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Doctorow On Copyright Reform & Culture
super-papa sends us to Locus Magazine for an article by Cory Doctorow discussing the conflicts between copyright law and modern culture, and arguing against the perception that copying media is still unusual. Quoting:
"Copyright law valorizes copying as a rare and noteworthy event. On the Internet, copying is automatic, massive, instantaneous, free, and constant. Clip a Dilbert cartoon and stick it on your office door and you're not violating copyright. Take a picture of your office door and put it on your homepage so that the same co-workers can see it, and you've violated copyright law, and since copyright law treats copying as such a rarified activity, it assesses penalties that run to the hundreds of thousands of dollars for each act of infringement. There's a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture."
Seriously, this is just preaching to the choir at this stage. Although it'd be nice if this picked up some mainstream coverage.
So when is the author going to spend $50 million of his money making a blockbuster movie and then give it away for free to everyone? I *eagerly* await that...
The problem is that copyrights are like the guilds. For example, you can call the right to make shoes a property right, buy and sell it, make profit off of it. But on no uncertain terms it is not a property at all and in fact it is an immoral restriction on peoples liberties.
Well the same is true with copyright. Contrary to myth copyrights don't promote creation, all they do is force the market to center around creation controls instead of creation services. Well, lawyers are good at controling things, while creators are good at creating things.
In fact, even when they do all these lawsuits, it's gotten to the point where they are not even trying to get copyright infringers any more. They know darn well it's unenforcable. Their only goal now is to sue guilt and intimidate people into buying overpriced content. That is why we have a moral duty to promote copying no matter what and treat it like a moral duty, not an infringement on peoples property.
Richard Stallman announces he would prefer that firms release all their code under the GPL or one of its variants.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
for me, the most frustrating part of the whole copyright law vs. culture thing is how the big guys calling the shots always say that they are doing this 'for the artists'.
well, i am an artist, and copyright law isn't helping me, it's getting in my way.
there have been many times when I've had to work around it. yes, i can usually do *almost* what i originally wanted to do, but a lot of my time is wasted researching laws, re-recording, writing new material, re-shooting things, covering up certain parts, etc. /.)
Not only does this water down what i originally wanted to say, but it also wastes valuable time that i should be using to make my next piece (or post on
copyright should not be abolished, there are legitimate uses for it, like stopping subway station vendors selling burnt CD's and DVD's for $2 a pop, but we need a sudden outbreak of common sense to be injected into this debate immediately.
non-commercial infringement should never be a crime.
re-appropriation should always be fair use. permission should not be required.
i believe that if the 'creative commons attribution share-alike non-commercial' was the default license that creative works would be released under; and people had to register for 'copyright, all rights reserved', we would all be much better off.
-I only code in BASIC.-
To pretend that you do not copy is to adopt the twisted hypocrisy of the Victorians who swore that they never, ever masturbated.
He's earned that cape.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If voters had a chance to vote on such, the penalties would be much shallower. There are three reasons they are so high: Lobbyists Lobbyists Lobbyists. Biz has too much influence over our politics and I hope the new administration does something about it. We risk not being classified as a democracy.
Table-ized A.I.
indeed, copying used to be for only a few large corporate players, in any media. copyright laws are merely polite gentleman agreements between major players. but the internet has entirely upended this by making everyone with a broadband connection the legal equivalent of bertelsmann, fox news corp, and time warner circa 1988. with a greater global reach and pretty much equivalent publishing capacity. and what used to be decided in terms of publishing outlays and release dates at the golf club over a cigar and a glass of whiskey between two executives is now decided by legions of 13 year olds
technology has taken us a lightyear in 20 years in terms of progress and how we relate to our culture and our media. meanwhile, the law concerning copyright and media has gone an inch
it is time not to reform copyright law and intellectual property, but to completely throw it out and rewrite it, based on a completely radically new status quo. or rather, of course, this will never happen. as if we ever has to rewrite copyright law. technology is moving so fast, the law's applicability can't keep up, and is outdated before it is defined and proposed. i'm not saying laws and morals are outdated, i'm saying that the ability to trade files in secret and without raising suspicion or flags will soon become commonplace
encryption and obfuscation are the next horizons in filing trading. at which point, the laws concerning our media will not be quaint and outdated, they will be completely alien. how do you enforce them? how do you investigate their compliance? its like coming into a spanish bank and holding a chicken up in the air and announcing in russian that you are making a bank robbery. who is going to pay attention to you? who is going to know what you are even talking about?
that's what copyright law is becoming: a russian bank robber with a chicken in a spanish bank: absurd, surreal, pointless, laughable
copyright law has been rendered obsolete, useless, defunct. there will soon be simply no way to enforce any of it, because there will soon be no insertion point for it into what is being done in media and culture nowadays. technology is evolving in ways beyond the law's ability to adapt
and no, that's not scary, its exhilarating. we are not talking about law concerning rape and murder here, we are talking about laws giving large media conglomerates the right to insert themselves into our culture, put up toll booths, and extort cash from us. simply not necessary anymore. bertelsmann, fox news corp, and time warner: they are now tollbooths on a dirt road for horses and buggies, over which a modern interstate highway bridge has just been installed. adios, media execs. your time is up. you are finished
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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Your office door exposes the clip to a casual glance by perhaps twenty-five people. There are no limits to re-distribution through your web site.
And let's be honest here. It isn't the photo of your office door that gets posted to the web. It's a high-res scan of the strip itself.
The geek takes his prize when he posts an HD rip of The Dark Knight Returns.
Entry level requirements a Blu-Ray drive and broadband service. Bonus points in platinum if he can score a pre-release screener and be first across the post.
It is not about money. It is not about Fair Use.
It is pure ego. Nothing more.
"I am invincible!" The James Bond flicks got that much right.
At this level of play, the geek is scaling Mount Everest and not cruising the Kansas plains, and he is lying if he says otherwise.
Auditude is a fingerprint system that basically embeds a watermark in the entire media file. That means any public web site that chooses to read this watermark can support the content creators by embedding ads over top of the media! Why oh why was this not done long ago to identify the source of piracy or at least add an extra step for pirates to remove the watermark?
Seriously. Those recordings of classical music are copyrighted in exactly the same way as recordings of pop music are! It's only the copyright on the composition that's run out.
You wouldn't get a symphony orchestra putting out CDs if we didn't have copyright. The only way for them to make money would be live performances which would mean they would only put out recordings insofar as they drove people to turn up at live events, it'd just be advertisements.
Nick
I wonder what Cory Doctorow would think if I posted a copy of this for my room mate?
(So that he didn't have to get up and get it from my book shelf, of course).
It's a laughable thing that movie studios spend their entire (large) advertising budget making people want to see their movie and then complain when some use any means necessary to see aforementioned movie.
These people aren't criminals. These are people responding to marketing. Marketing that emphasises seeing the movie. Many times I have seen very successful marketing centering on supporting the artist and experiencing the art.
I'm not saying that big movie studios can necessarily use that approach, what I am saying is that is that the blame should not be placed solely on the individuals engaged in bypassing copyright. People are essentially indulging themselves in something you made them desire.
Think of it this way. If I embark on a campaign to have people drive by one specific road to a remote town outside their city, emphasizing excitement at the end of that journey, should I be surprised when the speed limit is broken by some, some take different, easier routes, some fly to the town and some stow away in cars that only legally hold a certain number of people. No. I shouldn't be surprised. Are any of these people really criminals? Doubtful.
I record my sleeptalking
Both Simon and Green remind us of details we might have forgotten, skillfully weave a mass of information into coherent narratives and come up with some previously unreported nuggets. =================== Kyle DUI
Actually you've completey missed Doctorow's point. (Didn't RTFA, did we? :)
The crappy little 450x300-pixel, lossy-compressed-format, lousy audio version would be free and on the 'net. But if you enjoyed the storyline, you might well be willing to pay something to watch it on a big-screen in 7-channel. Or to buy a high-def limited-edition DVD that comes with a bunch of (physical) other stuff. Or perhaps you'd pay serious money to attend a local premier where some of the stars and technical people attend, together with dinner afterwards and a DVD-signing.
It's not about the content. It's about the differing values that people derive from these various format. The "premier, dinner, signing" thing is about being able to say to your friends, "I was there!" (Presumably they'd be impressed by that.)
It's about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
This is brilliance! I hope this picks up alot of coverage too! I have lots of beliefs about this subject area but couldn't summarize them in a comment so there's my post: http://james-ravenscroft.com/2008/11/08/the-copyfight-response-to-cory-doctorow/
This guy has a history of flamebait and bullshit just like the above and probably used his sock puppets to mod himself up again. Help Slashdot get rid of him by modding him to the karma hell he deserves.
The above is a long troll that devolves to pure incoherence. It's a waste of space designed to enrage and confuse. Help make it go away if you can. Other conversations will be better when the damage this joker can do is limited.
Parent was modded funny, but that site actually allows you to share your ideas with the President-Elect. Maybe if enough of us send him that article, he'll read it.
http://change.gov/page/s/yourvision
Indeed. If the /. community were to upload a PDF of this story to his website en masse, it would get some attention.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Because without copyrights, what would have changed?
NOTHING.
Metallica's "license" may, but that's got bugger all to do with the GP post.
You seem to want to ignore those beause they say "Copying is easy and universal and nowadays an inherent requirement of getting anything, so the old copyright law is broken and trying to shoehorn the modern digital age in the old shellack age that is now gone".
Wonder why you bring up technology changed society to need copyright but forget that technology now has arguably changed society to demand no copyright.
Arguments based on how the market worked prior to that technology don't necessarily apply to today's market.
The company paid it without our input.
The exact scenario presented is what a lot of Rights Owners do in fact use to beat down website owners. "Omg it's a copy of my product's packaging" "dude it's a photo of the product IN it's packaging" "I'm ordering you to remove all photos of my product!!!"
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The nick is westlake, kid, and I don't do sock puppets.
Since twitter quite despises the "westlake" brand name, it amused me when he began making an occasional apperance as "westbake."
You say a lot of stuff like this. Why?
Slashdot has few articles precisely to keep morons like you away.
I've been putting high-quality MP3s of my music up on my site lately. There's somewhat of a debate in the music communities about how best to promote one's work. Some people are "hoarders" and try to lock everything down. Others, like me, believe that profits are so incredibly tiny/rare among new musicians that you may as well release your stuff for free to build an audience. If you want to sell t-shirts or CDs or whatever later on, fine, but it makes no sense to restrict your music early on.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
What this law be when an average ISP connection speed will be 100 GB/s? When an USB memory stick will be 1 TB and a HD - 1000 TB?
The law will not stay the same however good it is written now. Such change of a base will inevitably cause change in the fabric of a society.
I do not know what this change will be. I have no way to know. But I know for sure that serious changes in the base will cause changes in laws.
Copyright laws when the speed of connection is 3 MB/s will differ from laws when speed is 3 TB/s.
Actually, comparing numbers of low-qual rip downloading to high-qual buying just means that to many customers, high-qual isn't worth the money. New episodes aren't better, just cheaper (if you download), so people buy more of them.
The fact that people still buy DVD collectors sets and remastered editions shows that yes, things that people have seen before still have value--if they sufficiently enjoyed them the first time. Naturally, not everyone who sees the low-qual rip will value the show enough to buy the DVD; that is just peoples' choices being made transparent. However, if you're worth your salt then there will be some who will buy your high-qual stuff, and that is where the money is.
If you look in the house of your average twenty-something TV fan, you will probably find loads of low-quality rips on their HD and a shelf of DVDs.
What is this "community" of which you speak?
Cynically yours,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."