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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
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.
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."
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
We're setting up a new group to funnel money to incumbents prior to the '08 election.
[Insert pithy quote here]
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".
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.
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.
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 ;).
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~AC
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.
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
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!
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?
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make install -not war
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.
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'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.
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
Tell me, what defines a free market? Go ahead, think long and hard on this. Feel free to Google it, if you never took economics or have forgotten it by now. Ah, hell, I'll quote the first sentence in the Wikipedia entry:
Notice the phrase "not being regulated by the government"?
Copyrights are a government-induced restriction of supply, and hence do not belong in a truly free market -- period. You ad hominem and irrelevant arguments do not change this.
The truth of the matter is that IP has infinite supply when unregulated -- therefore within a free market, its price normally approaches zero.
Oh, you mean that some people wrote self-serving laws? Surprise, surprise.
Exactly; supply of that work is infinite, why should anyone pay me? Regardless, your entire argument is irrelevant -- the validity and purpose of copyright has absolutely zero to do with whether copyright fits into free market economics.
Note that I am a proponent of limited copyrights. However, this doesn't mean that I can bend the facts to support my view, nor does it mean that I can ignore realities (such as copyrights being in contradiction with a free market).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"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