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Copyright Alliance Presses Presidential Candidates
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Not satisfied with the current copyright terms of life plus seventy years and huge financial liabilities for infringement, the Copyright Alliance is pressuring presidential candidates for stronger copyright laws. In particular, they want the candidates to promise to divert police resources to punish even non-commercial copyright infringement. After all, without copyright, what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?"
I refuse to believe Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci's works would be any less great despite their copyright status. Don't those works predate copyright? Aren't they just proving the point that great works are most useful when they are free in the public domain?
I was going to comment making a prediction that someone would completely fail to spot the "what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?" comment was meant to be ironic. Seems I was too slow.
Slashdot can be depressingly predictable at times.
After all, without copyright, what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?"
Widely imitated styles that will help usher in a new Renaissance of learning, arts and science?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
We need a much much much weaker copyright system. Already, due to "copyright infringement" the *IAA has managed to fine single mothers and college students outrageous amounts of money for supposedly "stealing songs" this has already harmed the emergence of P2P software as a way of distributing bandwidth better as simply a way of "illegally" distributing material. In technology, there is little innovation compared to what there should be due to software patents, outrageous licenses and copyright. We need to protect fair use and give the right to make backups and to share files and songs, without it, despite what the *IAA thinks, our economy of software, music and movies will collapse leaving the *IAA and artists without a penny. Our copyright system is broken, if it becomes hardly any stronger the USA will be right up there with China and other nations that are hostile to information sharing and become even more digitally shackled then we already are.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Copyright Alliance Presses Presidential Candidates
OMG! Special interest groups are pushing their agenda by pressuring politicians! We've never seen that before! But what will become of us!?!
You just got troll'd!
Copyright is already far too long, as it lets you make more money while being dead. You are dead! You cannot be productive! No reason to pay you anymore! Because, no matter how well I did at my job, once I die I stop getting money.
Copyright is supposed to exist to promote creating stuff, so you can profit of what you created. "As long as you live" should be long enough for anybody.
I certainly will not be creating anything and thinking: "And when I die, my grandson will still be getting money for this!"
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
Candidates don't just need money (that's good too). They also need volunteers, and -- if they see people lobbying for volunteers to support pro-consumer candidates, they'll react to that.
This is where "Vote Early, Vote Often" actually applies.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
United States Constitution, Article 1: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
So I guess the correct response would be to enact legislation:
I think that about covers it. Any more that I missed?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
They just want the Clintons and Republicrats to renew their vows of high fidelity.
I know someone who is older, around 60, whose father wrote music for movies and TV shows between the 1930s-1950s. He still gets a very handsome check each month for every time one of those shows or movies are broadcasted. The son lived his entire without working, just resting on the fruits of his father's labor. No new music is being produced nor does it encourage anyone to make any.
So I am left asking, what is this BS? This would encourage less productivity, not more.
Then, of course, blog about the results you get.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Instead of copyright law biased to the media companies, how about FAIR copyright? Current copyright has outrageously long terms lasting several decades (sometimes over a century). Copyright law has no provision for punishment for Copyright FRAUD where media companies claim copyright on public domain works. Fair use is intentionally vague. Let's level the playing field--both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are in the racket, passing ever-more biased copyright law.
You can't take the sky from me...
So, we need some ideas for laws to lobby for that will scare the pants off of these guys. And yet ones that are reasonable and even perhaps wildly beneficial for the actual creative people.
See for instance some ideas here:
http://zotzbro.blogspot.com/2007/04/some-thoughts-on-copyright-offensive.html
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
I find it ironic that I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes about copyright abuses and yet points to a Web site whose coalition includes the MPAA, among others. Ironic and self-defeating it seems, you silly copyright zealots!
"My fellow Americans, today we face many pressing issues: the war in Iraq, assaults on traditional liberties at home and abroad, a difficult economy, climate change, and the list goes on. There's another issue I'd like to address today, and it may seem like it's not quite on the scale of those others. But it's an important one, and it has implications for everything I just mentioned, because the way we're going to solve those problems isn't just to ignore them and hope they'll go away; it's to use our heads and figure out solutions. More than two hundred years ago, the Founders of this great nation decided that one of the best ways to do that was to make sure that smart people who came up with important ideas were rewarded for their work, and I'd like to thank the Copyright Alliance for bringing this issue up.
;)
"Today, I am calling on Congress to fulfill their Constitutional duty to 'secure for a limited time' copyrights and patents. And limited time means limited time. It doesn't mean extending copyright every time Mickey Mouse might be due to enter the public domain. It doesn't mean sitting on patents for things that you didn't invent until someone else figures out how to make money off it, and then suing them out of the blue. When the Constitution was signed, it meant twenty years. If twenty years was good enough for James Madison, it's good enough for me. So I urge Congress to send me a bill restoring the terms of intellectual property law to their original forms, and making it clear that it's a civil matter, not a job for the FBI, because you know, Osama bin Laden is still out there and frankly I think the FBI has more important things to do."
"Thank you, good night, and God bless America."
But that's probably not the answer CA is looking for.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"The future of our creative output in the United States is at stake in the 2008 presidential election," the letter to the candidates says. "It is critical not only for members of the creative community but also for the US economy to ensure that copyrights are respected and piracy is reduced. We are asking you to let us know what you would do to help preserve one of America's greatest strengths, its creative community." Would those lobbyist happen to represent the same corporations that are now denying the authors their right to be paid their share for the money that is made in new media?
My, how 'uncharacteristically' hypocritical of them.
You can't take the sky from me...
The only people who would benefit by such an extension are investors holding portfolios that are nearing the date at which they go into the public domain. This is not the group that the Constitution's copyright provisions sought to reward.
Its interesting that all of the anti regulation and anti legislation business groups use the argument that no law or regulation should be imposed unless it provides a net positive benefit to cost difference. In this case I'd like to see the Copyright Alliance provide such an economic analysis to justify their position.
Have gnu, will travel.
"After all, without copyright, what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?""
Rather than rising to the bait. I have questions for you. Do you know the pre-history of copyright? Do you know what things were like before the industrial revolution came along or the printing press was invented?
"Sorry ma'am, we can't investigate the gang violence down your street, those officers were re-allocated to chase down the vicious ring of copyright violators."
After all, without copyright, what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?
The next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci will wind up dead.
Every time I read that I think of the scenario where these special interests are ensuring monopoly on their product and position at the great expanse of the taxpayer to enforce the laws they lobby to have put into place.
I think one result of this should be these people front all financial burden for enforcement of such actions. Just like manufacturers have to pay excessive fees for the privilege of polluting communities the RIAA/MPAA should be paying for the privilege of arresting, investigating, trying, and incarcerating grandmothers and teenagers. Of course I don't think they would like such measures but that is the course they seem to be headed.
No I can see where people will say that the revenue should come from the people they arrest, of I don't know many teenagers with the %5 million for the estimated copyright fines that are leveed. Since they don't have it it goes either to you or me or the Recording/Movie/Book industry to take care of the bill, since it's their law they should be paying the fees (actual costs - not some wonky percentage like the pay the true creators of the works they are protecting).
do you honestly think i'm going to cast my vote based on copyright in these times? jesus. you guys are real morons.
Open source has shown the "proper" way to fight these practices. If we don't like how people use copyright to restrict their works, ignore them and create Free content instead.
This hasn't caught on in the artistic world yet, I guess primarily because art doesn't scale in the same way when the community works on it as a whole (in fact, that may tend to make it much worse...)
Some other possible factors:
1. The only people who are capable of producing high quality art may be primarily interested in using it as a revenue source, and not doing it for its own sake. Or, in order to do good work, they need to also be supported by it. Our own biases aside, there is a chance this is true for some definitions of "high quality".
2. The money spent on creating commercial markets for a given product actually does create demand for that product independent of its quality, and only large scale marketing and "social engineering" can create music/art on a scale large enough to be part of the large scale social fabrics of the world.
IRATE radio (http://irate.sourceforge.net/) was one interesting approach to solving some of the technical problems associated with creating a non-commercial large scale distribution system, but it hasn't seem to pick up the momentum (in fairness, this doesn't seem to be the precise problem it is intended to address, since it lists links to songs rather than serving as a central distribution point.)
An interesting project to create to help foster an independent open music community (perhaps other art forms as well, for that matter) might be to start with the basic idea of the IRATE radio project, but instead of using links incorporate bittorrent directly into the client-server system itself. When playing irate radio songs, each client can then help push "popular" songs to other clients and ease the load on a server, which would only need to be the seed source for new music and maintain the rating systems. Much of this is already suggested by online music sites of various types, but the pieces haven't really been put together and pushed with an "open content licensing" mindframe.
That's probably all possible technically, but the other piece of the puzzle is such a system must be seeded with enough "good" music to make people want to give it a look. That's the hardest part, and would require good connections to whatever free artistic types are out there today.
It's not easy, but neither was the creation of the open source software ecosystem we enjoy today. It can be done, and if it takes off would forever de-throne the multimedia corporations who currently command attention. Adding things like "where is this band playing" features to the client could help fuel local interest - say, if enough people express a desire for a live concert via their client and are in the same geographic area, the artist can be notified and the suggestion made that they set up a concert there. Even incorporate ticketing mechanisms for the performance if the band expresses interest in coming - there are probably ways to do that.
Let's try the creative approach, and let those who insist on locking up their content for life + 90 years or more opt out of the popular cultural experience. If a trend/artist emerges who large scale media companies do not control, they can't make use of the content to fund their own activities either - let's sharpen the other edge of their copyright sword and see what comes of cutting both ways.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Without Newton, string theory would have been invented hundreds of years ago.
That should be "15 February 1675".
The more you tighten your grip, mafiaa, the more potential customers will slip through your fingers.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Way to try to justify your illegal activity, slashfags.
Not that you care about either, AC, but laws should follow morals, not the other way around. Copyright laws are the result of corruption and following them is often immoral. They prevent the free flow of information more important than pop songs anyone can hear on the radio anyway. If the US is still a functional democracy, these initiatives will be defeated and bad laws like the DMCA will be rolled back. As is usually the case, private privilege has led to vast public harm.
Copyright laws have gotten so bad that scientific and medical journals are restricted and hard to find. This is both against the author's intentions and a sever blow to the whole purpose of copyright law. Authors who publish seek the widest possible audience. They want anyone who's interested to have ready access to their findings and that's what publishing is supposed to be about. The purpose of US copyright and patent law expressed in the US Constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Any law that goes against that purpose requires a constitutional amendment. Again and again, prominent scientists and artist have stepped forward to complain.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The real point that should answer the questions is who owns the copyright the creator or the community at large? That really seems the debate. As a copyright holder I've already radically changed what work will be released to the public and how it will be released due to the weakness of the current copyright system. Electronic distibution and foreign markets that ignore copyright has seriously threatened the market and the ability of creators to make a living. Yes there's still money to be made but for how much longer? I have films based on my work in stores in Malaysia shortly after their release for a $1 a copy. South East Asia is already spoiled as a market with the largest potential market China being almost exclusively pirate. If the creator doesn't benefit from his/her work then why do it in the first place? Yes we'll still create but why release it to the public? I can make money off my lesser work so I decided to not release any of my favorite work to the public because of the current system. It's like a genie in the bottle and once it's released it will be copied endlessly. I'm a writer by preference and even if I strictly limit my work to printed text even then some one will likely scan it and post it. The point I'm trying to make is if I can make a living off what I consider lesser work and I want to avoid others exploiting work that is important to me then the world at large will never benefit from the better work. You can say who cares and I agree one artist may not be important but I do know of others quietly doing the same. As free distribution of material gets worse so will the restricting of material so in the end the community suffers. Many artists were mentioned like Shakespear. He's a perfect example. Let's say his work was strictly performed live and never published in any form. He would be completely unknown today. All artists especially writers have work that they never publish. What if they as a group decide to restrict their best work? Already there's been a noticable drop in the quality of the work available. It may not be the primary cause but I will say I know for a fact that some writers are no longer releasing their best work. An artists creation is very much like a child to them and it's at times like throwing your children to the wolves. In the past it was publishers and film studios that molested writers but now the community seems to feel they own our children so it might be time to start keeping our children in a closet. There are two sides to any situation. If the community at large feels they should be able to freely exploit an artists work then they may find one day they control smoke because there might not be much out there to exploit. We need to encourage the best people not punish them. Been to a movie lately? One of my passions is film and in the past I've been known to see three films in a single day in a theater. Now I rarely go and going to Blockbuster is a depressing experience. Dozens of films were released this week for the holiday rush and yet I found myself renting several older films. I'm hesitant to sell film rights anymore due to how poorly they are treated by most film makers these days. Anyone see The Mist? They turned one of Stephen's best stories into a tedious yawn fest. If our best work is going to be stolen and butchered whats the point? I'd rather restrict my favorite work to family and friends and my safe deposit boxes.
Don't forget, these days "an honest politician" means one that stays bought. :p
Copyright law means nothing as long as the big content digital restrictions conspiracy is allowed and protected by law. Technical restrictions prevent works from ever entering the public domain. The DMCA keeps people from distributing software that undoes these restrictions and so protects big content's illegal extension of copyright law. Big content's agreement itself is a form of racketeering that restricts competition by deciding who's content can be played. Restrictions should be outlawed and law enforcement resources should never be used to enforce them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Without Newton, string theory would have been invented hundreds of years ago.
And that is the very least of his great achievements.
He counters: No, correlation does not imply causation. Here's another plausible explanation which says B is caused by A.
> what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?
They'd be like Disney's works, if the copyright lawyers had their way: licensed into perpetuity.
Which is one reason why restrictive copyrights beyond the lives of the creator and immediate heirs is rediculous.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
This argument tires me deeply.
You are talking about artists who had immensely powerful patrons.
No one sane crosses an Elizabeth or a Medici Pope.
You are talking about artists that could put others in total eclipse with a single line or a stroke of the brush. Shakespeare doesn't need to go to law.
What you do not see before copyright is the professional artist of lower or middle class origins who is willing and able to challege the establishment, the man who can make a decent living in a craft he loves. The man who can build an estate for his family solely on his creative endeavours.
politicians know how to make campaign funds.
Rent seeking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking. We need put incentives and or laws in place discourage and or punish rent-seeking activity as it is detrimental to society as a whole.
"After all, without copyright, what would become of the Copyright Alliance?"
There, fixed that for ya. What is that, like the new RIAA & MPAA? All I know is if I were an artist that distributed copyrighted works, and I am, I wouldn't really see it necessary to make money off my works after I'm dead. I wouldn't really want to profit off my work more than it's worth either, that's for consumers to decide. I'm a productive member of society and I don't need to leech off of everyone to stay alive, I'm perfectly capable.
Oh, ok, I see that The Copyright Alliance is a lobbying organization formed on May 17, 2007 by 29 companies and organizations including groups that represent songwriters, recording artists, film makers, authors, photographers and sports leagues (see members below). The group is led by Patrick Ross, who recently left the Progress and Freedom Foundation [The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a U.S. market-oriented think tank based in Washington, D.C. that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy.]
With such members such as RIAA, MPAA, NBC, Major League Baseball, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, NFL, so basically everyone who is a conduit for someone else's talent.
Twinstiq, game news
Considering the talk about increasing enforcement of criminal penalties,
...
...
here is a partial excerpt from:
"Microslaw satire"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33107&cid=3582999
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by
the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American
views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to
assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary.
The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially
just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software
and media content has long been privatized to great economic success.
Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws
banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our
economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must
I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster,
that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has
confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to
release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates,
music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low
levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry
was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned
and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these
successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a
similar approach to law.
I'm proud to say that the U.S. is now the undisputed world leader in per
capita imprisonment, another example of how my administration is keeping
us on top. Why just the other day I had the U.N. building in New York
City locked down when delegates there started talking about prisoner
civil rights. Such trash talk should not be permitted on our soil. It
should be obvious that anyone found smoking marijuana, copying CDs, or
talking about the law without paying should face a death penalty from
AIDS contracted through prison rapes -- that extra deterrent make the
system function more smoothly and helps keep honest people honest.
That's also why I support the initiative to triple the standard law
author's royalty which criminals pay for each law they violate, because
the longer we keep such criminals behind bars, especially now that
bankruptcy is also a crime, the better for all of us. That's also why I
support the new initiative to make all crimes related to discussing laws
in private have a mandatory life sentence without parole. Mandatory
lifetime imprisonment is good for the economy as it will help keep AIDS
for spreading out of the prison system and will keep felons like those
so called fair users from competing with honest royalty paying
Americans for an inexplicably ever shrinking number of jobs.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You have to translate these things so the troll can understand. Trolls have no use for your "facts" or "reason". I'll do the honors.
"OMG no ur wrong fag.Lol."
The reality that the members of the copyright alliance fail to recognise is that if you make fair use so difficult to achieve, then people will default to piracy. The reasoning behind this is that if laws are so absurdly stringent that no mortal being can follow, then they won't even bother.
The other problem is that culture loses out when copryright still applies to works that the owner refuse to distribute due to 'economic reasons', but fail to allow the public domain to take over.
With the strength of these fascist copyright holders, we need a fair use lobby with equally strong support. The sad thing is that when so many people fail to realise what they are losing, such counter-lobbies are unlikely to get much support or funding.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I'm thinking we need shorter copyright terms and here is why.
in the beginning, ideas took thousands or hundreds of years to become obsolete. methods to till a field with a pointed stick were probably invented simultaneously on several continents, but the information stayed novel for a few millennia. in the 1600's good ideas like say the steam engine stayed pertinent for several hundred years, but will never stay "novel" a tenth as long as the ideas of ancient history. starting in the 50's, ideas like Lead based paint lasted 20 years. in the 60's ideas like Packet-switched telecommunications remained novel for 10 years. in the 70's ideas like 8-tracks lasted 7 or 8 years. today an idea may be novel for as little as a day or even a few hours. fads that had lasted decades in centuries past, are now lasting a month. music is now "classic" 5 years after release, if anyone is still listening to it. AOL went from being king to pauper in less than 4 years. the RIMM ram specification lasted a year. Windows ME was sold for less than 8 months. CSS was cracked in 48 hours.
the sum of human knowledge is doubling at an exponentially increasing rate, and the novelty of that knowledge is wearing off in a comparable time frame. once something becomes common knowledge, it should no longer be protected. thats the way it;s always worked.
patent/copyright laws were supposed to benifet society by ensuring that good ideas are not lost, and to protect the consumer from look-alike fraud. however the system is derailed if the information is no longer novel when the protections end, and it is released to the public. the point is not to protect the artist. the protections are there as an enticement to the inventor to register the idea, so that we can achieve the goals above. these rules are supposed to help us, not hurt us as they do today.
Some of the Bard's work was based on the work of other artists.
Actually, 35 of his 36 plays reuse plots from previously published works.
If you have not researched Ron Paul, then you should.
He doesn't take money from lobbyists or large corporations. Over 99.999% of Dr. Ron Paul's donations are from individuals, not PACs or corporations. Lobbyists don't even bother to talk to him in Congress because he is known as "Dr. No".
Contrast this to Fred Thompson who was a lobbyist for years.
If you vote, consider voting for someone who is principled and honest.
Libertas in infinitum
Coward? You post as AC to call other people cowards? Am I the only one who sees the irony?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The theory is that as a democracy, legislative matters ultimately rest in the hands of voters. Well, we're a dysfunctional bunch if we make laws that criminalize wide-spread behaviour. Perhaps something is truly broken with the system. (Gasp!)
Lets face it: the genie is out of the bottle.
The cost of distribution of digital material is almost negligible. The only real way that a business can make a buck at distribution is by making the *accuracy* and *convenience* of their system better than p2p networks. That's possible, and the price they can charge is really only what that convenience and accuracy is worth - not the "hotness" of the content.
I believe that that will have next to zero impact on artists creating new works. In fact, I predict that musicians, writers, software engineers and painters will *all* created *more* art. Some with independent produces of other media. These days most musicians make money from people coming to their shows and buying merchandise - so nothing really changes for them...
What *will* change is the extravagant megabucks all-show-and-no-backbone facade that passes for art. The masses will probably not be too depressed by missing Michael Jackson, Brittany Spears, Madonna, and other such hyped acts. These artists probably would have had their own smaller scale success anyway. So what *exactly* is lost by not having their egos rammed down our thought by expensive advertising systems. Is it bad enough that we should have laws that make the average person a criminal? Doesn't bad law breed contempt for the law system? Isn't the law system struggling enough without all of this added extra noise?
One thing that might not come out in the wash are the super-duper-expensive movies that people are making theses days. The popcorn blockbuster made for $200 million. But I have to ask... do you really see a threat such that the TV and Movie industry disbands? TV is heading for a big shake-up, and home theatres are eating into the box-office. Well, maybe hollywood will have to scale back a *little*, like to the comparative budgets of the 70s, and maybe no more $2million dollar episodes of favourite space-soap. Is that the end of the world?
Hypocrisy has a corrosive effect on society.
Yeah... if we just wake up a little bit, we'd scale back copyright to help promote new art. Oh that's right, we can't stop businesses making money right?
Greed has a corrosive effect on society. Hypocrisy is the rim of wisdom.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I agree with your characterization of the issue as being about community / author ownership. I think the original idea of copyright was that the author would have ownership / 'monopoly on reproduction' for 'enough' time to reap a reasonable reward and then the ownership would pass to the community. In exchange for the value to the community it would provide a legal framework that could be used to defenf the authors monopoly for that initial period.
I'm a bit confused about who you want to be defended from though. Existing laws already protect against commercial piracy operations and even non-commercial distribution. It's just a case of enforcing them - the easy targets seem to be single mothers in the USA. Do the movie studio's steal work to make bad films? sue em under existing laws...
It seems now the copyrighteous want not only to extend the period of protection (that the community 'funds' through having laws and courts to hear the cases) but also to increase how much the community directly funds the defence of the copyright holders monopoly. They want their cake and they want someone else to pay for it, oh the want it forever.
The trick we are all faced with is finding a new balance between the author and the community under the new technical reality of zero cost copying and distribution.
What's this I'm standing on? Oh! It's the moral high ground! ;).
Your ad hominem attacks don't justify your thievery, you know
Archimedes invented/discovered the Calculus, and did plenty of work in harmonics (the original 'string' theory) too.
Who is John Cabal?
"Not that you care about either, AC, but laws should follow morals, not the other way around. "
The morals of who? The majority? Tyranny of the majority, and all in the name of "gimme, gimme, gimme".
"Copyright laws have gotten so bad that scientific and medical journals are restricted and hard to find."
And this is being resolved legally by authors. Not piratebay with the latests medical torrent.
"The purpose of US copyright and patent law expressed in the US Constitution is to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.""
Interesting how the above is often quoted but the "exclusive" part is regularly violated by pirates. I'll let you guess what "principle" is being violated here.
Although I have made the case before it bears repeating here that copyright laws have already seen too many expansions and extensions during the last decades of the twentieth century with the the Copyright Act of 1976 and the even more notorious Copyright Term Extension Act (aka the Mickey Mouse Protection Act). Prior to the copyright act of 1976 the terms were 20 years plus another 20 year extension if the author filed for one. The term was extended in 1976 to life of the author plus 50 years or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship. The extension act (lobbied and pushed heavily by Disney among others) extended the terms again to life of the author plus 70 years and 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever is earlier, for works of corporate authorship.
Now, the Consitution states that Congress may grant exclusive rights for a limited amount of time to their creators...they key word here is LIMITED. You don't have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to realize that most music, including the music of your youth, will not enter the public domain in your lifetime , so how does that give people an incentive to participate in the "bargain" of copyright? It is a bargain in the same way that the mob shakes down people for protection money, using their position of strength to muscle the average citizen or the honest business owner into paying them.
The last thing we need is another extension of copyright. The founders did not mean "infinity minus one day" (as suggested by former MAFIAA chairperson Jack Valenti) when they said limited. Enough is enough or would be if the MAFIAA wasn't so damn greedy.
Explain to me how you are enriching yourself more by not publishing the work than by publishing it and experiencing a certain percentage of piracy.
It's one thing to say you won't work to create something, but you already created it!
Simply sitting on it is a slight against society, and quite frankly, me personally, because once it's created withholding it is not about profit, it's about pure spite.
Additionally, your entire wall of text rant looks like it came straight from the **AA lobbying manuals. There is not one single original point there... how creative you are!
I personally see an astroturfer, but that's just me.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Without copyright, when everything cool is reproduced by others, watch the "registration organizations" pop up, who for a fee certify that you had X idea, song, invention on Y date. If someone else claims to be the inventor, you can point to your earlier date. Watch insurance companies team with lawyers to provide "prior thought insurance" to help you sue for false advertising when someone claims to be the visionary who came up with your latest idea. Of course, so long as they don't make that claim, there's nothing you can do.
That said, the market for PHYSICAL PRODUCTS would be harmed greatly. Imagine an inventor, investing every dime in a new idea, only to have a large company's scout pass one to a reverse engineering lab, who makes a "better" version. (Maybe faster, more durable, more colorful, less sharp edges) The large company then mass produces the "better" version and the inventor can't sell any more.
This piece of garbage actually made my head hurt. One of the things I do to help keep a roof over my head is edit the news stories for the Faculty of Law of the local university, and if one of my writers ever tried to pass me something like this, I would have their head on a plate.
The first four paragraphs are fine. They state the facts, raise questions (which is always healthy), and everything is backed up. And then it descends into ranting and fear mongering.
"It is ironic that the content industry invokes the Constitution to support their position."
No, it isn't. In the face of acts by the FBI and the government that plainly are unconstitutional, this is a laughable statement. The intention of the American founding fathers, as has been mentioned many, MANY times, was to promote science, research, and art by providing some protection for the creators. The American Constitution, however, was built so that it could be amended, as the founding fathers were also smart enough to realize that things change over time. To call upon their intentions is hardly ironic, particularly since those same founding fathers passed the first legal extension to copyright law before the 18th century ended - so the history says that the founding fathers were flexible.
"Recent changes to copyright law influenced by the content industry--most notably the egregious Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act--have undermined the balance by restricting fair use and expanding the length of copyright protection to preposterous durations."
This is where the editorializing starts to get even less subtle, and the factual content pretty much disappears. The word "egregious" is a value judgment completely out of place in a news story, as is the statement that copyright protection has been extended to "preposterous durations." Lifetime plus seventy years is the author's lifetime, plus that of his/her children and grandchildren - in short, the people who knew him/her in life. It is far from unlimited. And just because some corporations have tried to abuse copyright law, that doesn't mean that fair use has disappeared - it hasn't. There is a great distinction between the content of a law and the abuse of that law.
"The steady expansion of copyright law poses a grave risk to creativity and innovation because it threatens to further erode the public domain. Artistic creation will suffer gravely when the cultural heritage of America can be chained down and held ransom."
This is a statement better suited for an op-ed, not the news section. Aside from which, history has already proven it wrong. The writer has conveniently forgotten that the United States has tended to lag decades, and sometimes generations, behind the rest of the world on copyright law. If expansion of copyright law to meet the European standard of length is so terrible, how is it that Europe and Canada, which have been functioning under those terms now for decades, have remained vibrant in their cultures, rather than becoming a literary and artistic wasteland?
"When the public domain shrinks, the potential for modern adaptation of classic works is severely constrained. In the future, innovative companies that want to bring older content into new mediums will be deterred by excessive and unjustifiable licensing costs as a result of copyright expansion."
Another unfounded statement. The public domain is NOT shrinking. In fact, the Sonny Bono act specifically stated that work that had already entered the public domain could not be brought out of it from the copyright extension. The Sonny Bono act also mandated that private letters and correspondences from public figures that had been kept out of the public domain due to lack of publication ("common copyright") would now enter the public domain, vastly INCREASING it.
Aside from which, a cursory knowledge of copyright law leads you to understand that you CANNOT copyright an idea. You can only copyright the exact implementat
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Yeah, that's an improvement -- a tax on all recordable media because it could be used for piracy, then pass it all on directly to the MAFIAA.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
In fact, it's time to start calling a spade a spade, since they aren't backing off.
They are trying to bring back the old patronage systems, which would allow bureaucrats to make rules to control speech and even set thought control policies. (Think about it. The brain is a processing unit. If software patents can make it illegal to process some particular algorithm without permission, you technically can't even legally perform a walk-through of the algorithm.)
These guys have gone the path of treachery. They have not turned back.
Terrorists be damned.
These guys are the real traitors to the state and enemies of the Constitution.
Arguing about the morality of copyright violations on the internet is a bit like arguing about the morality of gravity after you fall out of an airplane.
You can't sit there and arguable about inevitable thing being 'good' or 'bad'. They just are. Digital data is instantly and infinitely copyable. It's not an argument, it's not a debate, there are no pros and cons to list and weighty questions to decide on, carefully balancing the rights of each side. Copyright with no barrier except legal to copying is meaningless. Poof, copyright just vanishes into thin air.
So we have fallen out of the plane. We could, perhaps, use some sort of parachute to land slowly, or we could plummet to our death, but the plane ride is over and we are, indeed, going to end up on the ground.
Notice I am, in no way, arguing this is a good thing, so don't respond with 'You're an amoral bastard who wants to steal everything from people'. We Are Outside the Plane and Falling. That is just how it is. It is not a choice. It was an unforeseen, inevitable result of the internet.
And this may, indeed, be something entirely horrible that will destroy all artistic creativity forever, leaving us with nothing, or, worse, reality TV. I hope not. But the result of being outside the airplane and falling is not my fault, and I did not say I approved of what will happen, but, nevertheless, we are still there and still falling.
Almost all discussion that goes on here about copyright is missing this one vital fact, and is instead arguing about the in-flight meal and how we're going to build our own meals instead of eating that crap. Come on, people, pay attention, we're supposed to be smart. Did you not feel the cabin depressurized when we collided with Napster?
This is why I didn't really mind DRM. It was attempting to grab hold of the plane after we fell out, with a makeshift grappling hook build out of shoes. Not a really viable option, and obviously didn't work, but you have to give props that someone in the corporate world realized: We just fell out of the fucking airplane. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Do something!
This article, OTOH, is talking about an attempt to legislate us back into the airplane. It's somewhat sad.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Google is your friend
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
personally, i think copyright should be for ten years, after that, it should become open to all, i mean, surely the companies will earn their "dues" in ten years? plz give your own inshight on this too ;-)
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
What is the US statutory licensing of a recording? A fwe cents (a little over 3c, IIRC), so 5c for a single download at lowish bitrate could see enough profit for the company selling at 5c and handing 3c over to the licensing authority.
10c would leave PLENTY. Even uncompressed, I would say.
So why is 5c nowhere near fair but 99c is, when 10c is probably acceptable with the (apparently fair) compulsory licensing rates? The artists OK'd those rates, so they can't be said to be *unfair*, can they? So 3.3c for the licensing authority, 2c for the network provider, 2c for costs and 2.7c profit for the company doing the sale seems appropriate and if you are selling a million tracks a month, this would be a real turnover for a small/medium business too ($20,000 a month running costs, $100,000 a month turnover).
Or are the contractually obliged to spend evey penny they earn on coke and hookers?
When I make something, I sell it and some of it goes into a pension fund. Some goes into a life insurance policy. These will pay me when I can no longer work or pay my family when I die. If I do not purchase a pension, I will have no money ('cept state pension, which penniless artists would get too), and if I do not buy life insurance, my family will suffer if I die.
Why must the artist not have to make this decision?
(and for Em, how many people will KILL an artist to get their copyrighted works, rather than let them live and take their (increased) work later? It's like killing the golden goose. Sure, you make a profit NOW, but you've just looted the gravy train. (and did Chuck Dickens get assasinated? Homer? ANYONE???)
(superwiz, Copyright et al ISN'T A PROPERTY!!! Try using your toaster and not sell it. Easy: You bought the toaster to make toast. Try using your song and not sell it. Hard: because you make NO MONEY OFF IT, and the money is all you're worried about.)
Archimedes did not understand the least upper bound property. Without it, real analysis is impossible. Nor did he understand log and exponential function. Without those, harmonic analysis doesn't exist at all.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"After all, without copyright, what would become of the next Shakespeare, Michaelangelo, or da Vinci?"
We'd be able to look at or read their works (70 years after their deaths) without having to pay their entirely untalented descendents (or the greedy scum they sold the copyright to) for the privilege?
Gee, what a concept! A dead guy not making money!
Is your point then that you are personally incapable of finding a middle ground between ignore it and POST EVERY SINGLE FUCKING INSTANCE OF ANYTHING COPYRIGHT RELATED AS EVEN THE MOST MUNDANE MATTERS ARE WORTHY OF EXTENDED DISCOURSE?
Maybe if you were smarter you'd realize they're already aware and don't care, so bashing everyone over the head constantly does nothing but desensitize.
My prediction is that your cynicism - and the further erosion of your liberties that you experience as a result of it - will lead to feelings of hopelessness and despair, but that's just a guess.
My prediction is you're not very bright.
But apparently I'm not the only one
You simply couldn't be more wrong.
Peruse the threads on this subject sometime so you can see exactly how wrong you are.
I continue to be impressed by the depth of stupidity of some posters
The numbers don't lie. You did.
I'd say you're just making things up
Did you mean to ask such a crap question?
In fact, when put in that context, it becomes obvious why a lawsuit is a stupid suggestion
You're full of shit
It is you who are wrong.
On this, at least, you are correct
you have no facts and have to resort to insults because you know you're wrong.
I don't care why you're posting AC
You mean like all those blues artists of the 20th century that got so fabulously rich from the royalties the record and music publishing companies paid to them (especially the ones that had their music covered by white artists like Elvis)? The media publishers have never been about rewarding the artist even when copyright terms were more reasonable.
I see two big prongs to attack:
1) The Copyright Alliance initiative is particularly vulnerable to a grass-roots counterattack. Write to the relevant candidates, emphasizing that the sponsors of the copyright alliance are asking them to help the artists, when many of those companies are notorious for not paying royalties to the artists once they lock up the rights. Make note that the government shouldn't be in the business of doing investigations on behalf of private parties, and based on current evidence, copyright owners and their agents have more than enough resources and funding available to protect their interests. The real issue the copyright holders have had is that they have been incompetent in putting together a chain of evidence that meets judicial scrutiny.
2) Reduce their funding by not buying the products of the companies that fund the copyright alliance. There's already one thread at AskSlashdot about sites where indie/non-RIAA music artists are available. Look for similar sites offering video and books. This is like thinking green. You can't eliminate all your greenhouse gas emissions, but you can vastly improve your energy efficiency. Apply the same thinking to your media consumption. Borrow from the local library. Take advantage of the legal alternatives on the internet. Rent instead of buying. If you have to buy, wait until the item is in the discount bin at 4.99.
We are the 198 proof..
I got this reply from Ron Paul's campaign:
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Thanks for taking the time to email us.
I think the crux of the problem is the willingness of Congress to sell their votes for campaign contributions rather than considering what is in the best interest of 'we the people.' I doubt we can expect a policy statement on this issue. There are so many bigger fish to fry -- education, health care, foreign policy, the inflation tax, the income tax. As a career, former patent examiner I am sympathetic to your concerns, but realistically it's not a hot topic.
I hope you will consider Dr. Paul's policy statements and will support his campaign. Have you located a local meetup group? The link is at the bottom of this email. We must win the primaries in order to win the Republican party nomination and then the election in November.
Sincerely,
Mat A.
volunteer - ronpaul2008
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It was in reply to this email:
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Hi,
I've searched ronpaullibrary for the word "copyright" and came up with 0 entries. Dr. Paul has not made his position on copyrights very clear. Establishing temporary copyrights is a power enumerated in the Constitution, but the Constitution declares it to be a power that must be exercised for the purpose of promoting sciences and arts.
The current copyright regime is quite a bit controversial. It allows, in some instances, a copyright to last as long as 75 years after the death of an author. The Supreme Court has ruled that this is not in conflict with the "temporary" requirement. On the other hand, there is a great deal of copyright violations that are committed by the public that finds it impossible to live within the confines of the copyrights as they exist right now.
It is my understanding that organizations claiming to represent a large number of copyright holders have just asked all Presidential candidates to comment on their commitment to the current copyright regime.
Where does Dr. Paul stand on this issue? If he has not made a commitment to any one position on this issue, would he be willing to consider changing status quo? In other words, would he be willing to press for a new copyright (and other intellectual properties) regime that is more in line with the Constitutional intent?
This issue is very agonizing for the technical community because the current copyright/patent regime is seen as severely stifling technical innovation. So what say you?
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Actually, all the music I listen to I have purchased. All the digital media I have on my PC is ripped from my personal library. All of my bittorrent traffic is limited to Linux ISOs or downloading software I still have a license for, mainly because I don't have the extra cash to pay for a replacement disc for my copy of Windows XP. And a Microsoft rep told me a while back (for what it's worth) that they don't particularly care about the install media as long as your license is valid.
"Slapping lipstick on a pig does NOT make it Natalie Portman. Paris Hilton, maybe, but not Portman." - UncleTogie
But apparently I'm not the only one
You'd realize that you are the only one, in this conversation at least.
And what, exactly, did you think posting links to comments by people as stupid as you proves? I'll happily stipulate that you're not the only stupid person ANYWHERE, but what does that have to do with this conversation?
Apart from proving me right about you I mean?
And I like how, when challenged, you link to my posts instead of addressing the issue. You start a conversation, get refuted, then run away and show your ass on the way out. At least you admitted I was right about your intellect.