm not happy the US is in the thick of it, but it's inevitablity was insured long ago.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I created the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX of blogs and forums in order to prove that you could generate an income for your talents without the need for copyright.
Yes, we know. And you shamelessly pimp yourself at every opportunity you get. And it's tiring. Very very tiring.
In the past, pre-copyright, there was no intellectual property
In the past publication was a privilege granted by a monarch, and strictly controlled by guilds. The actual authors of whatever works had no say in this whatsoever (other then not creating their works)
Believe it or not, but copyright was actually a liberation of sorts. This is also where the misguided belief comes from that copyright promotes creation of works of art. It definitely does when compared to the guilds system, but that is pretty meaningless when comparing it to a situation where any works can be freely used and reused.
For the rest, I definitely agree that copyright as it is is completely broken, and is not even remotely serving its stated purpose. Rather, it is only there to help the big distributors keep as much control as possible.
Copyright does not guarantee any kind of income to those who actually create works of art, and it derives them of many of their sources of inspiration (at least legally)
So far as I can see this is just a wish list written by American media companies, it would be very surprising indeed to see them putting anything in this report which doesn't have a direct influence on maximising their profits and protecting their market.
The problem arises if the US government, as the article suggests, simply uses this document as a blueprint when passing legislation or when making trade agreements with other countries.
I would again expect the US government to attempt to gouge the best deals for it's own industries in the international community but unlike private companies I would also expect that the US as a democratically controlled country would also take into account more factors than simply their financial bottom line, but if this what the people want then the US is in an excellent position to force there opinions on the rest of the world.
It's clear that what is suggested for other countries is also desired, and presumably being worked towards, in the US its self so I think it is in the interests of the US citizens to stand up and prevent the undiluted dreams of their entertainment industry to be dictated to the rest of the world because once the rest of world falls into line with their dreams then it will be harder for the US citizens to resist these changes being rolled back into their own country.
Ideally the rest of the world needs to stop allowing the US to dictate their commercial policies and decide these things for themselves without being threatened by the US.
Well, knowing the free advertising he's going to get gives him some incentive to spend so much time writing such a wonderful and insightful comment. :P
Yay for the free market
~= scwizard =~
Can anyone name me a subject where the US government is in touch with the rest of the world? And where it's not just doing whatever the hell it feels like?
09 f9 11 02 9d 74 e3 5b d8 41 56 c5 63
Copyright does not guarantee any kind of income to those who actually create works of art,
Copyright doesn't guarantee income to anyone -- after all, your intellectual works could be garbage. But a lot of people think that it does not help to generate income for the artists, since "the big evil record companies take it all". But this is common misconception. How much would the record companies pay the artists if they couldn't own the intellectual property at all?
Remember, artists already have the right not to claim copyright and try to make money without selling the rights to a record company. If you think you can make more money this way, go for it! But light a match before griping about the darkness.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
No. In the Roman Empire, there was a very active publishing scene, where the recitals of poets or the plays of playwrights were transcribed, copied by slaves, and sold in the marketplace. Most popular literary figures had little contact with the ruling powers in the writing and dissemination of their works. People like Plautus were relatively insignificant commoners, and do you think that Hesiod and Homer had to wait for the permission of a king for their poetry to gain acclaim? And even when some work or another ended up irking the powers that be, the result was not an end to publication (Ovid's work spread widely) by the exile of the individual writer.
Eloquently put, sir.
That's exactly what I was trying to get across with this post in another article. It's not about money per se, it's always been about control. As long as the **AA and the TV media companies have control of the means of distribution, there's an unending supply of disproportionate profit that never goes into the hands of artists, it goes into the hands of the distribution channel.
The Internet provides a way for artists to directly connect to end-users. It gives them the means to find an audience, no matter how niche their work might me.
If people gain control of how they connect with the artists, then who needs the RIAA, MPAA, the TV networks, or radio companies like ClearChannel? Money can flow from consumers to artists directly, completely bypassing all the middlemen, who today make the bulk of the money.
It's like Cisco says in their TV spots: Anyone can be famous. Welcome to the human network.
My blog
Copyright doesn't guarantee income to anyone -- after all, your intellectual works could be garbage. But a lot of people think that it does not help to generate income for the artists, since "the big evil record companies take it all". But this is common misconception. How much would the record companies pay the artists if they couldn't own the intellectual property at all?
They would do work for hire, and get payed for the amount of work they did. This would in fact work out better for the large majority of artists.
They would also have to actually do life performances or exhibitions or whatever is proper for their works, and get some income that way.
What this will do is remove some of the lottery aspect of creating art.
Remember, artists already have the right not to claim copyright and try to make money without selling the rights to a record company. If you think you can make more money this way, go for it! But light a match before griping about the darkness.
I happen to create works for which I can claim copyright, and I happen to not assert those rights in the large majority of cases. Where I do assert those rights, it is for a very limited time.
Oh, and I do actually make some money with that as well.
Does it make me rich? definitely not, but then, when averaging the income of artists "within the system", you may find that they earn very little typically. There are some exceptions, which are just that, exceptions.
The only ones typically making quite a bit of money on copyright are distributors, and not those who actually create works of art.
We need:
- Compulsory licencing (it's not like anyone has any real choice in whether files are copied anyway).
- Some mechanism whereby creators are compensated for each copy.
- A distinction between large scale commercial copying and small scale private copying.
- Extra consumer rights for copying of pout of print works.
This is actually a pretty corporate biased set of rules, and there would be practical problems. Many people will object to paying a fee per commercial download, even if the privacy and owner identification issues are solved. But I submit this as a starting point. It does allow consumers to have large scale access to a vast collection of works, and ensure compensation for creators.Yay for the free market :P
There is nothing free about our market. Our trade agreements are not free either. Both are loaded with protections for business in the form of restrictions in copyright, intellectual property, and patent laws.
A truly free market would have none of these protections in place. True free market agreements would also not have these protections.
In the end, we just have a normal market. And those are just normal trade agreements.
1) For the most part 99% of artists get nothing from copyright (trivial google search I've already linked a couple times but it's something like .03% who make big money)
2) Most artists are relentlessly and ruthlessly ripped off by large corporations. It's not uncommon to see a wildly popular creation deemed "unprofitable" after "promotional and accounting" expenses are accounted for. Even such stupid thinks as "breakage" from the vinyl area are still applied. Despite this outright fraud, they STILL outright LIE and state lower numbers of sales than they know occured-- they get caught at it all the time.
3) Copyright isn't about a lifelong income stream. It's explicit purpose is to induce artists to create work which will enter the public domain. The original period was 28 years. That's entirely reasonable. The author's life plus 70 years is completely rediculous. "Forever and one day" (Jack Valenti) is the ultimate goal.
4) I guess the "Star Wreck" movie didn't actually get made and I didn't laugh and enjoy it and I didn't spend 4 hours watching it (twice!) instead of consuming purchased products. Oh wait... it did and I did.
5) Entire swaths of music wouldn't exist now if copyright rules in effect now were enforced as they started. Blues for example reuses a lot of common riffs. As a result- the FIRST song would have locked up that sequence of notes and it would have been 100+ years before another song using that riff would be made- so no blues. (You see it in rock & roll now- very stifling).
6) "Happy Birthday" is still copyrighted and will be until 2030. The authors are LONG dead and don't receive a penny. Some corporation owns the "rights" (same thing with a lot of other dead people).
7) Every time micky mouse comes up for public domain they pay a lot of money and get the period extended. For who? Again- the creator is dead.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
1 mile = 1794 yards = 5382 feet (except nautical miles, which equal 4977 feet, and air miles) = 107 rods, or maybe chains. Whichever.
1 ton = 1440 lbs = 12880 oz (or 12000 troy oz.) = 12888000 grains = 256000000 iotas
1 gallon = 64 fl.oz. = 68 oz.vol. = 2 quarts = 16 cups = 256 tsps. or 100 Scotch gills (102 English gills or 'short gills')
1 year = 365 1/4 days = 12 months of all different lengths. That one's a bit confusing, I admit.
Also there are cubits and firkins. Well when you put it like that up here in Canada our metric system just seems down right impossible!
We have this crazy idea that working with base 10 is just so much easier!
Mad things I tell you! Like:
1 meter = 0.001 kilometer
or
1 meter = 100 centimeter
I could go on but It is just way to complicated not like your easy to remember system of random values and measurement base on kings feet and who knows what else!
At the risk of being modded a troll, I want to ask a question that rattles through my head every time this subject come up. Why whine about the system?
A corporation exists to make money. The method of making money can vary, but in this case we are talking about catering to a consumer trading money for something. Ultimately, they don't particularly care about the consumer, just maximizing profits, granted, there are corporations who have found a business model where being customer friendly DOES maximize profit, but the point is still profit.
I never understand why this surprises people.
A corporation uses any method it can to garner the maximum income for the investments they make, the only real differences are how far the people controlling the corp are willing to go and what techniques they are willing to use to get there. But there is no difference between EMI, Sony, Microsoft, General Motors or anyone else.
That said, if you, as a creator, don't want to turn over your copyrights to some big corporation because you aren't interested in the way they do business, or their logo suck, or you want a bigger cut,then don't sign. You are under no obligation to market your work to them. There are other outlets that bypass that distribution system, and, with a lot of luck, you will make money on your work.
The other side of the coin is if anyone creates a work, it's theirs, not you the consumer. If you purchase a song, a book, a bit of art, or a software product, you understand you are purchasing it for your use under certain conditions of the sale. If you don't like those conditions, dont buy it. If enough people don't buy becasue of the conditions of the sale (Like they don't like the DRM restrictions, for example) the system will change. You have the right to NOT enter into an agreement with the owner of the work, simply don't purchase.
If we were talking about "Air", "Water", Medical services, Broadband, you know, the things that you HAVE to have to survive, it'd be different, you don't have a choice, but we are talking about music - you Have a choice, and frankly, the new stuff the major lables are churning out isn't worth buying anyway, if everyone would stop buying that crap, we'd fix it all in one shot, get good music and get it on the terms we want.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
This really isn't a case of "do what I say, not what I do" -- the RIAA (for one) is actively campaigning against fair use in the US as well. They are, if nothing else, consistent.
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
Copyright has almost NO place in classical music.
The music itself is not copyrighted.
Copyright produces almost NO revenue stream.
Classical music lives on performance subscriptions and donations. It has far more in common with your garage band then commercial music.
While there's all this hype from the RIAA and MPAA about the illegal *broadcast* of their IP and how if one person plays a song that's not their's in public (under certain circumstances) they can be sued or have to pay royalty to the arist. But if you showed a painting or a drawing to the public (under the same circumstances), you can't sue the person who put it up for display nor do that person have to pay royalty. Artists and painters have had (to this day) to deal with the world "without Intectual Property rights" for ages. Think of why most of the great artists in the past died poor. If they want this standard in america to be fair, make people pay royalty for displaying their art in public and anyone seeing the art have to pay a royalty. Either that or make it so people that replay a musical piece or movie without fear of legal action. Just because one medium (art) was able to be put into solid form before another (music/film), doesn't mean they're subjected to different Intectual Property rights. After all, they are all intellectual property. Either fix the system or break it and start anew.
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
You might want to read Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture. (It's even downloadable for free.) In it, he gives a number of scenarios where highly restrictive copyright laws, combined with the fact that there is no central registry by which one can determine what works are copyrighted any by whom, do inhibit creators from creating content.
This is the most insightful work I've read yet on the problems of modern copyright.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
-- SomPost
On behalf of Americans everywhere (actual people not the Recording/Movie Industry), I apologize to the rest of the world. Please ignore them.
The purpose of copyright is to provide a temporary monopoly on distribution of the art so that its creator can benefit from the work enough to encourage them to create further works. Copyright is NOT intended to create a source of lifetime income for the creator.
This is particularly true because the entire purpose of encouraging the creation of artistic works is so that the public itself has more art from which to benefit. The true value of art is its value to the culture that created it, because it allows us to see ourselves and reflect on our own existence. Cultures NEED art because essentially, it tells us who we are. Jefferson himself (who, by the way, wrote the Copyright clause of the US Constitution), as a child of the Enlightenment, recognized that all artistic work is inherently public domain - which is precisely why copyright monopolies should be granted for as little time as possible. We can't FORCE people to create artistic works to benefit the culture, so we ENCOURAGE them to do so with copyrights. Simple as that.
From that perspective, there is NO justification for maintaining a "death + 70 years" monopoly (not just 70 years, by the way). Those kinds of copyrights only accomplish one thing: depriving the culture that created the art of its due. We have yet to see what disastrous consequences this is going to have on expression.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Of course, it is impossible to prove that something that does not exist would exist under some other conditions. I'll even say that the opposite, the claim that a given copyrighted work would not exist except for copyright, is just as unprovable.
However, consider that Walt Disney built his empire largely upon works (Snow White and Cinderella as the most obvious examples) that were public domain at that time, but under today's more restrictive (and effectively unlimited as long as ex post facto extensions are allowable) copyright laws, these public domain works would not have been available for Disney to create his profitable derivative works.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Of course, they're given a choice between two extremes there. The extreme of no protection, or the extreme of copyright law as it exists today. That doesn't really prove much of anything. What if copyrights lasted only 30 years? Would artists still create? History tells us that they would. Would companies be able to own these works forever and prohibit anyone from creating anything new based on those works? No. But I fail to see how that is a bad thing.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Give a corporation monopoly rights on the act of breathing, and soon you'll notice that 90% of the US GDP will come through this corporation. What's missing in the equation is opportunity costs: what amount of money would be made if people could spend their money elsewhere? A tricky question, but one that needs to be addressed.
Before even that, it wsa controlled by the cost of hand-copying documents. The Gutenberg press, and similar printiing technologies, changed this and made duplication cheap. This led to the first copyrights, granted on the Christian Bible, to prevent its publication except with the permission of the Church and to appropriate personnel. This was because, if non-priests read the Bible, they could more easily argue with established doctrine and even create new churches and heresies, causing endless difficulties for both the major churches and the governments who were heavily tied to those churches. Also, if printing were general and too uncontrolled, lots of heavily modified versions of the Bible could also have been printed, causing even more schisms. Keeping the Bible uniform was a major goal of early publishers of it, for many excellent reasons as well as purely political ones.
So the history of copyright begins, not with aiding publishers and rewarding creativity, but with controlling access to already existing information. Keep this in mind when you discuss copyright law: controlling access is its primary purpose. There can be benefits to this, to protect trade secrets and to reward authors, but its fundamental nature is to prevent access to information.
The U.S. copyright lobby exists for one purpose: to give distributors sole custody of intellectual property "rights."
The term "intellectual property" needs to die as it is most often used in an inherently meaningless and contradictory way. Copyright, Trademarks and Patents all exist for different reasons and empower producers and consumers in different ways. Co-opting the emotional rhetoric of the civil/black/womens rights movements 'Give us our rights, our intellectual property rights!!' is a means of obfucation and extortion as it intentionally clouds the issue with hysteria which obstructs reasoned analysis.
Looking at the demands of the media cartels in the cold light of day, one can only conclude they are demanding enslavement and mandatory serfdom. They demand a fascist, feudal world where the all property is owned by a single entity ( the media companies ), and people own nothing - not the devices they buy ( thanks to the DMCA 'circumvention technology' agenda ), nor the original content they produce ( thanks to the guilty-till-proven-innocent part of the DMCA that allows any website/content to be taken down, how can an independent artist afford to prove they own their content in court when facing down the MPAA/RIAA/BSA? ).
The current copyright regime in the US is illegal and unconstitutional - how does 'for limited times' mesh with DMCA/DRM that makes 'copy-protected' content illegal to access forever? ).
The current patent regime in the US is so riddled with blatant fraud that it is also broken. Patents taken out when prior art clearly exists, or when 'obviousness' of the invention is unquestionable is common fraud.
The current trademark regime in the US is also pretty busted. In a court of law we have seen the 'Lindash' trademark ruled to be 'confusingly similar' to the 'Microsoft Windows' trademark. Its subject to all the bribes and corruption of patents and copyright, and is broken for the same reasons by the same groups of felons - Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA and others.
Its a state of anarchy, looting and pillaging by corporates & conglomerates who will not follow the law.