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Richard Stallman Talks On Copyright Vs. the People
holden writes "Richard M. Stallman recently gave a talk entitled Copyright vs Community in the Age of Computer Networks to the University of Waterloo Computer Science Club. The talk looks at the origin of copyright, and how it has evolved over time from something that originally served the benefit of the people to a tool used against them. In keeping with his wishes to use open formats, the talk and QA are available in ogg theora only."
Why is there no transcript? I'm not saying I couldn't download the video and watch it, but I'd rather not spend at least an hour downloading it and then have to watch it.
Did you notice it was hosted by a computer club at the university? I bet they want some excuses for the university to give them upgraded bandwidth for their club server(s)... and putting 600MB files on the front page of slashdot should get them... hmmm... 2 x 1gbit links?
Good plan!
Because the anime industry is one of those really quirky things where they let fans do things which is against the law.
:)
Fansubbing is illegal the way it's most often done. They pirate TV programs with added text and then give them to hundreds or thousands of people. Now the companies could start being assholes and try to shut these groups down, but instead they have a gentleman's contract. Subbers stop subbing when a series is licenced and a blind eye is turned to the subbers.
In this way companies learn what is popular and get free market research, fans get what they want when they want it and then in an ideal world the fans buy the official releases to support the original companies and the ones who licenced the anime.
So basically, it's a good way to show copyright isn't always the answer. If you allow people leeway they will repay you back at a later date by supporting you. One could argue fansubs work as the perfect advertisement for merchandise to people outside of Japan and if copyright was put down on it, it would hurt the industry more than if they ignore it.
So anime is a good example of copyright done correctly in a lot of people's opinion.
I like muppets.
I find his choice of CC license odd given his talk.... He spends most of the time talking about the importance of derivative works, but then releases his talk under a no-derivatives license. Oh well :(
Not everyone who saw the lecture agreed with the contents. A counterpoint can be found here.
I didn't write that counterpoint, but there's one thing the author and I agree on: Richard Stallman is a lot more crazy in person. One guy in the audience asked how he was supposed to pay for his university education by releasing free software. Stallman didn't really give him an answer, he just told the student that he didn't have to go to school, and he had no right to release closed source software in an attempt to earn money. Stallman has compared closed source software to "a crime against humanity", yes?
I talked to Stallman after the lecture. I asked him how he paid the mortgage after leaving MIT in 1984. He said that that he's never had a mortgage and "he lives cheaply". I later heard that he basically squatted on the MIT campus.
See, here's the problem with Stallman's philosophies: they're highly incompatible with the status quo, and there's no clear path for change. If you want people to do $Y instead of $X, $Y has to be relatively pin-compatible with $X. Telling people to write free software is well and good, but your paradigm isn't going to have much success if it also requires programmers to buy a house, get married, and otherwise have a normal life.
On a related note, I also asked Stallman what he thought of the wedding photography industry. For those of you who don't know, typical wedding photographers cost over a thousand dollars, show up at your wedding to take pictures, and then make you pay through the nose for prints. They don't even give you the copyright, if you want more prints you have to go back to the photographer! One must shop around to find a photographer who'll actually give you the digital originals. Anyway, I asked Stallman if he thought this was analogous to what was happening in the software world, and he said no. He thought closed source software was a greater imposition on freedom than holding wedding memories hostage.
The man is too close to his particular pet cause.
"Live as if you'll die tomorrow." Ridiculous. You could die later today.
No-one said it did.
The argument RMS puts forward is that Copyright was a good deal for the public when the only people it affected was a small percentage of the population.. when it was seen as a restriction on trade. Now, with the PC, we all copy, all the time and Copyright is just in the way. It's no longer just a restriction on trade.. it's a restriction on private acts and requires intrusive policing to enforce.
How we know is more important than what we know.
it's the goose that lays the golden egg syndrome... quick cash is better than become established and making more cash over time in the minds of most companies.
Copyrights ARE artificial limits... whether they be five years or fifty years after the author's death. Nothing is natural about copyright. It's an unnatural legal construct that's quite unintuitive. That's why we need organizations like the RIAA to educate children about the importance of copyright.
It's more a matter of being fair (and practical). Copyright doesn't loose value like material property. With copyright people can still make money off of work they have long since done. It's bizarre. Laws are easy to create, and the non-power brokers like me have no defacto say. Five years is plenty fair IMHO for getting paid for (in some cases a few hours worth of work), over and over again for the rest of one's life.
I'm sure, all-things-being-equal, RMS wouldn't mind having an "artificial limit" placed on the GPL, but that would be assuming a fair and equal playing field.
I use your software every day, and I am really am grateful for your varied contributions. But can you go home now, and keep to yourself, please? All that crazy is just hurting our cause.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What needs to happen in a lot of circumstances is that copyright should not be transferable. So, if I write a song, it belongs to me. If a company wants to promote it, we can make a service contract. But the copyright is mine, not theirs. The labels are my agents, they could provide studios, or off-site storage for my works, and people with marketing savvy. But guess what? The industry that gave us the indentured servitude of the recording contract is no more. iTunes is more of a music company than any label out there. All they are are assholes with legal degrees.
Not being able to force artists into loan sharking arrangements with the labels would mean, however that all the labels as they exist now are effectively and instantly bankrupt. Yay. Without this leverage, The artist writes contracts with agents, and grants his or her managers a piece of his copyright for say, five years. So, the more tracks of mine they sell, the more they make. The more concerts I give to the bigger audiences, the more money they make. But the artist is in control. He has the copyright. I might spare them 10% of revenues, or 50% if I'm a newbie. But it will revert to me.
Because, after all, what function do the huge conglomerated labels have? They used to provide money for manufacture and distribution. They no longer have any significant burden, since once the final track is laid down, all they have to do is sell copies for more than it costs to download. And they were loan sharks. Game over. Finita la commedia.
Good question. I know it's not me. In the US it's members of congress who get lobbied by the copyright holders (which usually aren't even the creators of the work, but just the marketers). Yes "five years is plenty fair" is a bit flippant, but think of it more as an example of something that is MORE fair than, say, fifty or 70 years after an authors death. 10 years maybe, or even 20?
There is no such gentleman's agreement. The owners of the copyrighted works despise fansubbing, and the companies that license the distribution rights overseas despise them even more. There have been enough instances where producers and artists have openly said that they don't approve of fansubbing. The only reason fansubbers haven't been sued by the japanese distributors is because they realise they would gain very little compared to the time and effort wasted.
Biggest load of bull ever. Fansubbers don't always stop, they officially stop when the company that licensed it sends them a cease and desist. That's what happened when Viz picked up Death Note. What happened after the C&D was that the people originally subbing it, changed their name and continued to sub it.
I think companies get a reasonable amount of fan research from the original market already. What's popular in Japan is bound to be popular with the non-japanese anime fans if it isn't too localized (eg. containing jokes that are very culturally dependent). Market research isn't that expensive by the way that companies would start depending on fansubbers to do it for them.
In an ideal world, yes... In our world, the words "lol 'buy'" come to mind. You could start by arguing that those people were never going to buy it in the first place, but that's beside the point really. Fansubbing is a copyright violation, and it is viewed as such, but not actively pursued because it simply wouldn't be advantageous for the original copyright owner. There is more money to be made by selling the rights to an overseas distributor and let them deal with the lawsuits, than by trying to squeeze a few cents out of a college student. Fansubbers that stop distributing once it's licensed by an american company don't get C&Ds or lawsuits because they acquired the rights after the fansubbing took place.
In short, fansubbers aren't as "tolerated" as you would argue, they just aren't worth investing time and money in yet.
I would suggest that 'promoting progress for the benefit of the public' being the only legitimate purpose of copyright requires justification.
Another possible purpose is to protect the right of the creator to be the sole beneficiary of his labour.
Points to consider include dependence on earlier work and novelty and the benefits of the creation vs. the costs of protection with respect to those who have to pay.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Every /. story about the RIAA involves a conflict between principals dejure and the defacto state of affairs.
"Five years is plenty fair IMHO for getting paid for (in some cases a few hours worth of work), over and over again for the rest of one's life."
James MacNeil Whistler sued John Ruskin for libel. On the stand Whistler was asked how he could ask for two hundred pounds for two days work. He responded that he was charging for knowledge "gained in the work of a lifetime." Among musicians that don't appreciate his work, Handel will still remain immortal for writting The Messiah in a mere three weeks. IIRC, Dostoyevsky "knocked off" Notes from the Underground. When you argue that monetary compensation derived from copyright should be tied to hourly measures of time you assume equivalence in the value of work by Beethoven and one by Madonna. Hell, in this day and age, a fella can make millions by playing a game of basketball. How long does that take, an hour and a half?
"How would making instructional works copyright-free lower their quality?"
I think he/she was definitely talking about future "to be created" work as opposed to existing stuff. Maybe the intent was to suggest that the set of instructional works on a particular topic would be of less quality overall. There would certainly be smaller body of material available. I'd sort of consider that "lower quality", even though the quality of an individual work might be ~ the same.
"The value of a manual (to the company making it) is not in it's royalties. It is usually given away for free, so there are no royalties."
I guess you've never purchased the service/maintenance manual for an automobile. These typically run in the $100-$200 range. There are 3rd party alternatives in similar price ranges, but I *think* they must license the specs from the manufacturer as well.
I see no reason why instructional works should get different treatment.
Stallman has never claimed to be a fan of "openness", he talks about freedom. You are confusing the four freedoms with the ability to distribute in the currently popular formats. Information cannot flow freely if it is frestricted by patents, licences and other legal wrangling.
MP3 has a history of licencing and patenting issues, OGG Vorbis is patent free and open. Thus, of the two, the latter format is more likely to ensure continued access to the data.
Yes, the popular ( read: pre-installed with an OS ) music playing software make it difficult to play Ogg but there are plenty of players around. You call it fanaticism and say he has compromised to make a point. I (and many others I suspect) would say he is absolutely not-compromising and this decision is completely in line with Stallman's aims and philosophy and those of the FSF.