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You Can Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source
kfogel writes "I'm submitting 'Supporting Open Source While Opposing Copyright' as a response to Greg Bulmash's piece from yesterday. I think there were a number of flaws and mistaken assumptions in Bulmash's reasoning, and I've tried to address them in this rebuttal, which has undergone review from some colleagues in the copyright-reform community."
You got your open source in my copyright!
You got your copyright in my open source!
No one can agree, not even to disagree.
Have fun, y'all.
What?
You can support BSD without supporting copyright, as it doesn't take advantage of many copyright protections. You can't support GPL without supporting copyright, as it would be unenforceable without copyright.
Abolishing copyright abolishes the ability to enforce GPL. End of story. Even though the orignial article is flawed, the fact still remains. You can't control distribultion using the GPL without copyright law.
Nu-uh!
Because the most appropriate response to blog meta-wankery is MORE blog meta-wankery.
Seriously, I agree that the piece yesterday was quite flawed, but sometimes the most effective response is none at all. Responding formally just generates buzz and makes it more likely that Slashdot will continue propagating that kind of crap.
"I'm submitting 'Supporting Open Source While Opposing Copyright' as a response to Greg Bulmash's piece from yesterday.
Then why not make the title of this article: "Supporting Open Source While Opposing Copyright", instead of repeating the same title from the previous article?
People who just scan titles, esp on RSS, are going to think this is a dupe.
Richard Stallman puts it so much better. I disagree with a lot of what Stallman says, but the man has thought about his message and tries not to waste words. I respect that.
I tire of the "here are 10-15 different arguments on my side, if any of them sticks then I win" style of debate.
If you GIVE it to me all, who cares about "copyright"? Muuuuuwwhhaahahhhh
Which means I agree 110 percent. (C) is for losers.
Maybe the better question should have been, "why are some trying to seperate open source from copyright"?
So basically it seems like this guy doesn't want to do away with copyright, he just wants to change it so that any non-GPL-style license is prohibited.
The previous article suggested libertarian style freedom (free as in free to shoot your neighbor if he steps on your land), while this guy suggests communist style freedom (free as in "show your papers to get in line for free bread comrade").
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
If only there were a way to point out flaws and fallacies in a discussion about the original post. Maybe some way to comment on the validity of the argument or something. I'm sure the slashdot editors can come up with some method...
It's a little pointless arguing what copyleft would be like in a world without copyright, because we're never going to live in a world without copyright.
Let's focus on what we might really be able to achieve:
Find free books.
Both of you miss the obvious.
Bulmash misses the point that without copyright, I can find the appropriate place in your machine code to insert my functions and then distribute the modified versions to my friends. That's 90% of the GPL right there... And the right redistribute everything is probably more valuable than being able to see your sloppy undocumented source code anyway.
Kfogel misses the point that without copyright the computer industry would have grown an entirely different direction from way back in the '70s. Without specific protection for the software component, companies would have tied software to the hardware. Think: dedicated Pac Man machines in the arcades. You can copy the Microsoft Office ROMS all you want, but it uses the registers and I/O devices only present on the patented Microsoft Office machine. No *general purpose* computers... Copyright is what made the general purpose computer sociologically possible. That world, by the way, would suck.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
You can support copyright and NOT support ABUSE of copyright. Its the ABUSE of copyright that pisses people off.
As a professional photographer, if I take a good photograph, I don't want someone putting my picture up on their website and saying someone else took the photo. This is NOT me abusing my copyright.
If, however, a newspaper ran my photo on the front page, but I refused to allow anyone to cut out the photo and hang it on their refrigerator, and went from house to house inspecting refrigerators... THAT would be abusing my copyright. Sound vaguely similar to the MAFIAAs?
I hope you see the difference. Copyright is actually a good thing when not abused.
The difference between BSDL and GPL is that GPL forces other (linked) code into the open. You need some sort of property rights (ie copyright) to stake a claim on your code and assert this bargaining power. With no copyright you would not have rights and thus not have the bargaining power and GPL would be dead.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And in what way would these "base rules" NOT resemble copyright.
Once you accept that restrictions on private business, weather having sex or exchanging information, between two people is unnatural, how can you require people to distribute source to their work if they don't want to? Only if we accept copyright it makes sense to require the owner to release the source after a while so that other people can create derivative works in exchange for accepting the restrictions for limited time. But if you give away the binary without any obligations, neither should you have any towards others. Even today people who just release a binary compiled from GPLed source into public domain shouldn't be subject to any requirements to release the source.
"Supporting the GPL" does not mean "Insisting that it remain entact and enforcible as-is even if copyright law is reformed."
"Opposing copyright law" does not mean "Wanting to get rid of copyright law without also getting rid of the GPL."
These are both logical straw-men.
The GPL makes good use of a bad law.
Inasmuch as there is copyright law, I support the GPL as a good way to make the best of a bad situation. However, I would happily give up the GPL if doing so would mean getting rid of copyright law (or at least reforming it to my satisfaction).
So I oppose copyright law and I support the GPL, and there is no contradiction here.
The ultimate goal of the GPL is to ensure that free software remains free. In order to do this, the GPL relies upon some copyright restrictions.
Yes, if there were no copyright law, those copyright restrictions could not be enforced, and therefore the GPL would not exist. However, if there were no copyright law, then free software would remain free anyway, so the GPL would not be necessary.
This is not a self-contradicting position, and it is not hard to understand.
Sorry, but am I the only one who gets a little stuck on the part, "You can oppose copyright...."?
Yes we've all seen Megacorp decide to use someone's code and then incorporate it into their program. Or just use something in a commercial sense when it's clearly limited for personal use only. We've seen companies take advantage of contracts where anything an employee creates becomes fair game.
But likewise, I have a problem with those who believe that nothing should be copyrighted and we should just all share and share alike. Well, I'm totally for giving back to the community, but I don't find anything inherently evil about wanting to get paid for your work either. I think that also it doesn't help the open source community--it makes it appear that open source = long-haired, pot smoking communists to anyone outside the loop. It also makes businesses jumpy as to what remains theirs vs. what becomes public domain should they tinker with the code.
I do think there should be copyright reform. Just like you can't copyright a particular group of words...such as a title, you shouldn't be able to take a code snippet and declare "it's mine and mine alone." However, if you write a full program--just like if you write a story or a book--you should be able to copyright it.
Frankly I'd rather see something on, "You can support open source and copyrights at the same time."
"I'm submitting 'Girls Are The Ones' as a response to my sister's piece, 'Boys Have Cooties,' from yesterday. I think there were a number of flaws and mistaken assumptions in my sister's reasoning, and I've tried to address them in this rebuttal, which has undergone review from some colleagues in the 'Girls Have Cooties' community."
While easier to get reviewed by people who already broadly support your viewpoint, review tends to gain its power when those idealogically opposed to you review it and still can't find flaws in it.
Bulmash had some interesting points, but what ties the counterarguement together is pointing out how the definition of copyright would be different if computer information was treated freely (as in speech). If Copyright were abolished, the GPL would be a moot point. One point buried in yesterday's /. discussion thread included points about having ownership over your code to "feed your family", the idea being that there is a need earn money, lest the entire Open Source community (and their kids) will end up starving itself.
This, in my unpopular opinion, is a fallacy that keeps the rich on top, and the worker bees content with their lots in life. You work to be able to afford to put food on the table, true. But what if there was a national or global shift that removed the economic ideology from food distribution in a way that provided people the opportunity to go to the foodmarket and take what they need? This is an oversimplified example, but it drives at the overall point - remove corporate ownership rights universally and so long as the system keeps its pace, you can continue to feed your family without greedily hoarding your source code.
The key (of course) isn't freedom for consumption, but rather the opposite. Make production free, and the rest begins to fall into place.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
As with a lot of "there is no such thing as property" groups, QuestionCopyright.org* seems to not understand the purpose of copyright. Copyright is a legal construct created to encourage authors and other creative types to make their works public (e.g., published, performed, broadcast, etc.) by letting them retain legal control of the work. The import point is the person who creates the work gets to control its use.
People are motivated to create such works for any number of reasons. Some want the money that comes from charging for copies or viewing a performance, others just want credit. In any case, copyright is what lets the author determine who can access his or her works and under what terms. If we, as a society, don't give authors this control, there is a reasonable likelihood that a number of people who would otherwise create such a work will not because they don't want to see the fruits of their labor taken advantage of by others in ways they don't approve.
This brings us to open source software (OSS) and copyright. Some people license their work under a BSD license, some people put their work into the public domain, some license their work under the GPL and there are a number of other possible licenses. That there are a number of different OSS licenses and developers freely choose which license to release their project under means that the developers are making a conscious choice as to what kinds of restrictions they want on what they have created. This brings us to the GPL and similar licenses.
The GPL isn't just about attribution. People who just want attribution publish under a BSD license or something similar. The GPL is about creating a body of free software that stays free. As a number of court cases have demonstrated, there are all too many people out there who are more than willing to abscond with GPLed source for their proprietary products. Copyright law is what gives the GPL teeth to prevent this.
You can have free software without copyrights but it's going to be "free as in beer" software. Unfortunately, just like with beer, when the beer runs out, it doesn't matter if it's free. You still can't have any. If people aren't willing to develop without some level of control of the work after it's released, there won't be much free software. Copyright and the GPL means that at least some software will be "free as in speech" and, chances are, developers who continue to contribute to what they see is a greater good.
I guess I should rephrase what I said and say that you can have free software without copyrights but just not for very long. Lots of developers won't put up with having their work taken advantage of and will simply no longer create. Thus, the argument comes back to where I started, protection of an author's work is what incentivizes an author to create. Even if that incentive is just recognition by the developer community and knowledge that what they have created will stay free.
Cheers,
Dave
* I will give them a point for at least being philosophically consistent. Once you grant anyone the right to restrict the use of a creative work then it becomes difficult to draw a line as to when a restriction is benign or even beneficial (e.g., the GPL) and when it's not (please remit $0.25 (aka, two bits) to me for enjoying the above discourse).
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
"It's a little pointless arguing what copyleft would be like in a world without copyright, because we're never going to live in a world without copyright."
We're going to continue to have this discussion as long as either people don't understand copyright, or continue to believe that they would benefit from throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
From the article:
"All these problems can be seen at once in a paragraph near the opening of his article:
"The problem with a large part of the anti-copyright crowd is that they don't understand or won't admit what copyright entails as a concept. That is the right of the creator of a work to exert some control over how it's used, who can copy and distribute it, and a right to have their authorship acknowledged.
"Notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand there: he presents copy control as a natural and uncontroversial "right" -- and then accuses his targets of simply not understanding (or refusing to admit) that copyright entails that right! But it is precisely this so-called "right" that copyright doubters are questioning in the first place. If he wants to argue that it should be a right, that's fine, but instead he just asserts the right as though it's a fact of nature, beyond reasonable dispute. And again, he conflates control of distribution with acknowledgement of authorship."
Except there is no rhetorical slight of hand - Bulmash was summarizing the Berne Convention, which is the basis for most of the copyright laws in the western world, and a similar model exists in the United States. No slight of hand at all - those are the rights granted by the letter of the law.
This reminds me of a scene in Erik the Viking where the island of Hybrasil is sinking, and all of inhabitants are standing on the last little bit of land, earnestly declaring that the island isn't really sinking as it sinks beneath the waves.
I honestly don't understand why the concept of a right is so hard for guys like this to understand. Seriously, if the law states that you have a right to X, you have a right to X. This is not an obtuse concept. There aren't even shades of gray in this concept.
Sometimes, particularly when reading an article like this, I really feel like I'm living in an episode of South Park.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Only if we accept copyright it makes sense to require the owner to release the source after a while...
How... totalitarian of you. The government has no business forcing people to give away source code for something they spent their time and money developing. If someone wants to write a clone of it, that's a different situation.
Could someone post a story about what's going on with ABC?
Deleting posts from their message boards and then deleting posts asking ABC to explain why they're deleting perfectly legitimate posts...
Heck, we don't need a government to pull off 1984, they media's doing quite well.
I really don't understand why people are opposed to copyright. I'm opposed to the Scalia definition of copyright length (i.e. anything less than infinite is copyright for a "limited" term as required by the Constitution), but I'm not opposed to the idea of copyright in general. I think if you write a story, or a song or even a software application you're entitled to control ownership rights of it. Why shouldn't you be? I'm generally curious why authors shouldn't be allowed to have ownership of their works.
Software patents are something else entirely. To me, software is like math or music -- you can own the representation but not the process. I can't claim ownership to Mickey Mouse, but I can still make a cartoon about a mouse. I can't make a web store look like Amazon, but I should be able to offer 1-click checkout. The claim for the need for patent law is to promote innovation. But I think the open-source movement has shown that software innovation doesn't need patent protection to flourish. Quite the contrary, innovation is often stifled by patent squatters.
I also agree with Bulmash's premise that the GPL cannot exist without copyright -- it can't. I'm no lawyer, but as far as I know there's no legal framework that can support GPL style software freedom absent copyright law. It's not just about being "free as in beer" and decompiling a program is certainly not the same thing. Compulsary redistribution of modified sources helps free software thrive. Without copyright law, there could be no GPL. And without the GPL where would the GNU tools be? Where would Linux be? Where would software innovation be?
A licence is permission. Usually is is used when some activity could be dangerous if done poorly, such as driving or practicing medicine. It can also be permission to use something, like a fishing licence. I think that an EULA is like a fishing licence, permission to use enforced scarcity. The GPL is more like a licence to preach where one has to be reasonably free of heresy to be granted the licence, it is basically about competence.
s -selling-solar.html
It is the same word, but the sense can be quite different.
--
Solar power for what you pay your utility now: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
First of all, I support the GPL. I think that the concept of community supported software is great. I also like how someone can make modifications to code and be obligated to give back to the community.
Having said that, I think people who preach that we should abolish copyright are basically lazy and cheap. Oh sure they will serve us some leftist bullshit to legitimize their position, and they will throw some "Well it's not stealing because even after giving a copy of some software to a friend, the original owner still has the use of said software - NO HARM, NO FOUL!"
Of course this is Slashdot and I will get some hostile replies, but face it people who preach that we should abolish copyright are proclaiming that GPL doesn't work. They are frustrated that they don't have the time or money to make a commercial quality software, so they just want to be able to legally steal it. Basically these people rather spend their time trying to accomplish something that will never happen, rather than putting effort in a legitimate movement like GPL.
It all boils down to this. If you believe software should be free, then nothing is preventing you from using GPL license software. Hell, if you really believe software should be free, then create a GPL program. If you can't code and you can't find the software that you need, then I guess you'll have to spend money. Sponsor someone to write your GPL program, or just break down and purchase a legitimate licensed copy.
But if you just plain pirate all your software, then your just a leech and offer nothing to support your cause.
What we should be concentrating on is abolishing software patents...
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
The author is playing with words. At the end of the day a viral license like the GPL cannot exist without laws that acknowledge the "specialness" of intellectual property. You can't GPL a hammer.
.. yadda yadda..). The former doesn't need any copyright law, the latter certainly does. I think "copyright abolitionists" are trying to have it both ways here. The author certainly looks like a guy who is trying to reconcile something like the GPL (which I'm sure is perceived as a very good thing in the circles he hangs out) with his ideological beliefs about copyright. At the end of it all, it comes off as a clumsy argument.
>Imagine if we had laws that did away with most prohibitions against sharing, but that enforced crediting and permitted authors to enforce GPL-like provisions requiring sharing.
Considering that copyright law has no prohibition against sharing (after all, releasing your work as creative commons is as simple as cut-pasting a line of text) and thanks to GPL and similar licenses, copyright can have provisions to enforce sharing - I think I can imagine a world such as this - we live in it. What the author is arguing is that every work should be released with a mandatory GPL-like or maybe Creative Commons-type license.
>Thus, to say that the GPL depends on copyright is like saying that reading depends on scribes.
No.. the GPL is a license tested in court and found wholly within the realm of current copyright law.
>The basic argument of copyright abolitionists is that people should be free to share when sharing does not result in any diminution of supply.
I understand that argument even though I don't agree with it, but there's another point here. Is "free to share" the same as "forced to share"? After all, people are free to share MIT licensed code, but are forced to share GPL licensed code (provided that they made changes to it and distributed the binary
And..
They would be able to take your picture, chop it up, make it into something else and sell it... as long as they included your name in the 'credits'. The people who buy it would be able to give it away/sell it/etc - as long as they include your name, and your 'art copier's' name in the credits.. etc etc etc...
This world would not be nice.. I could walk into a museum, take photos of all the art, get it printed with (this painting was by....) and then sell/give away those photos. Why would anyone pay full price when I can sell them a (fully credited) version for far less?
Pfft.. Copyright is a good thing. People just get annoyed when intellectual property becomes valuable (sometimes because of restricting supply/demand).
Just because a project is open source, does not imply GPL. I for one abhor copyright and patents, and applaud open source software.
The problem people seem to have in saying that it's a contradiction, is implying that if a company took your work and sold it, then that would be wrong.
No regulation will be able to accurately compare one work to another, to find out whether it is a copy or not and as such will leave it open to abuse by anyone.
Now given that a company is profitable, wouldn't they have more power to use copyright laws to suppress the open solution than the open solution would have to suppress the business?
Protectionism such as this, is sold to people under some weird "moral" guise, and will only ever benefit the large companies that produce the works, and never the end user of the works, and as such should not be regulated.
Think of it this way... if someone else is able to sell a good or service for less price than you are able to, and sustain their business, then this implies that more end users (the people who count) are receiving benefit from it, and therefore shouldn't that be the moral high ground? That one company is benefiting people more than another.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This guy has it wrong.
freedom 3 of the free software definition could simply not be enforced without copyright.
what he calls "creditright" has nothing to do with the issue.
You can't copyright something which is not yours to begin with.
.h and slap a copyright notice on the top.
As an example, if you create a static data structure constructed from information from a published standard, you can not copyright the static data structure. The copyright holder is, ta dah, the publisher of the standard. Adding curly braces, commas and quotes does not magically transfer ownership of the data contained in the static structure.
I can think of a few open source, gpl software projects that do this or something similar. Take something that is not theirs to begin with, slap some formatting around it, put it in a
Now, imagine you are in court trying to enforce your copyright on some code. The defense lawyer is going to have a field day, picking apart every instance of anything borrowed. The average jury is not going to convict somebody because, ta dah, their confusion is reasonable.
This leaves only one avenue for y'all... public humiliation. If there is an example of anything else but PH working, feel free to flame me.
How is music or movies any different? who loses but me if I dont see a movie? The creator already has seen his creation come to life. That should give him emmense joy. Its not a trivial thing making a work of art for and that the world would enjoy. Restricting it is akin to a selfish god. One day we will have nanoforges. Please think ahead.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Copyright abuse is not about crediting work vs. the control of that work. RIAA/MPAA couldn't give a shit about actually controlling the work except as a means to an end. The struggle is actually about monetary compensation for the work. This is why they're willing to throw people into jail for 5 years for backing up their damned DVD - it takes away their potential profit.
What we need is a system that:
1) Financially compensates the creator, not the middle man. Make it unprofitable to be a middle-man and institutions like RIAA/MPAA go away. There should be a cap on what anyone else can make from selling a person's creation.
2) Does not allow an artist/inventor/creator to control distribution or use of the work. Seek compensation proportional to losses, yes, but have to prove that what they're asking is reasonable. Suddenly the whole problem of patented drugs and treatments being overpriced and people dying as a result goes away. Even more beautiful, if someone's able to distribute a creation more efficiently than the creator, they can do it. This also takes care of sharing work creatively where no profit is derived (ie. creating remixes, "mashups" and the like).
3) Removes unreasonable punishment for copyright infringement. 5 years for backing up a damned DVD is not reasonable. Heck doing that with the whole collection shouldn't land you in jail.
Unfortunately a lot of very powerful people and their allies stand to lose big time if such fairness came to pass. It would also be quite difficult to set up a system that administered these principles fairly and was resistant to corruption. So I agree wuith others when they say it's unlikely to come to pass. Pity, because all of the above is achievable.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Cause its lost to google. Seriously, google a line. (o the irony)
I read it on slashdot...
Seriously though, I'm sure that a lot of people think the way this guy thinks. It's an easy mistake to make, especially if you look at software as being analogous to physical property. The analogy breaks down pretty quickly if you look at it. I like to use the example of the "magic hammer".
If I attach a rock to the end of a stick to make a real-life hammer, and I give it to you, now I don't have a hammer anymore. With software, I can sell the hammer to you, and I still somehow have an identical hammer (that's how Microsoft makes the big bucks). With open source software, I give you the hammer with instructions on how to make it. I haven't really lost anything by giving you the hammer - I still have my copy, and copying it took about 3 seconds. You are encouraged to share the hammer with your friends (and you don't loose anything by doing so either). You can also make improvements to the hammer. Only an enterprising few will do this, but the effect is cumulative. When someone forges a brass head for the hammer, poof! Everyone's hammers are now better. Steel head? Poof! Claw on the back for pulling nails? Poof! It doesn't take long before everybody has a really good hammer.
Without specific protection for the software component, companies would have tied software to the hardware. ... You can copy the Microsoft Office ROMS all you want, but it uses the registers and I/O devices only present on the patented Microsoft Office machine. No *general purpose* computers... Copyright is what made the general purpose computer sociologically possible. That world, by the way, would suck.
That's so backward - general purpose computers are more valuable without copy restrictions than they are with them. There are plenty of patents on them but no computer maker would ever limit the use of their hardware with those patents. Copy restrictions are responsible for the dominance of Intel i386 and all companies have twisted their hardware to work with M$ junk and is close to the M$ Office machine you mention. Useful hardware like PowerPC and other general purpose hardware is not available for home normal use. In a world without copyright, one where Bill Gates was stoned to death at an early hacker meeting, M$ would never have existed much less made hardware even suckier than it is today.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Every law is about forcing people and every law except those concerning violence, global destruction/environment damage or close personal possessions is optional and should only be passed if it benefits most people. If I am forced to accept copyright, the copyright owner should have some obligations in return.
Copyright law under pins all legal protection over the rights on a piece of work. By attaching Copyright to a piece of work you are also staking a claim to ownership to be able to then license the use of the work from that legal vantage point.
The concept of "Public Domain" only exists from the vantage point of the original Copyright holder accepting continued legal liability for any future plagerism claim that may occur in relation to that piece of work (by puting their name to it); but then explicitly granting a free for all license on its distribution and use. There is no such entity as an "anonymous Public Domain" piece of work, since if no one stakes their claim to ownership then its legally possible for anyone to make that claim (as Mr Anonymous won't be able to defend himself in a court of law).
Why is "Copyright law" a bad thing for society, it seems a very passive law that grants the creator rights over ownership of a piece of work. From that legal vantage point the Copyright holder may do anything / license anyway they choose, being the "Copyright holder" they are granted that power by law. It makes no sense for any creator of work not to involve themselves in this process, since its costs them nothing and grants them everything.
You can't deny IP(not support copywright) and criminalize open source. After all, if everything is free, how can you make it a criminal act to use one free chunk of software to make another free chunk of software?
God spoke to me.
I oppose discussions of copyright and open source period.
Copyrights are a good idea when applied in moderation.
Open source is a means to an end, not an end unto it self.
Neither are particularly interesting to read about on Slashdot because both issues are plagued with juvenile whining by 35 year old virgins who still live with their parents.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
You don't even have to have the code to claim it is copyrighted, whether BSD or not. So no, BSD is not like "no copyright". With the BSD you still have to have "(c) USL" or whatever. Without copyright, you don't have to do that.
The GPL isn't needed under "no copyright" (actually, now that software patents are being allowed, you still have a problem with patents, but that isn't removed if you remove copyrights, so it's moot). That it has no legal weight is irrelevant, so being against copyright and for GPL is not inconsistent.
As for the shakespeare, you own copyright on the collection and the annotation if it is sufficient UNTO ITSELF for copyright protection but someone can take shakespeare and annotate it too. If their extra work is similar to yours, you have no right to restrict it because you are both annotating the same work.
It isn't quite the same with software because people now get only the binaries not the source. That the GPL requires source code distribution is one reason why it is MORE FREE than the BSD (which doesn't require the source so you may lose the code even if it hasn't been changed: if the original is lost or too hard to find you only have the propriatory binary and if you work out the code from that you can be accused of infringement when there has been none and you have no proof you are clean).
Here is a radical thought, why not just dust our hands and call what your wrote "the system". If I may put myself in your shoes for a moment I believe you wrote that thinking that this would not work until someone come up with an idea for ensuring that the creator actually gets compensated.
Let's say we do what you say but rely on the honor system for compensation. The creator sticks an address or paypal account or such on the work for you to pay him/her. You make it another rule that you have the reproduce this information in each copy. Not following any of the rules (breaking the honor system, if you will) would be illegal and have reasonable penalties.
There isn't anything in the system that makes people think they will be caught, but how is that any different from regular copyright? Do you ever fear the Feds busting down the door when you photocopy pages from a book? When you download a video game rom? When you download a torrent?
Maybe this isn't a radical idea and such a system would never work. In this case, the lesson is that if there was a way to make a new copyright akin to what you wrote (and what many like us would like to see) and make it enforceable, then it would be possible to make the current copyright system enforceable.
Hopefully someone will respond to this with additional insight. I've been thinking a lot about copyright recently and can't find any satisfactory solutions.
There's no coercion FORCING you to produce for us. Produce or not. There is no compensation. Under that scheme, you will not (I take it) be producing any new creative works. Fine. Get a job as a plumber or whatever. But don't expect 0.5c every time someone flushes the toilet you fitted for 95 years.
You'd end up essentially saying "You are obliged to both freely distribute this code and keep it secret" which seems a bit of a challenge. Frankly I think your idea is broken.
It is only copyright law that allows us to publish the code and defines the terms of use at a level that suites the copyright holder. This allows us to have various licenses.
Without copyright the writer has no rights and there are only two levels: secret (proprietary) and published (BSDL-like use as you wish).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
so that you will HAVE to be right. However, I have a counter-argument to your istockphoto: Corbis.
From your own mouth:
"can buy some often really great quality work for a buck or two an image, which is far less than Corbis and the rest charge. And, the artist gets about half of the money from the sale."
Without copyright, Corbis and the rest cannot charge so much and they cannot control their artists' content so much as to cut off most of the profit.
Copyright, when it was created, was not created with the view of giving control or even encouraging authors. It was created for the express purpose of giving publishers an incentive for publishing works. At the time (as now), typesetting and proofreading was a major expense. Although printing was also a big expense but still the publisher would have to amortize those costs over a large time. This required that the publisher have some control on the work. It used to happen before copywrite law that a publisher would publish a work and immediately another one would make a copy of it. Making a copy was much cheaper because proofreading and other creative issues could be simply copied.
The copywrite law did allow the author to be able to sell his work to a publisher, because that was the only way to arbitrate who got the write to publish the work. At that time Copyright was necessary for getting a work published. But now Copywrite is posing a big problem with the dissemination of works because the landscape has changed and authors can be publishers. The publisher as a separate entity is not required.
I also agree that a limit of 10 years for copyrights would be OK provided that it is necessary to register copyrights (no automatic copyrights), and the copyrighted work would be provided with the copyright office. Also it would be necessary to re-register before 5 years are passed with the copyright office. I would think that re-registrations should be made quite expensive, so that only works that are really profitable should be re-registered.
kungfujesus - you should have read the article!
moderators - mod him down!
As a part of the GPL, the software you have written also can not be SOLD for financial gain. That is the copyright section here. Most people who support Open Source do it because they want it to be free, as well as open so that improvements can be made by others. But pretty much every person I've talked to over the years has no desire to see a company like Microsoft adding your code to a commercial product and then charging due to code you have provided.
So, copyright. You, the copyright holder place RESTRICTIONS on the duplication and use of the code. Others are not allowed to sell the work YOU have done. Public domain on the other hand says you give the code away without any restrictions. As the copyright holder, you are entitled to set the terms of copying and use of the software, so just because you have chosen to use the GPL doesn't mean you "only want credit for your work", you don't want others to profit from your work without your permission. Without copyright, you KNOW there would be people selling $40 boxed versions of OpenOffice 2.2 and pretty much any other large/useful piece of code.
The author's essay misunderstands copyright and accuses the prior article of slight-of-hand while subtly acknowledging the fundamental premise of the prior article.
GPL is a license under current copyright law. Conversely, absent copyright law's enforceability, GPL is unenforceable. Abolition of copyright law does not result in GPL---it results in all works immediately entering public domain. This strips all control from the author.
There is a subtle nod in the OS community that discourages code forks for the sake of forking code. I'm involved in a community where a member of the community is presently engaging in a sort of "embrace and extend." He claims his enhancements make the underlying core code better, but at the same time radically change its behavior. When challenged, he implicitly admits his plans. This results in a response from the community to check his attempt to fork the code. The point is, even though there is GPL, OS people try to avoid derivations unless necessary. The contra example is X11 and XORG---the former stagnated and the latter breathed new life.
The original intent of copyright law is one of reward and fairness. The first to articulate an idea should profit somewhat from that articulation. Modern copyright law abuses that fairness by extending the limits of copyright protecting too far. What is wanted is reform of copyright, not removal.
That said, if you look at the development of American copyright, it has become abusive in response to copyright laws of the Continent; especially France---where the creator can enjoy moral rights for grossly long periods of time. What we need to do is embrace our Anglo-American legal heritage and not French law.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Without *some* kind of copyright protection, there would be no financial incentive to create content, and we'd be subjected to a whole world of reality TV and groupsourced "literature" and wikipedias - or all premium content would be "members only" and something like copyright would be enforced on a case-by-case basis with individual contracts that would have even worse terms than existing copyright laws. The problem is that copyright has been perverted into a dead hand; we need to reform the terms of copyright, not eliminate it. We also need to reform patents.
And I frankly do not understand how it can be put any clearer in the English language.
The GPL is an intermediate practical solution using the current legal framework that approaches as much as possible a situation in which copyrights will be minimal or non existent.
Most geeks and nerds (are they synonymous terms?) should read Nelson Mandela's autobiography, he talks about how any revolution should start first trying to subvert the order of things using the tools provided by the existing legal system. That gives your struggle legitimacy and the moral high ground you could not attain if recurred to means of fighting the system illegally.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No legal system has ever considered stuff protected by copyright "property".
Thus the rest of the argument is frankly completely intrascendent.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Whenever you create something like an application, a picture, a poem, a scientific article or whatever, it is your own creation. Copyright gives you the legal means to make sure that no one can take away your creation from you.
In the current world the copyright says that one can only copy a product if he complies with the restrictions imposed by the copyright owner. Therefore in this world we life in the very concept of open source would not exist without a licenses like the gpl, bsdl and such. These licenses rely heavily on the fact that someone owns the copyright to the creation in question. All these licenses define the way in which you are allowed to copy the product.
In a situation in which copyright as a concept doesn't exist you would have no more rights to your own creation. Sure, you're still the creator of it. But this wouldn't be relevant anymore. Everyone and his dog could take your creation and exploit it commercially. Cause there is no need anymore to respect you as creator of your creation.
In such an imaginary un-copyrighted world you could license an application you created under the gpl or whatever license you like. But you couldn't enforce it anymore, since you wouldn't have the right to control who copies it. I just could take your precious application and sell it.
And believe me, in such a world the greed of commercial companies would very very fast outperform the good natured os-activists.
Yt,
Gunnar
OK, that handles /half/ the argument. So credit right isn't a problem. Removing copyright still lets the company take and distribute a GPLed piece of software (or software derived from GPLed software) in binary only format, without source.
Actually, this very much goes to the difference between the BSD and GPL licenses, and why many like GPL and hate BSD. Namely, they consider the use of the open source software without keeping the source open, akin to theft. Yes, the original owner and the original source are not lost to the public, but in no way is the source of the derived software available to the public, except the parts of the original software kept unmodified.
/not to/. It may not be natural, but it is a valid option. A few of my favorite authors write books. I would be *VERY* mad if I saw their books illegally disributed online, or if they lost the ability to make money from the profession because the books couldn't be distributed for a fee. Why? Why would I not like getting my favorite authors books for free? Simply put, because they would have less time to write, needing other jobs, and they would produce less books for me and the other fans to enjoy.
Now, if I read the next part, the author then goes on to say there is no natural right to recieve compensation and control the distribution of ones works that can be copyrighted, especially when said distribution does not actually take the original work from the author or distributor
The author of a piece of work put a lot of time and effort into that work. They do have a right to recieve compensation by the people who use the work. Maybe not as much as they think in some cases (*cough* [insert many corporation names here], but the right is there. If you make it, you should have the right to choose how to distribute it; because you can always chose
And also people don't have to use the piece of work, they can use the alternatives, if they don't like the cost of your work.
That's not to say that there aren't issues with the system - certain things shouldn't be allowed (i.e. situations where you have something similar to the 'Microsoft Tax' for example).
Oh, and if copyright laws made copying permissible under most circumstances as described in this article, they would still be
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Specially the least succesful ones.
Everybody and his dog have to work day in day out to make a living, but many people doing copyrightable works want to be benefitted for a piece of work for the rest of theri lives, the lives of their children and a bit more of their grandchildren.
Now again, tell me who are the lazy ones.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Read through this thread and you'll realize the abolishment of "control" (which IP is) would affect far more than just weither one would get free music or not.
For the best part of human history there was no copyright wahtsoever.
People wrote music, poetry, books.
You point is frankly mooth.
People could become popular by giving away work and then the good ones on their field would be comissioned for ad hoc work. Also performing could come back with a vengeance (good poets nowadays make lots of dosh in poetry recitals for example).
It is called patronage, and you would not need to be rich to join the game.
1000 people paying 10 bucks could encourage a writer to write a new book for this group of patrons.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"The whole point the copyright abolitionists are trying to make is that it is not necessarily good that an author be able control the distribution and use of their work. I know that seems unbelievable, almost immoral, to many people, and yet it is how creativity was for most of human history."
Well since we're using history to make our point. History also tells us that the creative arts didn't proliforate as well untill technology changed that. History also tells us that there was a form of DRM back then when it came to ideas (Leonardo's notebooks, alchemy recipes, etc). The abolitionists not only don't know their history, they think it was some kind of creative utopia back then. Say what you will about the post copyright world, but results speak louder than "pie in the sky" ideology, and the present system has given far more than it's taken away.
There are two related problems: first and foremost, the multinationals have shoved through draconian copyright laws. The original idea of copyright is for the author/creator to get paid for their work, and to retain control. The original in the US was something like 17 years. It's now what, the lifetime of the author *plus* that? And who gets the money for it? Arlo Guthrie says that it took him *30* years to get paid for his records from his recording company.
Go back to the original, I say. And add some languages that forces the companies to pay the creators "in a timely manner".
mark
"I think you misunderstand. The point is that copyright is not (or may not be) a natural, inalienable right in the sense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's a right by fiat, de jure, and that may change. Perhaps it should change.
"If, however, copyright is a natural right, then it's a grave mistake to abolish that right, and freedom-loving people should revolt against any ruling body which denies that right."
Unfortunately, I'm too much a historian to accept the idea of a constitutional right as a natural right. A constitutional right certainly is at a higher legal level than a legal right (a right guaranteed by law rather than the constitution), but neither one is natural.
The concept of individual rights is a relatively new one in Western society (I know that ancient Persia had the first human rights code, but Western culture isn't descended from them). In ancient Greece, you had philosophers who speculated about what a person should have, but the value of an individual was determined by how well they met the obligations of society, not by how they operated as an individual (and, Greece and Rome being shame-based cultures, if you stepped out of the group-think mentality, you would become an object of laughter - I know this because I'm co-writing a book on ancient Greek and Roman humour that's due to be published later this year, once the contract is finally signed - the Greek word for the "quack" who steps out of line and acts in a humorous way is "alazon"). For example, in ancient Athens, if you were part of the voting class, you didn't have the right to vote - you had the OBLIGATION to. Failing to show up to meet your obligation could result in severe sanctions, and even expulsion from the city.
The concepts of society and individual rights only really start to co-exist at the end of the Middle Ages, and even there it's an uphill struggle for them (the Magna Carta, for example, is a step in the right direction, but it's a codification of the obligations of the monarchy towards the Barons, not the rights of the individual). What made the U.S. Constitution such a remarkable document in part was that it not only said that everybody should have individual rights, but that they would be protected under the highest law of the land. So, you could write pamphlets disagreeing with the government, and - gasp - NOBODY could lock you up! These rights didn't exist in Europe at the time, and they only start to appear during the French Revolution (which is why a lot of British Romantic authors are writing from France - they had free speech there, and they didn't have it in England).
I find a couple of things in this discussion very ironic.
First, the concept of copyright pre-dates the US Constitution by several decades (the first copyright law appears in 1709/1710), and the concept of intellectual property goes back about two hundred years before that, so the concept of a creative work as property actually is far older than the concept of free speech as an inalienable right.
Second, as has been pointed out several times on Slashdot, copyright is in the original draft of the US Constitution, so in the United States, it IS protected on the same level as freedom of speech.
Is copyright a natural right? Well, I look at the fact that half of the world's population lives under oppressive regimes, and so I would say that while there are rights everybody should have, there is nothing natural about them - like any right, they were fought and sometimes died for. But, in the United States at least, it is a constitutional right.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
You really didn't read the article, did you. You read it up until the point where you confirmed the position you thought it was taking, and then assumed the rest to be bollocks or whatever.
THE POINT was that the GPL would need to be changed if copyright laws were changed. The spirit of the GPL (Cohesion and Continuity, per the article) would be enforced by other clauses that would be created in light of whatever law takes the place of copyright, again per the article, "... be enforced using laws so drastically different from our laws today as to be unrecognizeable".
His position is that we can't just get rid of copyright, but we would have to replace it with something more modern. Something 21st century. Something that can be used to prove right of authorship and prevent plagaristic forms of derivative works, without limiting scope of distribution by the public, by default.
And the GPL would have to evolve to fit in that environment.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
copyright-reform community
I like that. I'm not a pirate, I'm a copyright-reformist.
Well, the laws concerning global destruction/environment damage should only be there it they benefit most people too.
Rethinking email
Lobby your representatives that you want laws passed to protect *all* aspects of Copyright law, including Fair Use. You want any software or device that claims to protect or enforce Copyright to enforce it accurately and permit fair use of the material in question. Any software or hardware that does not would be illegal.
My DVD player *should* allow me to easily record an accurate digital copy of some of the original material for use in a commentary on the video in question. I should not have to bypass hardware or software to do so. I have a legal right to use the material in ways the device prohibits, and this must end, DMCA or no DMCA.
In fact, most of us wouldn't care much about the DMCA if it enforced provisions like the above and didn't prohibit the publication of research on bypassing security.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
the bottom line is: if you talk about how much you love gpl, then turn around and download spider-man 3, then you are a hypocrite. agree/disagree?
"The abolitionists are perfectly aware of what copyright law *is* today, they're just trying to change that."
Bullshit. I'm a professional writer - part of my job requires me to have a working understanding of the law and what it does. My academic training is primarily that of a historian - and that gives me some insight as to how societies develop. And, frankly, I read your article very carefully (both of them, in fact), and you failed to understand copyright law on the reading comprehension level. I'm not surprised that you haven't thought through it. And, frankly, denying that it's there when somebody has simply summarized the letter of the law is one hell of an ostrich impression. You're the one who should be discussing whether it "should be there." Arguing that it isn't there when it's protected under the US Constitution from the get-go, has a history of case law, is recognized by international treaty, and has several other pieces of legislation that have passed in every western country in the world, is just embarrassingly stupid.
I've been reading Slashdot now for a couple of years, and I've seen lots of misconceptions from the copyright abolitionists - so you're not alone. These aren't arguments against the law, or against the theory of the law - and most of these are failures on the reading comprehension level. Here are a few of the more interesting ones, and they're all bullshit:
1. That having something under copyright keeps it away from society.
This one I find rather funny - there are abolitionists out there who really think that authors sit around creating work under copyright, and then cackle as they put them in a box and never let anybody see them. If you're a pro writer, it's publish or perish.
Sometimes, they expand this to mean that something can go out of print and then is harder to get your hands on, but what they keep missing is that this has to do with book sales, not with whether the book is under copyright or public domain. In most, if not all cases, royalties to an author make up very little of the total cost of printing the book. Contacting the author or his/her estate tends to be easy - the recluse author that nobody can contact is pretty much an urban legend at this point. The fact is that when a work enters the public domain, whether it gets printed is dictated by whether it will be profitable to print it, and that is dictated by how well it has stood the test of time. So, life of the author + 50 years in the here and now has very little impact on availability of a work.
(And, don't get me started on fair use, which is guaranteed under copyright law.)
2. That you can copyright an idea.
The sad thing is that while the first one at least is a take on a speculative issue (and, I will concede, possibly not a failure on the reading comprehension level), this one is disproven just by reading the SUMMARY of the law. You cannot copyright an idea (it's PATENT law that allows you to lay claim to an idea). For that matter, in the entire three hundred year history of copyright law, you have never been able to copyright an idea. So anybody who thinks this has obviously never read the law, or failed to understand it on the reading comprehension level.
3. That copyright is more artificial than any other right.
This one requires people to have little or no concept of history. Or current events. The people who claim that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are natural rights seem to be missing the fact that at least half of the world's population lives in places without those rights. They're also missing the fact that the US Constitution was a remarkable document because it DID enshrine those rights in the highest law of the land, making them inalienable in the United States - and that hadn't happened anywhere in the Western world before the American Revolution.
To make things even more ridiculous, the concept of a work of literature as a property protected under law pre-dates the US Constitution by arou
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
After acuusing the original author of making a weak argument, this ones goes one to argue semantics and claim he discussing a concept.
For example:
"We probably would not call such laws "copyright", since they wouldn't prohibit copying. Even if we did call them "copyright", the word would mean something so different from what it means today as to render Bulmash's arguments inapplicable. Indeed, the GPL today doesn't really prohibit people from copying, it merely imposes certain requirements on those who make and distribute derivative works. If you just want to copy and use a GPL'd work yourself, or even make a private derivative work from it, you're free to do so, and many organizations in fact do that. The GPL's requirement is just that if you want to share, you must enable others to share likewise.
This runs completely counter to the modern notion of copyright, and could be enforced using laws so drastically different from our laws today as to be unrecognizeable. Thus, to say that the GPL depends on copyright is like saying that reading depends on scribes.
(snip)
Claiming that copyright abolitionists depend on copyright for enforcement of their principles is just playing a name game -- it's thinking with words instead of with concepts"I>
First he confuses the meaning of the word copy in copyright; then assumes somehow without current copyright laws the gGPL would be enforcable.
"Put bluntly: a future law that merely allows authors to enforce sharing need have little in common with today's laws that allow the restriction of sharing. Since these two things are more opposite than alike, calling them both "copyright" doesn't make much sense."
Except that current laws do nothing of the sort - they give the creator teh right to decide how it may be distributed.
"But that is what Bulmash does, when he implies that the current copyright regime (or something structurally similar to it) is the only way the GPL could be enforced."
How can you enforce the GPL if you don't give the creator the right to determine licensing terms; as is what current copyright does? Assume people will do teh right thing all the time?
In fact, current copyright law lets you distribute a work any way you want - you can release code with new restrictions, and ask pleople to comply with the GPL *IF THEY WANT TO.*
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Free software is an issue of ethics. Shouldn't man be allowed to help his neighbour if he were to asked to share his knowledge? Or his computer software? In a humane society, would the men be punished or rewarded? Is a hierarchical system of knowledge/information acceptable? (Akin to the medieval feudal society, where an elite possess a wealth of information, and subjects are abandoned to poverty of education). Whereas the distribution of wealth (and books) has always been unjust because of their finiteness, for the distribution of knowledge today there exists an opportunity to share limitless information equally between everyone.
In such a free society, there would exist neither 'open-source' or 'closed-source', and they would require no copyright to protect them. The GPL exists as it does, protected by copyright, because Richard Stallman knew that this would be the most successful method to protect free software within the present system.
4 Informative my ***. This is not information, but disinformation, as eloquently demonstrated by several of my sibling and other posts.
"In a society without copyright, this would all change. Imagine 1) never having to pay for a school textbook anymore"
Incredible! I had no idea that copyright was responsible for the costs of paper, ink, glue, bindings, and shipping! Can you get rid of gravity by repealing trademark law, because that would just be cool...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
and I don't like it. In the first paragraph he explains how gbulmash misunderstands what copyright is. He tries to make his point by mis-explaining what was said. To me it is clear what the OP meant.
The OP did not 'conflate' copyright with 'creditright'. He just used a popular, well understood example.
If I take your red Ferrari, paint it green, and sell it as my own: that's stealing.
If I *copy* your software, remove all hints that it is yours, and sell it as my own: that's stealing.
Removing of credit is just a means of concealment of crime, and does not mean the OP 'conflates' copyright with 'creditright'.
The rest of the 'rebuttal' is of similar quality.
In my opinion kfogel is either unethical or stupid. I really don't care which.
I support the right of people to ignore the GPL.
If someone is going to create something and give it away for free, they need to let it go. The idea that they are giving it away but still owning it... that's pretty stupid.
If anyone bothered to read the GNU philosophy section, you'd see that RMS has long had great essays on how the GPL derives its legal authority from copyright law, but its moral authority from the fact that, if you violate the GPL, you're trampling peoples' freedom.
Alas, I can't remember which of the articles it is on the GNU philosophy page, but it clearly covers this exact ground.
So yes, I realize that the GPL uses copyright law and that weakening copyright law will weaken the legal underpinnings of the GPL. But it will also make them less necessary and it will never weaken the moral underpinnings of the GPL—no change in law could ever do that.
In other words, yes Virginia, you can use copyright as a means to a better end, while simultaneously advocating copyright reform that would make the laws the GPL relies upon (or even the GPL itself) unnecessary! After all, just what need would any of us have to add the GPL to our works if, for example, the law required that all software be distributed with GPL-like permissions to begin with (this is just an example; there are better ways to reform copyright law)? You'd be moving the language guaranteeing the four fundamental freedoms from the GPL into some neocopyright law.
Now, I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, but I still intend to work towards copyright reform wherein the scope and duration of copyright are reduced to something more livable, so that you can't go around terrifying grandmothers and small children with the specter of copyright infringement lawsuits, even if they don't own a computer and are clearly innocent.
But in the mean time, don't be surprised if I hold the current copyright regime in contempt. The GPL is forced to use it as a means to an end, but I believe that we'd be better off destroying the current system and building something which accomplishes the same end by a better means than our current laws.
Although individual animals may not have the same rights as humans, it's prudent to give them a right to survive as species and enjoy healthy genetic diversity.
If you read the comments posted in response to both articles, interested readers who have opinions on the issue do not, in general, actually believe that we should abolish copyright and leave a vacuum. Because we all know (with the exception of a few utopia-ists) that many businesses would fall apart and in general it wouldn't be very good, especially for anyone in IT.
And would such a poorly thought-out change in law even come about short of armed uprising?
In any case, I think the point is that the original article's author was addressing a viewpoint that few actually have, save the most vocal mouthbreathers and me-tooers on various forums and blogs. When I read it when it first came up, I skipped the slashdot discussion because I thought it was "obvious" flamebaiting since it assumes that no one has considered the duality before (current ironic situation vs. where you ACTUALLY want to be with respect to IP law)
I don't know, I've seen that discussion done to death on Slashdot a million times before, so apparently we've thought about it a little.
And this guy just wanted to poke a beehive to get the Google AdSense traffic... and this other guy is calling him out on his arguments (they're not incorrect, they just miss the point... it's like, why are we even talking about this?)
Blargh. I hate the blogosphere, for just this reason.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
nt
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I think something I wrote wasn't quite right:
"Further, I'd add that a few amateur authors who went pro (like myself) might not have been able to do so."
The more I think about this, the more I think this is actually wrong. All of the writers I know are people who will write no matter what - if they can't write one thing, they'll write another. So, I don't think harsher enforcement of copyright in regards to fanfic, etc. would actually stop them writing - I think they'd just move on to writing something different.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive