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Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy
Dotnaught writes "The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report (PDF) that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy and add more value to the U.S. economy than copyright industries contribute. "Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion.", said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."
I wrote an article about the lack of fair use being a consumer right last week. In particular, I mentioned that even 90% Creative Commons licensed music is very restrictive for videographers -- which was a surprise to me when I found out. Unless you only use the CC-BY license (only 60 albums exist in that license), you can't "sync" audio and video legally for free for your own projects. And that's for the CC music we are talking about (and two of the Board of Directors of CC agreed with my conclusions). I don't even want to start thinking how bad it will become if RIAA starts suing the actual users on youtube who sync their HOME videos with their music. In other words, IMO, fair use should be expanded to become a consumer right, at least for personal pre-specified usage (I am not endorsing piracy here and I do believe that commercial vendors should continue licensing for professional usage).
When the MPAA and RIAA quote ridiculous figures for the damage they suffer from copyright infringement, people here react with ridicule. How much you want to bet the slashdot crowd will accept these figures uncritically because it supports their ideology?
Fair use generates some money to a lot of people.
Copyright generates a lot of money to some people.
So the real question is what does our society value? Many people getting a slice of the the pie, or a few people getting all the pie?
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
...how much would you pay for your fair use rights?
An online newspaper publishes articles which include copyrighted images (company logos for example) under fair use. So they chalk up the entire revenue of the newspaper at "profiting from fair use". Seems just as shady to me as the RIAA's outrageous claims of piracy damages (which are modest compared with the staggering $trillions figure here).
Even within many companies, different business units will compete for the same cusomers and make competing products (wasting company resources in duplicated efforts). Rather than try improve the whole company's position, business unit managers will crush eachother to get ahead.
Basically it is the old story: you get what you reward. Competitors get rewarded (directly or via Wall St) by beating eachother up, not by their contribution to the economy at large.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Doesn't fair use mean you don't pay for content? Where is all this money coming from?
Hey man, every time some yahoo walks down the street singing "Free Bird, our national value is improved by $0.10. Don't knock it!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Since without one, the other either doesn't exist or else is superfluous.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I believe fair use rights should be greatly expanded, and defended against incursion from DRM technologies and bad laws like the DMCA. Unfortunately, this study is a good example of using meaningless statistics to prove a point. The statistics are based on studying what are referred to as "Fair Use Industries" such as education and software, but there is no meaningful way to quantify (for instance) exactly how much the relatively lax enforcement of copyright law against educational photocopies really contributes to the economic value of the education industry. I believe that this study does demonstrate just how important the free flow of information is to many important industries, but the leap from that well-supported assertion to a statement claiming a particular dollar amount benefit from fair use rights is not justified.
Doesn't fair use mean you don't pay for content? Where is all this money coming from?
People that (for example) buy computers and DVD burners and software and tons of blank media to copy movies and music. People that buy iPods to play tracks from the CDs they buy. Etc etc.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
My guess is "fair use exception" revenue generation is largely a result of websites using other people's content to generate ad revenue. Without fair use exceptions, 80% of the Internet "content" would disappear. When our economy gets past websites and Internet "companies" relying on a business model of profiting from the aggregation of other people's original efforts, I'm betting revenue generated from "fair use exceptions" will drop accordingly.
An economy can only sustain itself so long from re-packaging other people's work before it runs out of gas. Rewarding original creation is what is needed more.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Nothing as far as I can tell.
It isn't a "fair use" right to be able to make a derivative work.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
revenue isn't the same thing as value added... sorry for the spurious post
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I've long suspected that the congressional attempt to limit fair use, or to create draconian IP laws, was causing more damage than not to the global economy. These numbers seem to reinforce that, and hopefully the fools on the hill will pay attention.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Making backups of my CDs contributes $4.5 Trillion to the US economy? That greater than one third of the US GDP. Sorry if I'm a skeptic.
A problem that will become more and more obvious as internet multimedia pick speed, is that there will be less and less difference between "personal use" and "commercial business use".
If I host a YouTube video for my relatives with personal photos synched to some commercial track, it's supposed to be ok. But what if I have a cut from the ads since I signed a deal with YouTube.
Even worse, what if YouTube automate the process, and I get a cut if my video becomes popular automatically. Then I can wake up one day to see the video popularity rise and I'm suddenly a criminal.
I really wish the industry representatives would sit down and rethink copyright, DMCA and fair use (while following the same basic rules), but I know if they do, they'll tilt it further away from fair use rights, versus recognizing them better.
We'll need some screwed up revolution again after sitting through hundreds of frivolous suits, since greed on both sides (consumers and the industry) overshadows their reasoning.
>If I host a YouTube video for my relatives with personal photos
>synced to some commercial track, it's supposed to be ok
Nope, it's not. It is copyright infringement. YouTube STILL makes money, even if you don't. And even if they weren't, you are still not licensed to use music that way.
Agreed with the rest of your points.
because people don't have to pay for things they shouldn't have to. more money available for everything else other than paying only for "rights"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is a great start to estimating the contribution of fair use to the economy, but it misses two issues. First, fair use will only occur if original works are created and original works will only be created if people have some chance of earning a living from them. Saying that the contribution of fair use exceeds that of copyright should imply more fair use and less copyright is like saying we don't need to pay Boeing and Airbus, because flying (not making planes) contributes more to the economy. The larger point is that the value of fair use is a multiplier on the value of copyrighted material and that's what makes the analysis so hard. By this study's numbers, each dollar of copyrighted material generates another $2 or $3. So anything that leads to another $1 of paid copyright material should add even more fair use value.
Second, the real model needs to consider the trade-off (not the relative numbers). That is, if a given avenue of fair use is curtained by x% (e.g., add another year to copyright protection or prohibit consumer copying of music beyond device shifting) how much does the economic contribution by fair use drop and how much does the contribution of copyright increase? I'll be the first to say that I don't know the answer to that and that this study doesn't answer it.
In looking at the trade-off we need a model that reflects how added fair-use may increases the value multiplier, but may decrease the incentive to create copyrighted material and the pool of copyrighted material. This might vary according to both the nature of the work and the nature of the fair use restriction. For example, I'd argue that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft wouldn't lose much if copyright terms were extended by a hundred years -- that aspect of copyright does not effect them much. And would Microsoft lose money if music sharing were impossible? Internet companies might even make more money if all music copying involved some payment (handled by an internet company). The Fair Use multiplier would not change by much even if some types of fair use were curtailed. On the other hand, these companies would lose a great deal if strict interpretations of copyright meant that every transient copy of a piece of text (e.g., copies in RAM, server caches, and internet routers) had to be subject to some copyright fee paid to a MAFIAA-like organization.
This study is a great start, but we need a better model of the marginal effects of the change in total economic value created as a function of more or less fair use. At the very least, this study proves we need some fair use but it does not prove whether we have enough fair use or too little fair use.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If that fair use money were pumping bribes back to Congress as much as the much tinier copyright money were, we'd have a lot more fair use protection, and a lot less abusive copyright.
The copyright industry just lost its great, politically powerful champion in Jack Valenti. Valenti was completely tight with fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson (who was called "Master of the Senate" before becoming Kennedy's VP, then president by assassination), handling the press for him. Until Valenti left the White House in 1966, with Johnson's endorsement, to become head of the MPAA, just as Hollywood's products got a copyright venue in the TV explosion. Valenti just died this past Spring.
This is the time for the copying industries that really "promote the progress of science and useful arts" to push back the copyright monopoly industry. Let's finally get our First Amendment rights to free expression to trump the synthetic government monopolies on content that are holding us all back.
--
make install -not war
The value of Shakespeare alone to the US economy is in the gazillions. How many school plays & textbooks, theaters, community centers, and even Hollywood studios would disappear if Shakespeare's works went into the private domain with no fair use provision.
What about the value of putting previously copyrighted works in the public domain? That's the criteria we really need to get our hands on to convince the legislators to reduce copyright terms.
The difference, is those very same 'some people' contributes a lot to the congresscritters' re-election funds while the 'a lot of people' do not. Take a wild guess which way the IP laws tilt for.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
fair use lets people experience new things, which in turn makes people more creative, which makes them create new things, which can be sold, which makes profit!
1.) download stuff and listen to it / sample it, etc..
2.) make stuff
3.) profit!
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
They're on the right track but if anything have grossly underestimated the financial impact. Everything we say, do and even think flows from the work of our predecessors, long since peering out from the public domain. All the benefits - financial and otherwise - are profound, incalculable. Still the attempt is greatly appreciated.
- js
No problem at all. RIAA or MPAA will send DCMA take down notices and will, through the handy help of Congress, steal your content by declaring it as their own.
Welcome to America, land of political whores.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
you can use my music for free.
email me.
we'll work it out.
just cause it's under CC doesn't mean i can't relicense it to you under something else.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
There is a difference between using someones audio work in another audio work and using someones audio work in another audio-visual work?
I agree there is a difference, but don't see how one of them is necessarily "fair use" and the other isn't. If "fair use" were to allow combination of audio and video why not audio and audio? If the author wanted that they wouldn't have chosen an no derivative licence.
Nor am I sure how you could account for the difference in a generic licence without specifically mentioning particular media.
Perhaps it would involve some language about allowing "combined" rather than "derived" works where the original work is allowed to be used if it is "unmodified". How you'd define "unmodified" I don't know. It would need to allow necessary technical modifications to allow the combination while not allowing qualitative changes.
What you really need is more music produced with a less restrictive licence rather than trying to force people using the No derivative to allow derivatives. Either that or find a piece of music you like and actually ask the author if you can use it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Sound good, thanks, I will email you later tonight.
omg, trevin, your homepage... its ... its... its... so 1994!
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
not there's anything wrong with that. :)
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
While that's what
Those are some nice fair use rights you got there...Be a shame if anything happened to 'em.
Who would have thought that allowing users to ideally "share" samples of media with someone else (via youtube or the like) that someone that watches or listens might actually like it and buy the CD/DVD/Whatever. I'm sure a lot of us here use to have mix tapes that someone made up for you and thought to yourself "wow I like that song I might buy the cassette(or CD)". Really how are people supposed to get new music if all they have to go buy is the crap that is on those music television shows or on the radio where they play a very limited selection, and if you don't like Justin Tiberlake or 50 Cent too bad.
Nowhere do the authors suggest (or even intimate IMO), that copyright should be eliminated or that fair use is "better" than copyright. Their argument is that fair use *does* add significant value to the economy and should not be denigrated the way it often is lately, or worse, eliminated altogether.
I think they may also be arguing that if we merely restored the (old) status quo, where fair use was perfectly legal again, and the length of copyright was returned to a more reasonable length of time that we would all be better off economically.
At least that's the most reasonable inference to make from this study IMO.
But now patents are abused by big companies so little ones don't start.
God spoke to me.
This isn't really a comment on your thesis here, but you got me thinking ... is there a CC license that basically says, "NO, you cannot distribute my work ... you may only distribute derivative works?" In other words, sure, sync my music with your video, put it up on YouTube... make a remix of it... but if folks just want an MP3 of it, they need to download it from me. Might be kinda interesting.
Breakfast served all day!
'So they chalk up the entire revenue of the newspaper at "profiting from fair use".'
That is easily offset by the fact that profits from copyrighted materials are credited across the board despite the fact that copyright may not be responsible for those materials existing. After all, there were songs, plays, books, and works of art before copyright and there likely would be movies, books, albums, plays, and works of art if copyright didn't exist today.
Sadly human beings are given to profound fits of primate behavior
If you've ever spent a minute watching Nova or the Science Channel when a show was on demonstrating said behavior, there is a tremendous drive for primated (most mammals) to take as much as they can possibly get away with. With a monkey, it's fill you cheek pouches with friut, cram fuit under your arms, between your legs, as much as you can carry and more!
In fact more than you can eat before it spoils. Because you're packing it away while the good times last, and you're biology tells you the good times won't. So you cram it in, into you can cram no further. That, and if another monkey tries to take what you've laid claim to... well heaven help that monkey.
It's like the Malay Monkee trap... people will actually try to control, lock up, take, and destroy if they can't use it personally, anything they can, because the very same biological imparative is calling the shots. They will actually hurt their long term profits, to have some sense of control, and to lock others out in the cold. All because they want all the goodies. They want to control all the goodies. Some is not enough, they want them all, and thay want to control them.
This is not subtle form of social insanity, and huge sectors of our population are in the grip. WAKE UP PEOPLE, you hunger to control, is being perpetrated on the world to your own detriment. STOP FIGHTING TO SURVIVE, and please begin living. The two mentalities are mutually exclusive, because the first leaves no room for the second.
Here's the real threat... some bright child will discover the inherent value of fair use, then it's going to be all over. The rest will cave in, or go the way of the Dodo bird.
Not that I know of. It would indeed create a new kind of business model... which is "advertise my work by using it any way you want in your derivative works, but to download the original you gotta pay me". Although there is a danger with this idea: that a derivative is better than the original. :D
The first thing is, money means nothing.
Money is not wealth, it's just a way to figure out how to split the pie.
Don't agree? Check out some footage of elderly people paying for food with wheelbarrows of money when the USSR fell.
Expect to watch the baby boomers frantically waving money and deeds around in the coming years, desperate for some young person to care for them, only to be confronted by the fact that they traded those who might have been able and willing in exchange for birth control, a desk job and an extra zero on their bank statement long ago.
Anyways.
When life improves because plenty is created, whatever there is plenty of becomes worthless.
Oxygen is worthless for this reason.
However, it would be difficult to argue that we'd be better off with less oxygen.
It would be hard to argue that we'd be better off if we found a way to hoard it and make people pay for it.
But that's the argument being put forth by those who defend copyrights.
They feel that when people are kept away from art, music, etc, and only allowed to enjoy it if they pay, then wealth is created.
This is nonsense.
The truth is, leverage is created. Which is really what money represents.
And in a world where everything you might possibly need or want has been stamped with a "Property of so and so" marking, and police with guns will show up if you touch it without permission, leverage can seem pretty important.
Thing is, stupid, ignorant and desperate neighbors make bad neighbors, they make poor allies, and they make problems for everyone.
At this point, if we wanted to, we could put every book ever written on earth, every song ever sang, every play ever performed, every newscast, every scientific paper, the lot, we could put it on one little cube of holographic storage and distribute it far and wide across the earth. The tech was new two years ago.
So, aside from the collective "Intellectual Property" laws, which are intended to promote the creation and distribution of works of art and science for the common good, there is nothing stopping us from giving every human on earth a copy of the Library of Alexandria.
Wouldn't you think that the reward of having 6 billion and counting educated, informed neighbors to be your peers, partners and friends would be worth the price of finding a better system to fund creative works that doesn't require them to be locked away in order to properly operate?
Seriously. These intellectual property laws time has passed, and when you look at it in this fashion, it's pretty fucking glaringly obvious.
Lets get talking with open minds about alternatives economic structures that don't leave the creators out in the cold and don't require the poor people to flounder in ignorance any longer than they already have, hey?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
'An online newspaper publishes articles which include copyrighted images (company logos for example) under fair use. So they chalk up the entire revenue of the newspaper at "profiting from fair use".'
I realize I already replied to this once with another point but something else has just occurred to me. That is a fairly terrible example. Newspapers couldn't exist without fair use. A fairly huge portion of any given newspaper is spent quoting people interviewed and excerpts of outside sources of information. In fact, if a reporter has done their job, a news article won't really contain any original material of note, just a collection of facts included from outside sources under fair use.
is that our forefathers knew best. Most argued for LIMITED TIME copyrights, that would prevent building of empires and allow true capitalism to take place. It is those that push increased copyrights and try to limit fair use who have more in common with USSR and Communist China, than any other group.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If these soft-products, art, music, video are as valuable as the owners say they are, then why aren't they paying the approriate property taxes on them. I think if RIAA members were been taxed on true value of their product then a lot of this crap would be released to public domain in order to minimize tax expense. This BS with life time rights, when others just as creative are confined 12-15 year patient laws, has got to go. Heck you can't even own a home unless you pay property taxes. Its like renting house from the government. So why are artist exempted ??? I'll bet Micheal Jackson didn't pay shit for property taxes on Beetle music ownership, yet he made millions selling licenses.
I think YHBT.
You can produce value without having to pay for it, which is the reason fair use (And copyright expirations!) exist.
Cost != Value, grandparent knows it, and he's just screwing with you.
and tomorrow's headline:
"Copyright groups claim study shows unlicensed usage of copyright materials is costing US $2.2 trillion."
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
This is actually an argument in favor of copyright at least as much against it.
Seriously; this is not a troll.
Fair use is often a side-benefit of copyright. Someone creates a work, hoping to get paid directly or by a publisher or whatever. Other people benefit for free from this system, through the fair use rights.
How much do they benefit? If the study is correct, about $5 trillion in 'value added' works are created, and of that revenue only about 30% is paid to the various copyright holders. That would make copyright a pretty good deal for society--for each $1 in revenue turned over to the holder of a government-granted monopoly, $3 is turned over to the general public.
This is overly simplistic, of course, since obviously not all production ceases without copyright, and some fair use (free software, for example) is on copyrights which are unenforced (practically speaking). Not to mention numerous other caveats and speculation about behaviors within a different incentive system. Still, for anyone who claims this supports the idea that copyright is too stringent and stifling innovation--which includes me, in various circumstances--this is a fairly surprising finding.
Making a backup copy of a DVD that *I own* is very much Fair Use.
Being able to use the music that *I bought* on whatever playback device I choose is also very much Fair Use.
Great post. A few additional words of caution to those smelling blood and circling in hopes that copyright will fall of its own weight...
Fair use used to be something easy for people to do on their own, and it was a heavy burden on a publisher to show that someone was violating the copyright in a way that was unfair. It was hard to notice, legal avenues were the main way of proceeding, it cost a lot to even try. In the modern world, programmatic restrictions can keep people from making legitimate fair use, shifting the burden of proof from the publisher to the one needing the fair use. That, in itself, makes a mockery of fair use.
People's annoyance at the mechanical restrictions is certainly legitimate, but they should be careful to note that this is not an annoyance at "fair use", it's an annoyance at the way in which publishers and makers of technology are allowed to err in their own favor with no recourse. I've advocated for the creation of a legal notion of an "intellectual property easement" (by analogy with a real property easement), allowing one to sue a vendor or publisher for a way to make available a mechanism in support of fair use where the legitimate option has been mechanically forbidden. This might balance the scales without infringing copyright.
It's very easy for people to leap improperly to the notion that "big companies" own copyrights and "little people" can't use what they need, since a lot of this ends up being about published movies and TV shows and photos that people want to mark up and play with. But it works in reverse, and in the case where you're a little person who makes a movie, the firm application of copyright is all that stands between your ability to share with your friends or publish something on your site with a "look but don't copy notice" and your non-ability to keep a big magazine or portal from just lifting your work with not even a "thank you" in order to reuse it for them.
In my opinion, the value in copyright is not in protecting the big guy, who has many ways to make money, it's in protecting the little guy, just trying to make a start. So let's not be too quick to erode it.
The effect of further eroding copyright protection in favor of fair use becoming more like "unlimited free use" probably wouldn't help the free software movement either.
Of course, none of what I've written above in favor of keeping copyright protection strong should be taken to mean I think it's reasonable to have copyright terms as long as they are today. It's ridiculous, and getting worse in that regard. When I speak of copyright protection, I mean during a reasonable term of copyright, as originally designed. Perhaps even shorter for computer software, since the period of time between creation and obsolescence is probably only a few years, and even generously 14 years would be more than enough to be called conservative.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
"Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion.", said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."
This sounds very interesting until you realize that without copyright industry there's no fair use industry too.
In fact, if I blindly accept the given numbers for canonical (just for a moment), then 1.3 trillion is the money, PART of which the *content producers* will receive for creating their work.
And 2.2 trillion is then industries enabled by the *same* content, but NO PART of which content producers will receive.
So this is a study you can spin any way you want. The copyright industries will use it to claim how fair use robs content producers of their income, and pro-fairuse supporters will use it to point out how fair use creates a lot of additional value that will be otherwise lost if it copyright industry had a full lock down.
All in all, business as usual.
According to the RIAA and the MPAA the actual value of the copyright industry WITHOUT PIRACY should have been $120 trillion-ga-zillion dollars.
d
(and if you want to increase the Gross Domestic Product of the US, just copy your mp3 collection to another HD and the GDP will increase by $10k)
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
RIAA and MPAA lobby congress for stricter copyright restrictions. Representatives noted that "studies show that intellectual property thieves have deprived media producers of over $1.6 trillion in revenues through so-called 'fair use' of protected material."
We are the 198 proof..
That open things are more valuable is obvious that's why copyrights and patents expire. They exist to reward innovators with a temporary excess profit (at the cost of less gains for everyone else.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
We'll share the technical and scientific literature and leave all the Britteny Spears garbage as the exclusive domain of the RIAA.
Have gnu, will travel.
I hate to say it, but having taken a look at the article and the report, there are very serious issues with the methodology of the article. This report certainly does not indicate what the article suggests - quite frankly, the article is FUD.
But, I'm not going to just make the claim, I'm going to back it up. There are some very suspicious omissions and problems (excluding the terrible math in the article):
1. "Fair Use" industries are defined in great detail (albeit in charts that are sideways, making them unnecessarily difficult to read), with each industry used itemized. However, nowhere are "Copyright" industries defined or itemized. We simply do not have the other side of the comparison. For that matter, the report itself doesn't even make a comparison. Nowhere in the front or back matter did I find anything comparing the monetary value of fair use to the monetary value of copyright. The report makes a statement about fair use and backs it up. The article does no such thing, and does not source its statements about copyright-related industries.
2. This report lists several industries as "Fair Use" industries which are arguably dependent on copyright as well, meaning that in a comparison they must be counted on both sides. They are:
- Internet publishing and broadcasting
- Software publishers
- Radio & television broadcasting (counted twice in table 1)
- Printing and related support activities
- Newspaper publishers
- Directory, mailing list, and other publishers (for some reason, described exactly the same as "newspaper publishers" - who edited this?)
- Other publishers (apparently, these are the OTHER other publishers - yes, it makes my head hurt too)
- Motion Picture and Video Industries
- Sound Recording Industries
- Performing Arts Companies
- Agents and Managers for Artists, Athletes, Entertainers, and Other Public Figures
- Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers
Frankly, with the abuse like that which is taking place under the RIAA, and the poorly thought out sections of the DMCA, I can see how a report like this can be handy for legislators (although headache-inducing to read online), but the article is just FUD. For a comparison, copyright-dependent industries need to be defined, otherwise you're just pulling numbers out of the air.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Ack, sorry, I misread a word there. You said "private domain," and I thought you said "public domain."
But, in all honesty, Shakespeare has never re-entered copyright. Some editions are copyrighted, but that's because of the editing in notes and whatnot that create a new work. The actual plays themselves are public domain, and can be used however you like.
(This doesn't stop some people from trying to claim the entire thing is copyrighted, but that doesn't actually make it so. I can claim the moon is made of Lego blocks, but it won't make it true.)
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Without copyright, would "Fair use" actually have any meaning? That being said, I'm glad to see some folks with big fat checkbooks getting behind the concept. The EFF does great work, but arguably, they're somewhat limited in what they can do by the money (or lack thereof) they have to spend.
oblig.
I for one welcome our new Fair Use overlords.
The Digital Sorceress
Fair use doesn't just mean you don't pay for content.
For instance, parody is considered fair use. By that logic, about half of every CD Weird Al sells is dependent on fair use.
As someone else pointed out, newspapers use fair use for everything from photographs to quotes.
Schools use fair use to educate using copyrighted materials. Who here was brought up in the US education system and hasn't seen the movie Roots, for instance? It was presented as part of U.S. History where I went to high school.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Too bad that system only works (and the theory explicitly STATES this) when no particular entity has too much control over it. Then, that entity becomes a parasite. Much of what we call free market capitalism today is in reality that sort of parasitic relationship.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
What were you referring to here?
In fact, to add to your point, Fair Use implies Copyright, as without Copyright, Fair Use is meaningless (since all uses become quite equally allowable).
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
The point is not about the currency fluctuating compared to external markers.
The point is that when there is less available, there is less available, and if no one is selling, you're not getting.
You can have situations where no one is paying for anything and everyone stops doing anything and suddenly there is abject poverty everywhere where only a short time ago there was plenty. But it's not because the money went away, it's because the people stopped having an organizational system, so they just stopped doing anything. Turns out money doesn't mean shit if no one is being industrious.
I think it's important to make the distinction that money isn't wealth, it's leverage. People like to confound the issue by talking about money going away from the artists, writers, musicians, technologists etc and depict scenarios where creativity disappears because no one is paying for it.
It's put forth as an inevitable consequence, but it isn't. The wealth that was putting food in those peoples stomaches, roofs over their heads, and the small little pleasures that make life worth living within their reach didn't just disappear. We don't suddenly not have the capacity to provide for them where before we did.
That's the most important point that needs to be addressed. If you can't break people out of the money-is-wealth mindset, you've already lost, because you really are destroying wealth in the terms a typical economist would use to describe it.
If we don't give them leverage the old-fashioned way, what system will we put in its place to see to it that these people are still cared for by our society.
If we answer that question, and do it well, there is no longer any reason why you, "The One And Only", cannot have a personal copy of the Library of Alexandria for yourself. Seriously, would you like one? I really, really want you to have one dude, that's why I mouth off and try to get people to think outside the box.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Like piracy in China is worth more to their economy than copyright. If there wasn't piracy, people wouldn't buy DVD players, computers, blank DVDs, DVD burners, ect because they wouldn't have the money to pay for copyrighted items. Thus, piracy is an integral part in the modern Chinese economy.
Picking on the CC seems like a bad example to me. As alluded too, I think the guys that run the CC would be the first to admit that theres problems to iron out.
But it would seem the far bigger problem is getting more people generating CC (or equally fair-use friendly) content. My company does CC-BY-SA Travel information (travel guides and restaurant reviews) and truth is it sucks. We are just starting out, so I suppose its to be expected on our end, but even the biggest player is bad compared to commercially licensed content. Theres actually a great article here some guy wrote about how horrible copyleft travel information is compared to commercially generated information.
In my opinion we first need to get more people actually generating copy left style content thats inherently more fair use friendly, before we quabble about problems with the license. Even in your own example with the albums, if there were 60,000 albums licensed CC-BY instead of 60, your impression conceivably would have been much different.
Travature.com: Hello...World
If money isn't wealth in your eyes, can I have your money? If you honestly believe money is not a form of wealth, email me (there's a challenge/response setup you'll have to pass through) and we can arrange something. After all, if money isn't wealth, you would be just as wealthy if you gave me all your money as you are now. I think you're trying to say that not all wealth is money. That's more to the point, and quite different from what you've been saying.
My concerns are for the precision of the discourse--they are not for or against any of your conclusions.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Tell that to the RIAA and MPAA.
It is strange how people don't understand money. Money is nothing more than a representation of wealth, it is not wealth itself. All forms of wealth on this planet are merely placeholders for work, which is a product of energy and distance (or energy and time, in the humanistic non-scientific term). In a nutshell it equals real, measurable value to humans. If we didn't tacitly agree on whatever currency we held onto as this representation, then the currency ceases to be meaningful. Ergo money is not wealth. Energy/Work represented by such currency *is* wealth.
Get rid of currency and people have no problem going back to what money represents. That's why there'll always be bartering, as people use their own work / energy as relative currency to another's. As an aside, the reason gold was originally the first most valuable and widely used 'currency' everywhere is because it is, in an of itself, a very useful material. It has heft, which humans like, it is colorful (lustre) and aesthetically pleasing, it does not rust or break down, it is easily made into many things, and it is scarce. So you could make a case for gold being intrinsically valuable, but currently "money" (paper and electronic numbers in a bank's database) have no value at all. Coins are the vestigial holdout, and seem to be nearly extinct in the U.S. anyway. People don't bother to pick up a dropped quarter on the ground anymore! So much for the Almight Dollar...
Vox et praetera nihil
Yeah, but they do expound idiocy like this:
"Copyright was created as a functional tool to promote creativity, innovation, and economic activity," said Black. "It should be measured by that standard, not by some moral rights or abstract measure of property rights."
Let's try it:
Public schools were created to homogenize immigrants and keep children out of the labor force. They should be measured by that standard, not by some moral theory about a right to an education.
Hmm, nope, that doesn't work. Let's try again:
The state secrets privilege was created to permit royalty to keep commoners from nosing in their affairs. They should be measured by that standard, not by some moral theory about separation of powers and consitutional Democracy.
Hmm, nope, that didn't work either. This argument form doesn't seem to work for me. Maybe I don't know how to use it right.
...we don't need any more home-brew anime music videos on youtube.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Not really. They go to prison for a long time, while recreational, law-abiding shooters use up a pack of bullets at the range every weekend.
Software patents delenda est.
But what if you whistle "In the Hall of the Mountain King"?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Well, Creative Commons does have licenses for works that are to be sampled only. Commercial sampling is allowed, and verbatim redistribution is only allowed non-commercially. I'm not sure it's as general as you suggest, but legally the sampling is creating a derivative work. A problem with your suggestion is that it's very easy to create a derivative work: chop five seconds off the end, or rap "I rock" over the top of the chorus. Once people trivially change your file to creative a derivative work, they've defeated the point of your license. How would you get around that? Demand that all changes must be significant?
The cream of the crop talent-wise would then rise to the top rather than those the record companies forced to the top.
Yes, there are many issues with this approach but I'd still love to see what would happen.
Well written and well argued.
Believers in copyright often tell me that artists, lawyers, and telephone book editors need to punish us for copying their precious data and ideas, otherwise all this cultural wealth will evaporate and disappear. I suggest that if these "artists" need society's support so much, put them on government welfare to do what they do and give the rest of us back our freedom to share ideas and culture with whomever we like, however we like.
Of course, copyright believers are aghast at the idea. Britney Spears might look like a failure if she discovered her singing was economically devoid of value and had to accept hand-outs or work for a living.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That is exactly the point of the copyright regime -- promote the progress of the arts by promoting the creation of new works. The question today is whether we promote more and better new works by letting people freely copy bits of old works and incorporate them into new ones, or whether we promote them by allowing an artist to retain a monopoly on their creation and sue others for trying to use it. (this point stands whether or not the resulting work is actually "derivative" -- that's another whole debate, since sampling or quoting another work is not enough to make the new work derivative, IMHO)
"Although there is a danger with this idea: that a derivative is better than the original."
Another danger is that culture will be enriched by this derivation. We'd better not take that risk, eh?
Furthermore, in this case, the ratio is a lot more important than the figure itself. It wouldn't matter if trillion was replaced with billion or even million, the point still stands (just not to the same degree)
I see. you only want state-sponsored entertainment. Kiss goodbye to all video games except those that teach how government is just fantastic. State sponsored comedy should be pretty cutting edge too.
people will throw away all kinds of valuable stuff, if it lets them justify stealing other peoples hard work.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Yeees, because clearly the population at large makes their media purchase decision based on the quality of the product. Clearly the best product is what sells the most. C'mon now. Media is only partly about the actual product, be it music, a movie, whatever. Mostly it, like anything, is about branding and selling a lifestyle to the consumer. People buy things to show their "personality", or rather that they fit into a particular category of consumers dreamt up by marketers. That the chart-topping artists are there because the record co's put them there I don't doubt, but that is possible because consumers want such a system. They want to have clear categories of what is cool, so they can themselves become cool just by spending money on the right things. Then there's the people who are cool because they buy the wrong things, but that's just the flip side of the coin, and soon enough the wrong things become the right things... Everyone chooses media based on the enjoyment they derive from it. There are some who derive that joy purely from experiencing media regardless of the images associated with the artists, but for most consumers that enjoyment comes from the "peripheral" values attached to the media. Completely free derivative use of media would probably yield some interesting works, but I don't think it would change the commercial landscape much.
Sorry about the huge block of text, I keep forgetting I need to use BR's...
They did, that's the problem, that's how we got the DMCA in the first place.
I really wish the people's representatives would sit down and rethink copyright, DMCA and fair use. And remember while doing so whose representatives they are.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I do write some music, but I suck and can't _play_ well, plus I'm too lazy to do a "wall/layers of sound" thing on it.
So if someone takes it, and makes it much better, then hey that's a good thing to everyone else.
The world would be a worse place if we were all stuck with halfbaked crappy stuff just because to improve on them would still infringe on some copyright/patent/etc.
Sure in theory you could license stuff, but in practice you often don't even know who to license it from till 5 years later Mr Submarine Patent hits you for X million, plus the equiv of 2+2=4 is pretty stupid thing to have to license.
It would be hard to argue that we'd be better off if we found a way to hoard [oxygen] and make people pay for it.
But, you're ignoring the fact that human beings did not create or produce oxygen; we just found oxygen all around us. Books, movies, etc. are completely different, because people created those works.
Morality is concerned with human action, not just the current state of things. So, yes, creative works became plentiful after they were created. But that tells us nothing about whether or not it is moral to copy those works.
A similar argument would be, "Terrorist attacks and earthquakes are similar, because in both cases, a lot of people die. But we don't punish anyone for an earthquake, so why should we punish anyone for a terrorist attack?" The argument notes the final state of things (i.e. people died), but fails to ask the relevant moral question (i.e. How did people die?). In the same way, you note the final state of things (i.e. a certain type of good is plentiful), but fail to ask the relevant moral question (Why is that type of good plentiful?). And so, you draw no moral distinction between breathing oxygen and copying creative works.
...but how does doing anything non-productive ADD value to an economy? Look at it this way:
Joe spends $1000 a year on media
Therefore $1000 of his money re-enters the economy, going the the record labels and the stores he bought his music from
Joe spends $500 a year on media, and copies $500 "worth" of media from friends, etc
Therefore $500 of his money re-enters the economy, going the the record labels and the stores he bought his music from. The $500 he WOULD have spent does not vanish from the economy - it'll be spent on somethign else instead. Joe now has $500 of disposable income that'll only be "lost" to the economy if he takes his Benjamins and burns them.
Joe spends $0 a year on media and is a prolific internet pirate. $300 dollars a year goes to his ISP for a fast internet connection, $200 a year go to hard drive and DVD-R manufacturers, and yet again we have an "extra" $500 that Joe will spend on something other than a media cartel. Perhaps he'll buy an Xbox, or enroll on a mechanics course. Perhaps he'll blow it on beer. But at no point is him not spending money on $a_product destroying his ability to spend it on $b_product instead.
The only difference between any of these scenarios is the amount of money that goes to any particular industry (Joe's pyromaniac tendencies notwithstanding). All of these arguments that $activity will [add|subtract] $dollars from the economy are specious.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
He's talking about the ageing population of Western nations. The reduced birth rates and increased longevity means that an increasing fraction of the population are at an age where they are retired from work and thus no longer contributing to the economy. Worse still (from an economic viewpoint) this segment also costs the economy large amounts of welfare.
While automation is a wonderful thing, there are some things that are still the province of humans. Personal care is one of those things. But with a reduced number of young people participating in the economy, there are a reduced number of potential carers. With a reduced amount of production, there is less real wealth to provide for this care. A pension fund doesn't mean squat - it's just money. Without actual production, money is worthless.
Japan is well aware of this problem and is trying to compensate with things like robotic beds for the elderly.
That then asks the following question:
Can we have a true free-market capitalist system?
The market, in practice, consists as much of the information about the market as the market itself - people don't buy the best product - they buy what they believe is the best product, which can be quite different. Therefore, a market leads to specialists in information dissemination (accurate or no), because affecting the perceptions of consumers affects the value of your product at least as effectively as altering the product itself.
So, a market of any kind, free or otherwise, leads to the growth of an industry based around the manipulation of perceptions of that market. This industry must itself be a separate meta-market, an entity that exists parasitically upon the original market.
This satisfies the requirement that a market cannot exist without other parasitic meta-markets. Now, we examine whether these parasitic meta-markets exhibit "too much" control over the market itself.
In any market system, for this informational meta-market to drive the main market, and thus show control over it, it must be sufficiently beneficial to one sector of the market in question, by offering a service that is of positive value. Information dissemination is comparatively effective in providing value to a company, in that it increases the exposure of a product to consumers, and comparatively effective in providing value to consumers, in that they gain knowledge of more alternatives (though this may be spurious value, as not all information is accurate).
Thus, while the information industry cannot exist without the main market, it provides positive value to all actors in that market, and thus has control over all actors in that market.
Now, the danger is when the value that can be gained by this industry is uneven - when the gains from promoting suppliers of products are greater than the gains from consumers thereof.
Industry gains in direct monetary terms from supply-side, but gains in indirect status terms from demand-side. However, the industry in question is concerned chiefly with manipulating status, and is thus able to minimise status losses and maximise status gains. Thus, while it is preferable to gain from both sides, if one side must be favoured, it is easier and more beneficial for the industry to favour the supply-side. This can lead to sufficiently high short-term gains to destroy any competition that focuses on demand-side.
This tells us that this meta-market will inevitably benefit from favouring supply-side, and thus that it will exert its control over these actors. We've shown above that this control is large, and thus that any market with no counterbalancing force to this will inevitably fall prey to it.
By definition, a free market's counterbalancing force (the invisible hand) actually provides positive feedback to this process, meaning that a true free market inevitably evolves to become no longer free.
Would you disagree that there are those that sincerely believe we should pay to read them? Baby Boomers and those preceding got that information is power, but they associated it with gold, the need to control and pay per use. Why can't information be associated with a credit system, rather than a debit system like most (all?) economies? I think this is what the OP was arguing with his references to oxygen and German/Russian currencies. If the poorest of the poor is already rich, then the only inequalities in societies would be a result of the inequalities of equals. (apologies W. Churchill)
If the library of Alexandria had been spread around a little more, we may still have a lot of those texts with us today. How many more texts that may or may not be of value to future generations will be lost because we continue to restrict access and availabilities?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
You missed the irony in my comment.
*I* don't want state-sponsored entertainment. Copyright proponents do. However, they generally want to remove the *appearance* of the music/movie/publishing industry as being a benefactor of the state at the expense of the rest of us; so rather than relying on direct welfare, they choose to bolster their business model by taking away out natural freedoms (of which "fair use" is just a taste), and claiming their resulting windfall as "capitalism". (Far from it!)
"Hard work" is by definition something that cannot be stolen; but of course you knew you were using hyperbolewhen you wrote that, right?
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
oh dear.
if I sit down and program a new photo editing program, what fucking 'natural freedoms' am I denying you if I tell you that you cant have the fruits of my labour for free? To insist that you do is communism, you realise that right?
What natural freedom do you have to get free Hollywood movies?
grow up.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Looking back at history there was a period where copyrights and patents were most enforced. It was the middle ages. Confronted with a fragmented and decaying political sistem the corporations took over.
In that period you could hardly think of free thought let alone free speech. Entertainment was not a industry and singers were the newspaper of the age travelling unpaid and at a risk between cities and feuds. Trade and manifacturing processes were enforced by penalty of death and most of the troubles come from religious clashes.
Are we just heading there?
Have you seen Hollywood movies, lately? Fuckers should be paying me.
You're confused. You don't need fair use for facts. Facts can be neither copyrighted nor patented.
A copyright may prevent you from *copying* the precise way a person chose to express a fact, but it can't stop you from expressing that same fact another way. In fact, if there's only one way to express a fact, copyright *cannot* protect it at all.
My natural freedom here is to be able to make a copy of something that I own, and to whatever I wish with it. I could for example want to make a copy of a spoon I bought from IKEA, or of a DVD. Another freedom would be to examine and modify something that I have bought, for example a toaster, or a computer, or the software running in my DVD player.
c++;
WTF, did you go to the GWBush school of discussion? If you're going to try and seem all cool by attacking the GP with your hip and fresh attitude, at least try and figure out what the GP is saying.
Using your logic anybody that's ever used the omnipresent (or do I have to use the word ubiquitous with someone so hip and edgy?) slashdot car analogy is just stupid and wrong because computers don't have transmission fluid.
You're being a shit while completely avoiding the point the GP is making, it kinda makes you look like -YOU- don't know what you're talking about, but are too cool (or afraid, yeah, probably afraid) to say so.
I was going to use my time to explain it to you, but after a quick review of your posts, I can see that you don't WANT it explained to you, you want to be derisive and seem (that's an important word, seem) knowledgeable while saying nothing of value.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
tags.
c++;
Even if that's the case, if the derivative acknowledges the original, people will generally want to find the original for the sake of curiosity or comparison... look at the number of people who today track down the original version of a remix track.
(Or have I inadvertantly just told a worldwide audience that I'm a music anorak?)
Quibbling over the licensing terms is an issue, however, because better licenses do make a huge difference in terms of how the content is going to be used and reused.... and over how many people will be attracted to using that particular license.
I've been involved with the software development industry for nearly 30 years now, and I will note that there were many software applications I used (and modified) that were in the public domain 30 years ago. But it wasn't until the GPL came out and perhaps even more importantly was widely used by several major players in the computer industry (most notably IBM of all companies) that open source software was perceived to have any real value.
The written word and "open source" textual projects like most wikis are still trying to find out what they can do, and to even understand what the licensing terms really ought to be about. While some projects like Wikipedia have certainly struck a chord with a large group of people, it still hasn't had a huge impact on the much larger general publishing industry yet. I believe this has to do with some of the terms and conditions of those licenses that can be absurd... such as the license republishing provisions of the GFDL and the simply raw confusion over just what is a Creative Commons license. There are so many CC licenses that to all but a hardcore fan it can be very confusing to understand what is what. I'm talking here about trying to introduce the concepts of "open content" licenses at all to people who have never heard about it before in the first place.
I will also note here that in the "marketplace of ideas" that the GPL wasn't alone in terms of license concepts for computer software, and other concepts preceeded the widespread adoption of the GPL as well. Most notably the idea of "shareware", which was a huge hit among many software developers.... even though many of those authors and software publishers rarely even wrote the software for any real intent to make money. The BSD license, in fact, was perceived to be a better license and even now has its hardcore fans that distrust some key aspects of the GPL. It was also widely in use well before the GPL was applied substantially to large numbers of computer software applications.
Man, who's gonna pay for all of those hologram cubes?
He asks "permission" as a sign of respect, not because he has to.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
He does. But he himself has stated it is only out of respect and that he doesn't *have* to.
Say, for example, he had a large extended family and a large plot of land with resources etc so they were self sufficient.
You could then take all his money. His wealth is the resources he is able to use to continue life. And that isn't a piece of paper.
It would mean you're a better whistler than anyone I've ever met.
Fair use allow you to use existing content to create new and better content, which has intrinsic value.
Copyright is about making everyone is getting paid all the time for anything that is ever used. Which sounds good in theory, but in reality it's just bureaucracy with a huge overhead, making it more difficult to produce content.
I lost my sig.
Won't happen because it's impossible to define how different a derivative work must be. E.g. if I add a triangle ting onto the end of the track, that's a derivative work, but anyone hearing it wouldn't need to download your original to hear how it originally sounded.
I wish to remain anomalous
Isn't Fair Use defined as "I paid for x, I own x"? Copyright is a restriction of Fair Use, not the other way around.
The reason it is greater value than copyright is, without societies recognising ownership and possession, copyright would be unable to be affected. It is more correct to say copyright can't exist without Fair Use.
In recent times, corporations have tried to reverse this, and come up with the idea that we are "leasing" a product for personal use. {insert your own damn car analogy} I should be able to loan a book, cd, etc to a friend. As a side note: I shouldn't be able to reproduce an identical copy for them unless explicitly allowed by the creator/s regardless of how easy it is. (Sheesh, now we are getting into the messy bit...)
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Type in Kent Hovind on YouTube.
Fair use vs False copyrights, and false DMCA claims seem to be winning so far. Quite pathetic
Make SELinux enforcing again!
This is really one of the unfair practices of newspapers which I'd like to see pursued further. If I am caught up in a newsworthy event, say a huge fire and if I, staggering from the burning building, tell a journalist what I saw in there and he then just goes off and prints what I've told him then where is my cut of that wealth ?
It's me whos done all the hard work and the journalist has just stolen it and even worse he's then sold it on for profit. I'd like to see the copyright laws strengthened in this area so anything which I have seen is protected and can't be relayed or re-imaged without my say so.
Whoever creates those works doesn't really do so for the money, but for the wealth. Now due to the organization of our society, more money usually means more wealth. However that's not a law of nature, as e.g. inflation shows. Therefore the correct question to ask is not: How would the creator get the money he deserves for his work, but: How does the creator get the wealth he deserves for his work.
Or in short: If I understand him correctly, he means that capitalism (i.e. usig money as way to represent your share of wealth) isn't really a good fit for information. And it's not a good fit because information can easily be copied, i.e. as soon as a certain information exists, there's plenty of that. Which means information, once created, doesn't really have any economic value. The economic value it gets in our society comes from making it an artificially scarce resource through applying copyright. Now those copyright schemes get harder to defend due to copying getting easier, which is why all those technical and legal measures are created (DRM, DMCA). All this harms society as a whole.
Now what the OP suggests is basically that instead of trying to "fix" the plentiness of information in order to get capitalism work right on information, instead economy should change to accomodate the real economics of information, that is, find ways to give the creators the wealth they deserve through other means than capitalism.
Now I don't know what a good alternative could be, of if it really exists, but as long as capitalism is treated as a dogma rather than as the tool it actually is, we will not find out.
The current situation in a nutshell (a note: when I speak of new information in the following, I actually mean valuable new information, not just some crap anybody could produce):
So fair use has a net benefit of 4.5 trillion, copyright has a net benefit of 1.3 trillion.
Maybe my basic math is off but 4.5 - 1.3 = 3.2 != 2.2
So is the other trillion for the RIAA/MPAA so they can continue to litigate?
Informative
"if I sit down and program a new photo editing program, what fucking 'natural freedoms' am I denying you if I tell you that you cant have the fruits of my labour for free? "
There's no need to be offensive. What you tell me I can and cannot do with my own computer and Internet connection is irrelevant.
"To insist that you do is communism, you realise that right?"
You appear confused. Communism is a system that uses violent aggression to negate one's right to physical property. If you tell me what I may or may not do with the data on my own hard disk, and whom I may send that data to, that's closer to Communism. A non-belief in copyright is entirely peaceful and non-violent, the very opposite of Communism.
"What natural freedom do you have to get free Hollywood movies?"
Again you miss the point. Hollywood Studios have every right to keep their movies locked in a vault, instead of broadcasting them all over the place, if they don't want anything copied or shared. Ah, but they want special treatment from the government that will let them sell me a DVD, and then tell me what I can and cannot do with my own physical property -- the DVD.
"grow up."
I am grown up enough not engage in ad hominem attacks or replace logic with vulgarities. How about you?
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
How does your sympathy counter ShieldW0lf's argument?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
When poor people go to get a loan they're asked for a credit report (which is a record of whether or not they pay their bills on time). When rich people go to get a loan they're asked for a financial report (which is a record of assets, liabilities, and cash flow). A mortgaged house you live in, in economist terms, is a liability and not an asset even though the poor have been taught to think this way. A mortgaged house you rent where the rent is greater than the mortgage is an asset with positive cash flow on your financial report. Wealth is assets. Money in hand is a liability because it loses value over time.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
``We'll need some screwed up revolution again after sitting through hundreds of frivolous suits, since greed on both sides (consumers and the industry) overshadows their reasoning.''
The nice thing is that you can take action here yourself. License your own works under a license that protects users' rights (copyleft), and favor works under permissive licenses for your own usage.
One step at a time, we will move towards a freeer world. It's working for software. I believe media is next.
While on the subject, I invite everyone to reply with their favorite suppliers of permissive-licensed music.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Some things, I suppose, have existence value. I think it's a shame, for example, that vandals have removed the famous frozen leopard on Mt. Kilimanjaro, mentioned in Hemingway's Snows of Kilimanjaro. Since I never plan to visit there, its value to me is existence value, not use value. Same for the Bosporus dolphin; or the Rosetta Stone.
Consumers of "intellectual property" are not grant makers. They don't buy the latest Dan Brown opus because it pleases them that a significant artist has bread on the table. They are users of the information therein. What has changed is that there are more kinds of copy uses possible than before. On the flip side, technology makes it possible to restrict use as never before.
So buyers of "IP" value the works for the ways they can use it; the opportunity to use works is greater than ever before, and the scope of "owner" sanctioned uses is narrower than ever before. So the share of legitimate use value a user gets from his "fair use" rights ought to grow relative to the share he gets from officially sanctioned uses.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Someone mod this person "+1 Terrifyingly accurate".
Not necessarily better, just more ambitious. And ambition plus lack of skill is truly a terrifying thing. Especially when I whistle Grieg.
New punctuation update "~" (no quotes) at the end of a line to indicate sarcasm. ~
You seem not to have noticed that Newton, Einstein and Da'Vinci are dead (sorry to break the news to you). As a result they lack certain needs such as food and a place to live.
Much as I like free stuff and dislike DRM etc I appreciate that if I want someone to write a book, record an album or act in a film I enjoy then there needs to be some form of transaction that allows them access those little essentials that prevent them from going the way of Newton and friends. If we don't do this then you'll rapidly discover the next generation of artists doesn't exist because they are all to busy working to pay the rent.
'If I am caught up in a newsworthy event, say a huge fire and if I, staggering from the burning building, tell a journalist what I saw in there and he then just goes off and prints what I've told him then where is my cut of that wealth ?'
You do realize it isn't a big enough pie to go around? If you wanted a cut you shouldn't have told the reporter, you should have advised them that someone will have to pay for your story.
This theory was later found to be complete bunk.
It seems that for many involved their interest is making as much money as possible regardless of the impact on anyone else.
According to Apple, 30/track, unless you buy full albums.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"A mortgaged house you live in, in economist terms, is a liability and not an asset even though the poor have been taught to think this way."
Not true, or at least true only in a circumstance where real estate values are static or declining, or a person is continuously borrowing against their equity. Assuming a static real estate market, my home has a value in real terms of however much I have paid against the principle of my loan. if I bought the house last month, and made my first payment, in theory my home has a real value to me of $100 or whatever the principle portion of my payment was. If real estate values go up (as they continue to do, albeit slower than they have been), I have real value of whatever portion of my principle I have paid plus the increase in value. As a rule (and certainly this could change) real estate prices increase faster than the combination of interest and inflation. This means that in real terms, I am usually making money. If I get smart or lucky, and come into an area on cusp of regentrification in a city, I can make a lot of money.
Friends of mine bought a house in such an area for around 75K, and sold it (with a 15-20K of renovation) for over 200K only 4 years later. My wife and bought an already remodeled house in the same area a year after them, and paid nearly twice a much. We still made large profit after only three years.
I might (might) have been able to make more money in the same amount of time with the same initial investment in some other markets, but I would not have been able to live in my stocks, bonds or commodities while I waited for the investment to mature.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
you know nothing about communism, i have read marx and engels work, i can assure you my definition stands. you have reading to do.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Ask any competent economist. We've known for over 300 years that every monopoly costs it's society more than it provides in value. That's basic economics. Whatever else it may be, IP ("intelectual property") is a limited grant of monopoly power. In fact, that may be the only thing that the various forms of IP have in common. (They are an legal limit on freedoms of speach and action of others. Without that limiting power they would be meaningless.)
For copyright, while the proponents will swear loudly that there would be no printing, music or literature without it, history is at variance with the claims.
The greatest works of literature in the english language are generally agreed to be the body of Shakespere plays. Old Will wrote it all without any copyright for himself or others. He was paid by the Globe for each play, with a portion of the box office reciepts. In non-fiction,
I'd stack up Moores Utopia, or Platos Dialogues with Socrates against anything you might find. In Science, I'm not sure you will find the equal of Principia Mathematica in anything since. So, copyright didn't help or even motivate the best we hever had.
In Music, the greatest body of works ever was that of J.S. Bach. No copyright there. He was paid entirely by patrons. Nobility, churches, towns, etc. (A similar system to bands supported by fans today.) The only one who even came close was Mozart (W.A. not Leopold). He didn't ever have a copyright either. Go further back, the best ever singer, according to the ancient sources would have been a greek named Orphius. He never had a copyright either. So, music is not the creation of copyright in modern times. It's more the prisoner of copyright.
Hang around any musicians group long enough, and you will discover that records don't make bands money. Concerts do. Even for a major hit group. The Rolling Stones are reputed to have made money from records, several million dollars worth. Even with RIAA contracts. But, they are also reported to have taken in well over a Billion dollars from just one several year long major tour. The money for Artists is clearly not from the corporations via copyright, it's from the fans.
In publishing, there are lots of examples of publishers who make money selling only non-copyrighted works. Dover for example. The problem publishers have is that anyone selling a work without paying a copyright liscense fee to (usually) another corporation, (not the Author) is that the public pays a lower price. the publishing industry lists that as a loss to the public, where it is really a gain. Money I don't have to spend on this book/movie is money I can spend on something else I want/need.
What I see really going on here is that there is a group that wants to be paid in perpetuity for thier limited labor. Infinite reward for finite work. Nice if you can get it. The guy flipping burgers at McDonalds would like to get a deal like that too. Should you have to pay for todays meal again every day for the rest of your life? How about for 70 years after you die. It could be a debt you heirs owe. Now apply that recursivly to every meal you have ever eaten.
When you try to apply copyright concepts to real things, you quickly begin to see why it is an inherently unjust proposition.
Copyrights (and Patents) may be the only surviving forms of slavery in the Western world. (Slavery is a system where one person gets the benefits of the labor of another person on the basis of a claim the the second person is the property of the first. Copyright makes the same type of claim with regard to the time or assets of the user of works claimed by the copyright holder.)
Want stronger copyrights? Well, everybody dreams they'll be the master, not the slave.
The argument is not if copyright damages society. It does. The argument is only how much the damage is.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
I'm not avoiding his point at all, he's just doing a very poor job of making it. Honestly, my posts are no different from yours--just as you criticize the way in which I was arguing, I'm doing the same to him.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
The house itself is an asset. The mortgage is the liability.
A mortgaged house you rent where the rent is greater than the mortgage is an asset with positive cash flow on your financial report.Yes, and a house whose mortgage is paid off is an asset with zero cash flow and no offsetting liabilities.
Money in hand is a liability because it loses value over time.Cash money maybe, but invested money gains value over time. And it still isn't a liability--it's an asset, albeit one that changes in value. Please don't use technical terms without knowing what they mean. I think your main mistake is confusing assets with equity--equity is the difference between assets and liabilities, and represents net wealth in a way. So unless you're one of those trendy morons who gets an "interest-only" mortgage (or whatever they call that scam), even paying off your mortgage builds equity and grows your wealth, albeit not as effectively as buying the house cash money.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Up until now I have always expanded IP as "imaginary property", but I think you have hit the nail on the head. Henceforth (I always wanted to use that word) all references of IP shall be expanded as "Intellectual Peonage" as a more accurate and truthier representation of the intent and effects of those laws and their primary beneficiaries. Wikipedia: "[A] system of involuntary servitude was called peonage".
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I don't think you will ever see any kind of intellectual property protection for facts. If you think for awhile about what it would mean if people could own facts, I think you'll see that it's just too dangerous.
IP laws don't protect "hard work". Patents protect discovery of new designs or methods of accomplishing specific goals. Copyrights protect creative expression.
The closest thing to a law protecting "hard work" is some of the database copyright laws being discussed.
What the US really needs is citizens who demand fair use as a right, and insist that representitives act to codify fair use as a right, rather than simply ignore politics and allow Congress to serve the needs of industry.
Apple's iTunes Ringtones and Complex World of Copyright Law
Why copyright law involves more complex issues than many seem to recognize, and why we need to start caring about it.
How does the classical composer make a living when the orchestra won't pay him for playing the music he just wrote?
How does the Author do the same when I can download his text and print the books myself (do many people go to public author led book readings?)
How does the tv producer/actor/other make money from the tv series they worked on when the originals get released onto the internet and no one watches the adverts that pay for it or buys the DVDs?
Do you honestly think that something like Battlestar Galactica will be produced to give it away for free? Are you aware of how many people put how many hours into something like that? Of course if you want Coca Cola written down the side of the ships and half the episodes being Starbuck telling Apollo about the prouducts she uses to get her uniform clean it might still get paid for.