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."

Comments

Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan too

[Eugenia Loli]

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).

ok

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:ok

[langelgjm]

I'm sure plenty of folks will accept the figures uncritically, but at least in this report there is a detailed outline of the methodology used to produce those figures. They don't appear to be pulled out of thin air.

Re:ok

[garcia]

How much you want to bet the slashdot crowd will accept these figures uncritically because it supports their ideology?

If only they could give the true value of Fair Use rights in this report: priceless.

Re:ok

[jafac]

hm. fair-use value of 50,000 copies of a P2P-shared $1.20 Britney Spears single.

versus:

fair-use value of 50,000 copies of a P2P-shared $120 Physics Textbook.

Calculate the benefit to us all from the outcome of such unrestricted sharing.
In the first case, Britney Spears doesn't get paid, and perhaps stops producing music.
In the second, 50,000 kids learn physics, maybe grow up and write their own textbooks.

The difference

[nate nice]

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?

Re:The difference

[ScrewMaster]

Fair use generates some money to a lot of people.

Fair use generates vast sums of money for some people (hardware manufacturers, for one) that completely dwarfs the income generated by copyright on materials played or viewed by that equipment. Furthermore, if it were not for widespread exercise of fair use, a hell of a lot of technology (home audio recording, VCRS, CD & DVD burners, MP3 players, and so forth) would never have seen the light of day. People would have had much less use for such things if it were not for fair use. Furthermore, the content creators and copyright holders themselves have benefited from fair use, to the tune of many billions of dollars in sales they would otherwise never have made.

Copyright generates a lot of money to some people.

A lot fewer people, many of whom (unlike the hardware manufacturers) provide no creative or other useful contributions to society, and in fact have historically stood in the way of progress.

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?

You have it wrong, it's not zero-sum. What society values (and is the underlying goal of the specific legal environment originally crafted by the Founders) is a bigger pie! Copyright no longer serves that purpose in many areas, and is in need of serious repair (or reversion.)

Re:The difference

[ScrewMaster]

You missed the point. You're concerned about pigging your share of the goodies that result from creative works being packaged, protected and sold, including those to which no valid copyright even exists. That's not what the Founders were trying to achieve: revenue-enhancement for massive copyright holders was not the primary function of copyright, so far as they were concerned..

What I'm talking about is what copyright law was originally designed to promote ... a "bigger pie", in that context, means more creative works in the public domain, not more wealth being transferred from the buying public. Copyright, as currently implemented in the United States, is no longer about "advancing the useful arts and sciences" but about enhancing the private domain at the direct expense of the public. In other words, about limiting ownership of that pie to a few powerful corporations, where no benefits are being handed out, where the pie doesn't belong to the many but to the few.

If Thomas Jefferson isn't turning over in his grave he will be, once somebody tells him what's going on.

Aha! So if it's worth more...

[erroneus]

...how much would you pay for your fair use rights?

Re:I don't get it

[stefanlasiewski]

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!

Which is "worth more" is irrellevant

[mark-t]

Since without one, the other either doesn't exist or else is superfluous.

Meaningless numbers don't help the cause

[drabgah]

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.

Re:I don't get it

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Advertising $$$

[Runesabre]

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.

Re:Advertising $$$

[10101001 10101001]

My guess is "fair use exception" revenue generation is largely a result of websites using other people's content to generate ad revenue.

That's probably true. "Fair use exception" rarely allows for commercial content, as to do otherwise would crush an original author's ability to make any profit for an original idea. The exception tends to lie in reviews and criticisms. And in that field, review sites, online newspapers, and online magazines rather fit the bill.

Without fair use exceptions, 80% of the Internet "content" would disappear.

Now, this I somewhat disagree with. I don't believe 80% of Internet "content" is commercial in nature. Most comes in the form of personal webpages, blogs, and all sorts of other personal content. Look at how many posts that exist on /. that don't rely upon fair use exceptions. Now, if you wanted to talk about *quantity* of content that flows through the internet, I'd still disagree. It seems ~50% of internet traffic is piracy (bittorent/p2p). I don't think the lack of fair use exceptions would decrease that.

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.

It's funny you say that, since a majority of commercial copyright ventures outside the internet are done through corporations/companies that buy their original content from other people. Having said that, if it is the case that fair use exceptions allow for others to gain revenue, then it's a tautology that removing fair use exceptions will remove that revenue (since the classification will no longer exist). Of course, that just means more revenue from piracy.

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.

Tell that to Disney. Seriously, though, not all economies are based upon copyrights (or patents). In fact, such economies may very well be inately doomed to failure. But, yea, since the US's economy *is* based highly upon copyright, it does need more original works to avoid "[running] out of gas". Or, you know, we could try to change the US's economy to rely less upon copyright, given how fragile copyright is.

Trillion???

[MacDork]

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.

Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t

[suv4x4]

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.

Re:What does that have to do with "fair use"?

[Original Replica]

It isn't a "fair use" right to be able to make a derivative work.

I think in part that is what the GP was unhappy about. Derivative work should really only apply to commercial ventures. If I want to make a slide show DVD of my cousin's wedding pictures and set it to their favorite love song and give it to them for an anniversary present, is that really a "derivative work" or is it just something that has added value to some of my family and doesn't mean jackshit to the rest of the world? Or to make it more public, if I sync clips of The Muppet Show with a Snoop Dog song and post it to YouTube, am I somehow depriving Snoop Dog and Jim Henson of income they would have otherwise had or am I simply freely contributing some humor into the world and adding slightly to the value of YouTube? If a work would not exist if I were required to pay someone for the right to make it, then copyright is depriving the world of the value of that work.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Good Idea, Wrong Model

[G4from128k]

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.

Re:Good Idea, Wrong Model

[cpt kangarooski]

Actually, you've got it backwards, but first we'll have to be clearer about what we're looking at.

The economic value which can be exploited from a work by means of copyright compromises one incentive for creating works. There are other incentives, however, which are unrelated to copyright. For example, fine artists typically make money selling a specific copy of art, rather than just any copy of art (e.g. a Picasso painting may be worth millions; a print of a Picasso painting may be worth $10. Picasso dealt with the former.).

Presently, copyrights are granted to all copyrightable works upon creation, whether the possibility of getting a copyright actually incentivized the author or not. However, prior to 1978, in the US we granted copyrights only to authors who undertook extremely modest steps to indicate their desire for those rights. The idea is that if an author doesn't care to the point where he won't even so much as put a copyright notice on his work, then he probably wasn't incentivized by copyright to begin with; some other incentive or combination of incentives sufficed for him. They may still have involved money, but not money that required a copyright in order to be made.

As it happens, the vast majority of works created were of this latter type, where copyright appears to not have been a factor. The posts here on /. are a good example. With a few exceptions, each post here is copyrightable. But if the law was (sensibly) changed so that /. posts couldn't be copyrighted without the poster taking a few simple extra steps, I bet that there would be no decline in posting attributable to that reform, because no one here cares about or is incentivized copyrights on their posts. Instead, we just want to have a discussion, gain karma, etc. and that's our incentive.

As for the article, while it claims that fair uses provide more value for the economy than the creation of the underlying works does, remember that those uses would create the same value if they were made with regard to a public domain work. Indeed, the use of public domain works would surely be even better for the economy than if that work was copyrighted, since only a small subset of all possible uses actually turn out to be fair uses after looking at them. (Though any use may potentially be fair, mind you)

Re:Good Idea, Wrong Model

[Teancum]

The situation gets even worse than what you are suggesting here.

In the past, you could clearly identify not only who or what was copyrighted, but you could also get a reasonable expectation of being able to get some identifying information about the copyright registrant to be able to track down the original author or publisher to be able to see "permission" to reproduce the content. Such information was made available in a public forum (the Library of Congress) in a central "database"... even if it was only in a stack of boxes in some government warehouse.

To use the /. example here, you have millions of postings from the nearly 1 million registered users (plus the anonymous cowards). It would be very difficult to be able to track down to actual individuals more than a very small percentage of those registered users.... and that is just to get their actual names. To be able to independently contact them asking for copyright permission to use their comments would be much harder yet. And postings by anonymous cowards are still considered under copyright even though absolutely nobody can be traced to those postings directly.

I've tried (unsuccessfully I might add) to take Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project content and attempt to formally register the material with the Library of Congress as registered copyrighted content. To do so requires those contributing the written content to formally declare some basic information, most notably their nationality (what country they are eligible to get a passport from) and where they are currently living (not necessarily the same thing). Part of this is due to the fact that your nationality actually determines what laws can be applied to content which you write. You are also required to disclose a date of first publication, if it is a work for hire, and if somebody involved with the content has died.

What I discovered is that nearly unanimously the attitude among nearly all participants was that the formal copyright registration was not only unnecessary, but even providing these basic personal details (aka your actual name if you want to claim copyright) is considered a "privacy violation". And keep in mind all I was seeking was a voluntary disclosure of this information where those involved would be very much informed as to why the information was collected, and "anonymous" contributions were still allowed. Even being able to provide a mechanism to disclose this information was met with incredible hostility, and is only now being done on an ad hoc basis.... with repeated policy discussions to completely eliminate these pages where this kind of information has been disclosed.

Basically, under current copyright law, it is nearly impossible to determine what is or is not actually copyrighted, or even to whom it has been copyrighted. This is particularly difficult in "open source" projects like Linux or Wikipedia.

Sharing the Fair Use Bucks

[Doc Ruby]

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.

The value of Shakespeare alone...

[LOTHAR, of the Hill]

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.

Re:The value of Shakespeare alone...

[kamapuaa]

I'm guessing the ability for High Schools to freely perform Shakespeare adds a whole lot less than $4.5 trillion dollars to the US economy. By comparison, the GDP of France is $1.8 trillion dollars.

This study suggests that about 35% of the $13.1 trillion US economy comes from Fair Use. Despite the immense economic import of High School Drama Productions, I'm a bit suspicious.

Re:Good Idea, Wrong Model (straw man)

[Jeremy_Bee]

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. Some of your argument about the model is very interesting, but this part is really a classic straw-man argument isn't it?

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.

Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t

[PCM2]

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

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.

Re:I don't get it

[shaitand]

'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.

Primate behavior...

[Genda]

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.

Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t

[Eugenia Loli]

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

Re:I don't get it

[ShieldW0lf]

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?

Re:I don't get it

[shaitand]

'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.

Trillions, so where's the taxes?

[scruge]

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.

Re:I don't get it

[semiotec]

and tomorrow's headline:

"Copyright groups claim study shows unlicensed usage of copyright materials is costing US $2.2 trillion."

It most certainly is

[SideshowBob]

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.

Compromise

[PPH]

We'll share the technical and scientific literature and leave all the Britteny Spears garbage as the exclusive domain of the RIAA.

Re:I don't get it

[ShieldW0lf]

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.

Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t

[meringuoid]

I really wish the industry representatives would sit down and rethink copyright, DMCA and fair use

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.

Re:I don't get it

[Hucko]

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?

Re:I don't get it

[Rocketship Underpant]

"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?