World Copyright Summit and the Lies of the Copyright Industry

Mike Masnick over at Techdirt has an incredibly in-depth look at two presentations in particular from the recent CISAC world copyright summit. Rep. Robert Wexler and Senator Orrin Hatch both gave deeply troubling presentations calling opponents of stronger copyright "liars" and suggesting that copyright is the only way to make money on creative works, respectively. "Does anyone else find it ironic that it's the so-called 'creative class' which copyright supporters insist are enabled by copyright supposedly have not been able to tell this 'great story?' Perhaps the problem is that there is no great story to tell. Perhaps the problem is that more and more people are recognizing that the 'great story' is one that suppresses the rights of everyday users, stifles innovation, holds back progress and stamps on our rights of free speech and communication? Has it occurred to Wexler that for the past decade, the industry has been telling this story over and over and over again — and every time they do, more and more people realize that it doesn't add up? "

Comments

There is no debate

[QuantumG]

Debating how Copyright should work is like debating who should be king. If you accept to be ruled does it really matter how?

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Drama queen much?

Seriously. We're talking about your "right" to download movies without paying for them.

To equate this with the end of democracy just makes you look ridiculous.

Re:There is no debate

[QuantumG]

Maybe you are.

We're talking about restrictions on free speech.

Re:There is no debate

[mi]

We're talking about restrictions on free speech.

No, we don't. We are talking about, whether creators — of movies, music, literature, software, fashion designs — have the inherent rights to control their creations, or whether whoever happens to be able to copy their work has the same rights to it as the creator.

Re:There is no debate

[pugugly]

"If you accept to be ruled does it really matter how?"

Umm - yes?!?!?!

I remember nine years ago, people blathering on about how George Bush and Al Gore were hardly distinguishable and it made no difference.

A terrorist attack, two and a half wars, with eight years of dark age science, torture, and pissing on the Constitution later, I've come to the conclusion the 'How' makes a difference.

Sure opinions are like assholes. Oddly enough it turns out informed opinions are as rare as informed assholes.

Pug

Re:There is no debate

[the simurgh]

the only person who should be king is the guy who would kill someone not to be king.

Re:There is no debate

[k10quaint]

Drama queen much?

Seriously. We're talking about your "right" to download movies without paying for them.

To equate this with the end of democracy just makes you look ridiculous.

The comparison is quite apt actually, if a tad shrill. Say congress extends presidential term limits every 4 years and the House of Represenatives chose to re-elect him/her every 4 years regardless of the outcome of the "popular vote", you might cry foul. Technically, this would be legal but very unwise.

Copyrights are supposed to expire, mouse or no. Instead, they are extended ad infinitum to provide an economic moat to industries that would otherwise have none. Again, it is legal and quite common to rent congress-critters in order to bolster a failing (or failed) business model.

We were to be accorded limited/fair use of purchased copyrighted works. Instead we are only allowed to view, never transfer, transform, or reproduce these works in any way. Another bait and switch, I bought a product but now, somehow, I have no ownership rights to it.

There is a very good reason why unpopular but powerful governments shut down internet services (facebook, twitter, yahoo email, google, etc). The effortless transmission of information threatens them in exactly the same way it threatens the executives of Disney, Time Warner, Fox, and other large content creators. If you cannot control the flow of information, you cannot control the population or the consumer.

Don't you wonder why AOL could carpet the landscape with CDs/DVDs for pennies, yet when the same medium is produced by RIAA or MPAA members they cost $15.99 or $24.99? Independent filmmakers seem able to produce top quality films for only a few million, even using unionized labor throughout. When the MPAA members make movies, the budgets are in the hundreds of millions just to one up the last blockbuster with more fluff. Who pays for all this? You do. They just moved the decimal place once place to the right and rented congress to make sure that you have to pay it.

The state legislature of Indiana once passed a law that said "3 times the diameter of a circle is the circumference". So everyone who calculated the true circumference of a circle using Pi was in violation of the law. There was no Circumference Calculators Association of America at that time, so today we are able to determine for ourselves just how much runaround we get from congress on some issues.

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

That boat sailed a long time ago grasshopper and the answer back when Shakespeare was doing his gig is the same as the answer today. You build on the shoulders of giants, and only reach the heights you do, by the efforts of those around you and before you.

In order to give you incentive to build, and in deference to the realization that it is work just the same, you are granted the ability to control the rights to copy something for a limited time. But all the same, your work stands on our backs, and thus, we share in the ultimate ownership.

That limited time is and should always be that, limited. If you can't (or won't) monetize your products in that time, then that is on you. Not us.

And we should not be expected to limit our own rights and abilities outside of that specific right of yours to control who can copy your work for a limited time, simply because you've failed to keep up with technology enough.

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

Or me, I'd make a great king. Honest.

Re:There is no debate

[mellon]

They obviously don't have an "inherent" right, because if they did, we wouldn't be having this discussion. That's what an inherent right is - one that exists already. In order for it to be inherent, it would have to be the case, at a minimum, that it was broadly-enough recognized that you didn't have to fight against the average person's natural inclination. But peoples' natural inclinations are pretty clear - while people generally do seem to think that artists should be compensated, they do not agree that artists have a completely unrestricted copyright. You can see this simply by observing how people generally behave.

Copyright is a created right. It exists for a purpose: to encourage people to create new works of art. And it comes at a cost: peoples' right to copy these new works is restricted. Furthermore, peoples' right to speak about these works is restricted, and this does indeed get into the arena of freedom of speech, whether you want it to or not.

When you attempt to claim all rights to your work, in perpetuity, you are taking something away from the rest of the world. It may not be something that you consider important, but it is something that we consider important. So you have two choices: kill everyone who does not agree with you, or come to a compromise.

And that is precisely the purpose of this debate, which you seem to be arguing does not exist.

Re:There is no debate

[Opportunist]

We're talking about how culture is held hostage by people and organisations who think they're entitled to it. Culture depends on the use and reuse of what came before it. You can't do this today, a lot of culture is lying around and nobody may pick it up and create something new out of it. Redoing a 70s or 60s classic to fit into modern tastes? Can't do it, unless you are willing to deal with a huge studio that will rip your pants off if you're not careful.

Copyright was created to give artists an incentive to create, to give culture a boost and to make people create. Today, it is used to keep people from doing just that.

Re:There is no debate

[cpt kangarooski]

We're talking about restrictions on free speech.

No, we don't. We are talking about, whether creators -- of movies, music, literature, software, fashion designs -- have the inherent rights to control their creations, or whether whoever happens to be able to copy their work has the same rights to it as the creator.

No, the earlier poster is correct. Everyone has an inherent right to make, distribute, etc. copies of works, whether they created those works or not. This is a matter of freedom of speech. It's the reason why, for example, you have the right to recite Shakespeare in public, even though you are probably not Shakespeare. During the term of copyright, the public willingly surrenders a portion of their right to make use of the work of the author as part of a scheme to derive a greater public benefit than the public harm caused by suffering such restrictions. When the copyright expires, the author loses his right to prohibit other people from making use of the work, though he retains his natural right to use the work himself. This is why we talk about copyright as an exclusive right -- i.e. a right granted to the author to exclude others from doing certain things with the work -- and why when copyright expires, no rights in the work are, or need to be, granted to the public. The public has always been possessed of rights in the work, and upon the expiration of the copyright, the public is once again free to exercise those inherent rights.

What's not an inherent right is copyright. Authors have an inherent right as to whether or not to create a work to begin with, and they have an inherent right as to whether or not to reveal that work to anyone else, or to hide or destroy it. No one is suggesting that authors be compelled to create or compelled to publish. However, copyright is the right to prohibit the public from making, distributing copies, etc. with regard to works that members of the public have managed to obtain copies of, most often by publishing. The right to prohibit other people from, e.g. reciting Shakespeare, is certainly not anyone's inherent right! And as it is impossible to reconcile the idea with the much more reasonable idea that people do have an inherent (but not inalienable) right to recite Shakespeare, or whatever else, it's clear that this nonsense about inherent rights of authors to censor the rest of the public is absolute tripe.

I'm also rather surprised by the specific language you used. Movies, music, literature, software -- these are not unusual. But in the US at least, there is no copyright for fashion designs. Copyright in pictorial, graphic or sculptural works (such as clothing) can only subsist where the work is separable from any parts which have utility. (The idea, basically, is to avoid having people use copyright when they ought to be using patents) This just isn't the case for clothing, and it's long settled that this is so. Nor is there any need for copyright in the field of clothing design; copyright exists for utilitarian purposes, i.e. to encourage authors to create and publish new original and derivative works, while minimally protecting those works in both scope and duration of protection. That is, copyright exists to get the most stuff in the public domain fastest, with as little copyright as possible along the way. The field of clothing is terribly healthy without copyright. Many new works of fashion design are made all the time. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that there would be a substantial increase in the number of works if copyright were granted. In fact, there is an excellent reason to believe that there would be far fewer, as unauthorized derivatives would not be as common. Further, rent-seeking behavior amongst monopolists being what it is, the public would likely lose access to cheap copies of the designs. There is simply no public benefit _at all_ for copyrighted fashion design. So I'm wondering, why did you mention it?

Long story short, you seem to be quite backwards on this matter. You might want to read up on the utilitarian basis of copyright law, and the actual laws on the books.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

How is speech restricted. You are free to say anything you want and claim it as your own as long as it isn't something someone else said first and copyrighted.

Drama queen much? indeed!

Re:There is no debate

[sbeckstead]

Ahhh an example of circular logic
The state legislature of Indiana once passed a law that said "3 times the diameter of a circle is the circumference". So everyone who calculated the true circumference of a circle using Pi was in violation of the law.

Re:There is no debate

[sbeckstead]

I still fail to see how it is keeping anyone from creating anything. This part of the logic just doesn't add up!

It does seem to be keeping a bunch of people without an original thought in their heads from mashing together a bunch of other peoples work and calling it original.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

It's considerably more complicated than that. It's not just whether creators have the inherent rights to control their creations, but also under what circumstances and for how long. I'd be the first one to argue creators should be compensated - but not for the excessively long periods of time they have today. I'd like to go back to 14 years as a reasonable length of time for copyright owners to exploit their creation and then it should revert to the public domain. Copyright owners should have NO say whatever in what kind of equipment I use their creations - it's like say a book writer has the right to tell me I can read the book in the bedroom but not while sitting on the john, for example.

Re:There is no debate

[Jurily]

They obviously don't have an "inherent" right, because if they did, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Exactly. Free speech is an inherent right. The First Amendment does not grant it, but forbids Congress to restrict it.

Now contrast that to Disney's right over Mickey Mouse.

Re:There is no debate

[morgan_greywolf]

It's the reason why, for example, you have the right to recite Shakespeare in public, even though you are probably not Shakespeare.

Hence! I am Sir Shakespeare, thou clod insensitive!

Re:There is no debate

[nacturation]

That's what an inherent right is - one that exists already. In order for it to be inherent, it would have to be the case, at a minimum, that it was broadly-enough recognized that you didn't have to fight against the average person's natural inclination.

So black people in the United States fifty years ago did not have an inherent right of equality since they had to fight for it?

Re:There is no debate

[bertoelcon]

Ahhh an example of circular logic The state legislature of Indiana once passed a law that said "3 times the diameter of a circle is the circumference". So everyone who calculated the true circumference of a circle using Pi was in violation of the law.

Is that true, how is that even enforceable, much less what kind of horrible mess it would bring about in business that is now massively crippled due to not being able to legally use proven math.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Phrasing it a different way might be helpful: an inherent right is something we already have: life, speech, though, association, labor, etc. No one gives them to us, and if someone prevents us from excersizing them, they are violating our rights. This is true whether we fight for them or not.

The "right" to control what someone else does with something you gave them in a transaction is not inherent - in fact, it violates my natural right to property and association, which is an extension of my right to produce things through labor.

We might enforce such a rule because we think it has good practical effects, but we should never fool ourselves into thinking it's a "right." It's a violation of rights that we think is justified because of the end it produces.

Re:There is no debate

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Debating how Copyright should work is like debating who should be king. If you accept to be ruled does it really matter how?

Yes. Yes, it does. There are good kings and bad kings. Now, generally in the modern world we've accepted that "no king" (or having a king who is no more than a figurehead) is the best option of all, but for most of human history that hasn't been a choice.

Will we ever get rid of copyright? Hell, I don't know. Should we? I don't know the answer to that one either. What I do know is that we could have much, much better copyright laws than the ones we have now. (Say, seventeen years upon registration plus an optional, one-time seventeen-year extension ... I think I've heard that one before ...) Condemning all copyright laws as equally bad is not going to make them go away; they'll be with us for a long, long time. There is a lot to be said for harm reduction, just as there is for, to use your analogy, supporting a good king over a bad one.

Re:There is no debate

[cpt kangarooski]

parent's diatribe is the most repugnant smelly piece of tripe.

No, I think I've got it right, but I'm happy to discuss it.

"Authors have an inherent right as to whether or not to create a work to begin with" yup and if I want to starve I won't create anything at all or we'll let you have it the minute I produce it and still I'll starve.
It's my work, You can buy it, you can use it for your own amusement. You CAN NOT make copies of it and give it away.

No. There are plenty of ways for an author to make money without copyright. For example, Picasso could sell a painting for extravagant amounts; the sorts of people who were prepared to pay him such vast sums wanted an actual copy he made, and would not have just gone out and bought a cheap poster of the same work instead. Architects in the US have traditionally made a living without copyright. The aforementioned fashion designers still don't have copyrights, but do okay. The list goes on and on. In fact, I was a professional artist before I got into law, and I never made a penny that was attributable to copyright, but I nevertheless supported myself and had a comfortable life.

Of course, copyright is no guarantee of success either. Even if you do have a copyright, you can still starve because your work is unpopular. There are plenty of flop movies, plays, books, etc.

The work you create is indeed yours, in the sense that you created it. Other than that, you have no particularly special rights in it inherently. Certainly you cannot control whether or not other people make copies of it and give them away merely because you are the author. Whatever ability you have to control what other people do and do not do can only possibly be based on whether or not those other people consent to your control. Why would they ever do so, unless they felt that it would somehow benefit them more to submit to it than not to?

That's not free speech. You certainly have a right to say the same thing I said in your own words you can even quote me on specific points THAT IS FREE SPEECH.

Yes. And copying your work verbatim is free speech too. But I might be willing to temporarily not do that, at least in some circumstances, if you made it worth my while. But you don't just start out dictating to me what I may and may not say, merely because you said it first.

After my ability to make money from it runs out it can become public domain but not until it has run the course of being MY FUCKING WORK ASSHOLE!

That's simply never how the law has worked. Even in this awful era of copyright law we now find ourselves in, the copyright term runs out after a particular period of time, regardless of whether or not you've completely exhausted the copyright-related revenues to be had.

You are supposed to be enriched by what I write for you and teach you or make you think about. It is for you to repeat what I say or disagree with it vocally if you wish. But taking my work and copying it and giving it away at your whim is not free speech.
I don't understand how anyone can support this obvious garbage. That this "public domain first" crap exists I just don't see how in any society you could think that!

Society is enriched by: 1) Authors creating new original works; 2) Authors creating new derivative works; 3) The public being free to use works in any manner they see fit (copying, distributing, preparing derivative works based upon, etc.); 4) The public not having to pay for works, access to works, copies, etc.

An ideal world would be one in which every creative work that could be created, was, and where there was no copyright at all, so that everyone had cost-free access to the entire body of human creative output. For practical reasons, we can't manage that at this time, but we should at least strive to get as close to that as possible.

The algebra of copyright is essentially that without copyright, some number of works x will be created and published because there are non-copyright-related

Re:There is no debate

[mightyQuin]

We're also talking about my "right" to install my own purchased copy of Mass Effect more than three times.

Re:There is no debate

[shark72]

"Redoing a 70s or 60s classic to fit into modern tastes? Can't do it, unless you are willing to deal with a huge studio that will rip your pants off if you're not careful."

You mean recording your own cover? That's Harry Fox; ASCAP and BMI; there are mechanical licensing fees set up so that you generally don't have to deal with record labels or negotiate on costs.

If you're referring to taking the recording and, say, doing a remix, then yes, you need to specifically get permission. However, the alternative is to create something new which you own 100%. Then (and this is the beautiful part) you can copyright it but still release it with absolutely no restrictions on copying or remixing.

If you're not particularly good at writing hit songs yourself, then your own recording may have less commercial value than a remix of a well-known recording from the 1980s. But I believe that most people reading this aren't focused on releasing stuff for commercial gain.

Re:There is no debate

[bertoelcon]

I still fail to see how it is keeping anyone from creating anything. This part of the logic just doesn't add up! It does seem to be keeping a bunch of people without an original thought in their heads from mashing together a bunch of other peoples work and calling it original.

It does add up, how many truly original works are there past maybe ~1970, if you can claim anything is a derivative of anything else you have this massive pit of cash you now control called Lawsuits of Copyright Infringement. Somewhere a line must be drawn and someone must not be fallible enough to fail at guarding that line and making sure anything beyond is free. Sadly we are human and greed is inherit in our existence, and we are screwed until we actually do a damn thing to stop it.

Re:There is no debate

[Quothz]

Debating how Copyright should work is like debating who should be king. If you accept to be ruled does it really matter how?

So you won't mind if I download one of your programs, say TcpSafe, sell it, and keep all of the money. Right?

Re:There is no debate

[ShieldW0lf]

You're wrong. About everything.

Copyright exists because criminals have claimed to own everything, and enforce that claim with guns. They then give you made up little services you can do and trade with them, like make a painting or give them a blowjob. They pretend that the crap you make is meaningful property, so you can pretend to trade your made up crap with them for some food and a place to live. But it's all made up, and the moment that the chips are down, you're holding your stupid little tickets and they hold everything and you're a supplicant just like you always were.

You are indentured servants and slaves.

Re:There is no debate

[Daniel Dvorkin]

We're talking about restrictions on free speech.

No, we don't. We are talking about, whether creators -- of movies, music, literature, software, fashion designs -- have the inherent rights to control their creations, or whether whoever happens to be able to copy their work has the same rights to it as the creator.

[sigh] If you say something -- anything, whether or not it's something someone else has said before -- you are exercising your right to free speech. If the law tells you that you can't say what you want to say, that is a restriction on your freedom of speech. Period.

Saying "I support free speech, but X doesn't count" is a classic tool of the censor, and it's always wrong, whether X is a political position with which you disagree, a word you don't want your children to hear, or just something that someone else said once before. All speech is inherently free, and anything which limits it is, yes, damn it, a restriction on free speech. There's no way around it.

We long ago accepted that, no matter what the First Amendment says, certain restrictions on freedom of speech are acceptable. Slander carries with it legal penalties, as do threats of violence, as does revealing classified information. We also, as a matter of principle, try to keep these restrictions as limited as possible. So the only pertinent question is, how much of a restriction on free speech are we willing to accept in the name of copyright?

Re:There is no debate

[bertoelcon]

Sure opinions are like assholes. Oddly enough it turns out informed opinions are as rare as informed assholes.

While this only seems like a halfassed troll with a fullassed point, there is reasoning behind this and would make sense if stated using well thought out terms.

Re:There is no debate

[artor3]

The state legislature of Indiana once passed a law that said "3 times the diameter of a circle is the circumference".

Nope. Urban legend, with some basis in fact. They *almost* passed a bill which had been prepared by some nutjob pretending to be a mathematical genius. Part of the bill claimed (indirectly) that pi was 3.2.

The law was never passed, and even if it had been, it wouldn't have been against the law to calculate the actual value of pi. It would have been like those bills Congress loves to pass along the lines of "We hereby recognize that puppies are cute." They're not gonna fine you for preferring kittens.

Re:There is no debate

[drinkypoo]

Congratulations, you have entered the philosophical minefield of the concept of "rights". Really it's just semantic bullshit, it's arguing over whether the word refers to those things which ought to be true, or those things which are true. I say you have a right to violate copyright, and the powers that be have the right to try to pass laws to stop you, and you have the right to riot and throw bricks if you want to, et cetera; you have the right to do your best. The idea of a natural "right to life" for example is hilarious; just try to guarantee it! But again, it's all just arguing over the definitions of words. In English, one word is often used many different ways by definition, let alone colloquially.

Re:There is no debate

[drinkypoo]

If you're not particularly good at writing hit songs yourself,

Stop. Right. There. Because what makes a song a hit is only partly about the song itself.

To suggest someone is not good at "writing hit songs" is disingenuous because it's obvious that more goes into making a hit than writing.

Re:There is no debate

[Daniel Dvorkin]

That's not free speech. You certainly have a right to say the same thing I said in your own words you can even quote me on specific points THAT IS FREE SPEECH. After my ability to make money from it runs out it can become public domain but not until it has run the course of being MY FUCKING WORK ASSHOLE!

Take a look at your own little rant. Is it offensive? Yes. Is it obscene? By most community standards, absolutely. And there are many, many people who would therefore choose to class it as "not free speech." But fortunately for you, they don't get to do that.

And you do not get to decide what is "speech" and what isn't, either.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

We're talking about restrictions on free speech.

No, we don't. We are talking about, whether creators -- of movies, music, literature, software, fashion designs -- have the inherent rights to control their creations, or whether whoever happens to be able to copy their work has the same rights to it as the creator.

Yes, we are. Freedom of speech must include the ability to repeat the same expressions in partial or complete form that one has heard themselves. Copyright is an infringement on the freedom of expression, no if's and's or but's. The only question is, is it a worthwhile trade-off?

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Cowpat]

no, that's not entirely true. The actual story is far more releveant though.

A local doctor, who fancied himself an amateur mathematician 'invented' some proof regarding circles which also dropped out the value of pi as exactly 3.25. He they passed this to a friend in the state legislature and got it written into a bill, such that Indiana would have free use of his proof in school textbooks, etc., in exchange for protecting his 'invention' against other people ripping it off. The lower house pushed it around a few committees (who pushed it to other committees, wondering why it had come to them) before passing the lower house fairly overwhelmingly - many members commenting how they didn't understand it, but that if he was willing to let them use it for free, they were all for it. In the upper house, it passed its first reading and got packed off to some more committees. At that point, a professor of mathematics, who happened to be visiting to lobby for university funding, got wind of this bill; looked at it, picked his jaw back up from the floor, and promptly briefed a bunch of the state senators on what they needed to know about it. The bill was torn apart on its second reading in the upper house, then quietly forgotten.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Don't be silly. Natural rights are ones that essentially describe the default state if no one, government or other individuals, were to interfere with you.

Re:There is no debate

[mellon]

When you speak of people as a class, I think it really seriously confuses the issue. That's not to say that noticing the mistreatment of a class of people and doing something about it is wrong, but when you are trying to isolate what is right and what is wrong, I think it's pretty easy to wind up dividing by zero proving that 1==2 if you do this.

The Declaration of Independence says "we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal..." And when I was coming up, I heard those words and believed them, and couldn't understand all the inequalities that I saw. I wasn't thrilled about the sexist language either, but that's another story.

But here we're talking about ideals, not about what is inherent. Really, when you say something is self-evident, you're contradicting yourself - if it were truly self-evident, you would not need to hold it to be true, or say that it was true, because, since it's self-evident, everybody would already agree that it was true.

So the facts on the ground 50 years ago were that enough people didn't believe people should be treated equally regardless of skin color that they *weren't* treated equally. And this is a situation that appears to persist to this day, despite the great strides that were taken in the sixties, and despite the fact that we managed to elect an african-american president.

So did they have an *inherent* right to be treated equally? The facts would suggest otherwise. That's why our parents had to work for it, and that's why there is still work for us to do. That's a crying shame, and we should work to correct the situation, but the fact that it sucks and that it shouldn't be that way doesn't change the fact that it is that way at the moment.

This is nothing new - it used to be that serfs couldn't leave the land, and were inherited by the lord of the land. It used to be that you could capture and keep slaves in much of the "civilized" world. And never in all of history has it been the case that people actually did have equal rights. The fact that we would create and aspire to an ideal like that is a truly wonderful thing, and not to be disparaged by talk of "inherent" and "natural" rights that nobody ever actually enjoyed.

Re:There is no debate

[ljw1004]

There are two balanced rights. You only listed one. Here they are, together (this phrasing taken from the two parts of Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights):

(1) "Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits."

(2) "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author."

Sure, you can say that one particular implementation of part 2 (i.e. copyright) is not an inherent right. But part 2 itself is the fundamental inherent right which we have to figure out how to implement.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Whoever modded you flamebait deserves a metamod slap-down.
That's a pretty funny joke.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Straw man arguments are lies.

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

No one is born a slave, to lose one's freedom requires the action of a force outside of them. Thus, no, blacks have and had an inherent right to equality just the same as any other person. The fact that the nation took (and is still taking) a while to realize and acknowledge this fact doesn't make it any less true.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

During the term of copyright, the public willingly surrenders a portion of their right to make use of the work of the author as part of a scheme to derive a greater public benefit than the public harm caused by suffering such restrictions. When the copyright expires, the author loses his right to prohibit other people from making use of the work, though he retains his natural right to use the work himself.

Wait, you mean copyright's supposed to work just like patents? You know, "publish the secret of your invention, and get a monopoly on it, but only for 13 years"?

Spend a few billion dollars to develop the cure for cancer? Congratulations, your miracle drug gets patent protection: 13 years of exclusive right to produce the drug and sell it at any price you want, so as to recoup your multibillion-dollar R&D programme. After that, anyone who wants to cure cancer can copy your recipe and sell the cure for their cost of production.

Walt Disney doodled a cartoon mouse? Oh, that's not a patent, he gets a copyright. 75 years plus the life of the creator.

Any intellectual property framework that gives the inventor of a fucking cartoon mouse stronger legal protections than the cure for cancer is deranged.

Re:There is no debate

[penix1]

That limited time is and should always be that, limited. If you can't (or won't) monetize your products in that time, then that is on you. Not us.

And we should not be expected to limit our own rights and abilities outside of that specific right of yours to control who can copy your work for a limited time, simply because you've failed to keep up with technology enough.

I am going to play devil's advocate here. I agree with what you are saying that the public domain is the sole purpose of copyright regardless of what the distributors want to portray. That said, here we go...

It is hard for an owner to control for that limited time when whole works are leaked to torrent sites even before they are released. How does that situation play in your scheme of things? How about the infringed content when someone walks into a theater with a camera then posts it online? How about the latest Photoshop version showing up on torrent sites hours after (or even before) their release? The point is, in a connected world, content owners don't get even that limited time you are referring to. Are current copyright limits too long? Sure. Can you guarantee if the limit is reduced to say 7 years it won't be shared on the torrent sites in two weeks after release or before? I thought not.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

That boat sailed a long time ago grasshopper ...

Back in the early 1950's, my father invented the branch of engineering that is discussed in our textbook. Of course there were some people that did some related work before he did, but they didn't come close to putting together the physics models that are now used commonly (in our field).

Our text book is (C) 1995 and since then there have been 11 printings and well over twenty thousand copes sold of a very mathematical book. When we give lectures to the students that use the book, they are always thanking us for taking the time to write it down. It took eight years to write with a pause in the middle, then a large re-write for the final version. I typed something like two million keystrokes. The artist that created four hundred line drawings was paid something over thirty thousand US Dollars for his labor by our publisher. When people tell us about typos or other errors, we have our publisher correct them in the next printing.

You, grasshopper, have a lot of damn gall to tell me that we can't profit from our labor by restricting who can publish it.

Re:There is no debate

[hairyfeet]

One sentence- Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright! The man has been pushing up the daisies (or a Popsicle, depending on whether you believe the tale or not) for over half a century, and yet his FIRST work, one made when planes were made out of cloth and antibiotics were just a dream, is STILL under copyright. I don't care which side you are on, i thionk we can all agree that is just fucked up!

The American copyright system, which is now being shoved down the rest of the planet's throats was a CONTRACT- nothing more. in return for a LIMITED copyright, we in turn got a richer and more diverse Public Domain for future artists to build on and for We, The People, to enjoy. Instead we have been robbed of our Public Domain by treasonous corporations with the blatant bribery of our public officials. Until We, The People are once again represented at the negotiating table ALL copyrights should be treated by the people as completely worthless and ignored. An unjust law paid for with outright bribery should be viewed as the illegal act that it is. But until sane copyrights are again restored and We The People are given representation all acts produced by corrupted officials for their corporat5e masters should simply be ignored by all.

Re:There is no debate

[k10quaint]

Ah, I mistook the phrase "passed by the legislature" for enacted into law. I stand corrected. Thank you all.

I knew I should have used a car analogy!!!

Re:There is no debate

[cpt kangarooski]

The Universal Declaration doesn't list inherent rights. It lists rights which are good ideas and which people ought to have. Some of them are inherent, others are not. For example, people ought to have a guaranteed right to medical care (see Art. 25(1)), but we are not endowed by God or nature or whatever with an inherent right to compel others to grant us medical care. And treating oneself only gets you so far.

Frankly, I'd say that Art. 27(2) is outright wrong. Copyright is utilitarian in nature. A particular polity can decide to grant copyrights or not grant copyrights as it sees fit, provided it is generally equitable. It's little different than a town deciding to put up streetlights; if they're useful and cost-effective and realizable, then sure, they might be installed. And people might hold differing opinions as to whether or not they ought to be set up or not. But it's not a matter of human rights. It's a social program meant to help subsidize authors for the public benefit. It isn't necessary or even particularly important. It should not be in the Universal Declaration. Whether an author should be granted a copyright is a question for the society he lives in. It shouldn't be a given.

Plus of course, you still just cannot reconcile Art. 19, 27(1), and 27(2). It cannot be done. They're in conflict if you assign them equal weight. My solution -- that free speech trumps but is partially alienable for the purpose of setting up copyright, if the particular copyright law in question is seen as desirable by those who will be burdened by it -- at least makes sense. This is the same problem the moral rights crowd runs into; it's nonsensical, and even the countries that pretend to practice it are really hypocrites.

Re:There is no debate

[k10quaint]

Well done sir!

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

Good for you friend, you worked hard you did the deed, and you see the fruits of your labor.

Now tell me, your father, did he invent his own number system? No?
Did he invent his own alphabet? No.
Were the laws of physics that his branch of engineering is based upon, discovered by him?
Did he invent the math system behind it? The algebra, the calculus?

No?

Well hey, at least when you published your book, you probably did so on a machine completely of your own design. Using a printing system you invented. No?

Then maybe it wasn't all your work. Maybe, as I said, you and he are standing on the backs of the people who came before you. How much have you reserved of your profits for them and their families? Nothing?

Then perhaps you need to drink a warm cup of Shhh! and think upon your lessons grasshopper. Cause unless you and your father sprung out of Zeus's forehead fully formed and full of the knowledge of life, you owe a lot of your success to a lot of people that you haven't yet given shit to.

Re:There is no debate

[cpt kangarooski]

FYI, 'obscene,' from a legal perspective means that it appeals to the prurient interest, among other things. It's not a synonym for 'offensive.' So when he says "MY FUCKING WORK ASSHOLE!" I rather doubt that he means it in a sexual sense. So no, it really could not be considered obscene. That would be weird.

Re:There is no debate

[k10quaint]

I point out that any system that requires that the poor die from cancer for 13 years so that one guy can make money is also deranged.

Your point still stands however.

Re:There is no debate

[timlyg]

These sort of thing is like blood suckers using people's compassion to make money.

Da Vinci and the ancients are smart enough to make their living and they are truly artists, they certainly don't need your hypocrisy. Find another line of work.

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

The answer to "people are stealing my shit" isn't "you honest folk who aren't stealing my shit need to give up your right to do things" especially when it still doesn't result in people not stealing your shit. Nor is it "Well because some people steal my shit, the public should have to let me control this longer". How does longer control help anything but provide incentive to steal?

There are ways of making buying something more desirable than stealing it, both by creating incentives to buy and disincentives to steal. The problem today is that rather than do either, the argument is made that they simply need to keep control over the work longer and longer. And each time, they'll use the excuse that people are still stealing it, because the point is that they realize that this means they can milk it forever.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Copyrights are supposed to expire, mouse or no. Instead, they are extended ad infinitum to provide an economic moat to industries that would otherwise have none. Again, it is legal and quite common to rent congress-critters in order to bolster a failing (or failed) business model.

This is a typical bait and switch argument I often see on this forum. The file sharing advocacy crowd does not respect copyright, period, even for a movie that hasn't been released yet, so the question of whether the period should be 50 years vs. 70 or 90 becomes irrelevant.

The ones who post here make an interesting exception for works released under the GPL, however. Bravo when the FSF sic's its lawyers against anyone who dares incorporate GPL'd software into a product without strictly complying with the terms of the license. But hey, aren't we just talking bits that people should be able to freely copy and use however they want? I guess not. Suddenly, copyright law needs to be respected, and courts and lawyers are needed to back it up. Heh heh, what did someone once say about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of a weak mind?

When the MPAA members make movies, the budgets are in the hundreds of millions just to one up the last blockbuster with more fluff. Who pays for all this? You do.

Don't agree with their business model? The solution is simple.. DON'T CONSUME THEIR PRODUCTS. Don't buy it, don't steal it, don't copy it, don't share it. Walk away and the issue goes away. Patronize the indie filmmakers whose work you claim to respect.

The state legislature of Indiana once passed a law that said "3 times the diameter of a circle is the circumference".

What does that have to do with this issue? Absolutely nothing. Some state legislature passed a stupid law about mathematics a hundred years ago, therefore copyright law must be stupid!?

I'm starting to think that one of the unintended consequences of file-sharing is that it is degrading the ability of college students and young college graduates to think logically. They start with a gut-level position, then tend to throw the kitchen sink at it (see examples above) to defend it. If you have 30 posters raising 50 different arguments, and no-one with a dissenting view is allowed to get a word in edgewise, then the feeling is, well at least some of those 50 arguments must be good. Of course, this has been a common tactic in society at large for time immemorial; if often succeeds because it appeals to the prejudices of the crowd. But college graduates are supposed to know better.

Re:There is no debate

[ljw1004]

What exactly do you consider to be an "inherent right"?

There's no formal definition. But those rights which we the collective citizens of the world consider to be inalienable, well, if they're not "inherent" then I don't know what is.

And of course you can't reconcile them. That's the nature of rights. If you want things that can be reconciled then you're in a candystore not the morality of the human race.

Re:There is no debate

[QuantumG]

You mean this? http://www.quantumg.net/tcpsafe/ No, I wouldn't have any problem with that.. being that I licensed it under the GPL v3 and all. And before you ask, yeah, go ahead and sell it without source code, I don't care.

Re:There is no debate

[gnupun]

Now tell me, your father, did he invent his own number system? No?
Did he invent his own alphabet? No.
Were the laws of physics that his branch of engineering is based upon, discovered by him?
Did he invent the math system behind it? The algebra, the calculus?

No?

All authors borrow and use all those things from society for free. And that is why copyright is only for a limited period of time, unlike real estate, which can be passed down to family indefinitely.

Re:There is no debate

[bertoelcon]

Ive got to admit, that is more interesting that the politicians turn such a blind eye to reason in the face of the the word "free"

Re:There is no debate

[DAldredge]

Do you work for free?

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

Did I say he should? Mighty nice strawman you've tried to build there friend. It'd be a shame if some flames hit it and burnt it all up. Perhaps you want to go back and read the complete thread before attempting to put words in someone's mouth again.

Re:There is no debate

[Quothz]

And before you ask, yeah, go ahead and sell it without source code, I don't care.

Well, then I applaud the strength of your convictions, although I don't share them. While I think copyright is in need of some reform, I believe that creative works flourish much more when the creators right to control the work is protected.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

... Did he invent the math system behind it? The algebra, the calculus?...

I call bullshit on you, mr grasshopper.

Of course there isn't any way we can pay back Newton and/or Leibniz for inventing calculus. We are the first to give credit where due--the book has several hundred references to related work, which appeared in the interval between my father's first papers (1950's) and our (C) date. But we can pay forward by helping the next generation (of engineers that are interested in our field) get a real head start on their careers. We do this all the time, our volunteer work includes free lectures and design reviews (for just a couple of examples).

As far as the publishing technology goes, we did pay what the creators asked, we didn't steal any of that.

Let me tell you, I was pissed when some a**hole scanned the book and posted it.

Re:There is no debate

[QuantumG]

I believe that creative works flourish much more when the creators right to control the work is protected.

Care you share your reasoning? Or is this "belief" in the religious sense?

Re:There is no debate

[korean.ian]

I do agree that copyright laws at the present are not beneficial to the public or the artist. There should be some term where exclusive copyright is granted to the artist, but at the present that term is far too long.

Also you might want to rethink your progression of why society is enriched by art (for art please include music/film/plays/etc). To paraphrase: "Picasso could make a living by selling works." In your defense of eradicating copyright: "4) The public not paying for works, access to works."

It's interesting that you use Picasso as an example, because France had some pretty strict copyright laws. And they continue to enforce them.
http://www.picasso.fr/us/picasso_page_right-copyright.php

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

There's no way you can pay back the people before you? But you expect the people coming after you to pay you? And you call bullshit on me friend?

I think not.

Or once the inevitable happens and your father passes to the next world, are you planning on giving the book away for free? Is that it? You don't think Newton or any of those people in the 'several pages of references' had descendants that should see a buck from their work as well? Or is it only just you are special enough for that reward?

You see my friend that's the point, we give you the right to make money off the part you worked on, as long as you remember that you couldn't have done squat if you hadn't based that part off the much larger volume of work that was already in place due to their efforts. If you think that you should have the right to demand money for your work 'forever' then so should they.

Re:There is no debate

[Dragonslicer]

Exactly. Free speech is an inherent right. The First Amendment does not grant it, but forbids Congress to restrict it.

That depends a lot on your definition of inherent. The authors of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that all people (with varying definitions of "people") should have certain rights that the government could not take away. Either these rules apply only to the government, and any other person can take away your rights, or the government must enforce rules to prevent others from taking away your rights. If it's the latter, then those rights don't really exist without government. If it's the former, the only inherent rights you have are those that you can prevent others from taking away from you, either by fighting off aggressors or evading them.

Re:There is no debate

[Dragonslicer]

Don't be silly. Natural rights are ones that essentially describe the default state if no one, government or other individuals, were to interfere with you.

Not interacting with any other human beings doesn't seem like a very natural state to me.

Re:There is no debate

[k10quaint]

Copyrights are supposed to expire, mouse or no. Instead, they are extended ad infinitum to provide an economic moat to industries that would otherwise have none. Again, it is legal and quite common to rent congress-critters in order to bolster a failing (or failed) business model.

This is a typical bait and switch argument I often see on this forum. The file sharing advocacy crowd does not respect copyright, period, even for a movie that hasn't been released yet, so the question of whether the period should be 50 years vs. 70 or 90 becomes irrelevant.

The ones who post here make an interesting exception for works released under the GPL, however. Bravo when the FSF sic's its lawyers against anyone who dares incorporate GPL'd software into a product without strictly complying with the terms of the license. But hey, aren't we just talking bits that people should be able to freely copy and use however they want? I guess not. Suddenly, copyright law needs to be respected, and courts and lawyers are needed to back it up. Heh heh, what did someone once say about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of a weak mind?

So, they promise 50 years, them change it to 75 + life and you say I bait and switch? The quote you are looking for is: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." It is Emerson, and I believe he was bemoaning that too much consistency cuts off the flow of new ideas and new directions in society. The GPL is actually consistent with people who think copyright law needs to be reigned in, it uses fire to fight fire. It uses the unbounded constraints of copyright to force people who use it to share it with everyone. It is referred to as Copyleft because its purpose is as far from copyright as one can get. So you haven't read either Emerson or Stallman, fine.

When the MPAA members make movies, the budgets are in the hundreds of millions just to one up the last blockbuster with more fluff. Who pays for all this? You do.

Don't agree with their business model? The solution is simple.. DON'T CONSUME THEIR PRODUCTS. Don't buy it, don't steal it, don't copy it, don't share it. Walk away and the issue goes away. Patronize the indie filmmakers whose work you claim to respect.

I don't agree with the business model of the coal factory spewing sulfurous fumes into the atmosphere causing acid rain which kills all of my crops. Explain to me how my not using electricity would undo the damage? Those not affected by the rain would continue to purchase the power, and my land would be destroyed by the output of the coal plant. This is a classic tragedy of the commons example. I could walk away from my land, which I purchased and I would "go away". I could also walk away from the DVD I purchased (but cannot copy for my own use) and I would "go away". The issue still remains, people who bought land that had coal plants built next to them after the purchase have a right to address the damage being done. When someone sells me a DVD full of information, their ability to dictate the devices I employ upon that information stops at my doorway. Booksellers do not sell books that can only be read in light produced by GE lightbulbs.

The state legislature of Indiana once passed a law that said "3 times the diameter of a circle is the circumference".

What does that have to do with this issue? Absolutely nothing. Some state legislature passed a stupid law about mathematics a hundred years ago, therefore copyright law must be stupid!?

I'm starting to think that one of the unintended consequences of file-sharing is that it is degrading the ability of college students and young college graduates to think logically. They start with a gut-level position, then tend to throw the kitchen sink at it (see examples above) to defend it. If you have 30 posters r

Re:There is no debate

[cpt kangarooski]

Also you might want to rethink your progression of why society is enriched by art (for art please include music/film/plays/etc). To paraphrase: "Picasso could make a living by selling works." In your defense of eradicating copyright: "4) The public not paying for works, access to works."

Ah, a small quibble here. Creative works are intangible and often present in multiple instances. A novel is a work. A copy is a tangible object in which a work is fixed. The paper and cardboard book in which the novel is printed is a copy. And of course, a copyright is a right pertaining to works and copies in various ways.

Picasso could make a living selling copies, such as tangible canvases with paintings on them, or metal sculptures, etc. Even if everyone and their dog was printing up exact replicas of these things, Picasso would still be able to command a higher price by virtue of the fact that his copies were the ones that _he_ made. Thus, when someone steals a poster of Guernica, no one really cares all that much.

So while I'm not in favor of eradicating copyright (unless would yield a greater public benefit than reforming copyright), I don't see a problem here. Society is enriched when anyone can obtain access to published works freely, anyone can make copies of those works freely, etc., but this would not reduce demand for copies made by, or at least touched by (e.g. an autographed book) the hand of the author, as opposed to all the other generic copies.

Re:There is no debate

[Tubal-Cain]

I think I will be quoting this post in my next letter to my Congress-critter.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite so.

Even so, you seem to have missed a direct negative feedback loop between the duration of copyright and the amount of work being produced. Keeping in mind that the purpose of copyright is not to "reward" (that's what medals are for) or "make money" (people still sell bottled water in Ireland even tho tap water id *free*), but to maximize the production of "art", it is quite obvious that if artists make too much money, or for too long, their output diminishes, so overextended "protection" is counterproductive.

Re:There is no debate

[Tubal-Cain]

We were to be accorded limited/fair use of purchased copyrighted works. Instead we are only allowed to view...

How are we supposed to view without someone distributing? For that matter, why does nobody accuse libraries of violating copyright?

Re:There is no debate

[DMUTPeregrine]

"Independent filmmakers seem able to produce top quality films for only a few million, even using unionized labor throughout."

Sure, having your workers ground themselves so they don't carry a charge will decrease some small electrical shocks, but is it really that much of a problem to have ionized labor?

Re:There is no debate

[Quothz]

Care you share your reasoning? Or is this "belief" in the religious sense?

Half-and-half, or thereabouts. Prior to the establishment of modern copyright,* creators suffered pretty badly. The Statute of Anne makes a note of this as preamble. Although lawsuits, legislation, and Irish book piracy ran wild for the next century, a lot more authors got paid and a lot more books got writ. Based on this, I conclude that copyright works - at least somewhat.

The faith end of things is a general belief in property as a viable concept applied to a belief in the work ethic. A writer, like a carpenter, deserves a day's pay for a day's work.** As noted above, copyright is the only method we've used that's even been marginally successful at achieving that. While intellectual property may not be an inescapable conclusion of those premises, it's the only one I've got.

* That is, a limited, protected copyright granted to the author.

** Yeah, I'm ignoring a lot of nuance, such as what a bad author or carpenter deserve, but I don't want to start a discourse on the work ethic. I'll note that artistry is (generally), and I think should be, a meritocratic vocation.

Re:There is no debate

[Archades54]

Photoshop's main salesbase (creative industry) will always generally purchase licences for their product.

The majority of the downloaders are students who can't afford the $1000plus price, and in some cases will learn on a pirated copy and go on to work for a firm which buys legit copies (or they are the ones that push the bosses to buy the stuff)

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you really are a retarded twat.

I would try to explain why you are retarded, but its obvious you are a lost cause. Please do society a favor and keep whatever you create to yourself and never let anyone ever see or access it so we don't have to worry about you crying about it.

Re:There is no debate

[penix1]

There are ways of making buying something more desirable than stealing it, both by creating incentives to buy and disincentives to steal. The problem today is that rather than do either, the argument is made that they simply need to keep control over the work longer and longer. And each time, they'll use the excuse that people are still stealing it, because the point is that they realize that this means they can milk it forever.

It is greed on the part of the copyright owners for sure. I'm not arguing that. By the same token though, it is greed on the part of infringers that keeps it going providing the argument you are putting forward. They want the content but don't want to abide by the wishes of the holder even for a shorter limited time. I notice you didn't define even one of the ways you are claiming to make buying the content more attractive or providing disincentive to illegal downloading. You simply stated there are ways. Please define exactly how a copyright holder can control their content even for a day once it is released. That is the problem.

Re:There is no debate

[k10quaint]

I still fail to see how it is keeping anyone from creating anything. This part of the logic just doesn't add up! It does seem to be keeping a bunch of people without an original thought in their heads from mashing together a bunch of other peoples work and calling it original.

So the people who invented gene therapy did not have an original though in their heads because they mashed together a bunch of stuff about DNA and genes and diseases that other scientists discovered. The nerve of some people.

Creating an exact duplicate of a work is still an act of creation, just an unoriginal one. Taking a photograph of a photograph is also an act of creation, only slightly more original than the last example. Scanning a photograph, and emailing it to your friend is also an act of creation, also not original. All restricted by copyright. In fact, you cannot violate copyright without first creating a copy or derivative work. So yes, copyright restricts creation.

Music is far more impacted by this than video. Composers have been building on each others tricks for hundreds of years. You can find a base line from Bach in a Beyonce song. Shutting off the spigot and saying all songs henceforth may not build upon others without first consulting a lawyer is just something a lawyer would come up with.

Re:There is no debate

[walshy007]

because libraries have been around since long before this extreme copyright length, and usage restriction business. Any attempt at barring all libraries would meet extreme resistance.

Re:There is no debate

[k10quaint]

... Did he invent the math system behind it? The algebra, the calculus?...

I call bullshit on you, mr grasshopper.

Of course there isn't any way we can pay back Newton and/or Leibniz for inventing calculus. We are the first to give credit where due--the book has several hundred references to related work, which appeared in the interval between my father's first papers (1950's) and our (C) date. But we can pay forward by helping the next generation (of engineers that are interested in our field) get a real head start on their careers. We do this all the time, our volunteer work includes free lectures and design reviews (for just a couple of examples).

As far as the publishing technology goes, we did pay what the creators asked, we didn't steal any of that.

Let me tell you, I was pissed when some a**hole scanned the book and posted it.

Hurry up and die, I can wait 75 years to build on your work, I don't think I can wait the duration of your life on top of that. Before you shuffle off this mortal coil, please forward your profits and penalties to the heirs of the people named in your bibliography. I would hate to sit on the shoulders of a thief.

P.S. I just sent the great great great great great great grandson of Billy Shakes 50 cents for his timely turn of phrase from Hamlet.

Re:There is no debate

[Jeheto]

I'm sorry if it seems a bit off topic, but how can you blame Obama for your lack of job (see sig)? He was handed this scenario by us and our former presidents, he hasn't had time to do much of anything. Of course, what he has done hasn't impressed me very much, but still blaming him for a problem that had been building up for so long is just stupid. In fact, it's this thinking that is encouraging his bad actions. If he didn't need to worry so much about what people thought of him short term then he probably wouldn't have tried to duct tape the economy for re-election. People blame the current situation on the current president. True, he has some power to affect the present situation but the long term consequences are unseen.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Interact != interfere.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Are current copyright limits too long? Sure. Can you guarantee if the limit is reduced to say 7 years it won't be shared on the torrent sites in two weeks after release or before? I thought not.

I can't tell if you did it on purpose or not, but you've just made the standard argument for abolishing copyright - it's not enforceable so we should top pretending (and get on to promoting new business models).

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

When we give lectures to the students that use the book,

Are you giving away these lectures for free or otherwise below market value?
No? Well chances are you wouldn't be doing those lectures without the publicity of the book.
Yes? Well WTF is wrong with you for doing work and not getting paid for its value?

Re:There is no debate

[WiiVault]

No we're not. We are talking about if creators should have ironfisted control over something they sell to the public even after their death. Perpetual copyright is more concerning for the future of the human race than overpopulation or even global warming. It has the potential to freeze the progression of the world. Thankfully the Chinese don't give a shit and will use whatever they want. If we want to compete we have to realize that. IP law holds back western inventors who are forced to follow the laws, while other countries continue to innovate.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Bzzt! False dichotomy. For one thing it presumes the existence of a government in order to define an inherent right.

Re:There is no debate

[WiiVault]

You nailed it when you talked about building on the shoulders of others. Where is the "cut" for their teachers, parents, role-models, or anybody else who helped build the base from which they created their work. Sure they may have been payed once for their services, but why is once good enough for them when it clearly isn't for the music industry and some of their phony artists? As far as I'm concerned if copyright never ends than neither should the payoff to all those who lent a hand in its creation directly or otherwise. Sounds absurd right? Exactly.

Re:There is no debate

[WiiVault]

I think you may have missed the point. Copyright was never a guarantee that works wouldn't be "stolen". It is simply a means by which society has agreed that if caught for infringement an individual will be punished according to a standard. The length of a copyright term has nothing to do with the actions of individual infringers. Nor should it. Shortening copyright is for the public good, not as a means to fix the piracy issue.

Re:There is no debate

[quickbrownfox]

Now tell me, your father, did he invent his own number system? No? Did he invent his own alphabet? No. Were the laws of physics that his branch of engineering is based upon, discovered by him? Did he invent the math system behind it? The algebra, the calculus?

Facts aren't copyrightable; works of authorship are. The law in this area is pretty well-settled. The original poster wasn't saying no one should be able to use his work in new ways -- only that he thinks it is fitting that he should retain the right to control who publishes it. Your reply does not address this point.

Re:There is no debate

[WiiVault]

While I want to believe you. I also know the game played by writers and textbook publishers. It is dirty, mean, anti-education, and money grubbing. As a recent grad pardon me if I'm untrusting of a group of people who seem to generally view small edits, endless "editions" (with no real changes), endless copyright, and people assigning their own books and at $100+ each. Perhaps you are not like them, but its like trusting an oil executive to tell you the truth about the environment. You are simply too attached to the machine to be taken at face value. By the way, posting AC certainly doesn't help your credibility.

Re:There is no debate

[WiiVault]

So vile and so wrong all at once. The length of copyright should have nothing to do with how long you can make money off it. Don't you think Newton, Plato, and the rest could still pull in some pretty good dough for their works? Of course if we lived in the world you want we would have never built on their ideas because we couldn't. Some ideas will always be profitable, that doesn't mean they should be copyrighted forever.

Re:There is no debate

[shentino]

Fighting "piracy" is one thing.

Not giving a shit about collateral damage is another.

Re:There is no debate

[smoker2]

Who said they had complete control ? Or indeed that they should have ? When Adobe goes bust maybe I'll believe that the tiny minority who downloaded Photoshop for free had something to do with it. But they won't go bust, because the ones who really wanted it usually end up as customers later on - the first hit is free remember. This is not about profit or no profit - this is about "either you pay or you do without". You can never win that fight. Back in the 1800s children were sentenced to transportation for stealing an apple from a market stall. Is that the degree of control you wish to see here ? In the grand scheme of things, no-one suffers from a minority downloading movies. I don't regard making 1 million less* on a profit of 20 or 200 million, suffering. In fact it just highlights the all consuming greed of the media companies that they should make such a fuss about it. They are relying on the slippery slope fallacy to predict doom for their businesses, when in fact they are all making healthy profits. If they weren't they wouldn't be doing it at all.

*They think they are making 1 million less, when in fact they are making just as much as the market will bear. If downloads and copying dvds disappeared tomorrow, their profits would not jump by 1 million. It is entirely notional and wishful thinking on their part. They can test this quite easily, just don't release the movie on DVD, only release in cinemas. But then they'll make less money, something MUST be wrong with their assumptions. Speculate to accumulate - but they are trying to get rid of the speculation and change it to "invest to securely accumulate". Business doesn't work like that. Short of the govt. mandating compulsory attendance at cinemas to view the latest blockbuster, they will never have the profits they seem to be expecting as their right. All companies have margins for "wastage", these assholes are expecting the govt. to reduce their wastage margins to zero at the expense of our liberty and heritage.

Fucking Harry Potter - a book about a wizard at school - written in the english language. Does JK Rowling have copyright on English words ? (Duh !) Has there ever been a book written about a child wizard at school (yes, lots). So how come she suddenly OWNS the concept ? Where would she be without the education she received free of personal cost ? Or without the inspiration she received from other peoples works dating back millennia. Limited time it says and limited time it should be. Copying by a minority for non-profit personal use has no appreciable effect on the value of a work worthy of protection. If they don't get rich instantly, maybe the work is crap, or they have unreasonable expectations. Try creating another work. If that doesn't sell either, then you are in the wrong trade. Asimov started writing (Sci-fi) for magazines. He could knock out a story in a few hours. It was that background that gave him an idea that maybe he could write longer stuff and publish it as books. People today think they can burst into the market and instantly demand top dollar, and if anybody actually reads their stuff for free, then they are being stolen from. What about Asimovs early work languishing in a doctors waiting room ? Should he have demanded payment for every pair of eyes that happened to stray across the page his story was on ?

Get some perspective !

Re:There is no debate

[quickbrownfox]

We were to be accorded limited/fair use of purchased copyrighted works. Instead we are only allowed to view, never transfer, transform, or reproduce these works in any way. Another bait and switch, I bought a product but now, somehow, I have no ownership rights to it.

Really? Never transform? Look up Campbell v. Acuff-Rose when you get a chance.

Re:There is no debate

[smoker2]

Not only that, but the early US didn't respect copyright of other nations and so many works that are now copyrighted to US entities were originally produced by Europeans either through direct means (publishing) or as a result of traditional culture. Disney has a long history of copyrighting traditional European mythology and culture.
So the question we should be debating is, whether the US should be allowed to hold copyright on things that they actually stole from others ? Maybe the internet and bittorrent are just cosmic karma ...

Fun fact - did you know the author of the music for the star spangled banner was English ?

Re:There is no debate

[tapanitarvainen]

Please define exactly how a copyright holder can control their content even for a day once it is released.

They can't. But controlling copying at all is not a necessary condition to making money off it, and maximum control certainly doesn't mean maximum profits. That's what creators should realize and start working on ways to compete in the digital world on its own terms rather than fighting against the inevitable.

Re:There is no debate

[coolsnowmen]

::rolls eyes::, Lets tear this apart

Now tell me, your father, did he invent his own number system? No?...

Of course not, no one does. That argument doesn't even have a follow up. The math/alphabet/physics that was taught to him in school (Or learned it himself). We (as a society) want people to use their education. Otherwise we wouldn't teach it, and encourage higher education.

Well hey, at least when you published your book, you probably did so on a machine completely of your own design. Using a printing system you invented. No?

I'm sure that when you BUY a printer, or pay someone to print it for you, you get the right to turn around and sell what you've printed. WTF does this have to do with anything?

The rest of your post is simply meant as an attack on the parrent and therefor logically useless.

Of course work done is going to take from influences in your life and possible use technology that you didn't make from sand. That is because long ago we broke into a specialized society where I don't grow the food I eat, or build the car I drive. We also evolved to be able to pass on learned knowledge in various ways. What species are you?!

I am flabbergasted that you even took the time to post your argument because it truly has no information in it at all. You should be modded troll.

Re:There is no debate

[Opportunist]

I can, for example, not take a movie plot and shoot it with new technology, which would maybe not only alter its visual quality but maybe also its meaning. I can't take a photograph and alter its properties to bring out a different statement. Likewise, I can't use the baseline of a song and work a new song around it, I can't even take hardware that is tied closely to its software and system and use it for something different without breaking a law.

Don't think that derivative works are just "remixes" (which, btw, often surpass the original in creativity, unfortunately you won't get to see them except in shady bootlegs). Taking an idea and basing your own on top of it has been done time and again. How many books and movies took their basic plot from Greek tragedies? How many songs have been spun around a classic theme? How many photographers have tried to employ special development techniques to achive the style and feel of a certain painting?

Derivative doesn't mean copying. It means using old ideas to create new art.

Re:There is no debate

[Opportunist]

How many artists still own their own songs? I'd love to see McCartney redo some Beatles classics. Does Jackson still own them? Or were they already repo'ed?

What if the artist refuses to create a new version because he's happy with the original and wouldn't want to alter it? There's a piece that begs for a new release but nobody will be able to do it for the forseeable future.

Re:There is no debate

[Maxo-Texas]

And they don't.

Society grants them a temporary right so they will create more which will go into the public domain.

As Corporations have started to make a lot of money off of I.P. they are changing the rules of the road to extend copyright to forever (less one day).

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, 'obscene,' from a legal perspective means that it appeals to the prurient interest, among other things. It's not a synonym for 'offensive.' So when he says "MY FUCKING WORK ASSHOLE!" I rather doubt that he means it in a sexual sense. So no, it really could not be considered obscene. That would be weird.

And yet, I came..

Re:There is no debate

[Maxo-Texas]

Wow-- you really crammed "stealing" into that article [stealing] about copyright infringement as many times as possible without adding [stealing] some subliminal messages.

It's not stealing-- it's copyright infringement.

Most of the people infringing copyright couldn't afford to buy the product anyway so a lot less money is being lost than is claimed.

Re:There is no debate

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually, I think inherent rights are those which there is no way to take away.

Prisoners have a right to try to escape.
People have a right to try to find (pursue) happiness.
People can say whatever they want to (you can punish them afterwards).
The right to rebel against the government (they can kill you in return of course).

Creators have an inherent right to try to stop people from copying their stuff.
People (especially poor people) have a right to take those creations (especially medicines).

If the social contract is perceived as fair, then people will respect the granted rights of others.
Society has been getting increasingly unfair since the late 1970's.

Our productivity is supposedly way up, yet it takes 2 people to run a household now.

Re:There is no debate

[Ihmhi]

Photoshop might have a Left4Dead situation there.

If they sold their product for 1/10th of the price (even as a test), I'd bet that they would see a huge increase in volume - enough to make up for the difference.

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

get on to promoting new business models

Sounds awfully like PHB speak.

Of course you have an example of a new business model. One that will work. By work I mean in reality, on this planet. Care to share it?

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

Has there ever been a book written about a child wizard at school (yes, lots). So how come she suddenly OWNS the concept ?

I wasn't aware she did. I wasn't aware she'd even claimed to. No doubt you'll enlighten us all on this point.

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

Did he invent his own alphabet? No.
Were the laws of physics that his branch of engineering is based upon, discovered by him?
Did he invent the math system behind it? The algebra, the calculus?

If he was claiming rights on words in the English language (and the rest of your strawman crap) you might have a point.

However he isn't claiming that. The creative act was the assembly of the words from the English language (ATROYSC) into that particular form. I don't see why that creativity shouldn't be rewarded.

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

cheyld will start using the word strawman and swearing and threatening you in 5,4,3,2....

Re:There is no debate

[1u3hr]

How about the infringed content when someone walks into a theater with a camera then posts it online?

Who gives a shit about a video cam? Watching that is nothing like seeing a real DVD or much less, watching a movie in the cinema. I think people who DO watch them use them as preview. Anyway, I sometimes get one of these accidentally when I buy secondhand DVDs at flea markets. And 10 seconds into them when it's clear what it is, shadows moving on the screen, rustling cellophane, mobile phones ringing, I press eject and throw it in the bin. In all the celebrated cases when cam version have gone online and the movie company cried about their loss, the movie was a turkey and the cam might have prevented some people from being suckered by the advertising.

How about the latest Photoshop version showing up on torrent sites hours after (or even before) their release?

Again, so what? DTP professionals aren't going to use it. No support, no tax deduction, etc. And they are the true market. A bunch of guys do use the pirate edition to make fake porn or design their MySpace pages. They would have managed with a dozen cheaper or free paint programs if they didn't have PhotoShop. And I strongly suspect that Adobe is quite happy that this entrenches PhotoShop as the standard, those who do later get design jobs are already trained up on it, and now insist their companies buy the legit version. Just look at all the sneers at any alternatives (eg, Gimp) when the question comes up here.

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

an inherent right is something we already have: life, speech, though, association, labor, etc.

But you don't have those rights unless someone - could be you, could be government acting on your behalf - enforces them.

Blacks in the US certainly didn't have them until recently. Women in many parts of the world still don't. Doesn't sound very inherent to me.

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

This is a matter of freedom of speech. It's the reason why, for example, you have the right to recite Shakespeare in public, even though you are probably not Shakespeare.

I was thinking it was because he's been dead for several hundred years and his works had passed into the public domain. Boy, you really deserved that informative mod!

Re:There is no debate

[cliffski]

how is downloading a torrent of a hollywood blockbuster 'free speech'?

people in history who have fought and died to defend free speech would be disgusted to see you trivialise the concept as being the same as your right to help yourself to other peoples work.

Nobody is stopping you making, or watching or buying a movie, music, books, games, dvds... They are stopping you helping yourself to other peoples work without payment.

Re:There is no debate

[cliffski]

I agree. punishing the honest is no way to do it.
We should punish those who are openly stealing, and encouraging others to do so.

Like thepiratebay.

But hold on, isn't it this very site that champions the thieves at thepiratebay as some sort of heroes?

make your minds up.

Re:There is no debate

[shutdown -p now]

In the grand scheme of things, no-one suffers from a minority downloading movies.

Are you claiming that only a minority downloads movies (or music, or whatever other mostly copyrighted and not free to distribute content)?

Because last I've checked, most people who can't tell their browser from Internet know how to use Limewire...

Re:There is no debate

[cliffski]

omg, you mean I cant just remake old movies?

Fuck, I might have to write some new stories.

Explain how being able to just rip off old stuff encourages creativity again?

Re:There is no debate

[Exception Duck]

Your sig is a testimony to stupidity.

Re:There is no debate

[Znork]

The most trivial way to abolish copyright and switch over to a less unmaintainable model would be to simply change over to the radio model. Mandatory licensing, regardless of any, by now irrelevant, artificial distinction between 'copying' or 'broadcasting'. Preferably with a levy as percentage of revenue per duplication. And preferably not handled by private industry.

Let anyone duplicate and sell, but hand a percentage to the creator and/or artist in the work.

There'd still be unpaid copying going on, but as any actual value-added service would require revenue (heck, even torrent trackers, as horribly bad as they are, need revenue) you'd probably reach a reasonable equilibrium with a majority of the used services would be legitimate simply because they'd be better.

Re:There is no debate

[shutdown -p now]

Long story short, you seem to be quite backwards on this matter. You might want to read up on the utilitarian basis of copyright law, and the actual laws on the books.

You might want to do the same, but broaden your horizons a bit, and consider more than just the U.S. historical reasoning for copyright, and its present laws. You might find the perspective to be quite different in Europe, and not at all centered around copyright as a social contract (Google "author's moral rights" to see what I mean).

Re:There is no debate

[jesset77]

Hmm, I'm not GP but I'll answer your question with the first few things that come off the top of my head.

1: online services. WoW isn't hurting from people downloading the client for free, and you can't copyright infringe access to a service. This is also more fair, since the provider is providing something continually in return for the residual income.

2: Impulse delivery. You would be amazed, but there are tons of people who will pay token amounts to get your content even when it is also legally available for free (again, see WoW) if only because they are either too lazy or too luddite to figure out how to get a free copy off a friend or some arbitrary site. I make as much this way selling public domain virtual goods I create in Secondlife as my compatriots who sell their goods with locked down permissions do. This is a tiny retail experiment to be certain, but I'm losing no sales that I can tell and gaining popularity via free sharing. Another great (inadvertent) example here was Quake 1. People pirated it and held LAN parties, played online.. many of the people who wanted on board with such action at home simply bought copies. Piracy actually pushed sales in that case.

3: Advertisement-supported. Even if a lot of people use AdBlocker, 10 times more don't. Television and Radio survived 30+ years of VCR and Cassette-tape having consumers with this model, after all.

4: Digital product as advertisement. Record music. Disseminate it freely online. Encourage vendors to burn it to audio-CD to sell for their own margins (see point about impulse buys above). Create buzz. Hold concert which you charge for. Profit. Repeat. This is also a well-tested business model.

Add in any other business models you'd like that do not require pretending that large integers are scarce commodities or that swaths of data are arbitrarily contraband.

While it's true that these models alone probably will not support 300 million dollar blockbuster movies, there is no law of nature that says that those productions must continue to be economically viable. I would much prefer to live in a world where a million great stories are produced as B-rated movies than 2 or 3 as cinematic palaces. The industry must stop bloodying it's head against the landscape features that presently exist, and instead must find ways to use the new lay of the land to it's advantage and prosper.

Re:There is no debate

[selven]

Yes. And copying your work verbatim is free speech too. But I might be willing to temporarily not do that, at least in some circumstances, if you made it worth my while. But you don't just start out dictating to me what I may and may not say, merely because you said it first.

While I agree with the general point you're confusing a voluntary surrender of rights to a mandatory one enforced by the government.

Re:There is no debate

[selven]

One other point I forgot to add. With the pace of modern technology, some works (especially software, and if we'll extend this discussion to patents, various inventions) become useless in a very short time span (5-15 years often), so even a copyright of reasonable length for fiction books will prevent the public from ever getting value from them, so we may need copyright for some classes of works to become shorter and shorter.

Re:There is no debate

[jesset77]

College text book is definitely the wrong field to claim sainthood in. You get praise from students who won't actually pay for your book for another couple of decades as their student loans get worked down, or not at all if their wealthy parents foot the bill with no eye to the line items. When I went to college (this hasn't changed for the better since the nineties, has it?) course calls for you to buy a $100+ book and/or materials, either doesn't or barely uses it, and then it's not useful to you any more at the end of the semester. The bookstore refuses to buy it back since next semester requires a new edition with a handful of typo fixes and a new forward. For the same reason book trading is stymied because the new edition is paginated entirely differently so that your assignment "pp104-107" is suddenly 94-99.

College textbook publishers drown in the same lucre as prescription drug makers. You have a captive audience who are normally paying via deferred means (loans, insurance, same difference) so you inflate the prices 10x or more.

Also, about that guy scanning your work, he's nothing. Did you know I've seen your book available for free at the library, in HARDCOPY form? holy shit! You should talk to someone about the lost sales there. I mean who wants to read your thick text online or print it out on a zillion pages when it's right there at the campus stacks? D:

Re:There is no debate

[TheRaven64]

I think monarchs have a lot to recommend them. For one thing, you can chop their heads off if they aren't doing a good job, which tends to keep them in line. The worst we can threaten a prime minister or president with is forcing them to go on the multi-million-dollarpound lecture and book writing circuit instead of having their high-stress job.

Re:There is no debate

[johanw]

Wasn't some Russian writer who published a similar story about a wizard boy sued? He did copy the concept but certainly didn't copy Rowlings work.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Of course you have an example of a new business model. One that will work. By work I mean in reality, on this planet. Care to share it?

First off, what's your definition of "in reality" - are you going to dismiss anything that is not already widely successful? Your snarkiness suggests you would be fond of circular arguments like that.

Assuming you aren't just being an ass, here are a couple off the top of my head:

1) Customization - give away the original recordings and then sell versions that have been customized to the buyer's wishes. Like how Elton John changed the lyrics of "Candle in the Wind" to be about Princess Diana. There are lots of pop songs the feature a girl's name as key to the lyrics, tons of guys would pay $10-$100 for a version customized with their girlfriend's name since it would totally get them laid. Parents would easily pay for certain songs with their kid's names in them. And the beauty of that is since lots of people have the same name, you only have to record a custom version once for each name but you still get to sell it multiple times just like you do now with copyright because very few buyers are going to want to share their own personalized versions with the world. Of course you would charge even more for more extensive customization than just a basic name substitution.

2) Ransom model - set an asking price and shop it around to multiple buyers. The internet is great at bringing people of like mind together, convince 100,000 people worldwide to put in 10 cents each and you can pay for an episode of a television show (if you leave out the coke-snorting middlemen and big name actors). Once everyone has paid in, production starts with a guaranteed return already locked in, that's something modern hollywood would kill for. If the show is good, word will get out because its free to copy the show - people who like it will send a copy to their friends. When it comes time to make the next episode or instalment, previous success will increase the size of the paying audience, which means bigger budgets for quality programming (and shrinking budgets for crappy programming). Similarly, the big-name actors and directors should have the brand recognition to bring in crowds far larger than 100,000 - Scorsese's name alone could probably get 100 million people across the entire globe to toss $1 each in to fund his next movie.

3) Merchandising - Action figures, posters, clothing lines, plateware, candy-bars, perfume, bobbleheads, etc. All with tie-ins to the show or movie - heck that model is already giant business today, the ticket revenue of the star wars movies has long been dwarfed by the merchandising revenue.

Re:There is no debate

[rtb61]

Actually the whole current distortion of copyright is a lie. Copyright protection's sole and only purpose was to allow people to generate an exclusive income from their works for a short period of time in order to promote the creation of more works, "THAT WOULD FURTHER THE ARTS AND SCIENCES". Not make a handful of bloated egotistical people rich, not distort the nature of human society so that it would attempt to mimic the aberrant behavioural patterns of poseurs and grossly self indulgent individuals, not to imprison people for copying it and, most certainly not to corrupt the democratic process.

Clearly the original intent of copyright has gotten way out of hand and something needs to be done kerb it's society destructive excesses and to bring it back under control. Creative content is the work of a society, not an individual, no individual is capable of creating any copyrightable content with out the support of human society behind them, No movies, no songs, no books etc. all those works are the works of society and in reality do belong to the society that created them, that supported them and that nurtured them.

In truth the only time a work is stolen is when some one claims that they originated it when someone else did. Not when it is copied, by simple true and honest logic when a creative work is copied, a new creative work is produced, it takes nothing from the original, the original is not diminished, it is a fact that a new work has been produced. So copyright should never be valued over the true essentials of life, food, clothing accommodation etc. and first and foremost it should promote the arts and sciences and, be of benefit to the society that protects and nurtures. Where it fails this test, and it should be tested against acceptable human metrics and where it fails it should not be protected at societies cost, either that or copyright should simply be abandoned as a parasitical waste of human resources.

Re:There is no debate

[Skrynkelberg]

By that definition, it is my right to murder anyone. Doesn't seem like a very good definition, does it?

Re:There is no debate

[jesset77]

How is speech restricted.

You missed a question mark, and then answered your own question for us.

You are free to say anything you want and claim it as your own as long as it isn't something someone else said first and copyrighted.

"As long as" is a phrase which by it's very nature restricts available options. For example, Henry Ford was famous for quoting that you could get his Model T automobile in any color as long as that color is black.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

By that definition, it is my right to murder anyone. Doesn't seem like a very good definition, does it?

Gee, what part of no one interfering with you do you fail to understand?

Re:There is no debate

[Atrox666]

What we should be debating is not if artists should get paid.
What we should be talking about is why we need these "Record Companies". They don't invest in artists they speculate on the artist exploitation market. They stifle the fair market(see payola). Frankly we don't need them. Any artist can throw their stuff up on the pirate bay. Any artist can buy web advertising for the cost of a couple of days of busking. As far as corporate media goes, fuck `em all let them find honest jobs. Artists can tour and or merchandise even writers can sell signed copies or quality prints. I'm also in favor of automatic reasonable cost patent access. I think I should be allowed to use whatever technology I want and pay a legally defined percentage of the money I make. A company should not have the right to deny me the use of a technology or price it out of my reach. Technology builds on technology. Without fire you can't make metal, without metal you can't make advanced tools without advanced tools you can't build advanced electronics. Now we have companies that have a death grip on this chain of progress.

Re:There is no debate

[swilver]

Since in order to enforce copyright one will (eventually) have to require draconian monitoring of every action a citizen takes (which includes everything they do in the privacy of their own home), it will likely have indirect repercussions for free speech, simply because once such draconian monitoring is in place it will be used for other purposes as well.

Re:There is no debate

[rtfa-troll]

In a democracy (and I'm not saying you live in one, but even the USA has some of the characteristics of a democracy), mandatory surrender of rights enforced by the government is a long term voluntary surrender of rights. Some decisions just don't work at the individual level.

The point that the grandparent is making here is that a fundamental right; free speech; has been impinged on by a convenience: copyright rules which encourage the production of more material. This was done on an extremely limited basis in a deal in which the beneficiaries of that deal (the copyright holders) should provide very large benefit to society in return for something which would normally be an extreme human rights violation (limitation of other people's right to free speech). A large group of the copyright holders have fundamentally gone outside this deal and are not only not providing benefit, but actually doing harm. If one side fails to deliver it's part of a bargain, then the correct thing to do is withdraw the bargain. Copyright laws should be repealed or extremely restricted until such time as copyright holders show that they can behave acceptably. The only question is, are there any copyright holding groups which have tried to hold up their side of the bargain? If so then ways to maintain their copyrights should be found when other copyrights are cancelled.

I think key characteristics for people who should be allowed to keep their copyrights might be

• people who have never threatened fair use
• people who have always ensured that their copyright material is available freely in libraries
• people who have kept their work private
• people who have not been involved in organisations such as the RIAA or possibly MPAA
• people who have not been involved in organisations attempting to limit
• people who have never attempted to mislead others about their rights over copyright material

Apart from those people who have kept their deal; other copyright holders have been reducing free speech without any justification. They are effectively serious criminals, taking away a right many have died for. Cancellation of their copyrights is a pretty minimal and very just solution.

Re:There is no debate

[jesset77]

That sounds like an idea then. Just trick copyright holders into trying to ban libraries. Wave a red cape over the building I guess, I don't know. Once libraries are under fire perhaps we'll start to see some of this extreme resistance you promise.

That, or perhaps view the internet with a giant, digital library. Internet access appears to be one of the greatest draws in brick & mortar libraries these days anyway.. why hunt through stacks when you can get the data more easily via Google or Wikipedia?

No matter how you view it, content PUBLISHERS (the authors never make the money, somewhat in violation of that 27(2) I read awhile back) are not interested in cultural enrichment as long as there remains blood to squeeze from the stone.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't download movies without paying for them.

Oh, wait, actually I do: movies that the artists themselves have made freely available for download. There's some pretty cool stuff out there.

But, regardless, any system that targets the downloading tools and protocols (e.g., a "three strikes" law) is an indiscriminate trampling of my rights, yes. It's like saying I can't use the phone because some people somewhere use phones for criminal activity.

Secondly, copyright is a government-enforced bargain between creators of works and users. It always has been. It's a temporary monopoly control on copying of those works, but with LIMITS (e.g., fair use and a limited term). That balance has been steadily undermined in favor of copyright holders and against users, especially with the addition of technological barriers that limit the ability of users to exercise of their rights in a consumer and copyright sense (e.g., DRM that makes your product worthless if the company goes bankrupt, and which indiscriminately negates "fair use").

Why should I have a speck of respect for people advocating even stronger controls and longer terms for copyright? I use copyright to protect my own works, but I know its limits. The copyright maximalists need to understand that creating something does not justify being able to extract money from it forever and copyright does not give them absolute control of it once they release it into the wild. Much as they desire otherwise, it never has been that way and it should not ever be expanded to that kind of control. Ideas and every other aspect of "intellectual property" has always allowed for some kind of sharing and eventual freedom of those ideas. Otherwise how on Earth did Disney make so much money off movies derived from old stories (e.g., Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty) without paying royalties to the original artists in question? The kind of expansion of copyright control they are talking about will stifle the creative industries, not enhance them.

The only intrinsic right in "intellectual property" is that if it is copyable and it is useful, it will be copied. All else is laws we've invented to try to provide incentive for people to be more creative, while still protecting the ultimate and inherent ability for ideas to be copied and used freely. Copyright is a temporary and reasonable balance ... until people get it in their heads that if they "created" something (regardless of how much it depends on prior work) that they should be paid money for it FOREVER, and users get it in their head that the creators of the work are owed nothing at all. It's greed in both instances. But it's clear to me that the balance has been tilted much too far towards the creators' control.

Re:There is no debate

[jesset77]

Condemning all copyright laws as equally bad is not going to make them go away; they'll be with us for a long, long time.

I don't know. I am personally in favor of abolishing all copyright law simply because it is vestigial. It no longer applies and it is no longer enforceable. The pro-copyright pundits in this thread do hit the mark when they say "7 or 70? who cares?" they are correct. Someone will inevitably copy material when or even before it is publicly released, and others will inevitably desire a copy. None shall be able to prevent this trade without straightforward fascism.

The only power behind copyright law "staying with us for a long, long time" is in the money filched by copyright holders from the public. Stop their ability to fleece us and there will be no will left to keep these laws on the books. Copyright was an artifice from the start, and a bad idea that failed. It is somewhat more long lived than prohibition, but one day it will be just as distant of a memory. Even today it holds virtually no power, as essentially any user of the internet (anywhere in the world) has access to pirate (if they chose) from the lions share of copyrighted work ever published easily and with less likelihood of legal repercussion than of being struck by lightning. It cannot be any other way.

Who is foolish enough to respect rule of law when it in no way pays heed to common practice?

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

That just made it into my list of arguments against copyright. Top job.

Re:There is no debate

[Zencyde]

And then there are those who would argue that nothing is never created nor destroyed and that the idea of genesis is a flawed concept. As information is nothing more than a state of all defined matter within a particular system (definitions of system may vary), is it truly possible to "create" this state? We're assuming too much before we even get into the question of whether or not created works can or should be copyrighted

*removes tongue from being lodged firmly in cheek*

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

I've never heard of it, and if it did happen there'd have been a huge outcry from the jealous wankers[1] around here.

[1] Oops, that should read "guardians of liberty"

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

You must be a manager or a lawyer. Nobody else could use so many words where a simple "no" would have sufficed.

Re:There is no debate

[mpeskett]

The problem we're having now is that the massive extensions to copyright terms mean that the writer is getting decades of pay for his day's work (ok, so you can't write a book in a day, but you get my point). Also that more often than not, it's a large corporation collecting decades of pay for no work on their part. Then using that money to lobby for further extensions to their payday and fund lawsuits against people who break the laws they paid for.

The system of copyright needs to be reformed now that we're living in a world where copying is easy and free, I know the creative types need to be compensated for their efforts, but the whole "limited time monopoly" thing didn't work out. Maybe it could be restored to sense if the monopoly period was slashed down to something more reasonable, to the point where things enter the public domain within the lifespan of people who see the original release. Alternatively, we'd need to find a different way to compensate them... we had art and music and writing for a long time before we invented copyright, there must be a way to make it work.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I think inherent rights are those which there is no way to take away.

If that were an accurate definition, then there would be no inherent right to life, nor to liberty.
And the right to the pursuit of happiness would be so minimal as to be meaningless - someone can lock you in a room blindfolded, straight-jacketed and strapped to a bed and you can try to achieve happiness but you aren't going to get very far.

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

The Universal Declaration doesn't list inherent rights. It lists rights which are good ideas and which people ought to have.

And that's different from the US constitution how, exactly?

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we don't. We are talking about, whether creators -- of movies, music, literature, software, fashion designs -- have the inherent rights to control their creations, or whether whoever happens to be able to copy their work has the same rights to it as the creator.

That's funny, since the very people you are mislabeling as creators (the copyright holders), have not created anything what so ever.
The copyrights being enforced were always obtained from a person, who created it, to a corporation, who exploited it. In exchange, the person that created it loses 100% say so in what they themselves or anyone else may do with the work they created.

Corporations can not be a part of the copyright system if you want to talk about the real creators.

Additionally, of all the things you mislabel as 'inherent rights', the United States Constitution does not grant our government the power to revoke. By default we have all rights, until they are restricted by the government using a power granted them by the law of the land. No where in the constitution is the government granted the right to assure a profit for a creative work by restricting our freedom of speech.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Hey! Look at that! I was right, you are a bright red orangutan ass after all.

Enjoy your buggy whips.

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

Freedom of speech must include the ability to repeat the same expressions in partial or complete form that one has heard themselves. Copyright is an infringement on the freedom of expression

If you're just parroting someone else's work, you aren't expressing anything.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

You, grasshopper, have a lot of damn gall to tell me that we can't profit from our labor by restricting who can publish it.

You thief, have an even larger gall to complain when your ill gained stolen 'property' is again stolen from you.

Of course there were some people that did some related work before he did

And what about payment owed by your father and you, to those people, for 75 years beyond their deaths?

You are cheating and stealing from the very system you are so poorly arguing in favor of.

Again, your father was a thief from works done in previous generations, and now you are crying for him because the next generation is being a thief (using your own words) from your father.

Deal with it Mr. greedy.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you're just parroting someone else's work, you aren't expressing anything.

Bullshit. There is nothing about expression that requires originality. It's not freedom of orginal speech, not freedom of original expression.

Hell, Joseph Campbell makes a pretty good case for their only really being one story - the monomyth - in all of humanity's culture, the names and places change but the core ideas never do.

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

In contrast, the idea that I said he shouldn't profit is what? Just a colorful attempt to put words in my mouth?

Re:There is no debate

[Chyeld]

Yes master, the hivemind of all of the readers of Slashdot shall meet tonight and decide what all of us will believe in. Oh wait... don't you read Slashdot too?

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I've never heard of it, and if it did happen there'd have been a huge outcry from the jealous wankers[1] around here.

Hey, look! Even more dumbassery from Hognoxious, this time it's, "if I haven't heard of it, it didn't happen!"

Potter 'Twin' Causes Controversy

Re:There is no debate

[Rick Bentley]

whether whoever happens to be able to copy their work has the same rights to it as the creator.

No, that's not it at all. No one is suggesting that you can copy a piece of work that doesn't belong to you and then sell it. That's the sole right of the creator. We are talking about once you buy something whether or not you have the right to do with it whatever you want (make a backup copy, have it read out loud to you, play it on any device you own, give/lend a copy to your friend...). I think it's obvious that once I buy something it's MINE and I can do with it whatever I want, which includes giving it away, making backup copies, enjoying it whether I'm in my car or at my computer....

Re:There is no debate

[big_paul76]

"I still fail to see how it is keeping anyone from creating anything. This part of the logic just doesn't add up! "

Go try and make a movie starring Snow White, or a 1/2 dozen other works that were in the public domain until Disney came along and enclosed them.

Re:There is no debate

[Lumpy]

Shakespeares plays were being played by 2 bit actors in small theaters within days of the opening of the play.

Many times a Song or a play were transcribed by people in the stands and available and being performed by others almost as fast as we can do it today.

This has happened forever, and will continue to happen forever. You cant stop it.

Re:There is no debate

[Bigjeff5]

I'd claim that.

Downloading movies for most people is a pain, and more expensive than some folks realize. If you've got a 50gb monthly cap for $50 a month, that 4-8gb DVD quality movie just cost you $4-$8. A steep discount from $15-$20, sure, but it isn't free. It's actually much less worth it for me, my cap is 20gb for $70 per month. Yeah, crappy internet for sure, heh.

Also finding quality on a torrent site can be frustrating, plus the fact that it may take you a month to download it if it isn't the most popular movie in the world (for which the studios have already recieved piles of cash), and buying the DVD starts to look more attractive. Just look at the torrent download numbers, while seeing a torrent with 2000-3000 leachers is certainly impressive, it is a pitifully small number compared to the numbers of people going to see that same movie in the theater. In fact, a lot of theaters do that much business in an afternoon. It may seem big, but it really isn't at all.

I know a lot of people who won't touch limewire, either, half the crap on there have had viruses slipped into the install or the crack or whatever, it's opening yourself up to a world of hurt.

In any case, if it were anything more than a small minority of people who download movies instead of going to theaters and/or buying the DVD, studios would not be making hundreds of millions of dollars per blockbuster. On average, they make more money each year than they did the year before. Hell a mediocre movie pulls in $40 million in a weekend, that's 4 million people who went to see the movie, and paid $10 for the privilege! These next few years might finally see a steady decrease in profits for studios, but that is not because of copiers. It's because the economy is shit right now.

I'd say a few thousand people downloading a movie over a weekend vs several million going to see it in theaters would constitute a small minority, wouldn't you?

Re:There is no debate

[Bigjeff5]

Your number 4 is exactly how performing artists make their money right now.

You know, all those people you see on VH1 and used to see on MTV? Yeah, they might get a dime off of every album sold, if that. In fact, they are often hugely in debt to the recording studios.

Why do you think they tour 8-10 months out of the year? That's how they make money, and they make a lot of it on the road. Enough to cover the ripoff deal they get from the studios, and then some.

The people hurt by massive "pirating" are the companies ripping artists off. Songwriters can be an exception in this specific case, but their royalties are generally small and only a few make it big with a hit.

There's no reason the 300 million dollar blockbuster should go away, that is until everyone and their brother can afford a nice home theater (hint: that won't happen any time soon). Movies are just better in the theater, and people recognize that, and turn out in droves for even mediocre movies. If anything, eliminating copyright will make the whole thing less romantic, and more people would end up saying "screw it" and just pay the $10 to see the movie in the theater.

Heck the new 3d that is popping up all over the place is pretty frickin cool, and you won't be seeing that in a home theater for a while yet.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

We are talking about, whether creators [...] have the inherent rights to control their creations...

...by restricting the free speech of others. Exactly.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Heck the new 3d that is popping up all over the place is pretty frickin cool, and you won't be seeing that in a home theater for a while yet.

About a year, according to Lucky Goldstar:

http://www.smpte.org/news/pr/view?item_key=460b9f2707af05257ba9de20cd6d1e8f9a7aceee

The baseline hardware requirement is probably going to be a system that can accept a 120Hz signal (so 60Hz for each eye) - most current systems on the market can accept a 60Hz signal and internally double it to 120Hz (or greater) so the remaining step is to move to a full bandwidth implementations of HDMI 1.3 (1.4 already being a finished standard as of about a month ago).

Re:There is no debate

[Quothz]

The problem we're having now is that the massive extensions to copyright terms mean that the writer is getting decades of pay for his day's work (ok, so you can't write a book in a day, but you get my point).

Sure, I support lowering the protection period. I also support eliminating laws against circumvention and reverse engineering. I highly support civil procedure reform to prevent the thuggish tactics so popular with IP attorneys (or at least I'd like to see these mass-threat tactics treated as the barratry they are).

But I won't advocate eliminating copyright. I like copyright; it's put food on my table.

Re:There is no debate

[Thinboy00]

She doesn't. IANAL. copyright != patent. A copyright covers

the form or manner in which they [ideas and information] are expressed.

(qtd. from Wikipedia. How ironic.)

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

If a majority of people are engaging in copyright infringement then I think it's time to change the laws.

Re:There is no debate

[DAldredge]

It is really sad that you type so many words and still didn't manage to answer my simple question.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Observe YouTube. There are an awful lot of videos on there with music in the background to create an atmosphere for the video. I suspect that almost none of them paid for the privilege and are therefore in violation of copyright law.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

Do you seriously think that just because someone more powerful than you can force a certain type of existence upon you that your inherent rights cease to exist?

Look at Ghandi, Mandela and others whom have fought for human rights. If their inherent rights had ceased to exist they would never have fought for them.

Anyone can starve someone by not feeding them, but that doesn't mean food ceases to exist. The same goes for inherent human rights. Just because a Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, etc... uses force keep people from exercising their rights for a period of time doesn't mean those rights disappear. If they did no continuing force would be needed to keep on denying people their rights under totalitarian regimes.

Re:There is no debate

[Kjella]

The whole "inherent" discussion is bogus.

If you and I disagree on what is an inherent right, who's the authority? You? Me? The government? The UN? The people? Wasn't the whole point of "inherent" that they can't be taken away by popular opinion or the government? God? Whose god(s), there's so many to choose from and many people don't even believe in one. Or would you rather try a humanitarian or natural law argument that bottoms out in us being equals, when we know that's an hidden assumption many have rejected of untermenschen, slaves, heathens and infidels? Or perhaps you'd like the circular philosophical argument that they exist because they're inherent and because they're inherent everyone agree they exist. And even if you got past that whole "would other humans have rights", I could claim I'm in the Matrix and everyone else are computer simulations so there's noone whose inherent rights I'd have to respect.

Re:There is no debate

[keithpreston]

Hey, maybe Adobe figured this out...... An Academic copy at 1/5th the cost! Just go look on Amazon. Almost everyone does this now and who is to say that a student can edit with free software? There is plenty of good image manipulation software. Heck there is a lot of free music on the internet (Music that the musician's themselves give away). People don't just want free stuff, they want the best of the best for free. Basically there will never be an agreement especially in the Digital Age. There will always be the person who thinks they are entitled to all the Music, Movies, Games, Programs and other entertainment that others people made. It can be obtained for "free" and it doesn't "hurt" anyone for me to consume it. I'll just sit at my computer an consume everything that society makes and give back little. Then there will be those creative people that make this digital goods who think they should have exclusive control of it for all eternity and that their one hit wonder should pay for their life and their children's children's life. You need to understand that copyright law is supposed to be a balance of these two goals! Arguing on Slashdot is not going to get you anywhere because it is full of extremist either way. The only real solution will have to be a balance of views and it is going to take a long time to get too. Companies will die trying to protect the "copyright" laws as they stand now, and certain consumers will never stop consuming for free when it is available. What if... we look at the model that DVDs have evolved into. New releases are $20, after a year $10, after 5 years they are $5 and after copyright runs out you can get them for $1. Granted not every movie is this way, but just look around Walmart and you can see this model to be fairly true. What if we applied that to copyright? You get exclusive royalty from reproducing something that you create that you can set yourself. However anyone can make it as long as they pay you the royalty. After 1 year the royalty is automatically cut in half, after 5 years you get 25% of the original royalty and after 10 years the royalty doesn't exist.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If you and I disagree on what is an inherent right, who's the authority? You? Me? The government? The UN? The people? Wasn't the whole point of "inherent" that they can't be taken away by popular opinion or the government?

No. An inherent right is the same thing as a natural right, both are descriptions of the default state of the individual - a description of what a generic person is able to do if no one - private citizens, corporations or governemnts - interferes with that person. Think of the old saying which is the perfect example of how interference defines where one person's inherent right ends and another's starts - your right to swing your fist ends at my face.

Re:There is no debate

[Ashriel]

No one can take away an unalienable right. It's not even a feasible scenario. At worst, another can infringe upon an unalienable right.

If I shoot and kill you, I didn't take away your right to life - if I had done that, then no one would care whether or not I had shot you: you wouldn't have the right any more, you see?

Rather what happens is that because I have infringed upon your right to life, my crime is recognized by the society in which I live, and I can reasonably expect retribution.

Re:There is no debate

[jesset77]

Your number 4 is exactly how performing artists make their money right now.

The irony that this model is already being (ab)used by copyright proponents is not lost on me of course. :3 It is also being used in more healthy fashion by many independent and foreign artists.

The lesson to be learned? Let us stop treating artificially scarce bits as a commodity.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

That boat sailed a long time ago grasshopper and the answer back when Shakespeare was doing his gig is the same as the answer today. You build on the shoulders of giants, and only reach the heights you do, by the efforts of those around you and before you.

In order to give you incentive to build, and in deference to the realization that it is work just the same, you are granted the ability to control the rights to copy something for a limited time. But all the same, your work stands on our backs, and thus, we share in the ultimate ownership.

That limited time is and should always be that, limited. If you can't (or won't) monetize your products in that time, then that is on you. Not us.

And we should not be expected to limit our own rights and abilities outside of that specific right of yours to control who can copy your work for a limited time, simply because you've failed to keep up with technology enough.

Karl Marx couldn't have said it better himself.

It can be yours for a little while, but then we get to all enjoy it right? BS - If I build a house, Im going to live in it - ITS MINE. If I write a book ITS MINE. You are free to not purchase
that book, but don't tell me that because I gained some knowledge from others before me that its means you have free access to my works. What an idiot! Ok, your 10 years are over
with your wife, now its free reign for all guys - spoken like a true liberal that relies on people that work for what you need.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

In the grand scheme of things, no-one suffers from a minority downloading movies. I don't regard making 1 million less* on a profit of 20 or 200 million, suffering. In fact it just highlights the all consuming greed of the media companies that they should make such a fuss about it. They are relying on the slippery slope fallacy to predict doom for their businesses, when in fact they are all making healthy profits. If they weren't they wouldn't be doing it at all.

*They think they are making 1 million less, when in fact they are making just as much as the market will bear. If downloads and copying dvds disappeared tomorrow, their profits would not jump by 1 million. It is entirely notional and wishful thinking on their part. They can test this quite easily, just don't release the movie on DVD, only release in cinemas. But then they'll make less money, something MUST be wrong with their assumptions. Speculate to accumulate - but they are trying to get rid of the speculation and change it to "invest to securely accumulate". Business doesn't work like that. Short of the govt. mandating compulsory attendance at cinemas to view the latest blockbuster, they will never have the profits they seem to be expecting as their right. All companies have margins for "wastage", these assholes are expecting the govt. to reduce their wastage margins to zero at the expense of our liberty and heritage.

Spoken like a true idiot - Who do you think gets hurt when media is stolen? EVERYONE. Do you really think that prices aren't higher to paying customers to help offset piracy costs. Have you ever heard of shareholders?!?!?!? Working people that buy securities in companies to make money? You think when a company makes $19 million instead of $20 million that its no big deal? You lose that million dollars and then say that you prick. Stock holders get left holding the bag when people like you steal. Don't justify your stealing to us!! Just go ask the government for more welfare so you can sit and home scratching your crotch playing wow while you download high school musical again.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the UN's bullshit declaration of human rights. All these rights are "except for as limited by law" which means they're not rights.

Besides, the UN is the biggest anti gun anti self defense organization ever. How can you have rights without the ability to defend them?

Put down the kool aid please.

Re:There is no debate

[jedidiah]

It is not "shortening" copyright. It is correcting it back.

The terms are being constantly increased for no good reason really.
New sorts of powers and rights are also being created also for
dubious reason. Nothing would be "taken away" from authors. Recent
excesses would simply be remedied.

There is a bit of a difference between a radical and a reactionary.

Both seek change but the reactionary is ultimately seeking a
"return to the good old days". That is what many consumer
advocates are seeking.

Re:There is no debate

[jedidiah]

> Back in the early 1950's, my father

a) This is an ancient work. It should rightfully be intellectual
capital for the next generation now as older works were the
intellectual capital upon which it could be built.

b) This isn't even your work. So you have 0.0 standing to try and
claim any ownership of it. Someone else did the work. That someone
else can claim perpetual copyright if he's still around. Anyone
else is just as big of a leech as any pirate.

You want to whine about mooching off of some relative's work?

How about all of the stuff that you need to do any sort of
engineering. Let's start with Newton. Since you probably
can't even get started with Calculus, what sort of "cut"
are you going to offer Newton's heirs for his efforts?

If it's movies, then Sophocles wants his cut.

If it's engineering, then Newton would (if he were a mooching wanker).

Re:There is no debate

[jedidiah]

It's no more bullshit than what you're trying to pull.

If you can be a petty bridge troll then what about all the other contributors?

Sure you can't pay Newton personally but you can certainly pay his heirs.

There are probably plenty of less ancient contributors that should get their piece of the action too.

The problem is that you can't really come up with any good reason why you alone should be paid and not everyone else. If you want to treat creative works like real property then there's a lot of baggage that comes with it. This includes there being no free anything. This includes ever piece of land you ever stood on. Someone owned it (even if it's the government) and someone can kick you off of it or charge you rent on it.

Re:There is no debate

[jedidiah]

Well, if the copyright term has no relation to the ability to profit
then you have created a disturbance to free speech that is completely
without benefit. It's genuinely evil to have exclusive copyright
imposed over works for which there is no profit potential. The cultural
and historical significance of those works are being squandered for
absolutely nothing. The potential for private citizens to do useful
preservation work is being effectively stopped. And it's all with no
point.

The fact that Disney can't profit off of Steamboat Willie is very
relevant. It makes the whole copyright extension nonsense even more
evil than it would be otherwise. At least destruction for gain has
some sort of point to it.

Works being lost due to the nature of absurdly long copyrights is
like a form of corporate cultural vandalism.

A law that more honestly caters to the corporate interests of Disney
might actually be ultimately less destructive.

Re:There is no debate

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who invented the numbering system, alphabet, laws of physics, the math system, and the algebra are long dead, and their copyright has expired, even using Disney's lovely 140 years deal they pushed through congress.

They paid somebody else to print the book using a machine that was designed and sold to them for that specific purpose. The people who designed and built the machines have already been paid a simple flat price for their labor, and if they want royalties from every book sold that was printed on their press, they are more than welcome to write out a contract and try to sell their machines that way. It is an indication (to me at least) that that specific business model has already failed (I'm sure somebody's tried it before), and so we are in the current situation. If you wish to try your hand with that business model, you are more than welcome to try it.

Next time, instead of deluding yourself with the idea that people can make *more* money by completely opening up their works, as the market has rejected that idea. I will not deny that people can make money by opening up their works, but people also have a right to form contracts with others. In this case, the contract is between between content providers and the general public (represented by congress). If you don't like it, then change congress so it doesn't agree to stupid contracts.

Good luck.

Heh, captcha: barefoot - what hippies like the parent poster are

Re:There is no debate

[cliffski]

oh wait./
am I constantly modded troll for daring to believe in copyright?
yes.. I am..
*sigh*

Re:There is no debate

[Hognoxious]

I'll just take one of your pie-in-the-sky ideas - the customisation one.

First, a lot of my favourites don't have a girl's name in them. Heck, some don't have words at all.

Secondly, let's say I have a crush on fictional reporter Miranda Veracruz De La Jolla Cardinal. Explain to me how I can work her name into this Irish folk song without making a grade A1 clusterfuck of the rhyme, metre and geographical reference.

Thridly, and by no means lastly, the entire concept is so lame and twee I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But given that you didn't just bring up an Elton John song but chose his worst one ever as an example, I'll just snigger and mince accross the room while pointing at you in a limp-wristed manner.

When you make a million from your idea, let me know and I'll concede I'm wrong. But until it's proven that it does work, then any sane person will conclude that it doesn't work. Mmmmkay?

I won't even dignify your lame offtopic ad hominem attacks by replying to them. Leech.

Re:There is no debate

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

First, a lot of my favourites don't have a girl's name in them. Heck, some don't have words at all.

(A) You are being small minded in assuming that the only customization that anyone might want is to put a girl's name into the song. Hell, I already mentioned parents doing their children's names. There are also opportunities for using family names and for using team names - pro and amatuer, business names, city and town names, product names, etc. Nor is it required that every name be an option for customization. You are arguing the equivalent of every single song needs to be purchased by every single person on the planet.

(B) Not every single song needs to be a money maker - it sure isn't that way now where only one or two songs on an album are able to support any sort of sales as singles. Nor does every artists need to rely on customization, that's why there is more than one way to earn money.

(C) Who says anyone has to make a million dollars? All an artist needs is to make a decent living. Under the current system 99.99% of musicians don't even make a decent living from their recorded music today.

Dumbshit copyright maximalists like yourself are set up for permanent fail when you argue for pie-in-the-sky results that don't even happen with the current system. How about you come back to me when the current system is able to meet your ridiculous assumptions, mmmmkay?

I won't even dignify your lame offtopic ad hominem attacks by replying to them. Leech.

You mean like:
Sounds awfully like PHB speak.
or
You must be a manager or a lawyer.
and
Nobody else could use so many words

Looks like the ass lives in a glass house.

Re:There is no debate

[HTH NE1]

Can you guarantee...

If your position hinges on rhetorical questions, there can be no discussion.

Re:There is no debate

[HTH NE1]

Standing on the shoulders of giants is subject to the single occupancy rule.

If copyright was strictly enforced, it would be counterproductive to teach students from a textbook written by a living author as they would be legally barred from exercising any knowledge they gained from it until their grandchildren reached retirement age.

Re:There is no debate

[HTH NE1]

One sentence- Steamboat Willie is STILL under copyright! The man has been pushing up the daisies (or a Popsicle, depending on whether you believe the tale or not) for over half a century, and yet his FIRST work, one made when planes were made out of cloth and antibiotics were just a dream, is STILL under copyright. I don't care which side you are on, i think we can all agree that is just fucked up!

Would it be any less fucked up if, instead of being dead or on ice, he's been traveling through space at relativistic speeds such that he's outliving his peers by centuries? Is he still personally owed all the royalties thereto? He could still be personally producing works, albeit at an extremely slower pace compared to society and taking a hell of a long time to send them back to Earth to get published, so he's still incentivized to produce.

This loophole is just sitting there waiting for technology to advance enough to enable its exploitation.

Re:There is no debate

[HTH NE1]

how is downloading a torrent of a hollywood blockbuster 'free speech'?

How does free speech work without a freedom to hear?

A downloader is exposing himself to the extension of the maker's of the hollywood blockbuster's exercise of their free speech/press, extended by the generous act of the person who decided this work was worthy of being made available to more people (speech of the form "This is worthy of your attention") so that others may be exposed to the maker's speech expressed by the film.

The actions of copyright associations seek to make the act of an individual calling out, "Hear, hear!" illegal distribution.

(At this moment, The Pirate Bay reports there are 7 seeders for the 2003 movie Gigli.)

Re:There is no debate

[HTH NE1]

But would we have been better off with Vice President Joe Lieberman?

Re:There is no debate

[Archades54]

True, but comes a time also where people want to learn on the market leader, to gain the skills neccessary to use the program inside and out when they may still not be able to afford it, it's not an excuse but a partial reason for people.

Re:There is no debate

[skeeto]

Not quite. Copyright isn't about any sort of author's rights, but about creating authoring incentives at the cost of reader's rights.

Re:There is no debate

[skeeto]

You need to learn what free speech is.

And, well, you go make something and I'm going to go on and copy it, and there's nothing you will be able to do about it.

Re:There is no debate

[mpeskett]

Sounds like we're in agreement then. My beef with 'copyright' is directed at the abuses and misuses of the system. If it can be made to work than I have no problem in principle with the idea of a limited time monopoly.

Just seems like 'rebooting' copyright will only be a temporary fix - until the cycle of lobbying and intimidation tactics works its way round again. Then again maybe they don't have to time to build that back up again before it's pushed to irrelevance by some new thing, who knows.

hrmm

[acehole]

Great-copyright-story.torrent

Need more seeds!

Re:hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

These new hard drives I just ordered won't fill themselves...

Re:hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

These new hard drives I just ordered won't fill themselves...

Not running Vista, I take it?

dead simple

[markringen]

allow people to choose if they pay, you will see that 50% of the people will pay something. eventually people feel guilty, but you can't force people to pay whatever you want for music/movies/games.

Re:dead simple

[PylonHead]

How about this. We let people choose if they pay. If they pay then they get to watch the movie. If they don't pay then they can do something else with their time.

Seems simple enough.

Re:dead simple

[Anonymous Coward]

What idiot modded this redundant?

Re:dead simple

[Itninja]

Sounds great. But with all that digital media out there, and all the copyright holders' rights to enforce, we would need some kind management system. Maybe some kind of software that will constantly monitor users' PCs and make sure that actually are allowed to use the media they have. We could call it something like "E-Rights Watcher". Great idea!

Re:dead simple

[AnnoyaMooseCowherd]

...and if they pay and they watch, only to find that it doesn't live up to the hype that got them wanting to watch in the first place, we give them back their money?

Re:dead simple

[Opportunist]

Appearantly that's no option, because that's what's done and behold, studios claim everyone who refuses to watch their crap is copying it.

The idea that the junk that's currently clogging our cinemas isn't even worth the bandwidth to download it is beyond them, it seems.

Re:dead simple

[Overly Critical Guy]

I love that 50% figure that you pulled out of thin air. What you're proposing is the classic "someone else will pay the artist" mentality. People like to trot that out when they say musicians will make their money from concert tours and t-shirts. It's just an excuse to not pay and avoid feeling guilty.

You're right that you can't force people to pay whatever you want for music, movies, and games. Nobody's forcing anybody to do anything. That's because music, movies, and games aren't necessities, so people can just NOT BUY THEM. You're not justified in pirating something just because you think it's expensive.

One thing I notice Slashdot loves to do is cite how copyrights used to last shorter periods of time way back when, ignoring the fact that we live in a more connected society where media like films, album master tapes, and so on last longer, and so content owners can make money on something for many more decades than in the past. Copyrights were extended to reflect the times. The ONLY reason Slashdotters want shorter copyright laws is because they want shit for free, so they latch onto copyright battles to make themselves feel like they're part of some kind of movement and not just pirating things. There's always a self-serving motive.

Not to mention the amusing fact that the GPL relies on copyright, since it's a copyright license. It's interesting that Slashdotters don't apply their anti-copyright attitudes toward GPL code reuse.

Re:dead simple

[AnnoyaMooseCowherd]

ignoring the fact that we live in a more connected society where media like films, album master tapes, and so on last longer, and so content owners can make money on something for many more decades than in the past.

Copyright was originally introduced to cover written works such as books. Go to any decent library and you will find books that have lasted a lot longer than most films do.

Copyrights were extended to reflect the times.

In reality, copyright laws were introduced to encourage creative people to create more stuff for the enrichment of society as a whole. The terms of these copyrights were carefully chosen to give the creator enough time to make some money, but not so long that they could simply stop creating and sit back and live of an afternoon's work they put in fifty years before in a recording studio.

Re:dead simple

[Chyeld]

These "Artists" you speak of are the only people in the world that I've ever met who have honestly believed that they deserve to be paid by us in perpetutuality for 'an hours' worth of work using material they've borrows from us.

Engineers don't expect a monthly check from the people who drive over the bridges built to their design.

Architects aren't getting rich off the residuals on their building designs.

Your average office worker doesn't even get paid for all the reports and charts they create.

Why is it that being an "Artist" should equate to "being paid forever".

And PST... if we truely are living in such a connected world, then it sould be even easier for the "Artist" to make their buck in a shorter amount of time than before. The fact that the works 'last longer' is bullshit, given I still can go see the Mona Lisa, yet the majority of the TV shows broadcast just in the 30's and 40's are lost forever.

Re:dead simple

[sbeckstead]

Yes I can.

Re:dead simple

[sbeckstead]

Here Here!

Re:dead simple

[sbeckstead]

If you take it back or walk out of the movie you can many times get your money back. But you pays your money and you takes yer chances. Just like it's been since entertainment began.

Re:dead simple

[sbeckstead]

I love that 50% figure that you pulled out of thin air. First time I've heard of an ass being called thin air!

Re:dead simple

[AnnoyaMooseCowherd]

Just like it's been since entertainment began

When entertainment began, it is more likely that people would perform and then pass the hat round to get what people watching thought it was worth.

I'm not sure that copyright laws existed back then either, which begs the question; how did anyone ever make a living?

Re:dead simple

[artor3]

Yes, because clearly whenever you suffer buyers' remorse, you get a full refund!

Re:dead simple

[artor3]

I am so tired of this bullshit reasoning. This idea that no one's watching movies or listening to music because it's all crap... if that's true, then why can I search for torrents of any current movie and find tens of thousands of people downloading it at that instant? Do you honestly believe that not a single one of those people would be willing to pay for it?

No, of course not. You know full well that many (though certainly not all) downloads do represent a lost sale. You're simply trying to justify your actions, 'cuz you want free stuff.

Re:dead simple

[artor3]

Ok. In that case, let's go to a model where society pays salary to all artists, bad ones get fired, good ones promoted, etc... basically the same as other jobs. Of course, that money needs to come from somewhere. There are two options:

1) Corporations employ the artists and make money by selling their works. Looks like we still need copyright after all.
2) The government employs artists, gives their works away to the public for free, but has to pay for it with a substantial tax hike.

Right now, you only pay for the media you want (in most cases - cable TV packages suck). The alternative is for everyone to subsidize all art, whether they like it or not. Or, I suppose, a third option is for us to not have any TV or movies or big budget media of any sort. But if you want that third option, then you already have the choice of simply not paying for it.

Let's be honest. The status quo needs reform, but copyright is much better than the alternative.

Re:dead simple

[loufoque]

The way for musicians to make money is concerts.
This is actually how they are earning their money today. Musicians don't earn much from CD sales, really.

This can be generalized to all artists, and also craftsmen and the like, fairly easily: money comes from exhibitions and orders.

Re:dead simple

[artor3]

So, how about movies? TV shows? Books? GPL'd code?

Oops, looks like it can't be generalized all that easily!

Re:dead simple

[Anonymous Coward]

or people who want a story/ piece of art get the money together and pay an artist to make it.

Re:dead simple

[Quothz]

When entertainment began, it is more likely that people would perform and then pass the hat round to get what people watching thought it was worth.

You actually believe money came 'round before entertainment? That's... an odd notion. More likely, amateurs came first. Later, when folks survived to be old enough to become unproductive, some likely took on the task of entertaining the nice young folks who fed them. The first professionals probably negotiated their fee (that's fee-as-in-beer*) in advance.

I'm not sure that copyright laws existed back then either, which begs the question; how did anyone ever make a living?

It does not. It raises the question, although a moment's thought will sink it again. Copyright was unnecessary because no means existed to reproduce works. A story is only as good as the teller.

* Rim shot.

Re:dead simple

[bertoelcon]

If an Artist would continue to put out the same quality product as long as they survived and had the means. An "Artist" thinks that those lyrics they got from over here and beat they got from over there and got this studio here to put together and get it sold, should continue to get payed even if they didn't originally make them. While I do not doubt there are famous artists that still do the work of putting together a song, the numbers are most likely dwindling, quickly.

Re:dead simple

[Quothz]

The idea that the junk that's currently clogging our cinemas isn't even worth the bandwidth to download it is beyond them, it seems.

Samuel Pepys, diary entry for 29 September, 1662: "This day my oaths of drinking wine and going to plays are out, and so I do resolve to take a liberty to-day, and then to fall to them again. To the King's Theatre, where we saw "Midsummer's Night's Dream [sic]," which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. I saw, I confess, some good dancing and some handsome women, which was all my pleasure."

Re:dead simple

[AcidPenguin9873]

Engineers don't expect a monthly check from the people who drive over the bridges built to their design.

Architects aren't getting rich off the residuals on their building designs.

Why is it that being an "Artist" should equate to "being paid forever".

I agree that it shouldn't be "forever", but it HAS to be "more than once".

Architects and engineers create physical goods that have high duplication cost. The creators/designers of bridges and buildings have no need to amortize the creation/design cost of those things over the sale of more than one of them, because no one can duplicate them for $0. Whoever paid for those things paid for the entire construction cost AND design cost up-front, for the first (and only) copy of them. In other words, civil engineers and architects get paid in full for their creation up front.

IP creators are in a different situation: they create something once, but it costs $0 to make the next million copies. To cover the creation cost and creation value (creator's time, creator's years of training in the field, creator's creativity, etc.), we came up with the possibility of allowing LOTS of people to enjoy that IP for a fraction of its value. Copyright was invented to allow the creator to a) sell the IP for a fraction of its actual value to a LOT of people so that many people can easily obtain/access it, which b) allow them to amortize the creation/design cost+value over the sale of more than one copy of the IP. Eventually the fractions add up to cover the creation cost plus some profit.

Everyone on Slashdot wants to eliminate copyright, thereby taking away this amortization/fractional payment possibility. I, for one, like the fact that I can pay $10 at a theater to see a movie that had a production budget of $100 million (I'm paying 1/10,000,000 of its production cost). If you remove the amortization possibility that copyright-controlled distribution allows, that business model goes away.

I don't know what replaces it. Everyone talks about Shakespeare and how writers wrote plenty before copyright and about community theater and people making music for the love of music and stuff. That stuff is fine, but I still enjoy my high-production-budget movies and pop music and crappy NY Times bestseller novels. You know what else happened in Shakespeare's time? Commissioned works that were not accessible to the public. I hope that's not where we're headed back to.

Re:dead simple

[thejynxed]

That is, until this upstart named Gutenburg came along with that damnable contraption of his...

Re:dead simple

[Chyeld]

Never claimed otherwise. If you read the GP comment I was replying to, the argument being made was that everyone for shorter copyright terms was simply 'a thief' looking for free shit (my own words).

When a work made well before I was born has a chance of not entering public domain until after my death (not to mention well after the death of the creator), something is wrong.

Re:dead simple

[Chyeld]

Architects and engineers create physical goods that have high duplication cost. The creators/designers of bridges and buildings have no need to amortize the creation/design cost of those things over the sale of more than one of them, because no one can duplicate them for $0. Whoever paid for those things paid for the entire construction cost AND design cost up-front, for the first (and only) copy of them.

Ever see a McMansion? Was the computer you used to type up your reply signed personally by the EE who designed the circuit boards or the folk who came up with the chip designs?

Regardless, my answer is the same as it was here

Re:dead simple

[AcidPenguin9873]

Ever see a McMansion? Was the computer you used to type up your reply signed personally by the EE who designed the circuit boards or the folk who came up with the chip designs?

I don't understand your comparison. All of those goods have both an IP component AND a physical component to them, so there's a non-zero (and non-trivial) duplication cost. Companies can and do amortize the design cost of those things over the sale of more than one of them.

Regardless, my answer is the same as it was here [slashdot.org]

You must have missed the first sentence in my reply.

Re:dead simple

[ClosedSource]

If it's so simple to create "Art" by just gathering stuff lying around, than people would just do it themselves. Not only would they not pay others for their work, but they wouldn't even bother to download it for free.

The fact that they do desire to experience it proves that the Artist is adding something significant and valuable to the mix.

Re:dead simple

[Chyeld]

How many times do you think an average McMansion design is designed? Once. How many times is it used? You do know what a McMansion is, right? Once of those previously ubiquitous generic homes that sub-division developers loved building enmasse prior to the housing bubble collapse. Each one exactly the same as the one next to it, only deviating occasionally in paint color and siding choices.

There are a plethora of items out there in the world which a 'creator' has thought up and been compensated for exactly ONCE and yet the thought keeps being resold over and over again.

Why is it that an a CPU designer is compensated only once when the company can sell millions of chips and yet the author of a book is paid per copy sold, in addition to a nice fat advance prior to even finishing the book? There is no actual IP/Physical distinction. It is simply a matter of expectations. There is nothing mystical about a book, it has no special imbued properties that would make it metaphysically different than a computer chip.

And no, I didn't miss your first sentence, I was responding specifically to it.

Re:dead simple

[bertoelcon]

If it's so simple to create "Art" by just gathering stuff lying around, than people would just do it themselves. Not only would they not pay others for their work, but they wouldn't even bother to download it for free.

The fact that they do desire to experience it proves that the Artist is adding something significant and valuable to the mix.

I do not have the time in the day to make my music as my feelings dictate that day, its much faster to use a massive music library of songs to do that, but I am not going to pay ~$1.00 for a song unless I am getting a ~$1.00 worth of use out of it and very little in recent music has been that worthy of my dollar, but some has.

Re:dead simple

[Anonymous Coward]

These "Artists" you speak of are the only people in the world that I've ever met who have honestly believed that they deserve to be paid by us in perpetutuality for 'an hours' worth of work using material they've borrows from us.

Engineers don't expect a monthly check from the people who drive over the bridges built to their design.

Architects aren't getting rich off the residuals on their building designs.

Your average office worker doesn't even get paid for all the reports and charts they create.

Why is it that being an "Artist" should equate to "being paid forever".

And PST... if we truely are living in such a connected world, then it sould be even easier for the "Artist" to make their buck in a shorter amount of time than before. The fact that the works 'last longer' is bullshit, given I still can go see the Mona Lisa, yet the majority of the TV shows broadcast just in the 30's and 40's are lost forever.

Poor comparisons.

The artist is supposed to get paid for each copy of the song that is sold, not for how many times you play it, over and over again.

Some architects and engineers DO sell blueprints and plans. You don't want to pay an architect by the hour to design your house? You can pick a blueprint from a catalog. Those plans are protected by copyright, and they get paid again and again.

Note that many artists don't get paid again and again. The examples that come to mind include stage actors, painters, and sculptors.

Re:dead simple

[AcidPenguin9873]

You actually making my point for me with your McMansion example.

The "design" or "IP creation" process happens once, and then is duplicated for public consumption, many times. We're in agreement about this, I think, right? This creation process applies to music, software, CPU designs, McMansion designs, car designs, drug designs, whatever.

The difference between some of those things is in the ability of the company to charge for the duplication, because duplication costs money or is difficult. Physical goods, goods that cannot easily be duplicated for little or no cost, have some value because they are physical goods. Because of that, they can charge for the cost of duplication PLUS some fractional amount to cover the cost of creation.

Example: do you think home builders sell the homes they build at *construction cost*? No. They sell the home at construction cost PLUS some markup, so that they can cover other costs, such as paying the architect that they may have commissioned for the ONE design of the McMansion (yes, I know what a McMansion is, asshole). If they sell enough McMansions, they will have covered their architect's commission fee.

If the construction cost were $0, they have nothing to sell after they've sold ONE McMansion. Someone can just duplicate the McMansion for $0, and now the company cannot recoup the ONE-TIME design cost by amortizing it over the sale of multiple homes.

And no, I didn't miss your first sentence, I was responding specifically to it.

Again, I'm really not understanding anything you're saying. My first sentence agreed with the parent, that IP creators should not be paid indefinitely for their work. That was the point you were making in your other post, right? That some work that was created a long time ago is still not in the public domain? I *agree* with you.

Re:dead simple

[k10quaint]

Movies: Alternate sources of revenue involve product placement, advertising, streaming, and enhanced theater like IMAX. They must adapt to the new distribution channels, or die. Slowly on the life support from congress or no. Charging an exorbitant fee for what now costs almost nothing just so Tom Cruise can donate millions to the church of L Ron Hubbard does not strike a chord of sympathy in me.
TV shows: I don't see Bloomberg news or reality TV having profit issues. Bad sitcoms spoon fed through government mandated monopolies are having a rough time of it.
Books: Anyone can write anything anywhere that everyone everywhere can read all instantly, why should anyone be paid for doing what anyone can do from the smallest child to the oldest altzheimers victim. A timely analysis of a situation is another thing altogether, I would pay for information before others have received it.

Re:dead simple

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The terms of these copyrights were carefully chosen to give the creator enough time to make some money, but not so long that they could simply stop creating and sit back and live of an afternoon's work they put in fifty years before in a recording studio.

I challenge you to produce something in an afternoon that will allow you to live exclusively off said work for 50 years. That, or stop trivialising the creative process.

Re:dead simple

[UnknownSoldier]

> Seems simple enough.

So I pay $0.01, and the rest of my family watches for free.

Sounds like a great idea!

Re:dead simple

[smoker2]

You know full well that many (though certainly not all) downloads do represent a lost sale. You're simply trying to justify your actions, 'cuz you want free stuff.

That's crap, but as they say, where there's muck there's brass.
I'm currently downloading a torrent of all available BBC horizon programs. If you can point me to the place where I can legally buy copies of those programs, I would be glad to pay. Oh, they don't offer them for sale ? Oh, AND I've paid for those programs through the licence fee for the last 20 years ?

Fuck 'em then.

As for tens of thousands at that instant downloading any recent movie, you obviously haven't been near a tracker site for ages. The most populated torrent I can find on TPB right now has ~7000 seeds and about the same in leeches. The average is more like 100 leeches to 5 seeds. How many people are there in the world ? And what percentage of the world population is 14,000 ? How many of those 14,000 are completely unable to purchase that movie in their local market ? Do you really believe they are causing the industry to go broke ? Maybe the figures you have so obviously swallowed are bullshit ? Do you think that if your apartment overlooks a football ground you should be forced to pay because you can see the action ? Maybe the only reason so many people are downloading it is because it is free. If they had to pay they would do without. That does not represent a lost sale, other than if the price was right, maybe they could capture more customers. Supply and demand 101. If you don't supply it, someone else will. Message to all media magnates - pick up your ball and go home. You WILL be replaced.

Re:dead simple

[jhol13]

Architects and engineers create physical goods that have high duplication cost.

Architects??? Photocopy is cheap. Engineers make drawings, they do not build it up, the workers do. The workers get nothing.

allowing LOTS of people to enjoy that IP for a fraction of its value.

All the famous musicians seems to have wealth far higher than "value", so your calculation does not end up.

Everyone on Slashdot wants to eliminate copyright,

Don't lie! Practically no one want to do that! (just check GPL discussions).

that business model goes away.

So has many, many others in the last few centuries. "Adapt or die".

Commissioned works that were not accessible to the public.

Even that would be better than current infinite copyright.

Re:dead simple

[AcidPenguin9873]

Architects??? Photocopy is cheap. Engineers make drawings, they do not build it up, the workers do. The workers get nothing.

Thanks for the pedantry. Architects and engineers design physical goods. You're right, they don't construct them. Which is completely irrelevant to the simple point that the goods have both an "IP" component (the design) and a physical component (the actual physical thing). Architects and engineers do the IP component, but that IP component isn't worth that much without the physical component too.

All the famous musicians seems to have wealth far higher than "value", so your calculation does not end up.

So you are now the determiner of the value of some work? If IP goods should be able to be copied for $0, does that mean they are worthless? How much would you say the design of your computer's CPU is worth to you?

Don't lie! Practically no one want to do that! (just check GPL discussions).

That's right, creators of GPL-licensed software want to get something back for the value they have produced.

So has many, many others in the last few centuries. "Adapt or die".

And then I asked what replaces it, because I LIKE the business model where I only pay 1/10,000,000 of the cost of something, and so do a lot of other people (but apparently none on Slashdot). So far no one has offered me any suggestions other than commissioned works, which I addressed in the next sentence.

Even that would be better than current infinite copyright.

That is completely a statement of opinion, and I completely disagree with it.

Re:dead simple

[quickbrownfox]

Books: Anyone can write anything anywhere that everyone everywhere can read all instantly, why should anyone be paid for doing what anyone can do from the smallest child to the oldest altzheimers victim. A timely analysis of a situation is another thing altogether, I would pay for information before others have received it.

The smallest child to the oldest Alzheimer's victim could design a bridge, too. That doesn't mean I'd want to drive over it. Are you really suggesting that author's shouldn't be paid?

Re:dead simple

[smoker2]

Also, copyright terms were set at the length they were, because printing was a very expensive process, so the length of time allowed to recoup costs reflected that. Reproducing electronic works is virtually free these days, and even printing is far less expensive. Given those facts, if copyright were to be enacted for the first time now, the term would probably only be 5 years. And IIRC, there was no mention of profit at all. The term was meant to allow the creator time to recoup their costs so that the benefit of their creation could be shared.
Now that's irony.

Re:dead simple

[Chyeld]

Again, I'm really not understanding anything you're saying.

That much, we are in agreement.

Re:dead simple

[TheTurtlesMoves]

1) Corporations employ the artists and make money by selling their works. Looks like we still need copyright after all.

This is how a majority of the "art" is produced today. The "creator" does not retain the copyright. So what does lifetime + 70 mean when you are a corporation?

In fact the lack of balance in copyright perfectly illustrates the real problem of corporations with too much protections and rights. They are not people and they are not our equal. People should be first in the eyes of the law. But we are not.

And back to copyright. Most folk I talk too, its not the idea of copyright thats the problem, its the current implementation. There is simply no balance. Anything over 20 years is plain stupid. Yes I have written published books and I write software.

Re:dead simple

[Opportunist]

The idea that someone might consider Uwe Boll movies great art in 400 years makes me cringe.

Re:dead simple

[Opportunist]

Honestly, my opinion is what I said: The crap currently produced ain't worth the bandwidth. There's on average one or maybe two movies a year that would warrant a visit to the cinema, but 'til I find out it's usually already out of it again and I have to wait for the DVD release.

I hope we can agree that movie trailers are anything but a good way to judge a movie. Time and again I've seen trailers that consisted of the ONLY interesting parts of what was then dragged out to 90-120 minutes of boredom.

Re:dead simple

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be a misconception that someone who makes money from a song is getting paid for "an hours" worth of work; somehow sitting back and getting fat off of the public dollar while having put in little to no effort. This could not be farther from the truth. Professional songwriters write between 100 and 200 songs a year. Of these, maybe 6 get placed on albums. Of these, maybe none will be successful.

I've met lots of professional songwriters, and they are for the most part not rich people. Unlike architects, engineers and fashion designers, songwriters do not have tangible assets to sell. Abolishing copyright will help make songwriting an untenable profession, as performance, publishing, synchronization rights etc. - which are founded on copyright - are all they have, save the occasional one-off (and usually low) fee.

There is no doubt that the RIAA et al are doing nothing to advance the public image of the actual creators of the music and movies that you enjoy, but it is not fair to punish them for the sins of their trade associations, of which they are by and large not members.

Re:dead simple

[jhol13]

No, I am not making up the value, you were. I just pointed out your calculations do not end up.

Reducing copyright to few years would not kill music or movie industry. Quite the contrary, I think. No longer documentaries which cannot be shown, etc.

Re:dead simple

[cliffski]

wow.
I mean WOW.

So if a band walk into a recording studio and record an album (laughably you think this takes an hour, rather than weeks). you think they are on ly entitled, in your mind to earn an hours work.

newsflash:
bands maybe took 10-20 years learning to play, writing songs and playing gigs earning fuck all to get them to that point. They will then end up spending months doing PR, touring, TV shows, radio appearances yada yada yada for free to promote that work.

This pathetic jealous idea that all content creators are sitting on the beach laughing with piles of money for zero work is just insulting.
if its so fucking easy, why don't YOU give up work and write some music?
instant gravy train right?

Re:dead simple

[cliffski]

best post on slashdot in months.
I salute you.

Re:dead simple

[TheRaven64]

Tens of thousands of people? Really? Maybe for a movie near its time of release. And this is compared to how many people who pay to watch it at the cinema or buy/rent the DVD? Tens of millions? Is the proportion of people torrenting the film even statistically significant? Picking a movie at random, I see that 14,961,840 people have bought Transformers on DVD (it was the first recent film I could think of that would be out on DVD). The gross from cinema attendance was $319,014,499. Guessing that people paid $10 per ticket, that's 30 million watching it in the cinema and 15 million bought the DVD. A quick search on The Pirate Bay shows the top result has 1 seed and 12 leeches.

Re:dead simple

[loufoque]

So, how about movies? TV shows? Books? GPL'd code?

They're no different than the rest.

Actors are paid to perform, they don't earn money afterwards depending on the sales of their film. The same principle, being paid for the work rather than for the benefits earned through distributing the work, is already applied to certain programmers and book writers.
This falls into what I called "orders".

Also, cinema can be considered an exhibition for film producers.

The ones that get hurt by lack of copyright are not the artists, it is the distributors.
Internet already killed distribution networks anyway.

Re:dead simple

[AcidPenguin9873]

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 Slashdot contributors!

Re:dead simple

[Chyeld]

Because of course, a baby could design computer chips, and we routinely drive across bridges designed by 6th graders? Don't know what fucked up reality you live in bub, but we all had to learn our jobs. We don't all get paid over and over again for work we did in the past.

Regardless, as you've missed so many points so far, (such as the reason why I put 'an hour' in 's), I suggest re-reading the whole thread of this conversation rather than starting in the middle with my comment.

Re:dead simple

[Anonymous Coward]

He missed his argument; apparently he doesn't know about Cory Doctorow.

Re:dead simple

[quickbrownfox]

I don't think I missed his argument. I believe the argument is:

1. It doesn't make sense to pay people for doing something anyone can do.
2. Anyone can write anything -- from the smallest child to the oldest Anzheimer's victim.
3. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to pay people to write books.

I responded by attacking #2 (Though #1 is flawed as well. If your time is worth anything, then there are perfectly good reasons to pay specific people to do things any competent person could do.). Not everyone can write moving, original fiction (for example).

I fail to see how Cory Doctorow is relevant to the above. I understand that he distributes free digital copies of his books. He also sells a lot of honest-to-goodness dead-tree books. Could he make a living without being paid at all for his writing? Possibly. Is it reasonable to expect that all authors could pull this off? I don't think so.

Re:dead simple

[rts008]

Here Here!

Where? Where?

What you are looking for is:
Hear! Hear! ..as in :'Hear this man out, as he is saying something worthwhile'

My apologies if you are calling for your dog/kid/wife to come to you.

Re:dead simple

[stanjam]

As with most arguments in this debate, the logic here is completely flawed. Yes, you can still see the Mona Lisa, but comparing one individual work of old art to an entire generation of artistic works is not logical. You talk about the tv shows of the 30s and 40s, and compare that to ONE work of art that has taken tremendous work to preserve. What you would need to compare is the entire generation of artwork for that period. Indeed, I think you will find that the overwhelming majority of paintings from this period are lost to history forever. This is my problem with every counter copyright argument I have ever heard. The logic simply does not stand. People who argue against movies making 1 million less are talking about some specific instances, and are not taking into account works that make much less money. While I too think that the current state of copyright is messed up, I also think that getting rid of copyright is as stupid as stupid gets. The plain fact is that you WILL stifle creativity and the flow of information, and I have yet to see a good, logical argument that proves otherwise.

Re:dead simple

[alexo]

In reality, copyright laws were introduced to encourage creative people to create more stuff for the enrichment of society as a whole.

In reality, copyright laws were introduced to ensure the profits of publishers.

Re:dead simple

[alexo]

So what does lifetime + 70 mean when you are a corporation?

It means 120 years.

Re:dead simple

[alexo]

Reducing copyright to few years would not kill music or movie industry.

I will argue that eliminating copyright altogether will not kill music or performance arts (which were ubiquitous before copyright was invented, hell - before language was invented).

It may kill the aforementioned industries, unless they evolve and adapt.
But then, no big loss.

Copyright:

[Anonymous Coward]

Too big to fail.

Re:Republicans ! - pay enough and

[MaXiMiUS]

Seems to me it's more like you pay for what you get..

open source king

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like you are ready for open source governance

Re:open source king

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean open source instead of king, yes?

Wexler and Hatch are tools of Big Media

[bughunter]

Just another data point correlated with the general trend of Congresscritters whoring for the **AA. Even Wexler, who is a member of the progressive congress, needs wealthy donors. And he gets them by fellating the copyright cosa nostra, in this example...

Everyone in congress is owned by one or more corporate interests, and although it seems the recording and movie industries target those with a (D) after their names, Orrin Hatch proves that their corruption is bipartisan.

Re:Wexler and Hatch are tools of Big Media

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any evidence that the recording and movie industries target Democrats more than Republicans? It seems to be one of those Slashdot myths that gets repeated but never supported. It sounds pretty absurd on its face, given the copyright-expanding stuff the Republicans keep supporting. Those industries will put pressure on anyone they can to get their agenda through, so there's no sense in making a partisan scene out of it.

Re:Wexler and Hatch are tools of Big Media

[Anonymous Coward]

They do have a rather large vested interest in California, which is pretty heavily Democrat. So, yes, I would expect them to lean Democrat, until they open up "Little Hollywood" or something in Texas.

Re:Wexler and Hatch are tools of Big Media

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's such a bad thing, then have them VOTED OUT! Or quitcherbellyachin'! All you voters are the dummies who fall for the bling. So don't go bitching about the people who offer it up. Congress is corrupt because corruption gets the votes, period! All you people outside of Utah should demand that Hatch be removed from any committees he sits on, since those inside of Utah are going to keep him in office, it's up to the rest of us to remove his authority.

Re:Republicans ! - pay enough and

[CorporateSuit]

Orin Hatch is renowned for being one of the most corrupt men in the United States (accepting larger bribes than any other senator from the shadiest industries in the country). He is the personification of both major parties' vitriol, not just republican. He, like Ted Stevens and the Kennedys, is proof that we need to limit the number of terms that anyone may stay in Washington. He's a royal family, all in and of himself.

Wait a second...

[DesScorp]

I thought we were for copyright reform here... i.e. a return to reasonable copyright periods. When did we decide that we wanted to completely abolish copyright? What about the GNU copyrights? Do we start ignoring them too?

If you just want to completely trash the system and ignore all copyrights, then sorry, I didn't sign up for that revolution.

Re:Wait a second...

[conteXXt]

You have to realise that nobody shoots for the middle (workable) ground.

You have to aim for NO copyright to get "reasonable" copyright.

Tell me I am wrong please.

Re:Wait a second...

[QuantumG]

I thought we were for copyright reform here

-1 Characterizes Slashdot as just a single opinion.

I'm a copyright abolitionist. Other folks on here are copyright reformists. Other folks on here like copyright just the way it is thank you. Other folks on here think copyright should be strengthened. Other folks on here think copyright should be more like regular property laws.

Re:Wait a second...

[DesScorp]

Conte, what's the story on that sig?

Re:Wait a second...

[RobVB]

How do you make copyright laws more like regular property laws? The way I see it, regular property laws says something like "it's illegal if you take my car without either paying or getting my permission to take it", which is roughly the equivalent of "it's illegal if you take my master tape without either paying or getting my permission to take it". We're talking about the equivalent of "it's illegal if you make a copy of my car with me not noticing it" - which as far as I know has not put many people behind bars.

Re:Wait a second...

[QuantumG]

Well, it's not my opinion, so I can't really give a fair explanation.. but what Sonny Bono said was that copyright should never expire, it should have no fair use exceptions, it should attract criminal charges for violations, and be investigated by the police. I find this absurd, of course, but I guess he would have been in favour of the scenario where ripping a CD to create an mp3 is detected by some DRM mechanism in the OS, sends a message to the police, who then come knock on your door and charge you with a crime. His justification for this would be that copying = theft and so why isn't it prosecuted as such. Whether or not everyone who makes the stupid implication that copyright infringement is the same thing as theft believes that the police should investigate and arrest copyright infringers is an open question.

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which category would you say copyright only in copy-for-profit situations fits in?

If you're copying for profit (eg. things like people selling copied movies/software/etc), it seems fair for the the originator to have their fair share during the limited duration of the copyright. Basically, not having to worry that by publishing some work you're just letting some other person have all the money people spend on it.

Copying for freely sharing would be unrestricted since nothing is missed (except the idle speculation about who might be buying what if people couldn't share with each other).

Re:Wait a second...

[init100]

I thought we were for copyright reform here... i.e. a return to reasonable copyright periods.

In politics, you'll always have to negotiate, and when you do, you'll usually not end up with the solution you find optimal, but some middle ground between your solution and your opponent's solution. If you argue for reasonable protection terms, you'll get the middle ground between reasonable and unreasonably long term lengths. Only by aiming to abolish copyright, you can pull the middle ground to where you want it, and thus get a reasonable term length after the negotiations are concluded.

Re:Wait a second...

[QuantumG]

copyright reformist.

Re:Wait a second...

[symbolset]

I don't remember when. I do remember where.

Until the law gets back to where a reasonable person would consider it fair, it will be ignored. We may have to pass through zero to get there.

Re:Wait a second...

[symbolset]

By the way... the Sonny Bono who promoted laws for eternal protection of copyright failed miserably. His estate is now suing UMG for royalties they claim to be robbed of.

So even the great extensionator himself isn't seeing any benefit from the tyranny he imposed on us all.

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

> I thought we were for copyright reform here... i.e. a return to reasonable copyright periods. When did we decide that we wanted to completely abolish copyright? What about the GNU copyrights? Do we start ignoring them too?

Well, there are a few different sets of people here. I, personally, lean towards abolition, though I'm open to exploring reasonable compromises, alternative models, and other ways to compensate authors. (Who doesn't want to see authors compensated?) I'm just not open to jackbooted private internet police (e.g. MediaSentry, RIAA lawyers, DMCA abuse, copyright czars, etc.)

Anyhow, for the specific case of GNU copyrights, I suggest reading the GNU philosophy section, specifically this essay, where they discuss how the GPL could work in a copyright-free world. Basically, we'd adapt, because we're a collection of people who believe in working together. Most of the contributions to GPL'd software don't come from people who are forced to contribute because of the license. And even if people stopped sharing private forks of GPL'd software, those of us who believe in working together would still be able to make a better product and we'd still have our own code.

I know this is a fairly common question, so feel free to copy anything from here to answer it in the future.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to realise that nobody shoots for the middle (workable) ground.

You have to aim for NO copyright to get "reasonable" copyright.

Tell me I am wrong please.

You're wrong.

Re:Wait a second...

[noidentity]

Other folks on here think copyright should be more like regular property laws.

Except that copyright actually conflicts with regular property laws by preventing an owner from crafting his own property into certain objects.

Re:Wait a second...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Tell me I am wrong please.

You are most definitely wrong.

The position of no copyright simply serves to alienate people. Sure there are reasons against copyright as it is now, but most people are somewhere between "coping with it"and "enjoying it" (or, at least, what it has provided us). No copyright, on the other hand, is an extreme viewpoint that is trivially easy to poke holes in. Copyright supporters, such as myself, barely have to lift a finger in order to generate scepticism and doubt over the "everything will be somehow fine" mentality that prevails over copyright abolition, which is a shame, because middle ground and reform is exactly what would be best for copyright.

As it stands, pro-copyright lobbyists can stand up at a public venue and call you all liars, and get away with it. Tell me I am wrong please.

Re:Wait a second...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I can imagine that you're getting pretty sick of people generalising slashdot into a single opinion, right?

I can imagine because I'm in a similar predicament. I'm getting sick of people saying the same damn thing every time someone notices one opinion is more popular than another on slashdot, or someone addresses a group of people with said popular opinion.

Hands up anyone here who believes that, out of all the opinions we actively discuss, there exists one that everyone here shares and nobody opposes?

Re:Wait a second...

[WiiVault]

I'm not sure if we are reading the same article. It seems to me the vast majority are fine with reasonable copyright. Just like in any discussion there will be a misinformed fringe.

Re:Wait a second...

[rdebath]

The GNU Copyright is a very poor example. You see there used to be this thing called public domain, and an honourable man would release back into the public domain works that were mostly based on existing public domain works. It was assumed that the artist was in the best position to know and was an honourable man.

Now that the artists' representatives have effectively abolished public domain, honourable men (and women now they have the vote) everywhere need a replacement, however, improvements in communications have shown that honour is not as widespread as was hoped, so this version of public domain has teeth.

The main result of this is that if copyright has to go it won't be a problem for most works using the GPL, but, it's a rare person who uses only one copyright license for all their work. In the commercial world I'm a little guy and need copyright to protect me from the Microsofts of this world.

Re:Wait a second...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Say what you might, but in general, those here that think copyright should be strenghened seem to be in a small minority here, those few might just be sock puppets for companies in certain industries.

The only people I recall that might be construed as saying copyright should be more like regular property laws are those that want IP taxed, I think they mostly wanted that in part so that it encourages IP to be freed more quickly.

I don't think it's unfair to say that the prevailing opinion here is for copyright reform. Maybe it was said in a clumsy way such that those with a tendency to argue would argue about it. But just because there is a variety of opinions here doesn't mean that they are all represented with similar numbers or similar level of interest.

Re:Wait a second...

[msormune]

I want all the stuff for free also, like you.

Re:Wait a second...

[cliffski]

you are wrong.
I'm all for reasonable copyright.
But the people here forth and spit and shout and whine at me for being an evil content creator.
As a result, I end up firmly in the anti-piracy, pro-copyright, arrest the bastards camp.

The aggressive anti-content creators whining just forces them all to head straight to the other side of the room, alongside the MPAA and RIAA and everyone else you hate.

Hate to break it to you, but your tactics backfire hugely.
If it wasn't for all this anti-copyright drivel, I'd probably be a paid up supporter of the EFF.

Re:Wait a second...

[selven]

I thought part of the philosophy behind the GPL is that there would be no need for it if there was no copyright.

Re:Wait a second...

[geir.isene]

And there are those forming their opinions on this matter. I spent a little more than 2 years of intensive study forming my opinion - from squarely for copyrights to squarely against it and advocating copyright abolition; see The Battle for Ant Hill. "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine goes through much of the arguments behind abolishing copyright.

Re:Wait a second...

[gsslay]

Tell me I am wrong please.

You're wrong. If you actually read the speech given (http://www.cisac.org/CisacPortal/consulterDocument.do?id=16287) you won't find the words lie, liar or lying anywhere. What you'll find is the word "misinformation", which is not the same thing.

The Congressman was referring to the efforts of "the anti-intellectual property community". Who then, by way of techdirt, misrepresented what was said and even went as far to give it quotes marks, all the better to suggest "lying" was what was actually said. Kind of ironic, if not a excellent example of the practice in action

Re:Wait a second...

[swilver]

So instead of having an opinion on the matter by giving it some rational thought, you instead back draconian laws to spite the other camp.

But anyway, hate to break it to YOU, but eventually copyright will be abolished or atleast become completely toothless. You may think that you can control a digital work with some legislation, DRM or some other technological barrier, but in reality you can't and never will.

Even though this may seem evil, I think it has been a long time coming. Artists donot deserve special treatment. They donot deserve to earn more per hour than any other highly skilled professional. They certainly donot deserve to profit from their work in perpetuity just because the industry they belong to (yes, it's an industry) managed to lobby for special treatment of their workers. Let's not even get into the fact that these rights are usually in the hands of corporations making copyright nothing more than a tax on society to benefit some specific corporations.

Re:Wait a second...

[swilver]

I think you are right. Things have gotten so out of hand that even if we lobbied for a 1 year copyright, it would still be 50 years if we met in the middle, which is still ludicrously long.

Worst part is that if they agreed to meet you in the middle, you wouldn't have a leg to stand on anymore when you then claim that 50 years is still too long. Abolishing copyright law is probably the best thing that could ever happen to an economy, unless of course it is the American economy.

Re:Wait a second...

[jesset77]

I am against copyright though. I am amused when pro-copyright posters say everyone is in my camp, I think it feels lonely here! :D

I honestly don't understand the moderate viewpoint of copyright reform given that it's a paper tiger no matter how you dull the claws. What on God's Green Earth is the purpose in reforming a law which you have no hope of enforcing?

Why does everyone claim that media cannot be created in gift culture when we are already in gift culture today? I still see plenty of media being created.

There are no valid boundaries preventing anyone, anywhere in the world from getting any media they want for free (save some media you can't even pay to get). Whatever social stigma exists is rapidly eroding as more people realize they can tighten their belt and do not have to give up their cultural participation in the process.

Yet there are still millions who pay for media out of the kindness of their hearts. In some cases this is abetted by either laziness or not realizing what other options are available, but that is part of the beauty. Some people will pay for your content, even when it can be had for free. Copyright law has zero real impact upon this phenomenon, so do not misunderstand the forces at work.

Also, this describes the entire economic tide pool of artificial scarcity in todays world, and it is rapidly drying out. It will not dry out completely, but it has much dwindling left to do. Specifically, it cannot sustain most of the monster media conglomerates that swim stubbornly through it. There are no laws you can reformulate that will change these facts short of thorough fascism. Until you monitor all internet traffic, outlaw encryption and systematically search citizen's homes you cannot turn this tide.

Thus, I am terribly perplexed as to why my position is viewed as so extreme, even by you lot. :/ The world is changing. You can't blame the change on me, but media will be produced in unexplored ways. Not because I said it was a great idea, but because there really aren't any other choices. It is time you quit calling me names (like I care ;3) and wasting time on powerless laws, and instead began exploring the landscape that actually surrounds you. There is money to be made in this brave new world, and it's really not my responsibility to tell you how simply because I'm among the first to admit that we are actually here.

Re:Wait a second...

[selven]

I think he's talking about the aspect of it lasting forever, having no limitations, etc.

Re:Wait a second...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I am against copyright though. I am amused when pro-copyright posters say everyone is in my camp, I think it feels lonely here! :D

It's not quite so amusing when you consider the fact that I was considering only the people in your camp.

I honestly don't understand the moderate viewpoint of copyright reform given that it's a paper tiger no matter how you dull the claws. What on God's Green Earth is the purpose in reforming a law which you have no hope of enforcing?

See, now you've set yourself up to do something really, really difficult. You have just made the claim that, given all the possible and feasible methods of approaching enforcement, including ones no-one have thought of, that copyright cannot be enforced. You've also made this claim in the face of all the lawsuits started by the **AA in order to enforce copyright. You have quite a bit of evidence to present here.

A common mistake made by people in your camp (yes, they do exist beside you) is to think that because something can't be enforced perfectly, it can't be enforced at all. After all these years, after so many billions and billions of dollars sunk into police, we still have crimes being committed that haven't been solved and prosecuted, but we don't ponder the pointlessness of making laws.

Why does everyone claim that media cannot be created in gift culture when we are already in gift culture today? I still see plenty of media being created.

Gift culture? I must admit, I've never heard that term. I can't say that I know exactly what you're referring to, but if I had to guess, I would say you were referring to the ubiquity of free entertainment right?

Well, first let's not confuse free commercial entertainment with "paid for through advertising" commercial entertainment. There's a big difference to the artist between money from advertising and money from charity. That knocks out most TV and radio.

Even the truly free commercial media is often simply an advertisement for other non-free commercial media. Advertising is useless without buying power behind it. There's no point in making your products known if anyone can get them for free.

Naturally, there are people, and there probably will always be people, who will create without intention to profit. However, you're going to have a difficult time convincing people that they make a significant portion of people creating today, or that they'll have the collective man-power, dedication, and free time between jobs to fulfil any significant part of demand for culture. And yes, in order to institute change from something that is essentially working, you do have to provide at least some evidence that such a change won't backfire on us.

Actually, this is a very good example of the "everything will be fine" mentality I was referring to. The fact that you can't see copyright's involvement in culture today, from a cursory analysis, in no way implies that culture will be fine without it. A slightly deeper analysis typically reveals a wealth of issues that haven't even be considered, let alone solved.

There are no valid boundaries preventing anyone, anywhere in the world from getting any media they want for free (save some media you can't even pay to get). Whatever social stigma exists is rapidly eroding as more people realize they can tighten their belt and do not have to give up their cultural participation in the process.

People are realising that there are no "real" boundaries to piracy? OK, I get it. Enforcement is not working too well on average. But does it therefore make it OK? Are illegal actions only immoral if you get caught, huh?

In fact, I would certainly agree that social stigmas are eroding, and people are realising that there is another option apart from paying for their entertainment. If copyright ceases to exist, I can't see this getting anything but worse. T

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh for a mod option of +1 'good example of a bad argument'. I'll have to settle for 'interesting'.

Re:Wait a second...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Anyone who mods up an opinion they don't agree with instantly gains kudos and respect in my book. Thank you.

Re:Wait a second...

[jesset77]

You've also made this claim in the face of all the lawsuits started by the **AA in order to enforce copyright.

I know, and those are just the tip of the iceberg, right? You should see the millions of lawsuits they will file next month. Oh yeah.. they've tapered that activity down since it's both very expensive, and turning their customers against them.

You have quite a bit of evidence to present here.

Look, I am not trying to push a bill through congress, I am only providing information to people hoping some will pull their heads out of the sand.

For example, if I see you under your car pulling your oil filter out, but notice you haven't drained the pan first, I will warn you that you are approaching the task incorrectly. If you demand it, I will not however trot home and grab a copy of "changing oil for dummy's" for you, I will consider my warning good enough and walk away to let you enjoy your face full of oil.

Copyright is simply unenforceable. It is not even imperfectly enforceable. I can share a piece of media I have in my possession with absolute strangers if need be by emailing them an encrypted copy of the data. P2P isn't any easier to enforce than email, but that is more complex to illustrate here. The point is that the progression of hardship we face to continue to pirate is in inverse geometric progression to the hardship producers face to try and stop us.

Now before you launch into a tirade of other clever tricks law enforcement could use to track infringement, I would also like you to take a look at what is being done by this siege. Bit Torrent is a brilliant technology for dissiminating information. MP3 was the top audio encoding format in it's day. Both have had their names drug through the mud by copyright advocates because of the infringement they enable. They are simple, to the point, and they allow people to share media. Since most media people wish to share (apparently) is copyrighted, the technologies have suffered bad PR and the market has missed many opportunities to innovate: focusing instead on complicating the distribution of media solely to preserve vested IP interests.

Chase us into a hole and we'll use moderately complex means to continue to defy you. It is a siege we will win, but some like me will continue to call from our side saying "just give in already and quit scorching the earth in a futile attempt to insert your nose where it has no business being".

Gift culture? I must admit, I've never heard that term.

While I appreciate that you are willing to admit to things you aren't versed in, there is always Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_culture

in order to institute change from something that is essentially working, you do have to provide at least some evidence that such a change won't backfire on us.

Again, I'm not instituting a change. Only asking that you perceive the fact that the change in question has already occurred, and that most of the consequences are simply playing themselves out very slowly. I am also not claiming that (certain) IP holders can expect to earn what they used to or more in the 21st century (that this "won't backfire" on them). Could you convince an early 1800's plantation owner that it was in his short term financial interest to voluntarily free his slaves? I guess if it's not in his short term interests it would't pass your criteria of being morally right either.

That should not prevent an activist from attempting to appeal to a slave-owner's long term interests, should they choose to gamble their words in the educational effort. Human rights (including the right to share your experiences with others, irregardless of overlapping commercial IP) are not a luxury. Thus, it is foolish to believe that advocates must submit to you a competing business

Re:Wait a second...

[jonaskoelker]

And, more importantly, why can't we let the market decide which culture is better?

How do you propose leaving that decision to the market?

I can sign up however many or few of my natural rights to download stuff for free from TPB as I want, as part of a contract between me and an artist?

(That sounds like "The market-based solution" to me: I negotiate with people how much I'm willing to pay, in terms of freedoms, for whatever service or product I want with those I want to provide it.)

So... I call up $ARTIST and say "Hi. I promise to not give away copies of your CDs for the next five years; wanna make me a CD?", and then he asks me how many other people are willing to do the same, and says he wants at least ten years, and then we hold a general assembly and agree to offer him seven, and then he accepts because there are at least $N of us?

And then we move on to the next $(($BIGNUM-1)) artists?

That seems like an absurd amount of overhead.

I think it'd be much better if the people elected someone to decide, considering the wishes of the people ONLY, which freedoms should be given away (for how long) and which freedoms should be kept, so as to enrich the people with culture as much as possible (both by not having restrictions and by giving artists an incentive).

Re:Wait a second...

[cliffski]

Artists don't earn a tenth what lawyers do, or accountants.
You really think that the average 'artist' earns the same as madonna?

pull your head out your ass. You've been reading too much torrentfreak and pirateparty propaganda.

Take your anti-corporate bullshit to north korea where it belongs.

Re:Wait a second...

[stanjam]

I agree. Copyright reform is necessary. However abandoning copyright altogether is incredibly naive and foolish. If we were to abandon copyright completely (at least in today's society with nothing to replace it) we would be stifling creativity and killing progress of all kinds. I know I would NEVER think of releasing any work I wrote without some form of protection to assure that if I wished, I could profit from that endeavor (unless the work was designed to not be profited from). Why would an author work? By the way, we are not talking, as some have stated, about an hour of work one afternoon. The people who have stated that here are showing incredible ignorance. Any decent (and in many cases, even bad works) work takes a lot of time and hard work to produce. One does not simply sit down and bang out a work in an hour one afternoon. If it were that simple these people would ALL be doing it. Often we are talking about years of work. For instance, the book I am working on is the result of 19 years of experience with computers, years of research, and years of schooling, which have cost me a lot of money. Why would I pay tens of thousands of dollars in education only to produce works that anyone could copy and distribute as their own? The only ones that benefit from an hour of work one afternoon are the copyright violators who are stealing other peoples work. Copyright reform is necessary. The current state of affairs is incredibly out of whack. However people also need to get a sense of perspective, and realize that many of the arguments on the other side are as unrealistic and as stupid as some of the arguments put forward by people who want copyright extended in perpetuity.

Re:Wait a second...

[stanjam]

Umm, ok. You are wrong. Aiming for a stupid and dangerous goal is not the answer, and both sides are guilty of this.

Re:Wait a second...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

How do you propose leaving that decision to the market?

Oh, that's easy. Just like any market solution, it starts with demand. You need to get into contact with artists and say that you would much prefer free media to copyrighted media. If artists can indeed survive while producing free media, and they are motivated to do so (which is an integral part of most reasonable arguments against copyright), then they will produce their media and relinquish their copyrights. Consumers then have a choice between free media and copyrighted media. The better system will produce more demand, and will take its fair share of the market, and people who like and don't like copyrighted media can both be satisfied. In fact, uncopyrighted media has a huge advantage, being free in both senses.

However, what's possible is not the only facet of market solutions. It also very neatly weeds out what's impossible or infeasible without cost or long-term damage. For example, if creating quality works for free in acceptable volume is an unwieldy and unfair burden on the artist, then only a handful of artists will volunteer and even fewer will keep creating in the long term. Whatever few that do would be pretty much exactly the people who would carry all culture if copyright was abolished.

That's why the market solution is so elegant here. There's no need for hit-and-miss, hope-for-the-best legislation; we can just let people decide what they want, and artists decide whether or not they can provide it. And, best of all, the system is naturally flexible enough to accommodate a variety of tastes.

Oh, and just as a postscript, I'd like to point out the obvious: that (almost) free media already exists. There is FOSS, with a varying amount of copyright rights relinquished. There are creative commons music stores. There are people who write books, make music, make movies, and create visual art, and release it for free. They exist alongside commercial art with varying degrees of success. By far and away, the most successful would have to be FOSS, but even then, even the most popular free software packages are often edged out by proprietary software (e.g. Photoshop, MS Office), presumably because they offer something worth the price difference that their FOSS counterparts don't. But, for those who don't need the expensive option, or those who have an objection to restrictions on sharing, the free alternatives are always there.

I think it'd be much better if the people elected someone to decide, considering the wishes of the people ONLY, which freedoms should be given away (for how long) and which freedoms should be kept, so as to enrich the people with culture as much as possible (both by not having restrictions and by giving artists an incentive).

You have to think this line of reasoning through before you start applying it. It's pretty safe to say that people want culture and entertainment. To achieve that, we need artists on board. It's no good abolishing copyright, or limiting severely in the name of the people, because then artists wouldn't create, and then nobody gets what they want. So, in that way, stricter copyrights can, to a certain extent, lead to a better position purely from the perspective of the common man.

In fact, I would say that if you truly followed your credo, you'd arrive at something remarkably similar to what we have today, with changes only made to small details.

Re:Wait a second...

[conteXXt]

Funny you should ask this during this thread :-)

It applies to the source of much of Led Zepp's music (old bluesmen that never saw a dollar, or credit for their work)

Got shouted down in a most disgusting way when it was brought up.

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, you're wrong.

Re:Wait a second...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Look, I am not trying to push a bill through congress, I am only providing information to people hoping some will pull their heads out of the sand.

For example, if I see you under your car pulling your oil filter out, but notice you haven't drained the pan first, I will warn you that you are approaching the task incorrectly. If you demand it, I will not however trot home and grab a copy of "changing oil for dummy's" for you, I will consider my warning good enough and walk away to let you enjoy your face full of oil.

Well, if you insist on holding your advocacy for radical change without evidence, you'll have to excuse us when we don't take your opinions too seriously.

For example, if I'm pulling my oil filter out, and you tell me I'd be better off first lying on the road, face down, chanting a prayer to the flying spaghetti monster, I would listen to you, but then I would conclude that there is no evidence to support the claim that it will be anything other than obscenely dangerous, even if it lead me to getting oil all over my face.

Copyright is simply unenforceable. It is not even imperfectly enforceable. I can share a piece of media I have in my possession with absolute strangers if need be by emailing them an encrypted copy of the data. P2P isn't any easier to enforce than email, but that is more complex to illustrate here. The point is that the progression of hardship we face to continue to pirate is in inverse geometric progression to the hardship producers face to try and stop us.

This is the mindset I was referring to (again). I would call it defeatist one more time, but it isn't technically defeatist, because it automatically assumes that inevitable == good.

Yes, copyright is difficult to enforce. Yes, we can't intrude on people's private communications. Yes, we can't assume that enforcement bodies will be able to crack encryption. No, this does not mean it is unenforceable. No, this does not mean we should give up and stick our heads in the sand, chanting, "This is good. This is what we want. I am happy." It means that we should be first deciding whether this is good or not, and evidence tends to support that it isn't, and then we should be looking to redouble our efforts in order to enforce the damn thing.

We actually don't need, like I mentioned before, to stop friends sharing with each other. The sharing capabilities of friend groups are severely limited. Compared with public sharing networks, often which share files automatically, the effort of sharing with one person is vastly greater than sharing with thousands. Both you and the friend must communicate first, and if the friend has moral doubts about the practice, they have the opportunity to share them with you. Even if you devote your entire time to sharing everything you have with friends, the damage will spread much more slowly than through P2P networks.

Thus, I submit that P2P networks are, by far, the most important targets. These are very large and obvious targets, and police or the **AA can easily infiltrate them without privacy concerns, since they are completely public. In fact, I would go so far as to say that they make up a vast majority of piracy, in both current practice and potential, and hence, we only really need to concentrate on taking them down, rather than snooping on people's private communications.

But, I know, they can encrypt these networks, right? Well, first I'd like to point out that you're holding copyright enforcement to a ridiculous standard. In any crime, smart criminals don't get caught. If I murder someone, and I put gloves on, and I'm not seen, then I won't be caught. Period. These are simple measures I could take, and it means I get away with murder. Does this mean the murder is unenforceable? Does it mean that we should just abolish murder as a crime? Does that mean that murder is automatically good? No! Of course not. It means we catch, primarily, stupid murderers, and we hope the smart ones

Re:Wait a second...

[jesset77]

I apologize if I've wasted your time thus far. It appears after all as though our view of the world and even our concept of how to apply "reason" in an argument are so dissimilar that we will not be able to agree on the matter of the merits of copyright vs. abolishment. I however won't call you a "whackjob" over this difference of opinion.

I believe you understand the material of my proposition, though you seem unwilling or incapable of discussing what consequences would actually arise. Specifically, you refuse to stray more than a single oversimplified step at a time out of the comfort zone of 20th century copyright model you have become accustomed to. You have made it clear that you are thrilled with the status quo, and deeply humbled by the depth and breadth of media produced today, which apparently would have been impossible unaided by the political power to force every citizen on Earth to sign the equivalent of an arbitrarily large number of convoluted non-disclosure agreements.

So I will agree to disagree on this specific point and leave you to your face full of oil. However, you have now taken the additional step of blaming all negative actions taken by our media industry squarely on downloaders. Apparently, your fair use rights and privacy are threatened by DRM and rootkits, and it's our fault even though we neither implemented this DRM nor coded the rootkits. You agree that innovation is being hampered in protocols such as HTML5, media storage such as blu-ray and transition such as P2P technology.. though the parties actually doing the hampering are innocent of wrongdoing, as Pirates have allegedly forced their hand.

This would be an example of our difference of view on entitlement. You are claiming that big media is entitled to encroach on their customer's property rights when the bottom line is at stake. Compulsory Trusted computing and global wiretapping are apparently justifiable evils when an artist's living (or more accurately, the bottom lines of companies who largely keep artists in financial bondage) are at stake. Damn you free-wheeling pirates for making such hard choices necessary! :P

Thus, I turn your criteria back on you good sir. If you wish me to stop "feeling entitled" to see and hear media which is already freely available to me, I demand that you provide evidence that what I watch on TV or listen to on my media player financially impacts content producers and furthermore that it hampers innovation. Allow me to clarify that corporate press releases where the **IA claims to lose $dice_roll billions of dollars per year are not evidence. Observing generic slumps in CD/DVD sales time correlated to the unquantified "rise in filesharing" are also several degrees of separation away from sane evidence. And the ship has sailed so far as thought experiments go as well, you who would ask Galileo to actually climb the tower of Pisa and measure that which is much easier to induce will be held to that same standard.

In fact, I am hard pressed imagining what form of evidence one could even present to support an argument as far fetched as this chestnut of yours. I happen to know the evidence doesn't exist because the premise is false; but still one ought to be able to imagine what form it would take were it hypothetically possible. The best idea I have would be this then: a single-blind experiment where I illicitly copy and listen to one song from a limited selection of artists you could establish a relationship with. Next, you measure which artist becomes impoverished (or at least financially burdened) by my free lunch and thus demonstrate the damage done by correctly guessing which song I've aurally pilfered. This is just a start, feel free to volunteer any alternate quantificational approaches you can craft.

Another point in your arguments that baffles me is that you no longer sound as though you are defending copyright as a mechanism to release work into the public domain. Your new

Re:Wait a second...

[Kargoroth]

IMO there are in fact valid reasons to actually abolish copy/patentright beyond "everthing will work out somehow" and "middle ground" argument.

For brevity's sake i would like try to look at technical patents only but i think similar arguments can be made in regards to artistic copyright.

Lets compare the scenarios patenting/no patenting from the point of view of the person who is supposed to be protected by this whole thingie the scientist who invented cure for something or the software engineer who wrote a killer application:

CASE one, today's patenting solution: cure for cancer or THE SPAMKILLFILE algorithm or whatever has been invented or written by a person or a group of people. The moment it gets patented (actually before that but since the general public is none the wiser until stuff gets patented it doesnt matter much) the company those techs and scientist were working for are the ones in total control of that piece of intellectual work (including the power to sit on it and dont let anyone using it for some reason or other) and what is important here ist precisely that: patents do not empower those techheads but rather the firm who they work for. Sure, the do get paid for that piece of work, maybe they even get a raise, but then maybe not. If not, they couldn't just take that expertise of theirs and go implement the "brilliant ideaTM" elsewhere, the company owns that innovatiove piece of knowledge for effectively forever. Even the brilliant scientist who is one among the very few people in the world who actually has the most profound understanding of that new technology or the guru who knows the KILLERAPP code like no one else have no say whatsoever on how that piece of work will be put to good use (or even at all) Instead we have the firm using that piece of knowledge for one purpose and from one angle only, namely profit maximisation. I know we(you) have come to accept the fact that all the good things are a mere byproduct of that profit maximisation paradigm and subordinate to it when push comes to shove. (Indeed this could be one of the reasons people are fed up with IP concept. It helps create certain.. inefficiencies like letting poor people who cant afford the new drugs die and such)

Anyway this wasn't about failings of capitalism in general so lets look at the hypothetical
CASE two, no patent right whatsoever:

The same cure for cancer or killerapp is being developed and put into public domain the moment the product hits the shelves.
(I am aware of the obvious question: why would firms even invest money into R&D if they don't get to keep total control over the resulting innovation? i'll come to that in a moment, please bear with me)
Now for the tech in question the situation is obviously better than ever: her expertise is still worth as much as ever, in fact the more popular the application gets the more is his expertise worth. Sure there are thousands specialists in the same filed who are capable of understanding/implementing the innovation in question but the gals who wrote it are still the ones who know that shit better than anyone else, that is until the technology in all its possible and different implementations is commonplace (which would happen fairly quick with something truly innovative, as one would hope it should).
Now the company better treats their scientists and coders right! Lest they pack up and go implement the idea elsewhere.... Which is kinda apropriate because those where the guys who actually did all the (intellectual) work and such. Yeah the coders still need an admin to mind the network and their servers and such and yes the scientist still need someone to do the stuff that needs to be done and whatsnot but one still could argue that a software developing firm ist primary about writing software and pharmaceutical firm is about developing drugs?
The point i am obviously struggling with here is that patenting is not empowering those people who actually provide the service in question, quite the opposite perhaps?
On the oth

Orrin Hatch...

[Evil Shabazz]

...is one of the better examples of why we need to impose term limits on Senators. Right up there with Mitch McConnell and John Boehner.

Re:Orrin Hatch...

[maxume]

Term limits are dumb. We just need to get the Senate to get rid of the incredible power bonus that currently comes with seniority.

Re:Orrin Hatch...

[thejynxed]

If two terms are good enough for the POTUS, then two terms are damned sure good enough for Congresscritters.

Re:Orrin Hatch...

[WiiVault]

Nooooooooo way should they impose any limits on my Boner. Oh wait, you mean the douche in Washington right? RIGHT?!

Re:Orrin Hatch...

[maxume]

Michigan (my state) instituted term limits. The most significant change I have noticed is that the legislature is even more ineffective now.

I suppose there are arguments to be made about that being a good thing.

I'm not real sure how useful a guide the presidential term limits are; in the last 50 years, only Reagan and Clinton would have had any real chance at a third term (Bush II and Nixon are the only other ones who made it to a second term, the one had no prospects for a third term, and it would have been pretty bleak for the other) and neither one would have had any chance at a fourth (Reagan was pretty old in 1988 let alone 1992 and 9/11 would have destroyed a president who had been in office for 9 years...not to mention the nation simply getting sick of Clinton by 2000). Going back from there, neither of Truman and Eisenhower had good prospects for 3 terms and FDR was the first man arrogant enough to step outside the precedent set by Washington.

Sounds great, but

[Mathinker]

There is only one problem with your glib idea. The people who are supposed to choose not to watch the movie are being manipulated into wanting to watch it.

I would totally agree with you if there were laws which required the media cartels to spend even 10% of their advertising budget on educating the Average Joe how he could actually enjoy spending his time not watching their product.

Yes, it isn't going to happen. The same Average Joes are also manipulated into supporting (or at least not actively dissenting to ) governments which also aren't interested in them being less manipulatable.

Re:Sounds great, but

[sbeckstead]

This is called commerce. I generate a desire in you to exchange money for entertainment. You give money I give entertainment.

Restatement of status quo ~ redundant

[Mathinker]

I agree that the moderator probably just disagreed, having been around here for quite a while; however, since the post really is just a restatement of what is supposed to be the status quo, there is a certain amount of justification for it being modded Redundant.

Re:WHY is he personification of both ?

[CorporateSuit]

whereas EVERY single gamebreaker shit i see belongs to republicans ?

That certainly sounds like a personal issue. Maybe pay more attention to the democrats for a while?

Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Opportunist]

What's the reason behind copyright? To give authors and creative artists an incentive to produce, to give them the exclusive right to use their creation for a limited time (yeah, that's the idea, now the studios hold it in the stranglehold... bear with me, ok?), so they can regenerate their expense, so they can reap the rewards for their labour, so they can actually live off their creation.

Tell me one thing: If you're unable to regenerate your cost, if you don't earn enough within 50 years to have an incentive to produce, why do you think 70, 90 or however many more years would be an incentive?

My suggestion would be, let's limit it to, say, 20 years and see if people stop creating content. My money is on "they won't stop".

So care to explain to me why you need the lengths you do? To give people an incentive to create? Don't make me laugh!

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[QuantumG]

What's the reason behind copyright? To give authors and creative artists an incentive to produce

You still didn't answer the question.

let's limit it to, say, 20 years and see if people stop creating content. My money is on "they won't stop".

Now you're getting closer.

Assumption: There's creative works which we want people to create (books, songs, movies, whatever).
Assumption: Without some economic incentive, they won't create them.
The Problem: What is the minimum incentive that we can give them to encourage production?

Thing is, both of those assumptions are simply wrong. The first assumption is wrong because it doesn't actually specify in quantity, quality or kind exactly what it is that we want. This means that any solution we come up with is going to have to include a well functioning market, cause its an observed fact that, on occasion, markets can answer these questions for us. The second assumption is wrong because its an observed fact that people do make these things we're interested in without any financial incentive. "Starving artist" is a cliche because many artists make an economic choice to do their art rather than do something much more economically sensible. It was never observed that there was a shortage of art, books, songs, movies, whatever. For as long as these things have existed they have existed in abundance.

So trying to solve this problem with these false assumptions is folly, but ok, let's give it a go. For a start, we need a well functioning market to determine the quantity, quality or kind of goods we're trying to economically encourage. Great. Let's give artists a monopoly.... hey, how the hell do you get a well functioning market from giving people monopolies? That seems pretty stupid doesn't it?

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Opportunist]

You're right, maybe "incentive" was the wrong term. Let's say, how do we enable an artist to focus on creating art instead of forcing him to have a "mundane" job so he can fund his artistry? If people are really good artists, I'd call it a waste if they were forced to work a 9-5 job just to do what they're really good at. Think how much art he could produce if he wasn't distracted by mundane tasks!

If you are dealing with easily reproduced art where the reproduction itself does not represent any sensible amount of 'work' compared to the original creation (any kind of art that can be distributed digitally, from music to movies, computer programs and photographies), not giving an artist the ability to have the exclusive distribution right would result in people waiting for others to invest their time into creation and focus on distribution. The usual market forces of supply and demand will not work, due to a limitless supply. Prices, and thus sales since any other determining forces like quality and availability are equal for all possible supplyers, would not be determined by who is the best creator but who has the most efficient distribution system.

Essentially, abolishing copyright altogether would shift power to distributors even more than the current system does, since they will certainly have more efficient and cheaper distribution systems already in place.

The counter argument for this is of course that distribution has been proven to be easy and can be done (is actually done) by the ones wanting the content, through P2P. This is of course true, but leaves the question of compensation completely open. Content being created without the financial incentive has been mentioned a lot too, because people are creative without an immediate monetary incentive to create. The question that remains is, though, whether the amount of art will be the same without the incentive, whether the quality will be the same and whether the kind will be the same. Art, by its very definition, is something personal. People will first and foremost create the kind of art they like and enjoy, which is not necessarily the kind that will please the majority of the consumers.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[QuantumG]

If people are really good artists, I'd call it a waste if they were forced to work a 9-5 job just to do what they're really good at.

Surely if the market isn't offering artists a 9-5 job to create their art then there really isn't that much demand for it.

Think how much art he could produce if he wasn't distracted by mundane tasks!

Think of how much of that art we don't want. I can apply this argument for anything. Think of how many waves I could surf if I wasn't distracted by a 9-5 job.. Think of how many nasty letters to KD Lang I could write if I wasn't distracted by a 9-5 job. Before you decide to offer an economic incentive for an activity you really have to ask what the value of that activity is.

Your other points demonstrate what I've been saying for about a decade now.. There's simply too many existing works for copyright to be used as anything more than a means to suppress their appreciation. There's a reason why the vast majority of books only remain in print for 12 to 18 months. It's not because everyone who would want to read that book has bought a copy in the limited period of time.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Requiem18th]

The problem is that the economic process of creating art is turned on its head. It should be possible for instance to make a 10 million dollar movie if only the buyers payed for it in advance.

No, people want the content to be made before they pay for it, which is funny since in the current system people can't actually know if a movie is good without paying for it first.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Opportunist]

How is there anyone interested in you surfing waves? If you're a professional surfer and get some airtime on TV, you may notice that you can actually do that by getting sponsors that want to show off their logo on your swimsuit or painted onto your body. But if you're just some Joe Average... And I won't even comment on those angry letters.

The point is, none of your examples really serve the general population in any way. Whether you surf the waves or I pay a computer game, it ain't something anyone would care about. A piece of art, on the other hand, could well be something someone cares about. So, to use your argument, what is the value of surfing compared to the value of a piece of music? If done well, either could be fun to watch/listen, and people might pay to do just that. This would offer the very interesting question whether a professional athlet should have the copyright to his performance (i.e. no filming etc without permission), but I don't really want to give the copyright crowd any bad ideas...

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Anonymous Coward]

So care to explain to me why you need the lengths you do? To give people an incentive to create? Don't make me laugh!

You are correct. Insanely long copyright terms does the exact opposite. It encourages people to STOP creating while expecting everyone to continue handing them money until their great grandsons are dead from old age.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[mpe]

My suggestion would be, let's limit it to, say, 20 years and see if people stop creating content. My money is on "they won't stop".

In the 18th century the period was 14 years. In the 21st century we can send physical items anywhere on the planet within a day and information within a much shorter period of time. Three hundred years ago this was impossible. It could reasonably take months/years to get a book to a prospective customer. Thus if anything 21st century copyright should be more like 7-10 years than 20.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[mpe]

"Starving artist" is a cliche because many artists make an economic choice to do their art rather than do something much more economically sensible.

Or they do both. e.g. having a "regular job" and doing their "art" at other times. Even where people are paid to produce "creative works" they may divide their work into "what pays the rent" and "what pleases me".

It was never observed that there was a shortage of art, books, songs, movies, whatever. For as long as these things have existed they have existed in abundance.

Many of these having existed long before copyright was even thought of.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[mpe]

You're right, maybe "incentive" was the wrong term. Let's say, how do we enable an artist to focus on creating art instead of forcing him to have a "mundane" job so he can fund his artistry? If people are really good artists, I'd call it a waste if they were forced to work a 9-5 job just to do what they're really good at. Think how much art he could produce if he wasn't distracted by mundane tasks!

Copyright, as it currently stands, wouldn't help much in that senario. Since this artist still needs to be able to have a roof over their head, eat, have whatever tools they need for their "art", etc before he/she has completed anything.
Also separating them from the rest of humanity may mean that they produce a lot of "art" nobody wants or even rob them of the inspiration they need.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[swilver]

Copyright is all about control. You only need to look at one little fact to see that that is the only reason for it to exist:

The fact that Copyright extensions are retro-active.

I mean, they extend copyright, but it does not only apply to new works (billed as an extra incentive of course), but it also applies to works already made??? Do you mean that those works would not have been created if 50 years in the future there wouldn't have been a retro-active extension? Of course not, those works were created and they knew full well what they were getting in to -- and now they want more. They're simply a tax on society, creating wealth out of thin air for older works by doing nothing other than lobbying for a retro-active copyright extension.

If they really were doing this all to benefit society with more an better creative works, there would no need for these extensions to be retro-active (after all, these works have been produced already). They could give us a well-thought out argument that by extending copyright so-and-so long would encourage more NEW works to be created. They haven't though, and that's where you can clearly see the corporate greed shining through.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Anonymous Coward]

My suggestion would be, let's limit it to, say, 20 years and see if people stop creating content.

People are ignoring one of the worst aspects of the current copyright regime: when the copyright holder is not known, the work may fall into oblivion because nobody dares to touch it.

That's why we need to bring back the copyright registry and abandon the automatic copyrights. To get copyright protection, the author must register the work with an international, offical, online registry for a fee.

The registry fee should grow exponentially: $1 for the first year, $2 for the second year, $4 dollars for the third year and so on. $15 buys you protection for 4 years -- not too much for the poorest of artists. For $1023 you can make money with your creation for 10 years. In the end, the renewal will be more than the economic benefit and the work falls into public domain.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Hognoxious]

Assumption: Without some economic incentive, they won't create them.

It might not be as binary as you'd like to assume, but it's right to an extent. Without some economic incentive, there'll be less and it'll generally be of lower quality.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you basically answered the question yourself.

How is there anyone interested in you surfing waves? If you're a professional surfer and get some airtime on TV, you may notice that you can actually do that by getting sponsors that want to show off their logo on your swimsuit or painted onto your body. But if you're just some Joe Average... And I won't even comment on those angry letters.

Most of the "IP" being produced these days IS being produced by Joe Average, or rather someone who's just enough better than Joe Average to be of slight interest to some people. Think of it like the guy who's just enough better than his buddies at surfing for the local gals and dudes to get some enjoyment from watching him. Where it breaks down though is that it's not easy (sometimes impossible) to quantify exactly what is "great" art, and what is just run-of-the-mill dross churned out by someone just a bit better than Joe Average. So while the local surf champ might not be able to make any money surfing because it's easy to tell that there are thousands in the world better than him, some local guy with the same amount of skill in his particular art might be able to make some money producing his art because someone might like it well enough to pay some money for it. Now imagine though that local surfing champ managed to come up with some slight twist on a trick that was interesting and he was able to copyright it so no other surfer was allowed to do the same trick... and boom, now he IS able to make some money, even though there's plenty of other surfers out there who could do the same trick, and possibly even a few that may have come up with the same trick in the next few months or years. Basically what it boils down to is that most modern "artists" should be grateful that they're making money *at all*. Not necessarily because it's not "good enough" but because (as has been pointed out) there's so much available.

Re:Explain the reason for copyright expansion

[stbill79]

My suggestion would be, let's limit it to, say, 20 years and see if people stop creating content. My money is on "they won't stop".

If copyright laws are really intended to 'promote innovation' then I'd even say that 20 years is far too long for most copyrights. I've always argued that music doesn't need more than a year or two, if any, copyright protection. Can you imagine the millions of young people nowadays that aspire to be 'rock stars' losing interest because copyright laws have been shortened. Fame, chicks, and the lifestyle are more than enough incentive to keep talented people pursuing careers in music.

On the other hand, this probably wouldn't work in other fields, such as book publishing, software, etc.

It's amazing to me how the legal system can be just so narrow sighted in some cases.

Congress Can't Do That

[maz2331]

The Constitution explicitly spells out when Presidential terms begin and end, and that can't be changed without an actual amendment.

Even the attempt would probably cause a civil war and/or military coup.

Re:Congress Can't Do That

[crazyjimmy]

Yes. Because nothing in the Constitution could possibly be changed without an amendment...

The 10th Amendment says:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

:-/

--Jimmy

Re:Congress Can't Do That

[Trahloc]

Your absolutely right. Which is why an amendment was passed to limit it to 2 terms, so the persons example stands. After all you don't think its We The People who elect our President or amend our Constitution? It's Congress.

Re:Congress Can't Do That

[Repossessed]

Um, no, its the electoral delegates. The delegates are chosen via the election process.

Congress does have some voice in the primaries, how much depends on the party rules.

Re:Congress Can't Do That

[k10quaint]

The amendment I envisioned that says something like "an act of congress can exempt a sitting president from the 2 term limit". In states with primary elections, each presidential candidate designates a slate of electors (perhaps consisting of members of congress who just let him run again) who then appear on the November ballot. Collusion by the two parties (like the big record labels colluding to fix prices) would easily leave congress in control of the executive branch and by extension the judicial as well. Dystopian, but possible.

Re:Congress Can't Do That

[Dragonslicer]

After all you don't think its We The People who elect our President or amend our Constitution? It's Congress.

You could certainly argue about how little choice voters have in who they get to elect as president, though I don't quite see how Congress is the group in control of it, but it's pretty hard to make the same argument for amending the Constitution. Amendments have to be passed by 3/4 of the states. While an amendment can be proposed by 2/3 of Congress, it can also be proposed by 2/3 of the states. In theory, an amendment could be ratified without a single Congressman supporting it.

Re:Congress Can't Do That

[jesset77]

The Constitution explicitly spells out when Presidential terms begin and end, and that can't be changed without an actual amendment.

Even the attempt would probably cause a civil war and/or military coup.

The constitution also spells out when copyright terms begin and end. That has been flouted. Now where is my war/coup? :P

TFA seems crappy

[dthx1138]

You could classify me as a Slashdot reader who does not have a firm opinion on overall copyright law and needs to be convinced one way or another. That being said, this article has progressed 0% of the way towards that goal. It's basically several quoted paragraphs following by the writer ranting as if he's yelling at a television screen- "Oh no you didn't say that! Corporate whore!" etc.

Aside from a few anecdotal cases of copyright-related stupidity such as the iTunes song activation limit, I could not tell you anything in particular that is wrong with our overall copyright law that needs to be changed. Saying that all copyrights should be abolished sound ridiculous, and ranting about greed does nothing to advance your position either. Somebody explain to me WHAT should be changed about copyright law and WHY I should support such a change, and you will have my attention.

Re:TFA seems crappy

[Opportunist]

Length, for one. If you're not able to recover your production cost in 10 years, you won't recover them in 90. So why extension after extension?

Or how about erosion of fair use? Why is a copyright holder allowed to practically undermine fair use exceptions by DRM?

Re:TFA seems crappy

[drinkypoo]

Length, for one. If you're not able to recover your production cost in 10 years, you won't recover them in 90. So why extension after extension?

I see this sawed on quite a bit, and I disagree. Often, interest in a classic results in a resurgence of income for whoever is holding onto the rights, if they are clever and "agile" (/me ducks) enough to take advantage of it.

On the other hand, what do I get by allowing corporations to exert copyright? If I eventually get the right to do anything I want with it, and by eventually I mean "reasonably within my lifespan if I became familiar with it as a teenager", then maybe I am willing to pay what the market will bear to have limited rights to it now. That was the deal, right? Only copyright keeps getting extended, so that we are offered only tantalizing glimpses of what a world in which copyrights expired in a reasonable period would look like with, for example, the antiquated (though still often useful and/or entertaining texts) of Project Gutenberg. So I also don't agree that the exclusive right to copy should be granted for periods so long.

Re:TFA seems crappy

[plasmacutter]

The reason for this is the arguments have been hashed out over and over again, as have the analysies.

If he were to include all the details of the refutations and analysies he references you would spend the next month reading the resulting tome.

Simply google any cases to which he refers but does not detail.

as for me, i was taught how wrong copyright law has become by a 4 letter acronym: DMCA

On my iPod

[MikeD83]

I wish someone in Congress actually served their constituents and asked the simple question:
When a consumer buys a CD/DVD is that customer allowed to put it on their mobile media player? If so, and how would they legally go about doing that?

It seems that the **AA wants a one way street when it comes to this issue. They put anti-ripping software on both CDs and DVDs,,, which doesn't actually reduce copyright infringement; it only causes their customers to break laws in order to actually use the content they purchased.

Re:On my iPod

[stbill79]

I wish someone in Congress actually served their constituents

We have no one to blame but ourselves. Congress has the lowest approval rating in decades. It's estimated that 'the people' were against the first bank bailouts by a ratio of approximately 300 to 1, though Congress ignored us and overwhelmingly approved it without delay.

And every few years at election time, something like 95% of incumbents are reelected back to Congress. Either We the People are so stupid that we deserve what we get, or our votes are simply being ignored (sometimes I wonder).

Hatch... a blight on my land.

[r1v3t3d]

Without getting into a fierce debate about IP reform and the absurdity of current copyright law, let me just say this: Hatch is a fucking idiot, always has been. He does not represent me in any way, shape or form. Nor does he represent the majority of people in the state of Utah. Those who do follow this raving moron are probably no more educated than he is. Seriously, Orrin. You're old. And ignorant. And closed-minded. And petty and small. Shut the fuck up already. Utah hates you-- You just haven't let the truth sink in yet.

Re:Hatch... a blight on my land.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

We have the same problem next door in Nevada with Harry Reid. He is a complete waste of humanity, but we keep voting him in because we like having the power.

Re:Hatch... a blight on my land.

[r1v3t3d]

I concur. He is a disgrace to the Democratic party, just as so many, many others are to the GOP. *cough Limbaugh Cheney Rumsfeld Bush Rove Rice Boehner cough* But I digress. Reid is good for almost nothing.

Re:Hatch... a blight on my land.

[denzacar]

Seriously, Orrin. You're old. And ignorant. And closed-minded. And petty and small. Shut the fuck up already. Utah hates you-- You just haven't let the truth sink in yet.

Somehow... I doubt that he reads slashdot...

Maybe a letter... or a youtube video explaining why you find him "a blight on the land" might do the trick.
Make it fun, catchy and snappy. And don't forget to send a copy to CNN's iReport.
A slow news day is always just around a corner... you might become famous as a bonus.

personal ?

[unity100]

the anti net neutrality attack was hatched by republicans. iraq flop was engineered by republicans. healthcare flop was engineered by republicans. unconstitutional wiretappings, torture, executive powers to the extent of dictatorship were engineered by republicans. the fucking global crisis was only possible thanks to republicans chanting 'hands off businesses' for 30 years and more. entire world is suffering. republicans. republicans, and again republicans.

excuse me but yeah, its personal. because it directly affects me in person.

a problem i see in american people is preferring to escape the easy, bringing-together route by saying 'both parties are equally corrupt', instead of laying the blame where it lies, and prosecuting the guilty.

Re:personal ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea and Chicago is ruled by Repubicans too in your world I bet. Their is enough retardation and moronic thinking to go around in both US parties. Both are corrupt and self dealing at their core.

Fuck Orin Hatch BTW he is a peice of shit moron.

Re:personal ?

[unity100]

i dont give a flying fuck whether they are 'both' corrupt or not.

the fact is, one of them fucked up the ENTIRE world economy, started a totally irrelevant war, attacked net neutrality, bankrupted not only u.s., but caused bankruptcy of a few other countries, undermined american people with that healthcare flop, aided radical right wing governments to power in numerous countries, and did that ALL at the same time in the past 8 years.

excuse me, but, if i do have any amount of proportionality and comparison skills, goes WAY beyond any political party on the face of the planet has done in the last century. and even before.

Re:personal ?

[bertoelcon]

Prosecuting an elected official for a crime they did commit? What world do you live on? Here on earth everyone who tries that gets, for lack of a better reference, Trolled and Down modded so hard that there will be no redemption, or will be paid to STFU.

Re:personal ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see. All the crooks posing as businessmen who were so greedy that they destroyed their own businesses through their corruption have no responsibility for their actions at all. It's just the fault of the Republicans.

Second, this started long before Bush. How about the prostituting of of the Presidency by Clinton? He got up and lied under oath and walked away from it. Once he did that a lot of people began to believe they too could lie, cheat, steal, etc... with impunity too.

Also, how about our entire society seemingly agreeing with the concept that greed is good, that there are no morals absolutes, that whatever an individual decides about morality in their own mind is OK?

There is lots of blame to go around. Start at the fundamental causes to find the real culprits.

Re:personal ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see. All the crooks posing as businessmen who were so greedy that they destroyed their own businesses through their corruption have no responsibility for their actions at all. It's just the fault of the Republicans.

If your economic system relies on businessmen to not be greedy then your economic system is a miserable failure. A winner uses a system that works. A loser uses a broken system and then blames everyone else for not making the system work. Republicans are losers.

[blame Clinton] ... [blame society]

Blame God if you want. Republicans are still losers. :)

Laid out bare

[RyoShin]

that copyright is the only way to make money on creative works

While I don't think anyone's been delusional about it, this is proof that government officials are in the pocket of corporations, or at least have some ulterior motive for acting in their interests. (While that line was said by Hatch, Wexler's part doesn't fare much better.)

The US Constitution empowers Congress:

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.

No where in there does it say anything about profit.

I now view Wexler and Hatch as one of the many bought-and-paid-for politicians; it's unfortunate I have no opportunity to vote against either. On an interesting aside, Wexler is a Democrat (FL) and Hatch a Republican (UT). Why neither the summary nor the techdirt article states this is beyond me, as I consider it highly relevant.

Re:Laid out bare

[artor3]

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.

It's pretty fucking clear that the goal is for them to be able to (try to) turn a profit. What's your theory on what that limited period of exclusive rights is for?

Re:Laid out bare

[RyoShin]

How about

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts

Certainly, this does require profit in most cases on the part of the holders, but profit should not be the main motive. The quote I referenced said:

that copyright is the only way to make money on creative works

Emphasis mine. There are many other ways to make money on creative works; the congressmen in question are simply trying to twist copyright into some capitalist holy grail, when it's not and shouldn't be.

Re:Laid out bare

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

While I don't think anyone's been delusional about it, this is proof that government officials are in the pocket of corporations, or at least have some ulterior motive for acting in their interests.

I'm always a little disturbed about what passes for proof of this proposition these days. The whole case against them is heaps upon heaps of here-say, conspiracy theories, and opinions borne of ignorance or a lack of perspective when viewing the facts.

For example, your "proof" here could more easily and sensibly be explained by the government wanting to protect entertainment, due to the fact that the vast majority of their constituents actually like entertainment. Republicans and Democrats are far too smart to jeopardise their position with the people by following something like that.

That's not to necessarily say your theories aren't true, though.

Re:Laid out bare

[RyoShin]

I'm much more inclined to always think of a politician as a crook, and force him or her to prove otherwise.

Re:Laid out bare

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Well, it does keep the bastards honest... ;)

Cocaine

[Anonymous Coward]

Wexler loves cocaine because it's fun. so are copyrights.

The Real Value Of IP

[jusmah2cents]

There is a very good book by two economists: Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine called "Against Intellectual Monopoly" in which they cite example after example of real empirical evidence that dispels the claims of the value of IP. The claim that IP is necessary to spur innovation, and protect profits to repay all of the research required is not supported by actual evidence. They put their money where their mouth is in that the book is in the creative commons and can be downloaded as a free pdf at http://mises.org/books/against.pdf

Stephen King died today

[The_Wilschon]

I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Horror/Sci Fi writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. The host went on to say that he died of a rare and malignant form of copyright, after it spread to his liver. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to culture. Truly an American icon.

Exclusive copyright is THEFT!

[LadyDarkKitten]

I took a copyright law class not too long ago and after said class I came to the conclusion that exclusive copyright even for a short period is theft. If you put exclusive protection to a piece of work then your stealing that idea from the creative pool and preventing its usage by everyone else who may have had that idea. Now what if that one idea was what would have set an individual on the path to being an artist but the person didn't even bother because someone owned it already. What if that person were to become the next Picasso? The next Michel Angelo, Julie Bell, Luis Royo or Olivia De Berardinis? How could anyone let the world be deprived of that? Keep in mind that this comment is from an artist point of view. I write, draw, paint and honestly I want other artist to be able to take my work and put their own twist on it or make it something completely different. With the current copyright laws that's not possible unless you know about the Creative Commons License. http://creativecommons.org/

Re:Exclusive copyright is THEFT!

[VGPowerlord]

er... you took a copyright law class, but that class didn't point out that copyright is on fixed works and that patents are on ideas?

Re:Exclusive copyright is THEFT!

[LadyDarkKitten]

Not talking about patents. If someone takes the work of a famous artist and uses it as a base for a piece of their own they can still get sued. Fan art and fan fiction are a prime example of that.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[artor3]

You're right, of course, but Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation systems are quite good at enforcing groupthink. As long as the majority of people on this site just want free stuff, rational opinions will be marginalized, and the same tired old lines will get modded up over and over.

"Hollywood only makes crap, no one would pay for it even if they couldn't download it."
"Piracy doesn't take a physical good from anyone, so it's OK."
"They've over-extended terms/sued for too much/employed illegal tactics to harass filesharers, therefore I'm justified in stealing their stuff."
"It's my right to free speech to copy that guy's free speech verbatim!"
"Artists are just leeches trying to coast on a few minutes of work"
blah blah blah...

Memories...on the corners of my...

[zaivala]

Somebody should get Wexler and Hatch to read (or, hopefully, re-read) Spider Robinson's Hugo-winning story, "Elephant's Memory". The longer and tighter you make copyright last, the more you HURT creativity.

Re:Memories...on the corners of my...

[Amazing Quantum Man]

"Melancholy Elephants", not "Elephant's Memory".

Re:Memories...on the corners of my...

[zaivala]

Ah well, at least I got the author's name, subject (and award?) correct, and the need for these people to read it. I guess my own memory is proving less-than-elephantine. My apologies.

i honestly don't care

[Heppelld0]

i think any system perpetuated by personal gain is flawed full stop. everybody wants more. even if they've got everything they ever wanted, they still want more. artists want more money. record labels want more control over the work their artists create. governments want more control over their people and will influence the record labels at their highest level in order to direct culture in the directions it desires. the people want more freedom. ultimately all concerned parties want more of lots of different things. money, influence, freedom, material goods.

what people are not willing to do any more is take responsibility. nobody wants to deal with themselves any more. if they run out of money, they blame the recession, when actually they've just spent more money than they have in reserve. nobody wants to save up for anything, they pay more over a longer period of time and get a credit card, just for the shear convenience. they then lose their job, and they've got no means to pay off the debt they owe the bank... money which the bank created out of nothing to begin with, but thats another rant... nobody wants to change to renewable energies, because that involves initiative, and initiative involves hassle, hassle which people aren't willing to take responsibility for.

the artists want to make money from the album they've made, but instead of giving it to their friends and distributing it themselves (taking all of the money make for themselves), they shift all of that business to the record label they sign a contract with to give them a large percentage of the total takings (less money, quicker process). the record label want to control who hears their new product but dont like the idea of making consumers sign a contract to give them the license to use the product (better process, more expenditure, more internal paperwork), so they say to governments that they can outline what sort of product fits with what they want people listening to (less hassle, more guarantee of consumer uptake, more money). the governments then want people to accept the direction they want things to go in but they dont want to tell people they've got a direction at all (nanny state, less freedom), so they just dont tell the people.

whats interesting to note, is that at the head of all the parties involved is a single person. banks, governments, bands, record labels. this leaves a high level of influence in the hands of a few people, which, history has shown us, is a baaaaaad idea... taking us back to the first point... personal gain... i think something's very wrong, but nobody wants to take responsibility for things they can do to change...

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[Daniel Dvorkin]

People who present conflicting opinions to all those you listed get modded up as well, as long as they do so in a reasonable way. It seems to me that most of the whining on /. along the lines of "waaah, my post got modded down because it disagrees with the groupthink!" comes from people who write semiliterate rants and obscenity-laden trolls. They're not getting modded down because they're Bold Rebels Speaking Truth To Power; they're getting modded down because they can't express their arguments in a way that makes sense.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the "groupthink" is quite unusual compared to the normal media "groupthink".

The "groupthink" conveyed by and adopted from mass media is often:

"Copying information is like physical robbery"
"Unlimited copyrights encourage innovation"
"It's ok if companies or the government is monitoring my communication, as long as they are looking for illegal behavior"
"the efforts to protect profits from copyright help the poor artists"
"billions of dollars are lost because people copy information"

Mickey Mouse!

[techhead79]

Everyone knows the problem started with Mickey Mouse. Copyright is what it is today because Disney has thrown enough money at law makers. So you know what I think the solution is?

I'd like to hear someone that has started their own business on writing software explain how the system would have worked if copyrights were removed from the world? Do you think Linux would be Linux today? Um no. Microsoft would have started spitting out fucked up version of Linux a long time ago breaking any form of a way to control the future of Linux. Without copyright MS has the right to use Linux code and screw it up anyway they want and never release the source code.

As far as I can tell the problem is people think they need 40k worth of music on their iPod to be happy and content. Disney is worried about losing what their entire Industry was built on the second the market gets flooded with a billion Mickey Mouse cartoons they didn't create...lol. And instead of fighting against the Industry that has destroyed the image of copyright the public masses just decide to remove it. How is this a solution?

Copyright in software gives a kind of virtual patent on an idea until another company can develop their own..this costs time and money to avoid copyrights. In a world with no copyrights any software designer can write their killer app and start to sell it...any company can then decompile that code slap their logo on it and sell it and market the creator out of existence. Anyone that thinks the software industry is about writing a killer app is kidding themselves. It is about marketing.

I got a better one for you...lets say an artist creates a new song...pick your pick...any one of them. Lets say you just wrote some killer lyrics that spoke to people...you had a great band and (fuck if I know how artists do their thing) and out comes a one hit wonder. Do you honestly think you'll get credit for it? An artist that has already made it big will just take your song and play in front of millions and then claim they wrote it first and without copyrights...honestly no one will care who wrote it first...but who will make all the money off of it?

We hate the RIAA and the MPAA so much for how they have treated us, their consumers that we think the only solution is to destroy the system. The same is true for the patent world. Patents today are just a fucking joke...I'd say a major part of that problem is software patents. Why don't we try and fix the system first? Limit the amount of time a copyright is valid per industry. Software say 20 years. Music the life of the artist. Movies 15 years after the first DVD sale or whatever media we use...etc. Make the system make sense not this 70+life of artist crap. Who the fuck gives a shit about the code I write 150 years from now? Why do we assume copyright by default? That's another dumb ass idea. Don't destroy the only system that protects many industries just because you want to have 40k in music on your ipod but don't have 40k to spend on it.

This is a math problem

[symbolset]

And apparently a distinguished mathematician has done the math. Benefits are optimized at about fifteen years

Long long ago, in a parliament far away

[symbolset]

Thomas Macauley gave two speeches on copyright extension. He covered all the salient points we're going to touch here on slashdot today, and a few more. They are hosted here. Please note that the host is a publisher, and Macauley was himself a distinguished author. It was over 160 years ago, but it's still a good read.

After that, if you have the math to sift through these two papers on the subject, you may agree with their author that the maximum benefit to authors and the public comes with copyright terms of about 15 years. The farther you get from optimum, the less benefit both creators and consumers see - not more for one and less for the other depending on direction, as one might assume.

Excessive length of copyright harms content creators, too.

It's not about free speech, it's about free stuff

[ClosedSource]

It's plausible that you might wish to convey an idea by referencing a small part of a large copyrighted work. It's not plausible that you wish to convey the exact full content of War and Peace.

The more pertinent question is, how much will we distort the meaning of free speech in order to avoid paying for something we don't want to pay for.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[artor3]

Uh-huh, sure. That's why, as of right now, there is one pro-copyright post thats been modded up more than once (and that only to +2), and that one actually just says "copyright shouldn't be *completely* destroyed."

Anyone who relies on the logic, "We would listen to opposing viewpoints, but the rest of the world is all too stupid to make a coherent point" is both arrogant and a fool.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[symbolset]

Tell you what... Give us back the hundred years of culture you stole from us and you can have this for a reasonable time -- say, 15 years. Keep the position that you stole that longer term fair and square and we can't have it back, and you'll find most people don't care what the law says. You steal from the people. You steal from the artists. And you think people won't react by treating you like a greedy little troll with no entitlement to intellectual property rights?

It's propaganda all the way down

[ClosedSource]

So basically you want the media to spend 10% of their advertising budget to manipulate Average Joes to think like you?

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[artor3]

Ah, quote #3 from my list: "They did bad things to us, so it's ok for us to steal from them!"

See what I mean? It's all the same, every time. Even when you try to directly refute my post, you prove part of it true.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[symbolset]

I wasn't trying to refute your post. I was calling you a whiny little brat who isn't getting his way. Cry some more - I'm loving it.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[artor3]

Ah, the classic internet QQ post. "No, really, I wasn't trying to make a point. I'm just trolling you. Boy, I sure got you!"

FYI, no one believes those sorts of posts. You didn't dig up those links to troll me, you didn't adopt that tone to troll me. You do care, and you like to think "boy, I sure owned that guy".

Re:It's not about free speech, it's about free stu

[Tubal-Cain]

It's plausible that you might wish to convey an idea by referencing a small part of a large copyrighted work. It's not plausible that you wish to convey the exact full content of War and Peace.

I would probably reference an entire film or tv episode that has Chuck Norris in it if I wanted to convey PURE AWESOME.

Your Music?

[ClosedSource]

"I do not have the time in the day to make my music.."

I suspect it's more a matter of lack of talent than lack of time.

Re:Your Music?

[bertoelcon]

That neither improves your point, nor weakens mine, so it really is redundant to point it out.

Re:Your Music?

[ClosedSource]

Actually, I shouldn't have said that. I have no idea if you have musical talent or not. I apologize.

Why this is bollocks

[Dr_Ish]

As a professor, I write programs, papers and am currently working on a book. All these activities involve creating copyrighted content. The people of my State pay me to do this, as I work for a State university. So, you are probably thinking that my situation is a bit like Bono and the other 'creative' sorts? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Once I have written a paper, it needs to go through peer review, via the blind referee process. This is all good and stops me publishing silly stuff. The next step is where the copyright problem arises.

Once I have a paper accepted, it is necessary for me to assign the copyright to the publishers of the journal. No copyright assignment, no publication. It is as simple as that. So, who gets the fruits of my labors? Big multi-national corporations. What did they do to get this intellectual content? Absolutely bugger all, other than rigging the system! What about the people of my State who paid for my hard work? They get nothing. If they want to read my papers, they have to buy them from the journal (at $15 per paper and up), or visit a library. Libraries have to pay for a journal subscription ($750 per annum and up).

Thus, all this 'creativity' and copyright bleating is clearly bollocks. It is just a case of the powerful folks using rhetoric to fight for their monopoly 'rights'. I don't care to participate, but am forced to. Of course, I also run an e-journal where the authors retain copyright, but that is another story. My little act of subversion.

Don't fall for all this 'starving artist' rubbish. My bet is that we professors in our professional bondage produce more per year than the people represented by the members of both the RIAA and the MIAA, put together. I wonder what those crooks, or their mouth pieces, would have to say in response to that claim? I bet we will never hear.

"We are led by fools who waste our lives". Copyright is a good idea which has now been subverted into a scam and it sucks.

Re:Why this is bollocks

[Anonymous Coward]

"We are led by fools who waste our lives"

be your own leader you feeble burke

Re:Why this is bollocks

[WiiVault]

A very interesting point, and one often forgotten. So many more people are abused by copyright like yourself than is realized. Only the connected stand to gain from anything other than minimal, reasonable copyright. Thank you as a creator for noticing this.

Re:Why this is bollocks

[scruffy]

Once I have a paper accepted, it is necessary for me to assign the copyright to the publishers of the journal. No copyright assignment, no publication.

I had thought the standard agreement in Computer Science is that the author keeps the copyright, but the publisher obtains a kind of exclusive use, but in the last agreement I signed, the copyright was assigned to the publisher. Oh well. In any case, the standard practice in Computer Science is also to ignore these things and have them available on one's web site and Citeseer and the like. I've never had a publisher complain about it.

Next time I'll pay a little bit more attention.

And we call it "democracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it not laughable that we oftenrefer to this aristocratic republic as a democracy? Where is the democracy? Where is the will of the people?

Pointing out that this is all about to change, at least in some parts of the world: http://metagovernment.org/

RE: Copyright -- the Big Lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Were Copyright driven to beutiful furition, then every living human being's brain would have to be subjected to electro-shock treatments in order to obiliterate any "copy" of any "copyrighted" material that the human beings's brain had "copied", i.e. retained a memory of.

What monsters these copyright homo-phobic perverts!

The Racist Republican Party will jump to the opportunity to subject all U.S.A. citizens to electro-shock therpy to re-program them into the loving womb of the Racist Republicans.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[walshy007]

I have semi-frequently posted about my views on changing copyright (not getting rid of it, just more sane time limits of 15-30 years from publication) I haven't in this article, however I usually tend to get modded up. It's all in the justification.

Re:It's not about free speech, it's about free stu

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It's plausible that you might wish to convey an idea by referencing a small part of a large copyrighted work. It's not plausible that you wish to convey the exact full content of War and Peace.

Is it plausible that one would retell a joke in its entirety? Under your 'definition' of free speech it seems that one would only be allowed to say the punch line.

Hatching a story

[Anonymous Coward]

Wexler and Hatch are paid lobbiests for the entertainment industry, most directly Disney. They sponsor him. He is paid by them. He is their man in the bag. He will lie, cheat and steal for them. Bob Wexler and Orrin Hatch shill for the **AA's every chance they can. Big greedy corporations wanting everyone elses ideas and suing people for their ideas is what Hatch and Wexler are pressing for. I'm disgusted by them. They disgust me. They suppress peoples ideas, steal private citizens innovations, and line pockets of large corporations (who give them a cut). In a way, their greed is reflected from their masters (not voters, but corporations). In a way, they are being paid twice, except citizens are not getting as big a return as their corporate masters. I look forward to the day when their greed gets them indited on bribery charges.

I suppose

[Mathinker]

If I come to your house with a gun and generate a desire in you to exchange money for my not shooting you, it's not called commerce.

Similarly, the practice of hiring workers to work in remote locations and then charging them a lot of money for basic necessities to virtually enslave them in debt bondage is now considered an illegal coercive labor practice. Previously, this was called "commerce".

But don't worry. What you have just called commerce isn't going to be redefined as anything else in the near future, barring some kind of global catastrophe. Joe Average likes it just the way it is.

Interesting logical paradox, or is it?

[Mathinker]

If "to think like me" is actually "to actively try to not think like others want me to, but rather find my own way", what is the real meaning of your problem with my suggestion? Interesting.

But you are right. There is no real way to define what I would like people to "think like", by definition, I'd like them to be able to think independently to a much larger extent than is currently accepted. But that's too hard (and dangerous) for Joe Average, so it's not going to happen.

Actually, TV stations currently do need to use some kind of percentage of their advertising power for "public service announcements", don't they? These announcements, however, often end up showing media figures doing "good deeds". They never try to warn Joe Average that he's being manipulated by the media, and should go off to try to think for himself.

Actually, in human society, not thinking "like everyone else" isn't typically a good survival trait, so there might be significant evolutionary pressure causing the status quo.

The Commons Is Primary...

[d'baba]

Else the Language is forfeit.
'Nuff Said
---
Free The Mouse

It's fun spending other people's money

[Hognoxious]

I point out that anyone who pontificates like you is deranged, and should pay all the R&D costs himself.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[cliffski]

Agreed. they could start by refusing to come to a site with this at the bottom:

© 1997-2009 SourceForge, Inc.

What you should do.

[sam_nead]

I am also an academic (in mathematics). Aside from the first three or four journal articles I wrote, out of currently about 25, all the rest are in the public domain. After I explain this to the copy editor, and rewrite their copyright agreement, I usually don't have a problem. Every once and I while I have to push a bit to get my way. Only once did a journal refuse to understand (Comm Helv) and they insisted that I either

a) give them the copyright

b) retain it for myself or

c) withdraw the paper.

I chose b, with a bit of a sigh.

Re:It's not about free speech, it's about free stu

[jesset77]

I don't understand why you would wish concepts like "plausibility" to rest at the very foundations of law.

I contend that copying a complete work, no matter how large it is nor how little unique content I contribute, is a form of speech. How do you think stories survived before the printing press or even the written word? Retelling. In their entirety. Rich retelling to be sure, but that is lost and impossible in today's copyrighted, mass-produced industry.

Besides all of this, your central logic fails when you substitute "War and Peace" with "The Great Gatsby", vis a vis Andy Kaufman. (lawd, that man knew how to Rickroll ;3)

They DO have those rights

[Anonymous Coward]

And when I ***create*** a copy, that work ***I*** did belongs to me.

These people lost the right to control their creations when they sold a copy to me. They have every right not to sell, but once they do, they lose control.

After all, your car was created by Ford workers, but they don't tell you where you can and cannot use their car, do they.

Answer the parent; don't just call troll.

[rtfa-troll]

The parent post is a bit silly, but it's making a standard and interesting point. It's not a total troll; should be modded up (at least to +1; not -1) and it should be answered.

But taking my work and copying it and giving it away at your whim is not free speech.

As a reasonably literate and eloquent person (though you might find that if you SHOUTED less and didn't call your debating partner "asshole" you would be listened to a bit more; you probably lost many people at your first sentence) you are able to explain your point clearly and on your own. There are many people, however, who aren't. If they agree with you but can't explain it clearly (perhaps because English isn't their first language; perhaps because they are almost illiterate, used to a non standard dialect, new to an issue or just plain stupid) then passing on the words you wrote literally may be their best way of saying what they have to say.

There is a huge history of this and control of printing presses and duplication of political works has always been crucial to oppression and fighting opression. Have a look at the history of illegal pamphlets during the war or at the history of Solidarity in communist Poland.

The right to copy Britney Spears may not seem worth much (though I'm sure there are some freaks^W people who feel she 'expresses their feelings'). Definitely there are some publications so worthless that my argument shouldn't apply to them, but there has been a decision in many countries that it is too difficult for a judge to decide which speech is worthless and which is worthwhile. The easiest way to permit free speech is to permit almost all speech. This should include most of the right to personal copying.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[swilver]

You're right, of course, but Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation systems are quite good at enforcing groupthink. As long as the majority of people on this site just want free stuff, rational opinions will be marginalized, and the same tired old lines will get modded up over and over.

"Hollywood only makes crap, no one would pay for it even if they couldn't download it."
"Piracy doesn't take a physical good from anyone, so it's OK."
"They've over-extended terms/sued for too much/employed illegal tactics to harass filesharers, therefore I'm justified in stealing their stuff."
"It's my right to free speech to copy that guy's free speech verbatim!"
"Artists are just leeches trying to coast on a few minutes of work"
blah blah blah...

--
Blatantly stolen by me.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[jesset77]

Look, I feel dirty getting involved in astor's little trolling thread here, but what do you mean in your post by "so it's ok for us to steal from them"? Ignoring your misuse of the word "steal", what would it mean for something to be "ok" or not, in this context? Are you hoping we will seek your blessing on the matter, astor?

Let's get one thing clear here: we are downloading the content. No amount of moral relativism will change how many people are capable of obtaining media freely online. As downloaders, we really aren't in a position where we need to justify ourselves to you. I for one post here as a courtesy to the /. community so that maybe they'll realize how much time they are wasting drawing lines in the sand that everybody just walks over. But you can only ever lead a horse to water.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[rtfa-troll]

1.) Slashdotters only rant against copyright because they're pro-piracy and don't want to lose the free ride. The hypocrisy is ridiculous, especially because Slashdot itself has sued other websites over copyright infringement.

I'm anti current copyright law and at the same time I never pirate. For me, breaking the law is something which can be done, but should only be done seriously and for a good reason. My lack of access to "bratz" material does not hurt me. I would only copy illegally on principle. I even buy material such as CDs as long as I know that I can actually copy it.

You attack yet another straw man. In fact you make the standard stupid mistake of assuming that the opinions expressed on a web site are the opinions of that web site. You probably think the letters column in your local newspaper expresses

2.) Copyright protects content creators so that they get paid for their work. Slashdotters don't want people to be paid for their work, because they want to pirate it. All your motives are self-serving, and it's so obvious.

There are many other ways to get paid for work. Firstly, you can charge lots for the access to the first copy. Most of us have nothing against privacy laws and the right not to give out your own stuff. Secondly you could work in an academic institution and be paid for doing the creative work. Thirdly you could look for patrons and sponsors.

Doing work is not sufficient to guarantee work. If you want to sit all day working hard bashing rocks don't come round to me and demand to be paid unless I told you you should do it. There is nothing special about "content creators" that they deserve to get paid for things other people didn't agree to pay for. Any copyright system has to be justified and accepted by both sides.

3.) The GPL is a copyright license. If you disagree with copyright law, then I'm free to do whatever I want with your GPL code.

the thing about law is, that it applies whether you agree with it or not. Your statement is as stupid as the statement "I don't agree with copyright law so I can't go to jail for copying".

I know I'll get modded down for voicing this opinion, because I've posted anti-piracy, pro-copyright opinions in the past and gotten trashed by roving gangs of moderators. Ah, well.

Help, help, I'm being repressed!

You get modded down because your post contains so many logical flaws and mistakes of logic that most people think it's just a troll. I see value in it as an expression of the stuipdity and ignorance of a certain group of people, however, you can't expect to get modded up till you learn to think straight.

Dear pirates--if copyright law is wrong, then the GPL has no legal standing.

An inability to separate moral wrong and right from legal and illegal is going to get you into big trouble if you go to China or, for example, North Korea. Just because something is wrong doesn't mean it isn't a law. In this case the GPL is legal because it is (see the case law; reasons are irrelevant). It's justifiable in the same way as someone shooting you could be completely justifiable. As a form of self defence if you attack them.

Where are these "Creators"?

[Shadowmist]

I've heard time and time again about how the creators are not being served by copyright, usually by some self-righteous user defending his right to pirate. So I'll ask the original poster, who and where are the creators supposedly advocating YOUR side of the argument? It's kind of self serving for a pirate user to trumpet the buzzwords of "fair use", "creator's freedom", when all they're doing is grabbing the material, and using it without paying. Maybe the real reason that you're not hearing the "creator's" side is that they're happy with the status quo as it is. Maybe because they hire agents to deal with items regarding to their compensation so they don't have to. And when I mean creators, I'm talking about the big ticket folks whose stuff you're pirating, not the local band who can't give thier CDs away, much less get them published.

Re:Where are these "Creators"?

[plasmacutter]

how about reading the post listed above yours. Here, ill link it for you.

Jews cause copyright abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Adolf Hitler. All Jew haters want to praise him but I say fuck him. He is the single most enabler of Jews in the 20th century more than any other force. Jews own the United States, Europe, The Middle East, and are attempting a cultural coup of Asia as we speak. You can't say anything against jews because they can hide behind the Holocaust, something 90% of them never experienced but are allowed to use to get anything they want in society. African Americans are still treated like shit in American society and look at most of the sub-Sahara Africa being raped and exploited. Israel is treated like royalty despite whatever crimes against humanity are committed against anyone. If Hitler was reborn an Israeli and decided to commit genocide against Palestinians, the rest of the world would just watch and not do anything behind their guise of "never again". Jews need a new Holocaust which does the whole job of wiping their influence out and no half assed bullshit like letting them own 50% of the US and 50% of the USSR at the time. A complete wipe is all that is needed and nothing weak like Hitler suggested, rather a fill blown purge in the US, Europe, Africa, and Asia. No rounding up, just straight shots in the head. Humanity would then actually progress without people having to worry about being destroyed financially and personally while Jews who never contributed to society end up in business leading roles destroying everyone else's lives. Long live the Neo-Holocaust. The Jew Museum was just a fringe attempt but I promise the real execution will be nothing but armature.

Re:Slashdot is living in the stone age

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's not. You're so full of shit though that you really don't have a clue what he actually was saying.

Posting AC so as to not spoil mods. Too bad I don't have mod points left to mod your posts what they should be.

Fail troll = fail.

Re:It's not about free speech, it's about free stu

[ClosedSource]

"I don't understand why you would wish concepts like "plausibility" to rest at the very foundations of law."

I don't understand why you wouldn't wish that the enforcement of laws would include logic. Would you prefer a summary judgement for or against free speech without any evaluation of the circumstances or facts?

If you pay a hooker to have sex with you is that protected speech?

"How do you think stories survived before the printing press or even the written word? Retelling. In their entirety."

I'm not sure how practices that predate both the establishment of free speech and copyright law are applicable to them. I suspect that if you told the "wrong" kind of stories, you'd be banished. Besides, most stories were not passed on word-for-word. Haven't you ever played telephone?

Re:It's not about free speech, it's about free stu

[ClosedSource]

I'm not aware of anybody being sued on the basis of a single joke. But you could give somebody a sheet of paper with a joke on it that you haven't even read - how can that be considered speech?

Re:It's not about free speech, it's about free stu

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm not aware of anybody being sued on the basis of a single joke.

Yeah... and so what of it? You claim that freedom of expression does not include copying "the exact full contents of" of a creation. I give you an example of a class of creations that are regularly copied verboten without copyright suits being filed and you basically agree with me. If I didn't know better, I'd say you just changed your mind. The kind of thing that you could cite to contradict me is a court ruling that jokes are not protected speech. Good luck.

But you could give somebody a sheet of paper with a joke on it that you haven't even read - how can that be considered speech?

The same way that a bookstore's right to sell books that neither the owner nor the clerks or anyone else in the bookstore has read is protected by the right to freedom of expression.

There is a recurrent theme here - you think the right to freedom of expression is this tiny little thing when in fact it is extremely broad and free ranging and has been constantly affirmed so by the courts in the US.

from an actual artist

[Anonymous Coward]

The underlying impression I get from this discussion is that people who have never created anything good (Ii.e. that anyone else actually wants to read, see, hear or watch) wants me to work for them for free. I hear a with of anger in these posts] that I actually want to earn money for my efforts. All this talk about "big bad corporations" is BS. Practically any good art is created by individuals not soulless corporations. Those corporations may be exploiting the artists, and they may be asking to ridiculous extensions on the length of the copyright, but remember this: a corporation did not do the actual creating: and artist or artists did. If I spend a year or two or more on a work, why the hell should you be able to use FOR FREE as a matter of right? It's the fruit of my labor.
By some of the arguments I hear here, what the difference between posting a copyrighted book on the internet for anyone to have free and me breaking into your house and eating the food from your refrigerator that you worked to buy? ("Food is a basic right and for the government to restrict the peoples' free right to food is wrong").
Grown up. The world is not free. The example of painters making money from selling their paintings and copies being free is a false one: the copies are copyrighted, too, for the life of a copyright, and an original painting is always richer than the copy. With writing or music, the digital copy is the essentially the same as the original.
Again, I've spent years writing a book, got it published and made a bit of money. Why the hell do you think you have the right to my labors for free? If you really believe in that, give me your address and I'l be over to eat your food and drink your beer for free.

Re:It's not about free speech, it's about free stu

[jesset77]

I don't understand why you wouldn't wish that the enforcement of laws would include logic.

Logic has every reason to be used in the foundation of law. The word "plausable", on the other hand, is entirely subjective and you know it.

Would you prefer a summary judgement for or against free speech without any evaluation of the circumstances or facts?

If you pay a hooker to have sex with you is that protected speech?

Let me take this moment to solidify my position. I am in favor of recognizing the basic human right to share any and all information at one's disposal. I suppose this can be easily confused with "Free Speech" (even by me at times, my apologies) but the latter has become an embattled legal term with divergent meanings.

My meaning is a simple one, and exactly as stated. I believe it is injurious for society to practice any compulsory law indexed against the sharing of data. Period. If you hire a prostitute, you should be charged based on prostitution laws but not censorhip laws. If you scream "fire" in a crowded theater, you should be arrested for reckless endangerment (or similar), not because "fire" is some kind of a contraband idea to convey.

I view the idea of "protected speech" as equally injurious. The sharing of information is materially irrelevant to virtually all standard criminal activity, and thus ought simply be disentangled. Copyright happens to be a section of law I would prefer to see dissolved completely.

Besides, most stories were not passed on word-for-word. Haven't you ever played telephone?

On the other hand, many were. Just because kids are not conversant in sharing gossip with fidelity does not mean that generations of mankind were incapable of maintaining fairly rigorous oral tradition prior to widespread literacy.

The gist of the matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Since copyright exists solely for the public good (to foster innovation), not to enrich the copyright holder, the argument that the copyright holder is losing money is meaningless as an argument to augment copyright laws. (The holder still has a right to sue for infringement, under the law, but has no reason to expect any help from the public).

The only rational argument to augment copyright law is that piracy is stifling innovation.

I see no evidence of this.

You should be a comic....

[rts008]

BwaH!HAHAHAHHEEHEEHEEHOHOHOHAH!

Not to mention the amusing fact that the GPL relies on copyright, since it's a copyright license. It's interesting that Slashdotters don't apply their anti-copyright attitudes toward GPL code reuse.

You're utterly clueless, aren't you?

It is my sincere hope that you get trapped on a dysfunctional elevator with RMS for several hours after saying that to him.

HAAHAAHAHAHHAHOHOHOHEE!
*I think I pulled a rib, or something*

idiot

[unity100]

businesses didnt destroy themselves. executives destroyed the businesses for their major shareholders' benefit, because they were ALLOWED TO DO SO AND IT WAS MORE PROFITABLE.

they destroyed entire world economy in the meantime - but hey, what the fuck does it matter ? the executives and their fat cat masters already reaped their benefits from the SCAM.

idiot. develop some cognitive powers and do some research before you talk. ENTIRE world financial community blames REPUBLICANS AND THEIR PUPPET ALAN GREENSPAN. they themselves even do not object to this. but idiots like you listen to hannity and other fuckfaces and come blabber around in here.

at least develop the balls to post with an account.

Re:Republicans ! - pay enough and

[alexo]

Orin Hatch is renowned for being one of the most corrupt men in the United States

What does it say about the 356,238 people that voted for him in 2006?