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Lessig's "In Defense of Piracy"
chromakey writes "The Wall Street Journal is running an essay from Lawrence Lessig about the fair use of copyrighted material on the Internet. He makes the case that companies who go to extreme lengths to squash minor videos, such as Universal, are stifling creativity in the modern era. Lessig makes specific reference to a YouTube video that was hit by a DMCA takedown notice, in which a 13-month-old child is dancing to a nearly inaudible soundtrack of Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy.' Lawrence Lessig is a board member for the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
They should be happy they weren't charged for child pornography because of the dancing child. Somebody didn't think of the children?
Is that this was written by Thomas Jefferson, and Lessig just republished it under his name. Yes, Thomas Jefferson knew about YouTube 200 years before it was invented.
Even though Lessig wants to change the length of copyright and ensure fair use, he still believes that the concept should be enshrined in law. That makes his status as a hero here on Slashdot odd, because many posters here have claimed that copyright is simply no longer a valid concept at all in the digital era.
Why do media companies think that any use of media should be paid for?
Suppose farmers acted like that. They grow grain to sell, but their plants create oxygen from carbon dioxide gas as a side effect. Oxygen is a valuable commodity, it's sold in bottles for many uses: hospitals, aviators, steel-cutting, etc. But farmers are sensible enough to know that it would be totally impractical to try to charge for the oxygen their plants release into the atmosphere.
Media companies should grow up and accept the same fact for their productions. Copyrights should be enforced in movie theatres, someone sneaking into a theatre to watch a movie without paying is somewhat like someone stealing grain from a farmer. But trying to charge for every little use of their media is like a farmer trying to charge for the oxygen their plants release into the atmosphere the same price industrial gas distributors charge for bottled oxygen.
It has come to the point in America that many people are in some form of rebellion. Copyright issues are but a small edge of the issues that surround us. But as things now stand in the social justice arena piracy of intellectual property is not something I'm willing to get all excited about.Perhaps when our lazy government gets off of its backside and does something about the exploitation of our citizens by outrageous fuel and power prices and mortgages designed by Satan then i'll worry about whether somebody hummed a tune he heard on the radio without permission of a record company.
... the takedown should've been on the grounds of "No one really wants to see your damn baby pictures"
Because I can find hundreds if not thousands of full music videos posted by random joes. I have not spent a dime on music for the past 12 years. And this is coming from someone who had 350 CDs in high school. Thanks YouTube!!
The US Constitution says:
Copyright is constitutional only if it promotes the progress of science and useful arts.
Now the question is *ARE* science and useful arts being promoted by copyrights? Would you say that this work is a progress over this one? If a remake was made, is the copyright in the older film still valid? Why?
The only thing that's being promoted by copyrights is the profit of some corporations.
Copyright was never intended to prevent private copying for noncommercial uses. Please don't try to argue that "copying = not buying = commercial loss = commercial use" because it's a horribly disingenuous and intellectually dishonest argument. Stealing is depriving someone else of their property. Even if copying is depriving someone of a potential sale, there is no vested property right in potential sales. If so capitalism would not work, as competition would be equivalent to stealing. The makers of cars would be stealing from the makers of horsedrawn carriages. The makers of refrigerators would be stealing from ice manufacturers. The makers of calculators would be stealing from the makers of abacuses (abaci?). You get the point. I should be able to copy and read/watch/listen to/play in my own home, for my own use, any media in existence. The notion that without monopolies, creative people would not create has long been disproved. No monopolies are necessary to foster creativity. The best, most creative people will create regardless. The hacks are the ones who need monopoly protection. For example, without copyright, Neil Young would still be making music, but Brittney Spears would not. Because copyright has been so greatly abused, because it's been proven to be based on flawed logic, and because it only serves to hinder creativity and make money for those who do not deserve it, copright should be abolished completely. There should still be protection for attribution to prevent plaigariasm, in some form.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
demanding a take down notice for a video like this is futile and silly. Demanding take down notices for you tube in general is futile. Not that this is new news, but the industry has not kept up with technology and the backwards train of thought that may have been ok in 1982 does not apply now. I read that top gear is the worlds most pirated TV show, yet you cant even buy boxed sets of the show. On top of that one, the TV networks don't make it easy to watch your favorite shows...they chop and change the times, chop and change the order and cancel your show whenever they feel like it. In terms of music (I am a professional musician) CD sales are down not just on the back of piracy, but also quality. There have been many studies with supporting data that show this. If an artist is especially popular, their CD sales should suffer when their music is heavily pirated, but this is not always the case. Its a complex problem, with other factors, but you can safely say its not just piracy causing poor CD sales. Many people are just getting sick of the same bling bling sex sex tripe that is the majority of commercial music now and are buying less CD's because so. In the older days, the big labels would spend time investing in and developing quality artists. Often a bands/groups 1st album was not so good and they would progressively get better each album. If your 1st album doesn't move large numbers in todays climate - bye bye, you wont be making another one. Record executives have been heard saying that james brown, parliament and curtis mayfield would never have been signed today...thats really sad...These days you can get over $100 million dollars NOT to make another album (mariah carey) because your previous album didnt make as much money as the bean counters thought it would (even though there were several top ten hits). One lone plus out of this is artists are forced to generate a lot more of their income from live shows, which can only be good for you, the punter, as you get to see your fave artists way more often. if industry in general wants to 'reduce' piracy, their business models have to completely change. tonnes more material has to be way more accessible without being a rip off. DRM just makes everyone want to puke too.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/14/prince_b3ta_dmca/
According to the submitter's blurb:
According to TFA:
This concept of creative common good is going to take awhile to be accepted. .... whoever sees a benefit they are going to do what they have been doing.
1) It has to be accepted by society.
Many still do not understand the Open Source model. If you look at financial markets and talk to business people they don't understand how RedHat and Novell plan to make money selling free software.
2) Those who appreciate open source, need to reward those who produce for the open market.
Not many have gotten filthy rich from open source.
3) Lessig is correct.
Copyright and IP rights are probably going to be here for awhile and probably should stay. Those who publish and produced copyright and license information software are going to be here for awhile. They choose to participate in a different market. Until there is a detriment or significant benefit to participation in one type of market or another, there is always going to be a choice.
4) Get over it
As long as MS, Universal,
Personally, I believe this is going to bite them in the ass big time. They want an open global market and yet they want IP rights at the same time. Well guess what, you manufacture your product in Asia and you've pretty much open sourced your product. They don't like to talk about it very much, but it is a fact of what is happening.
[ubiquitous car analogy] If you make a car and you want it made cheaply, you had better have figured out a way to make a steady income from that car. What is happening is companies are requesting certain manufacturing be done, and then all of a sudden somebody else is manufacturing the same product. They start screaming "They stole our product". Guess what get over it, by the time you finish the legal international law wrangling, there is nothing left.
So as soon as a company accepts open source the quicker they will be able to adjust to the global market.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
If i had mod points, i'd throw a few flamebaits here, but I'd feel pity because there's a lot of work put into this post.
Not too much pity though, I'd still mod it down.
greed@All_Evils:~#
And you are confusing (conflating) existing with value.
Existing is a property of the physical world.
Value is a human construct.
They are not the same thing, at least in the way these words are used by most educated people, which is about the best measure for meaning we have.
It is the deriving, the shaping, that adds the value. Your use of the word 'just' is misleading here - that activity is the whole point.
So - you are simply wrong.
Or, if you prefer, I, and from my experience most intelligent people, disagree with you.
The real problem is that is is next to impossible to get a successful barratry conviction against the corporate lawyers that embark on their scorched earth lawsuit campaigns. If the courts would lower the bar for establishing abusive behavior the sharks would think twice about using lawsuits as a weapon against harmless people.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I can't possibly be the only one who remembers A Fair(y) Use Tale can I?
You know, if these companies thought on a smaller scale, they could just work out a deal with individuals where if a copyrighted work is unintentionally embedded into that individual's content, that individual could pay a reasonably small fee to continue using it without harassment, so long as it remains used only that particular context.
People like to be able to share their home movies, but with crap like this going on, anyone is potentially vulnerable to similar issues with recording industry, simply because some jackass drove by their house with the radio cranked to 11 as the video was being shot.
Oh, and forget anything like weddings or birthdays being safe from such abuses, birthdays are guaranteed to be grab bags for whoever owns the rights to "the birthday song" (which really should be in the public domain by now, IMHO). I'll bet there may even be a crack team doing nothing but searching youtube for birthday clips for any infringing content including "the birthday song" to harass those who posted it unaware they did anything wrong...
8==8 Bones 8==8
Since Lawrence Lessig tend to write sensible arguments whenever he writes something, I would hardly call this and outbreak of common sense.
Then again, the Wall Street Journal publishing a story like this could point to a sudden outbreak of common sense in the editor. Or maybe they just want to sell more copies, who knows.
"Perhaps when our lazy government gets off of its backside and does something about the exploitation of our citizens by outrageous fuel and power prices and mortgages designed by Satan"
You're absolutely right - European governments (not sure which you're in.. Turkey or The Netherlands?), really should do something about those fuel prices!
http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2008/08/Gas-Prices-Around-the-World
meh.
on-topic: copyright terms are too long, copyright claims are largely abusive (but then bittorrent usage is largely 'abusive'), but copyright still has a right to exist. If nothing else, because otherwise everybody will take the GPL and run with it (breach of the license makes it default back to copyright law, no?) - and if that's what 'we' wanted, we'd use the BSD-style licenses, eh. Or, perhaps, because otherwise vendors can just take artists' imagery, use them for no compensation, and claim that they should be glad for the extra exposure or something.
(-1, Incoherent)
It doesn't matter whether /.ers think you should be able to post a review written by someone else if you don't take credit for it, it matters what the laws are. /. probably got a DMCA notice, and its pretty obvious that if they were taken to court they'd lose. As for the GPL, the GPL wouldn't be necessary if we didn't have copyright, but right now it is necessary to ensure that people give other people the same rights to the code that they had. The only thing the GPL prevents is people taking some code that is free, and giving it away as non-free.
. . . because the benefit of having it has not been measured.
Who is to say if a song or film is really worth £8 to view? Does that bring more than £8 worth of benefit to the listener - if not then that's a rip off.
Now you can decide to just not go but since all cinemas charge the same, there is an all or nothing choice: either see film X or see nothing.
Piracy adds another option and puts pressure on media companies to provide more value.
Since there is no other way to pressure Media companies, I think it's probably having an excellent effect.
If someone (e.g. Apple with iTunes) can find a way to provide better value it will make piracy less attractive.
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights have at least two clauses that are in the form of "$purpose therefore $power".
The other famous case of this involves a well regulated militia. IANAConstitutional scholar, but it seems that it isn't necessary for $purpose to be served in order for $power to be upheld as Constitutional. This cuts both ways, you see. If we accept that $purpose must be served, then you must interpret the 2nd ammendment as providing no right to bear arms except in support of a well regulated militia. In exchange for that, you get to eliminate copyrights and patents that can't be proven to have incentivized the creator.
Note, I'm not advocating that SCOTUS should be so rigid in its thinking. I'd like our judges to actually use judgement. If they don't use judgement, they're just referees not judges.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The trouble is that these media companies have paid lots of money for the 'rights' to these media, for which they expect a return. The other trouble is that for every 'true' artist, like Neil Young, there will always be 100 artists who want all the riches for their 20 mins of inspiration. To my mind, the simplest approach is that all rights should be legally bound (non-transferable) to the creator. So artists *cannot* sell their souls, even if they wanted to. In this modern age, where media is cheap and distribution is easy (and traceable), there is no reason why merit & reward cannot remain with the originator. This way the big studios are reduced to their real role: marketing and PR. Which artists may choose to hire, if they have the resources. Exposure, in its fullest, most transparent sense.
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty. -- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
It was actually Thomas McCauley in 1841.
And yes, he considered these issues and came to the same conclusions as Mr. Lessig over 150 years ago.
Maybe we should just do away with copyright. That would solve this problem permanently without consuming the precious resources of the courts.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Larry is speaking at the Free Culture Conference in Berekely right now (streaming video available on that site). He mentioned the essay (an excerpt from his book) and stated that he hated the title, had no control over it, and that it speaks to the problem with a fundamental problem of the free culture movement: people perceive us as thieves.
He begged anyone who would listen not to use the term "intellectual property" as was widely ridiculed, as in many things.
I, for one, agree with what RMS has to say about the blanket term "intellectual property". Use of the term reinforces misconceptions that benefit owners of some exclusive rights. Particularly, it invites drawing false parallels among copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets, and between those legal traditions and real estate.
The GPL is a form of copyright licensing that attempts to enforce certain usage restrictions/requirements. I don't understand why you think the GPL would be unnecessary if we didn't have copyright. The purpose of the GPL is to ensure that changes made to something are returned to everybody, and without copyright, there would be no reason to follow the license and distribute any changes made. The GPL doesn't exist as a reaction to copyright; it requires copyright to have any power.
Perhaps when our lazy government gets off of its backside and does something about the exploitation of our citizens by outrageous fuel and power prices [...] then i'll worry about [copyright misuse]
The United States government can't just force firms in other countries to sell energy more cheaply. There are two ways to push the price of a good down: increase supply or decrease demand. A government can regulate demand for a particular form of energy down somewhat by subsidizing more energy-efficient products, and it can regulate supply up by subsidizing forms of energy that haven't yet been widely exploited, but these won't have as dramatic an effect on energy prices as some might hope.
[link to Region 2 box set of Top Gear]
Top Gear is available if you look for it.
So how does Joe Sixpack, who lives in Region 1 where DVD players sold in stores are locked to Region 1, play a Region 2 DVD?
Lawerence Lessig has made the GOP's shitlist. So keep that in mind this November.
The GPL wouldn't be necessary because those that took the code and closed it off wouldn't have any legal standing against those that continued to distribute the free versions or those that re-freed the closed off portions (by reverse engineering etc).
Like any strategy game, you have to think several moves ahead.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Ha! Ahahahaha!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
That would be a valid argument for the BSD license, not the GPL.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
He is defending fair use, but, if you scroll to the second half of TFA, he's also defending file sharing. He thinks we should change copyright law to "decriminalise generation X". He also seems to believe that copyright law is a good concept that could be salvaged. I don't see how it would be copyright law after you allow unlimited, rapid reproduction and distribution of works. That kinda punches a big hole and renders copyright useless.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Alright, this election is a lost cause but a core item in the new Republican Party that must emerge is a more open stance on copyrights. Democrats and liberals are in bed with copyrights because, well, the copyright is the life blood of the liberal - books, movies, etc, all require copyrights to succeed, and Republicans should be more willing to go after this jugular by removing the artificial laws that ensnare the very masses the Democrats claim to love.
If Democrats can do windfall profits taxes and penalty taxes on Republican economic interests ranging from petroleum to corn, then it only makes sense to shorten copyright to ten years and wave all civil penalties for infringement against anyone who, to borrow a page from Obama, makes under $250,000 a year.
If, after all, America's middle class is so strapped, then, why should we be forcing them to pay for something that they are perfectly capable of copying for free? If Madonna wants to be a Democrat, she can die by their economics.
This is my sig.
fundamental problem of the free culture movement: people perceive us as thieve
See, I think this a natural issue for Republicans to take up. I would rather say that it is not that you are thieves, it is that greedy hollywood wants to throw teenagers in jail for paying a tax on copying something that they can copy themselves.
Big copyrights are big government, I'd say.
Conservatives are reeling after three decades of getting torched by the liberals in the movies, songs and press, and are just itching for some payback. Yeah, you go stand in front of a crowd of Sarah Palin supporters and liberals want them to think that copying is a crime so they can loot the middle class with their copyright socialism. IT would be like waving a bloody finger in a kiddy pool filled with piranha. IF you sell copyright reform as a way to get rid of liberals, I guarantee you've immediately got 40% that's going to get a bitter pill this November, and then after that, you just need to get the non-riaa democrats to go with.
Copyright, long term, is a dead as a doornail.
This is my sig.
Let's face it, GM has let go of more people in the last decades than all of the jobs in Hollywood, and a percentage of that is arguably because of liberal legislation who viewed the fallout as collateral damage in the fight for mother earth. It's high time conservatives start playing with the same deck of cards. If all of us who like oil and cars and stuff have to have our way of life upended in the name progress, then let's put hollywood on the table too. I can live without capitalized TV and you can too. If you want to make money off of a song more than once, play it more than once, that's what I say.
This is my sig.
I love Cold Play, but I like V8 engines too, and sometimes, we just have to give it up for Mother Earth and progress.
Since Obama is going to create 5 million new jobs making windmills, then, if we lose 350,000 jobs by getting rid of copyrights, then, clearly there's still 4,650,000 jobs left. Maybe Madonna can work in a carbon sequestration plant, dressing up mother earth with her love.
This is my sig.
Look, both parties and both candidates are deep in the pockets of the industry here, and they both have platform planks for furthering their mission. One is not better than the other on this issue.
I know it's getting close to the peak of silly season, but can we limit the injection of partisan politics to issues or individuals where there's a real difference? Please?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It continues the myth every time someone makes the same lazy connection.
The point of the GPL is to make source code available to end users, as per Stallman's definition of software freedom. Without copyright, GPL code authors would have no way of enforcing source code availability when others make changes to it. Microsoft could sell a closed-source version of Windows Server running on the Linux kernel, and there's nothing Linus could do to stop them. The viral, protective nature of the GPL would be gone.
Reverse engineering is imperfect, isn't it? Or can you get back the original source code in the form of the original code?
I mean, it's hardly equivalent to GPL-protected source code if you can only reverse engineer a gorgeously coded program into shittily-organized and repetitive reversed code.
You can take my BSD licensed source code, make a binary from it, sell me the binary, then sue me for copyright infringement if I distribute your binary without your permission.
You can basically WTFA. Lessig gave a good TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html
It shares a fair amount of content with TFA, but would also be good to supplement it if you're interested in the speaker and/or the topic.
The GPL does NOT force redistribution. Read the license.
What it does require, above plain copyright-turned-on-its-head, is for the binary to allways be accompanied by the source code when distributed.
So, a world without copyright would be like one where everything was GPL, but you where allowed to distribute binary-only works (and people would be allowed to decompile it, and to diff it against your upstream version etc).
Sorry, I tricked you. Yes, I'm playing dense but here's the punchline: The vegetables I grew were puny and inedible. All I got out of that hard work was a bit of knowledge, viz: I suck at gardening. Am I right that this piece of knowledge is "intellectual property" now, and that I somehow deserve to be compensated? Obviously not. What I'm trying to point out is that the labor that goes into a thing is not the source of its market value.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
That's true. But your new product would be functionally very similar to the original and a close competititor. And if your new software were available for free, yours would likely wipe the other out.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
The point of the GPL is to make source code available to end users, as per Stallman's definition of software freedom. Without copyright, GPL code authors would have no way of enforcing source code availability when others make changes to it. Microsoft could sell a closed-source version of Windows Server running on the Linux kernel, and there's nothing Linus could do to stop them. The viral, protective nature of the GPL would be gone.
But without copyright why would Microsoft sell windows server -- or rather why would anyone buy it?
You make two points I disagree with. The first is by far the most important to address:
Woah. Since when was open source/FLOSS ever about competition? I thought it was about keeping good code open for people to improve upon!
I think the existence of myriad competing products makes that argument demonstrably false. I mean, if all products are "open," then shouldn't we just see the competition of Ubuntu and Debian as proof that even if two products are both freely distributable, one does not wipe the other out? I mean, Ubuntu is "functionally very similar to the original and a close competitor."
This touches on a concern I have. What about the various "mashups" we see out there on Youtube, et al.
"Scary Poppins" was pretty creative; imagine if the copyright holders went after them? Actually, did they?
I like to work with video in creative ways, and I'm concerned about "fair use" vs outright infringement.
Are there any pro-Fair-Use attorneys here that can comment on this.
I question what benefit companies like Universal hope to obtain from pursuing these innocuous projects.
The case against the Youtube baby video with "Let's Go Crazy" was and is completely inappropriate and over the edge.
What if I film a friend at a club, where a popular song is audible, then I publish it on YouTube as a an innocent family video? Am I going to get sued? Right.
"Because the metaphor of property was allowed to run rampant, unquestioned."
While I think you're absolutely right about this, as was RMS, it reminds me of something I just read by James K. Galbraith (Yes, John K.'s son...)
Full article:
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/05/predator_state.html
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
The grandparent is clearly a troll, but he's right on one count.
1. If there were no copyright then licenses would be useless.
2. The GPL is a license.
3. Useless things are unnecessary.
4. If there were no copyright then the GPL would be useless (from 1, 2).
5. If there were no copyright, then the GPL would be unnecessary (from 3, 4).
First you say it doesn't require redistribution of source code:
But then you say it does redistribution of source code:
It really doesn't make sense anymore.. "..if society pays a young songwriter royalties on a single creation until the day he/she dies, then why not pay a fireman equivalent royalties in perpetuity for his own "act of art," namely the extinguishment of a single, major fire in which many lives are saved?" - Catman Cohen
I think you need to work on your reading (and logic) comprehension. The parent poster (to whom you responded) is/was exactly right, and you somehow managed to miss it, despite quoting what he/she said.
I'll try once more, using slightly different words, as one statement:
- The GPL requires that you make source code available iff (if and only if) you distribute the program.
And again, as two separate statements:
- If you don't distribute the program, then you are not required to make source code available.
- If you do distribute the program, then you are required to make source code available.
The two formulations above, combined with the parent posters' variant, really should be all that you need to finally understand the requirements. If you still don't, then I'm afraid there isn't much I can do for you.
It's really very simple. I hope you understand now.
But without copyright why would Microsoft sell windows server -- or rather why would anyone buy it?
Depends. What kind of support agreement would be included with the purchase? Any other entitlements? It might very well be worth it to buy it, but you need to describe the entire deal much more succinctly. I don't know what was your point, but I'm pretty sure you didn't make it very clear.
Now you can decide to just not go but since all cinemas charge the same, there is an all or nothing choice: either see film X or see nothing.
There is the choice of waiting until the movie is on DVD and cheap enough to buy. It is possible to buy two older DVD:s for little more than the price of one cinema ticket.
You don't have to see the movie when it is new. It is possible to wait until it is cheap enough. If you are, say four friend that do this, you get to see the movie for one eighth of the price of a cinema ticket.
Piracy adds another option and puts pressure on media companies to provide more value.
IKEA has a table that I want, but I don't think it is cheap enough. Stealing adds another option and puts pressure on IKEA to provide more value.