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New Copyright Alliance Formed In D.C.
jombeewoof alerted us to a story that went past unnoticed last weekend. A new industry-backed 'Copyright Alliance' was formed in the city of Washington, DC. Tasked with the nebulous goal of 'promoting the value of copyright as an agent for creativity, jobs, and growth', the ultimate goal of the organization is to strengthen copyright laws overall. "Backed by organizations like the MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, ASCAP, the NBA, and others, the Copyright Alliance has already secured initial support from several members of Congress ... The group is headed by Patrick Ross, a former senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank. Ross has written about IP issues for years, and in a 2005 opinion piece claimed that he was 'looking for anyone who wants to join me in seeking that elusive middle ground.' His new gig may be a strange place to fight for that 'middle ground' in any meaningful sense, as the Alliance is dedicated to 'strengthening copyright law' using 'bilateral, regional, and multilateral agreements to protect creators' and advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of strong copyright.'"
welcome our copyright-law-promoting overlords!
The best way to create more pirates is by trying to provide to much control over copyrighted works. What I mean is that if copyright becomes to complicated for the average member of public, then they will just give up trying to play nice with copyright holders.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The enemy may change its name or wear a different mask but the stench of stagnation reeks heavily from this one.
This was brought to you buy the Department of Redundancy Department
you must eba ctive in government, all the time. People with opposite views do stuff like this, and if it is the only people the representitves hear from, then it is the only view they can vote on.
The result of being apathetic in politics is to be run by evil men.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Outside of executing copyright infringers, how can copyright law be made 'stronger'. Mandatory brain implants maybe? Both??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
The tighter you grip, the more will slip through your fingers.
The more laws they create, the less those laws will control. When law becomes esotheric and illogical, people stop heeding it. Partly because they don't even know that it's illegal, since it's anything but common sense that it should be. Partly because they don't care, since it does not match their personal morals. And finally partly because they think it does not matter what they do, they'll break some law anyway.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...depends on where you set the edges. Given the overall mentality when it comes to copyright and DRM from copyright holders, I guess "liberal" just want copyright to extend to infinity minus one. "Conservative" means omnipresent invasive usage control, and somewhere between there they want to find the middle ground. "Totalitarian" would be when you get mandatory surgical implants that record what IP we're exposed to and get billed accordingly.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of strong copyright.'
What exactly are they going to teach. Most laws do not remotely cover what is needed with today's technology. For instance, if you start teaching about copyright "infingement" someone will ask if it is an infringement if you rip a CD or copy a movie for personal use. The current problem is that NO ONE KNOWS 100%. These issues have not been hammered out in a court of law and the current statues have no opinion either way.
The first thing that really needs to be done (besides possibly shortening copyright) is to define what exactly can and cannot be done with an existing work. Until then, whatever anyone attempts to teach about copyright is 100% opinion and speculation.
As a side note: The really pathetic thing about copyright is that it was initiated to promote the science and arts, but has since been hijacked by what I believe to be the lowest benefit to our society - the Entertainment Industry.
The software and record companies have invested millions into developing copy-prevention, lock-out chips, etc and it gets defeated by some person with 20 lines of code. That is why they want congress to write laws against it. How do you think the CEO of CBS felt when he gets music mp3s emailed to him from some guy who beat a copy-protected CD with a black marker the day it came out.
I have always believed that DMCA was never designed to fight music and software pirates, but to stop the Open Source software developers. I would not be surprised if congress tried to "license" developers in the coming years. Something else that bothers me is if the try to merge the DMCA and the Patriot Act.
Seriously. Is this even a good idea for the companies themselves? Doubtful. Certainly isn't a good idea for me.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I've been reading /. for a while, but never saw a need to sign up and post till I saw this article.
I think it might be time to relocate to a place that caters more to individual rights than America has become... China comes to mind, maybe some former soviet state.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
As today is the 30th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, I cannot help but say...
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
Don't they already teach this at the business schools that produce these jackasses? And do they honestly expect anyone else - say, productive members of society - to buy this line of bullshit?
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Look at this bowel-movement! It now has a new coat of paint!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
This just goes to show that many of the free market idealogues out there aren't really about free markets; instead they are all about unrestricted corporate activity. The two are not the same, and shouldn't be conflated. It's been shown time and again that maintenance of a free market requires government intervention (see Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the US); even the Austrian school will admit that their economic model requires adjustment (and by implication, government action) to correct for monopolies.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Pro free market. Wtf is up with that anyway? These people want a free market to reign, but also to up their bottom line. The best way to do just that is to coerce lawmakers to pass laws that are favourable to these corps. Usually, this means that other businesses can't get into the market as easily, how shall I put it, they're less enabled. Which makes it less of a free market. Paradox?
We're setting up a new group to funnel money to incumbents prior to the '08 election.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Wow, it comes round fast, it seems like only a yesterday that laws big wads of cash were handed out in the name of 'creating' economic value by reducing competition.
All governments become more aristocratic over time, and as such they tend to favor the interests of the few over the interests of the many.
This is just an age-old battle between the classes. The masses benefit most from the free flow of information, and an elite few benefit from being able to prevent that free flow.
Money vs many, once again.
"a strongly free-market think tank"
I would have thought an organisation that was strongly free-market would be against stronger copyright laws.
I expect they are really "pro-big-business" rather that "free-market".
jombeewoof alerted us to a story that went past unnoticed last weekend. A new industry-backed 'League of Evil' was formed in the city of Washington, DC. Tasked with the nefarious goal of 'promoting the value of copyright as an agent for world domination and the creation of several doomsday weapons', the ultimate goal of the organization is to strengthen copyright laws and strike terror into the hearts of puny Earth humans worldwide. "Backed by organizations like the MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, The Galactic Trade Federation, Time Warner, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, Invader Zim, ASCAP, the NBA, and others, the League of Evil has already blackmailed initial support from several members of Congress ... The group is headed by Dr Doom, a former senior fellow at the Super Villains Workers Union, a doom-bringing think-tank. Doom has written about genocidal issues for years, and in a 2005 opinion piece claimed that he was 'looking for any fool who wants to join me in seeking that elusive dark side.' His new gig may be a strange place to fight for that 'dark side' in any meaningful sense, as the League is dedicated to using 'bilateral, regional, and multilateral weapons of mass destruction to protect super villains' interests and enslave humans using over-elaborate schemes and mind-control rays 'that teach the value of bowing to your new emperors and overlords.'"
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
It's long copyright I have a problem with. Like copyright that exists long after the original creator is dead.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
The inability to share knowledge will collapse a democracy. A democracy can only survive with free access to information, and a population willing to be educated. Soon, we will have neither. How can we trust our neighbor to help run this country when they know nothing?
In fact, we as a soceity cannot survive without free exchange of information. Culture, the shared information of a group, includes not only "book learning" but stories, music, patterns, and ideas. All of those are being taken from us and gifted to monied interests.
Once, poems like Beowulf would be told, retold, and changed according to the zeitgeist. The characters would be familiar, the plot would be familiar, but the small changes over time would stand out to listeners, and the bards and shapers would emphasize or change different parts to better reflect their audience and the state of current culture. That is what held us together.
Now, we no longer have the power to control our own culture, it will be permenant and immutable for all eternity. Star Wars is a new Beowulf, but we as a culture cannot own it and make it ours. It is now eternal and unchanging, as will be our culture. Another word for eternal and unchanging is dead.
Add to the dead culture and uneducated citizenry a new type of tax- the culture and learning tax, paid to everyone who holds IP. Do you think that given the total control of information flow that IP-holders wouldn't leverage every dollar from their holdings? They'll go so far to protect their "property" that they will certainly cut off all fair uses, such as critical review. Expect even bad movie reviews to go the way of the dinosaur. "Sorry Mr. Ebert, you gave us one too many bad reviews, your license to view all Universal movies has been revoked."
The only silver lining is that the same technology to lock down all ideas has given us a massive, nearly infinite virtual library. The internet, large hard drive arrays, and instant communications have given us the means to acquire and archive massive amounts of data. Do you remember your grade-school librarian? She was a scary old woman probably, and would scare the pants off of little kids. Librarians have always needed to be scary, as they have a hard job keeping information from the hands that would hide it. In the future, we are our own librarians. It's time to get scary.
why these guys should be kept alive? Not only are they not contributing to society, they are actively trying to take things away from society, apparently solely for their own benefit.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
They strongly favor a policy that effectively destroys common law protections of property rights, subordinates physical property rights to IP rights and the presumption that all property rights to IP belong to the creator. They are, in effect, rabidly pro-government on IP and are against even moderate supporters of strong copyright law like myself. Even my views, which I have stated in blog discussions with them, are unacceptable to them, and they include:
1) Prosecuting file sharers under the No Electronic Theft Act for any serious sharing of data.
2) Throwing the book at college students who use most of the bandwidth on the network for sharing, using college policy to suspend or expel them.
3) Making IP conform to the same law and expectations that physical property is governed by. This means I fully support normalizing the relationship between the two, with the only caveat being maintaining the sole "right to copy" in the hands of the creator.
a 2005 opinion piece claimed that he was 'looking for anyone who wants to join me in seeking that elusive middle ground.' Turns out the middle ground is actually money; something I've also found to be elusive.
I can tell you that in order to productively "teach" something, there needs to be room for discussion and dissent. More specifically, people don't tend to absorb material as well when it is preached as gospel, regardless of how much of an opinion they may have had on the subject previously. Taking everything at face value is never the mark of a good student.
In this case however, any "teachings" undertaken with regard to copyright will be treated as gospel. If I had to spend time in front of a crowd discussing something as loaded as copyright, something about which basically every person is going to already have some opinion about, I wouldn't assume they will walk away with "my message". More likely I'd be taken aback by the level of opinion (not necessarily legal) being expressed, and more likely than not I'd come away with a broader appreciation of the subject. Needless to say the opinions won't be rooted in legal terms, or formal definitions of the word; however, people already have a life's worth of experience dealing with the issue as they saw it. Someone telling them "you can't do this because it's wrong" means nothing as most of them aren't of the opinion that it's wrong =). Tough sell, even outside the /. crowd.
This should not come as a surprise though, and I'm sure we have many more years of this nonsense ahead of us. The push of the corporate juggernaught has brought us to a time when one of the few genuine homegrown exports coming out of the US (or perhaps "the west" more generally) is entertainment. If they can't leverage their power in other countries (many of which don't care --- and I'm not referring to Mozambique here; I live in Canada and I don't care much about them wanting tighter copyright laws), there is no room for growth.
Tell me we aren't already at the limit of the $200M summer blockbuster machine ;).
--
~AC
#include "advancing educational programs "that teach the value of strong copyright."
They are just putting in white what was gray for several years.
I am working to develop the way to ensure "teaching the strong value of copyright" without using the "Public force".
Maybe the best ways is the way they used to do it:
Case Intellectual Property infringement = True Do Intellectual punishment
Or the old way
Case Intellectual property infringement = True Do Phisical harm
Power is not just a measurement, it's a real force.
?
It's sad to see so many Slashdotters that have absolutely no inkling as to how business/government works. This is a lobbyist group, or a PAC (political action group). They're paid by the large industries to, in turn, pay politicians to vote a particular way. Happens every day in the US. Nothing at all unusual about this development.
I don't respond to AC's.
I reserve the word 'hate' for truly worthy people. I don't hate the people that cut me off, I don't hate the people who get my order wrong, and I don't even hate the people that give me the run-around.
But I really do hate these people, and the people like them, that try to hold society back.
On a similar note the AAWA (American Ass Watcher's Association) has just announced that they will be advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of not wearing pants.'
How can that be?
We finally have someone getting together to try to protect the digital media rights of these companies, its been a long time comming. They should be able to nail this on the head in a few months and make life much better for us all who buy their products.
The point is not that people want less copyright, the point is that these corporations want MORE. They're shifting the paradigm (pardon my French) from "copyright is a government granted monopoly" to "copyright is ours by default and you're a pirate."
The government grants the copyright monopoly not because it wants these firms to make money; they grant it because they hope that ARTISTS (see what I did there?) will make more of their art when they can make a buck off of what they do, for the purpose of making a rich culture. So, the purpose of copyright is not financial but cultural gain. This comes with the implied benefit that the ARTIST can make money. When the copyright is held by anyone but the artist, there is no more cultural gain to be had.
The default setting for stuff that goes out of your head and into other people's sight/ears/whatever is that it is no longer yours. I tell you my Great Idea, now you can use it. I sing you my song, you can play it as well. That's the default mode. It's very easy to copyright something (just stick on your name, the year and the alt0169 symbol) but it's so hard to get it back into the public domain where it belongs (after a reasonable period of time,) it's ridiculous.
Also, extending copyright past the death of the artist involved. Make more art, Jimi! Make more art, Django! Make more art, Pablo! Make more art, Joan!
Because you know, I was just thinking, what we're really lacking is another copyright PAC.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
an organization whose mission is to "strengthen the copyright [or any other] law" is not "strongly free market. The PFF and this Alliance are more correctly called "propertarians" b/c they think everything should be owned.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Additionally, they are also in favour of spam and software patents. They're not pro-market, they're pro-big business.
Donate free food here
The RIAA is not on the list!
Here be signatures
Well, if the handling of the recent Suns-Spurs series is any indication of the organization's ethics, I'm sure it's going to be fair.
The Internet is generally stupid
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
If you haven't read Bounty Hunters by Greg London, you really should give it a go.
He describes the struggle of society to reward creators in analogy to paying bounty hunters to track criminals. It's a good analogy, and the analysis in section three is good. He spends time talking about making copyright have the proper length so that artists create, but not so long that society pays too much. I must admit that before reading it, I was skeptical that copyright could ever work or had anything to offer. He convinced me that it can be a good system, but there must be fairness in the term of protection.
The last flesh-and-blood discussion about copyright I had was very illuminating. I publish in science, and generally see copyright as getting in the way; I believe ideas that I come up with make me more valuable, rather than having external value (they could be useful for others to learn, then they've increased the value of their labor). But I spoke with a friend who writes fiction. Naturally, she had a different bend. She wanted to be compensated for her work and she didn't want any other writer writing substandard work with her characters, diluting her vision. There were just different issues between knowledge-based creative product and entertainment-based creative product. I would write more about how I disagreed with her, and thought her fears were unfounded, but it seems unfair to do that without a chance to respond
Monopoly rights on thoughts are some of the most important things facing our society now. We've developed a system where the physical reproduction of these things (text, music, images) is dirt cheap, nearly free, and it is forcing us to reconsider exactly what copyright and patents mean. The "Intellectual Property" crowd has a lot of money, and I think they are dangerous. We need to forge a new compromise between creators and society that maximizes creative output. That will require negotiating the "price" of that work in terms of monopoly protections.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
The People have a new enemy...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Copyright is derived from the Constitution's instructions for Congress to "promote progress in science and the useful arts". But they now impede progress more than they promote it. A "free market" is unencumbered by government-created monopolies like copyright. Copyright is a misnamed privilege to restrict free expression.
Does anyone think that Ross is busy protecting freedom, progress and markets? Or is he busy grabbing as much money as he can for people with licenses to print it?
--
make install -not war
MPAA, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft. What could go wrong?
Be very afraid.
This is not good for our rights and freedoms. The money they will have at their disposal to attack us with will be mind boggling.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Read the summary again. It's surprisingly objective, a damn sight better than most /. submissions. Don't feel too bad, I read "nefarious" instead of "nebulous" too.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
None of that is what I addressed.
First, I cannot put my stories in the public domain (I used to write more, I now help my wife write). If I do, someone like Disney can take the idea, copyright it (or even patent the plot), and prevent me from addressing their additions to my work. In fact, Disney or another large media company could force me to no longer use my original material in any substantive way. They are larger, and they can fight me off. Even though Anderson's The Little Mermaid is in the public domain, if I made an animated movie, they would certainly fight me in court. I have to use copyright as a 'bandaid' to defend your ability to make derivative works from mine (Creative Commons).
Second, before "money," if I wanted to give away a copy of a scroll, I'd copy it and give it to you. I didn't need to pay the guy who originally wrote it, or figure out who wrote it 500 years ago, find his descendants, and figure out which one is owed the royalties. How do you divide 3 chickens 900 ways among great-grandkids?
Third, don't buy that DVD? It's part of our shared culture. Sure, I can ostrasize myself from my peers and have my own culture unique to me. Wait, no I can't, that's not what a culture is. Fact is, media companies control the flow, content, and mutability of our culture. I'm not judging it, I'm saying it's true. Really, do people who watch American Idol contemplate they no longer play a role in their own culture? Does it mean they have no culture? How do we voluntarily wean everyone from restricted IP? I can't answer those questions. But I know if I don't watch American Idol, Lost, or other big shows I share much less ground with those around me.
Third, permissions, contract? Whisky Tango Foxtrot, indeed. It's copyright law, not contract law that determines what I do with that CD. It's the DMCA that dictates what I do with that DVD. There are zero contracts regarding my purchase of them.
I expect the government to get the hell out of my culture, out of my abilites to archive and record that culture, and respect my natural right to share information freely. Thomas Jefferson held very deep the belief that knowledge should be shared freely. He made a great statement about candles and flames and lighting the darkness, look it up. The governemnt doesn't need to repect my rights. It needs to get the hell out of the monopoly-granting business. We need no more Charters of the Crown. We are a democracy, damnit, and all rights are ours be default! I don't need a government to protect them, and I certainly don't need one taking inalienable liberties away.
I'm not attacking you, as you are certainly sympathetic to most of my arguments. I am attacking a bit of what you said though. Keep on arguing, and keep on sharing your ideas. It's what makes us great.
"All of those are being taken from us and gifted to monied interests"
what bullshit.
who is "us" and who are the "monied interests". has it occured to you that copyright protects ANYONE who gets off their ass and actually CREATES stuff? Has it occured to you that its anti-copyright extremists like you who are taking the hard wrk of other people from them and putting them out of business? The nest time you warez a piece of software, a game, or take a copy of a book, a movuie or TV show, maybe you should spare a thought for the 'monied interests' of the poor bastards who put their lifes work into creative works that leeches like yourself took for free.
But that isnt enough for you is it? You dont want to just leech other peoples hard work for fuck all, but you want to come on to slashdot and rpeach like some saint about how evil all those people are who create the cultural works in the first place, and somehow you are the force for good because you sit on your ass and take their work for free.
If you want to create some communist utopia of free cuture, go write a book and distribute it for free, theres no alw against it. Dont expect to be able to pay your rent though.
its morons like you that are the reason companies have to use DRM.
Copyright doesn't need to be "strengthened", it only needs to be clarified a little and, most importantly, restored to a more sane balance between creators and users (i.e. rollback of the ever-extendeded terms before things expire into the public domain). As it is now, the public domain has been consistently sacrificed, legal exercise of "fair use" rights are being stymied by DRM and anti-circumvention laws, and you even have people talking about loony ideas such as extending copyright forever, as if they were talking about property and land rights.
Companies such as Disney have profitted ENORMOUSLY from the existence of the public domain. Now all they want to do is use copyright to stake out parts of the free realm of ideas, own them forever, and destroy any future contribution of them to the public domain. It's hypocritical and wrong.
You're right. But, read up on our "founding fathers." They were an ornery, angry, unruly bunch. They were fanatical about being left the hell alone. Sure, they were personable, and many had quite a few friends and shared their ideas with the world, but they hated to be forced to action. They were even very disliked by the moneymakers in the colonies, part from loyalties to the Crown, and part from loyalties to their income streams.
Perfect information and instant communication destroy tyranny. You can't distort public perception if the public knows exactly what it perceives, and you can't distort history if we have a perfect, open record of government and offical business. So, yes, information access is anathema to control. That's why Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and others advocated public libraries so vigorously. But, we cannot have our original brand of democracy without it. Instead, we have our current democracy because of our lack of education and information.
After what I just heard on the radio this week... I can only imagine the kind of crazy extensions they'll try to start tacking onto copyright.
On my local radio station, every monday morning the morning show DJ's (Stuck 'n Gunner, if anyone's heard of 'em) will do "Microwave Monday". This involves either putting something in a microwave that one is not supposed to, or otherwise somehow mangling, tormenting, and/or destroying a microwave.
A couple months back, they had a popular band on the show (who I guess I better not mention, as I haven't purchased the rights to say their name in public). The DJ's and said band proceeded to bash the living hell out of a microwave on video, and posted the video (as they do with all their MM videos) online.
This past week the record label for that band got the video taken down on some kind of alleged copyright violation... for a video of the band smashing a microwave; no musical performance involved. WTF?!?!?! Glad i didn't become a musician. Apparently becoming a big name US musician means you can no longer do anything on video, ever, without paying the label.
I'm tired of the Valenti clones spouting the "infinity minus one day" line. Infinity minus one is still infinity.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
I was being facetious. I'll not move to China any more than I would move to Cuba.
On the other hand, the vote that I cast during election does not matter. I can cast my vote for whomever I feel is the closest to me on a variety of issues, but even when a new congressman/woman senator whatever gets voted in it's only a few years till they're on the corporate payroll. No matter how strong their convictions or how much they promise to "change the government from the inside out" they cannot hold out against the lobbyists.
My solution, outlaw corporate lobbying. It's the only real solution to the greater evil. Not DRM, not copyright law, not global warming or any of those things. Taken individually these are all threats to our way of life. The fact that none of us can influence any politician 1/100th of a percent as much as Microsoft, or Sony, or MPAA or any corporate group is the real crime.
I would gladly give up my "right" to copy a movie, or cd if MY interests were being looked after in washington.
My interests are fairly simple, I wish to do whatever the fuck I want so long as it harms none. I want to listen to cd's I purchase on whatever device I want to. I want to watch movies I buy wherever I feel the need to watch them. I want to use my xbox as a cheap ftp server that can also stream the movies I've purchased to any tv in my house.
According to the current rules in place, none of these things I want to do is legal.
The arguments that the protected content is not worth paying for doesn't float with me. If it's worth stealing, it's probably worth shelling out a few bucks for. But take Vista for example, if I pay $600 for the top of the line version. I cannot use it in the manner I see fit. I must use it according the their rules, and those rules are so strict, and the measures in place to make sure that I don't break them are so prohibitive that it does not make any sense for me to pay that much for it.
I'm not saying I've never downloaded software/music/movies. I have, I've downloaded tons of IP. But everything I've ever downloaded was either complete trash which I've deleted, or something I have a legit copy of. IP, copyright, DRM, these are symptoms of the much more dreadful disease of corruption. And corruption at the highest levels, as bad as it currently is can only lead to revolution. This country is not old enough to be in the dire shape that is in. In a mere 230 years we've gone from We the people, to screw the people.
"America has to go through some kind of a radical change". --MH
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
I'll more or less re-post what I said the other day.* Disney built their empire largely on non-copyrighted works, especially their earliest and biggest hits. A very short list: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, The Little Mermaid, and most (if not all) of the music from the Fantasia movies. And now their position is "We created some things**, profited from them, continue to do so, and would like a governmet-sponsored monopoly to allow us to continue to do so until the end of time."
i n_characterst ed_features
Compare the lists at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_doma
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_anima
for more clues.
* mod me funny if you don't want me to gain karma for saying the same thing twice. I just think this is an important point which should be brought up in every single discussion where Disney wants copyright enhanced.
** I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to profit from their use of other people's work. I'm saying that their original creations should fall into public domain, same as all those other things did. But no. Their attitude is "I got mine, now no one else gets any." Fucking hypocritical bastards.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Only because I'm ornery today. I own far more paper-published copyrighted works than you will. At exactly one work, I'm sure my wife does as well. Google my username to get my fictional works. You may find my real name, and come across my academic works too.
I have a need to eat, and I create as copyrighted works to pay for it (all academics, or programmers, or writers do). However my need to eat needs to balance your need to information. Sure, I don't want to starve, but I don't want my informed electorate to starve. I don't want our culture to starve, either. Did libraries and universities sharing information collapse literary and scientific innovation? No, it's easily argued it did the opposite. So, if a limited concept of information as property has done so well do we need a system of highly restricted intellectual property rights?
You created a derivative of my copyrighted work. I don't like what you said, and feel you should have to pay comensurate to the value you have extracted. Please remit $50,000 to Troll Chow, Inc, 1600 Domicile Bridge, Frothing Mouth, WI.
Look, I don't pirate. I don't care about you young'uns music. I have Netflix for all my movies (Some Like it Hot is on for the weekend). Thanks for your amazing leap to conclusions.
My argument is about the restrictions lobby groups like this one want to impose. Right now, if you want to legally review a DVD, you must get the pre-approved, licensed clips from the distributor to use in review. You can be denied these clips for any reason. Warner and Universal still claim non-digital reproduction like re-recording a circumvention of CSS, and we have no court findings yet. However, if this group gets it way, you can bet your sweet ass that any unapproved reproduction, even for critical reviews will be illegal. They are cutting off your right to information.
Universal and Disney are also pushing to have plots and storylines patentable. They have already submitted a few for patent review. If they pass, expect more. Does that scare you?
I'm a fan of 30-50 year copyrights (I'm an academic, it's my job). I think they balance public and private needs. I could live with longer or shorter. I prefer zero patents. I imagine inventors are in my boat in that regard, and would be willing to accept patents with limited lifespans. Don't think I hate copyright just because I hate restrictive IP. Restrictive IP would prevent me from doing my life's passion, not protect it like these bastards say it will.
a former senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank
All the micro-econ courses I took, every single one from micro-101 to price theory, stated pretty strenuously that fiat monopolies and the free market are antithetical. I'm not saying copyright is necessarily bad - maybe the free market is not efficient when it comes to creative works - but the intersection of the free market and copyright is the empty set.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Time is an illusion, and lunchime doubly so. I'll keep this short.
I dislike piracy. Bitwise copies of DVDs certainly do harm creators, and I don't dislike copyright. However, why shouldn't I be allowed to say, edit the script to Star Wars, and refilm it with better actors and special effects? Before we freak out, remember this doesn't diminish the fact there is still an original recording, and will still have value when I'm done. I add value to the economy, I create value that didn't exist before, and I add to the general good if the final product is good. Why should I be restricted?
The answer is that some authors and all media companies want to maximize their income. They feel they did work, and that all subsequent work that even glances at theirs deserves their blessing (all for a hefty tithe of course). In the late 1500s, Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Raleigh all wrote poems, plays, and stories that played off each others current works. There was an increase in cultural value from these works.
I'm not advocating piracy. I'm advocating a looser framework for mutating our own culture while still compensating creators (please, I am one). I'm advocating being your own librarian (pay-per-view, the media child of the future restricts that). I'm advocating the free-flow of ideas (eternal copyright and strict IP prevents that).
Also, there is no contract in just purchasing a copyrighted work. There is no meeting of the minds. You never negotiate. You purchase a product, and that is covered by separate law. I do agree you can decide not to purchase it though.
That this is about individuals being able to vote for members of congress.
If the only issue was individuals having the ability to vote in congressional elections, they would be pushing for the much easier and more reasonable goal of having most of DC rejoin Maryland. But for some reason, the example of Arlington being retroceded back in 1847 seems to escape them.
It's a blatent attempt to gain more power at the Federal level. It makes about as much sense as New York City asking for it's own Senators because it's the largest concentration of people in the US.
Only a three-time champion of idiots would write that.
"Free market" does not mean "shoplifting."
A market necessarily means there are things to sell.
Without copyrights, there is no way to sell creative work.
Imagine you are capable of creativity, and write a book on Proudhon. Without copyrights, your work is immediately public domain. Then why should anyone pay you for your work?
I am only defending the idea of copyrights, and in American law the copyrights as originally specified. Those that would mess with copyright terms would do well to remember that the people who wrote them were themselves authors.
I knew a guy that could look once at the words to a song (in a hymnal) and then he could sing that song perfectly. He had photographic memory for songs, and total recall. I knew another guy who had 1/2 the Berkeley kernel memorized. I imagine that by now he's got almost all of it available for recall.
In the future, genetically enhanced kids will have complete recall of every movie they ever saw, and don't need to go back to the theater. They will just be able to sit by themselves and remember it.
How will things be then? Will these people be banned from bookstores and libraries? Will broadcast TV be gone by then? Will they have to report regularly to **AA "Memory Erasure" stations?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
Or maybe they don't, apparently...
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
The thing that needs to happen most is to pull back the length of copyright term to something more reasonable. Clearly the current term breeds excessive complacency in the bulk of copyright producers. I'd like to see a study (I'm sure some have been done already) that shows how the overall average of producers of copyright material start with a lot of material (or a singular big effort), then basically produce nothing very quickly afterward, and just rest on their copyrights to provide them their subsistence. This runs counter to the reason for copyright and is explicitly stated in the Constitution as such. Copyright is supposed to stimulate additional progress of science and the useful arts, but if producers of copyright follow the trend of "resting on their terms", then we are in a state of counter productivity with copyright and in violation of the constitutional language intent. I keep seeing the Disney case brought up as an example of this and what keeps me scratching my head about Disney's big props for extension of copyright is that they continue to refine "the mouse" with new copyrighted material over an over again anyway. I can't understand their fear of the original Mickey Mouse material expiring if they continue to produce new stuff (with brand new copyright terms) that brings in new revenues. Disney is one of the big companies that, because they keep coming out with new stuff, is least of all affected by their old copyrights expiring. The only thing they have to worry about is putting out material that nobody wants, which is a risk all companies have regardless of product. They have a few old classic movies that may not make them money anymore, but that's not where their big money comes from anyway.
It's actually "Hear hear!" as in "Hey listen up guys and hear what he's saying!!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear_hear
"WE ARE NOT TO STAND BY WHILE THEY TAKE OUR RIGHTS AWAY!"
i nal1.pdf )
Polemic aside, what rights exactly are you talking about?
One of the biggest problems in this debate is that both sides have extremists who have little objection to stretching the truth, and just plain making stuff up when it suits them. Frankly, there are a lot of reformers who don't have the first inkling of what copyright actually is and does. I still remember getting into a debate with somebody who I challenged to tell me what was wrong with copyright law - and he raised several objections, all of which were based in patent or trademark law. He couldn't raise a single point that was based in copyright law itself.
Perfect example of extremists making stuff up: the Sonny Bono law, known to the reformers as the Mickey Mouse act - the problem being, of course, that the law was supported by Disney, but actually put into place to bring American copyright law in line with the current European standard, so that American intellectual property would have the same length of protection in Europe as European intellectual property. And that does make logical sense, when it comes down to it. The idea that Disney pushed it through in the middle of the night just to protect Mickey Mouse is fiction. (A great deal of information on this can be found here: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-orig
So, I have to ask - what rights are being taken away here?
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
This is exactly the sort of thing that is turning our government into a Communist entity. Stop big government control! Vote for Ron Paul in 2008!
Excuse me, but the only reason it went unnoticed was because you didn't accept my submission on this exact same story last week. I wrote it up at http://www.bytesfree.org/ in the entry All Your Rights Are Belong to Us. LinuxToday was on the ball enough to report it.
I started bytesfree.org under the shockingly banal premise that people have the right to access information they possess. Wow, what a concept! And yet, so many well-funded organizations are dead set against such a concept. Information access be damned, 'cuz we can't afford the risk of people distributing illegal copies! It's not surprising to me that companies will do anything to protect their revenue. What surprises me is that 1.) not enough people give a shit and 2.) we've allowed things to progress this far. -Cyrus http://www.bytesfree.org/
Actually it's a lot easier than that. Simply create something (original) and put it into a tangible form. That is all. No © symbol necessary.
Copyright is the opposite of the free market.
-l
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I frankly have never met a statue that did have an opinion, current or otherwise.
I think you have to combine at least two of the joke memes at once for it to be worth anything nowadays. Perhaps... "In Soviet Russia, new copyright-law-promoting overlord welcomes YOU!!"
Speaking as a full-time writer and an author, and having taken a close look at the website for this new organization, I think it can be a very good thing.
I am a moderate - I understand the need for fair use (indeed, I've used it myself), the public domain, and the need for copyright, and what it does (some of the most important uses of which are not obvious unless you're in the creative business yourself, as it affects the relationship between the creator and distributer). And, where possible, I try to get good, accurate information.
And, having taken a close look at the website, that's what they're delivering. Their information is accurate, and having looked at a few of the research papers they provide, they seem to be pretty balanced, with both pro and con positions represented. And that's what the copyright debate should be.
If they can get good, accurate information out there, in opposition to the noise that you get from both sides of extremists, who have no objections to twisting facts and just making stuff up (for example, I found out recently that the Sonny Bono Act was actually passed to bring American copyright law up to a European standard - the idea that it was pushed through just to save Mickey Mouse is pure fiction), I think they can do a LOT of good, and bring balance back to the debate.
I have to wonder, though, just how many of the detractors here have actually taken a decent look at their website...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Not true. Copyright, in the US, protects derivative works. You can mount a fair use defense, but you can be sued, and you have no legal right to making derivative works. Even the Wikipedia has an entry for this.
Also, not true. Again, even the Wikipedia has an entry. You have no rights to sample even very small pieces of music, such as 3-5 note runs. Yes, this theoretically means that all music has long since been written. It practically means a legal nightmare.
My arguments do hold up. To do either, you must receive permission, usually as a license with requisite royalties. And yes, given legal standing to do so, I fully expect them to be exploited maximally. That's good, if I didn't think so, I wouldn't be an economist in the first world. What's not good is they are given that standing.
What wonderful paranoia!
i nal1.pdf
You know, there is so much wrong with what you've said here that it ranges from conspiracy theories to a view of the creative artist that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with reality, but I'm not going to shoot it down myself. I'm going to let somebody else, with far more knowledge and evidence do it for me: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-orig
And, as far as that wonderful, cliched paranoia goes, what are you on, and where can I get some?
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
From your post, you seem to think that legally protected rights to access data are "extreme". You refer to the alliance as "balanced" and I say there's no such thing when there's not even the acknowledgement of my information access rights. I have the right to access information I possess. Period. To say otherwise would seem to be an extreme view.
Put simply, I cannot entertain the idea that any balanced view would not recognize the tyranny of anti-circumvention laws.
-Cyrus
http://www.bytesfree.org/
At the end of the day we have four powers to attack these cartels with:
1) Stop purchasing their stuff. Seeing as how a portion of every dollar spent on an RIAA CD or Microsoft item goes to groups like this that seek to undermine our freedoms in exchange for their own cash flows the only way to cut off that flow from the company is to cut off our own flow to the company.
For those jonsesing for new music, check out your local bands or those bands that sell their own stuff. Libraries are also excellent sources of things you only listen to, read, or watch occasionally. With Microsoft Put up or shut up to other vendors stop whining about Bill and then ponying up for Vista "because everyone else is using it". Between Ubuntu and Openoffice even Grandma should be able to use Linux these days.
Spend some time reading a book or talking to your friends, get outside even the air isn't copyrighted, yet.
2) Write your reps and make a simple point: I won't vote for you if you listen to them. Make it clear that your vote is conditioned on these things and that you are paying attention.
3) Donate to groups like the EFF who lobby against this shit.
4) This is the hardest, if you are a director, musician or author, don't sell your work to these cartels. Consider marketing it on your own or via another group that doesn't play these games. I know that this isn't trivial and that you need to eat but if you can go it alone that makes the most difference. These cartels are not capable of making things on their own only gobbling up your gems and sitting on them. They are unimaginative slugs who seek only to feed. If you really want to get them out of there and get your ideas into the world then try an alternate route.
First, as the author of the EverQuest Companion (if it's the same one I had when playing Everquest oh so many years ago), thank you for providing me with plenty of bad information that helped me leave the game. Afterward I found Asheron's Call and had a wonderful time there.
Second, you realize that your "paper" comes from a general council for Paramount. Not exactly the paragon of honest research. I've read this before, and here are my responses.
As an economist, I know that copyright can be good, and that the public domain the the default state of information.
It works like this: Marginal costs of distributing information include publication costs, fixed costs include publishing equipment and original research. Ideally, we would like to see the creators of new information compensated, because we would like to subject the creation of new information to the benefecial forces of competition. It should mean better entertainment, more scientific innovation, and cheaper/faster distribution. The internet DOES change this. Publishing equipment means a small share of a $3000 machine. Marginal costs of distribution come out to fractions of a penny per reader. The problem is that with cheap distribution, the costs of original research and creator compensation can no longer ride on the distribution costs.
Horsecrap. Empirical study of economics is what I do. You can answer this question, you can model it, and you can decide on a legal framework to accomplish maximal good between publisher, creator, and society. This paper was crap 3 years ago, it's crap today. It's a movie company trying to push their agenda, as is their right and even responsibility. But it does not make it true.
If you think for one second that media companies do not want as much control over the flow of information as possible, you are either misinformed or far too trusting of actors in a free economy. DivX did not appear from nowhere. It was created as a distribution method based on rentiership. The concept of rents is very old, is was how feudal societies functioned. Lords did not provide positive value to their economies, but supported themselves by owning properties that then then rented to value-providing actors. The western world rebelled against that system many times over the last 500 years. Rents, while important to economic understanding, shouldn't be applied to non-goods or non-properties. Law is what makes information property, not economics.
As for conspiracy, control of knowledge and education has been the hallmark of tyranny. No, I don't believe Paramount is out to destroy anybody. They are out to turn profit by any means legal. But as a veteran of this world, people do not let power go unexploited. The moment all information is tagged as a commodity, you run into issues with distribution. If you must rent your news, or license it's distribution to your neighbor, how can you make informed decisions? How can you have libraries that are open to all?
Your, and many others', misconceptions about my views on copyright are wrong. I write, I have work published. I support copyright. However, my job revolves around understanding economics, and frankly you can't nail down information like you can a chair, or a table, or a building. Efficient use of information can happen from one person or all persons. A car or a chair can't do that. And the market will act accordingly, unless restricted by law. And to restrict the flow of information, in the form of derivative works or critical review (both of which the Alliance supports even further restricting), involves removing the last defense against tyranny- knowing what tyranny is and what your responsibilites are in fighting against it. Do not think it won't be exploited someday.
Once, poems like Beowulf would be told, retold, and changed according to the zeitgeist...
Star Wars is a new Beowulf, but we as a culture cannot own it and make it ours.
An ironic statement, considering that the original Star Wars movie shares a number of characters and plot points with Akira Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress", among others. Taking a (copyrighted!) work set in Japan and adapting it as a space opera is exactly retelling a work, changed for the zeitgeist.
Also interesting: Wikipedia lists Beowulf as one of the inspirations for Star Wars.
"The group is headed by Patrick Ross, a former senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank. Ross has written about IP issues for years, and in a 2005 opinion piece claimed that he was 'looking for anyone who wants to join me in seeking that elusive middle ground.'" "Backed by organizations like the MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, ASCAP, the NBA, and others," They're seeking middle ground, and yet have some of the biggest copyright trolls in existance behind them? "the Alliance is dedicated to 'strengthening copyright law'" Ah, there we go. So by "balance" you mean "tip even further in the wrong direction", and by "Progress & Freedom Foundation" you mean "Stale Business Plan Protecting & Restriction Foundation". Great, just wanted to make sure I knew what the terms meant.
If there's anyone I hate more than stupid people, it's intellectuals.
"First, as the author of the EverQuest Companion (if it's the same one I had when playing Everquest oh so many years ago), thank you for providing me with plenty of bad information that helped me leave the game. Afterward I found Asheron's Call and had a wonderful time there."
Well, if what you were looking at was a strategy guide, then it wasn't mine. If it was a book about the history of the game and its genre, the community around it, and the social issues, then that's the one I wrote.
"Your, and many others', misconceptions about my views on copyright are wrong."
Well, reading this post, which is quite coherent and grounded, sent me back to your original post, which was...um...not all that coherent and grounded. You started off with an implied declaration that this new group was going to destroy democracy (in retrospect, you didn't say it specifically, but it was implied by the context). You then followed it up with a comment that our culture was being taken away from us (which isn't actually happening - copyright extensions in the United States were not applied to work already in the public domain, and new material is, well, new material - you can't take away something that was not there to be owned in the first place). And then you finished up by saying that we weren't able to incorporate new material like Star Wars into our culture, which flies in the face of the numerous Star Wars rip-offs, references in popular culture, and the fact that "Jedi" is now a recognized religion on certain census forms. And as a published writer like myself, you must know that copyright law does not allow you to copyright an idea, and that it protects fair use when it comes to excerpts and other such reproductions.
So, I'm sorry if I misread your views, but the picture you painted was a bit on the unbelievable side.
As far as what you've written here, you've raised a very interesting point:
"It works like this: Marginal costs of distributing information include publication costs, fixed costs include publishing equipment and original research. Ideally, we would like to see the creators of new information compensated, because we would like to subject the creation of new information to the benefecial forces of competition. It should mean better entertainment, more scientific innovation, and cheaper/faster distribution. The internet DOES change this. Publishing equipment means a small share of a $3000 machine. Marginal costs of distribution come out to fractions of a penny per reader. The problem is that with cheap distribution, the costs of original research and creator compensation can no longer ride on the distribution costs."
Well, first of all, new information is not created, it is collected (after quite some time, I finally came up with this definition of the difference between information and art - information is present prior to collection regardless of what people do, and art is created by somebody). It may seem semantic, but a lot of people would deny creative artists their rights based on the argument that what they create is information, and therefore must be free. But, to deal with the point I actually want to raise, I'm not sure that what you've mentioned changes the situation at all.
Think of it this way - a writer writes, a sculptor sculpts, and a painter paints. The end result will be a work of writing, a sculpture, or a painting, regardless of if the Internet is involved. It certainly makes research easier, but does it affect the end product or its distribution in a way that would affect copyright?
I'm actually going to fly in the face of the DMCA and say "no, it doesn't." Ultimately, if somebody downloads an e-book or a painting, they are reading a book or looking at a painting - the very same thing they would be doing if they had gotten it through more traditional sources. The cost of distribution is much lower, but that cost is affected by all of the costs involved with getting that work of art ready. If a book has to be edited and typeset, tha
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
I'm a strongly pro-free market guy. But I also favor weakening copyright law back to its original form: 14 years, with an option to renew for another 14 years, after which, the work falls into the public domain.
Actually, I favor categorical copyrights: some types of works should have longer copyrights than others. Software, perhaps only 5-8 years, but books, perhaps 20 years. I don't know what good times for each would be (though I could make some reasonable estimates, given the time), but I can't think of any work which should be copyrighted for longer than a total of 50 years or so though.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
And if you put 'em all in one big group, it makes it easier to drop bombs on them!
It was terrible. You do seem much brighter than whomever wrote it. As for a history of EQ, I may read it, it sounds fascinating. The economies of online communities is my sad, sad nerd-hobby.
Without nitpicking, you are right about feudalism. In practice rents collected went to fighting other lords at home and abroad. Of course you need lords protecting you, as other lords would be invading you. In practice, across eastern Europe, real invaders were rarely fought off. But the idea was for buying collective defense. Practically serfs and even peasants were used to fund whatever the nobility wanted, with the exception of England. Also, I envy you, as looking back I would rather have had a degree in history. I don't have time for any more disciplines.
You are right about information as property. It isn't, and law can't make it so. However, law can cause many, many problems as while it's being used as a bludgeon against information flow and networking.
My final point is on "art." Legally, things like graphs cannot be copyright, as collections of data and presentation of data do not warrant copyright. The reasoning is that they provide nothing artistic, or add nothing of value. The idea of default copyright and restrictive IP is a rather modern concept, not intended to remunerate artists, but to fund monopolistic channels of distribution. The Writers Guild in Hollywood will tell you that no company is willing to give much money to the real creative minds in Hollywood. The price of new art is not very high. The costs given to us for distribution is not only high, but usually cashed in as profit.
A quick rule of thumb is that in a capitalist economy, or any free economy, the best sign of inefficiency is windfall profits. Competition should drive profits low, just to the cost level of entry to the market. With movie studios, and even TV studios, the barriers to entry are near infinite with media pressure and ever more restrictive interpretations of IP. Even Time-Warner, one of the only companies that could field a new major network, had to shut down their network from FCC pressure. And as I said elsewhere, companies right now aren't thinking "take over the globe," they are thinking "make the biggest pile of cash possible." But since this is Slashdot and sensationalism sells well, I like to present worst-case scenarios some days.
My favorite author. I've wanted to somehow legally list my religion as "Cthulhu cultist" for years now.
However, fan fiction occupies a very tenuous place. It is illegal, even if enforcement is rare. This is mostly because a fair use defense could be successful if the fan fiction isn't profitable, and I don't think anyone wants a big precedent for that. Copyright law does very explicitly say that derivative works are covered, and are the sole property of the copyright owner. But it does exist despite it's illegality, mostly because it's a feature of humanity that can't be controlled by laws. Society has deemed it useful to tell stories, and accepts it. Laws cannot change societies collective values.
If the Berne Convention gets in the way, then apply "intellectual property tax" accounting only to those works that are not subject to the Berne Convention: those where the creation and use occur in the same country. U.S. copyright law already has a name for these: "United States works".
Wow, who would have expected to see "creativity" and "MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, ASCAP, the NBA" in such close proximity to one another? The cognitive dissonance is just mind-boggling!
One of the many groups that are apart of the new Copyright Alliance is the Entertainment Software Association(Basically, the Video Game Industry)
l ishers-join-new-copyright-alliance/
http://gamepolitics.com/2007/05/28/video-game-pub