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."

Comments

Not all open-source is the same

[kungfujesus]

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.

Re:Not all open-source is the same

[Sam Ritchie]

I think GP's point is valid: supporting both GPL-style sharing & copyright abolition is inconsistent, as they're mutually exclusive - if you're a genuine copyright abolitionist, you'd support BSD instead. I don't think it would be possible to enforce the particular flavour of sharing currently enabled by the GPL with no copyright. TFA appears to propose some sort of nebulous copyright replacement legislation which would enforce GPL sharing - I might be missing something obvious, but it seems likely that it would just be copyright by a different name.

I suspect the intention would be for the copyright-that's-not-actually-copyright to tip the scales in favour of consumers, not-for-profit distribution etc, but exactly the same thing could be accomplished via copyright reform, so I'm curious as to how this approach could be copyright abolitionism at anything more than a technical level.

Re:Not all open-source is the same

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Stating its so doesn't make it so. Score:4, Insightful likewise doesn't make it so. You are exhibiting a point of view that goes like thus: "To a man who only has a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail." The question posed is whether replacing copyright laws with other laws would allow the spirit of the GPL to prevail. Probably the GPL would need to be rewritten to be in accord with a new set of laws.

Two things irritate me about this topic:

people who assume that copyright is an inherent right, when it is so obviously not;

people who think that without our current copyright structure, there could only be chaos.

Re:Not all open-source is the same

[lewp]

Many folks feel that, while copyright is altogether a bad thing, as long as it does exist we should make the best of it by forcing commercial entities -- who grouse about stronger copyright legislation being needed to protect business/"innovation" on the one hand, while shoveling BSD/MIT/Artistic/whatever-licensed code into their products as fast as they can on the other -- onto a level playing field.

Put another way, while you may want to get rid of copyright altogether when you can, if you are writing code now, you might choose the GPL because you don't want your code to put money into the pockets of the very people who will likely be fighting against you for copyright reform/abolition. Once copyright is gone, everybody has to "fight fair", insofar as anyone can be as "dirty" as they want with respect to using others' code without their sanction.

I'm not one who has strong opinions for or against the GPL or BSD -- I see the logic on both sides: so you can choose to live as if there were essentially no copyright, the BSD way, and help your "enemy", or turn the law against the people who use it as a cudgel with the GPL -- but most GPL advocates I have talked to seem to be more of the mind that "I'm not going to let my Open Source code contribute to the bottom line of the very people who have forced us into this proprietary hell in the first place", rather than "I want to 'protect my innovation' by taking advantage of copyright law." More simply, it seems to be a defensive choice more than an offensive one.

Either way, there are people both for and against copyright who choose both licenses regularly. I don't think, ultimately, what you feel about a world where there is no copyright has much to do with what license you choose for software right now. Most projects seem to choose their license with the practical considerations of the system we have in mind, rather than what they might like to see in the future.

do we really need to hear this again

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Abolishing copyright abolishes GPL

[Bronster]

No, but you could theoretically build a new GPL on top of something which wasn't copyright but provided the protections that the GPL needs. Copyright is not the _only_ set of base rules on which a GPL could exist, it's just the current one.

Re:fix the article title, then

[Bob54321]

People who just scan titles, esp on RSS, are going to think this is a dupe.

I almost did. But then I remembered that Slashdot has editors to prevents such horrible things as dupes and that this must have been a legitimate follow-up to the previous article.

the real issues

[bcrowell]

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:

1. Under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, US copyrights will start expiring again in 2017. We need to make sure that when that day comes, there isn't yet another copyright extension.
2. We need to work against software patents, business method patents, and abuse of the patent system. We need to work for institutional change in the US patent office so they'll start rejecting completely bogus patents.
3. We need to repeal the DMCA.
4. We need to work to keep fair use legally healthy, and prevent it from being more and more circumscribed and forgotten.
5. We should work to change the law so that orphaned works can't remain copyrighted for a century, during which nobody is allowed to publish them.

Re:Abolishing copyright abolishes GPL

[bstadil]

There would be little point in enforcing the GPL if no copyright existed. You would have all the rights to use whatever code you wanted or could get hold of. Traditional "stealing" would be a perfectly legitimate way.

Sigh

[DTemp]

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.

Re:Sigh

[spud603]

You may have misread the article:
kfogel argues the distinction between "the right to be credited for a work, and the right to control distribution of that work." So under his paradigm, in a world without copyright folks would still be breaking the law for posting your picture uncredited or miscredited, but they'd be allowed to post the picture on their site with your name under it. I'm not sure if this would still bug you, properly credited, but that's the gist of TFA.

Reviewed... By People Who Already Agree

[nick_davison]

"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.

Seems to be a misunderstanding

[DaveAtFraud]

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).

Arnold says "Stop whining!"

[leereyno]

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.