Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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 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.
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.
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]
"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.
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!
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
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!