The Fashion Industry As a Model For IP Reform

Scrameustache writes "In this 15-minute TED talk, Johanna Blakley addresses a subject alien to most here — fashion — but in a way sure to grab our attention. The lesson is about how the fashion industry's lack of copyright protection can teach other industries about what copyright means to innovation. And yes, she mentions open source software. There is one killer slide at 12:20 comparing the gross sales of low-IP-protection industries with those of films and books and music. If you want to know more, or if you prefer text, the Ready To Share project website should give you all the data you crave on the subject."

Comments

Drupal

[ArsenneLupin]

I didn't get my question answered, as the developers immediately discussed the fact I was using the "old tech" version (5) and the entire discussion became about when I was going to upgrade to the latest greatest version (7).

7 is still alpha. I wouldn't use that for production system. What's more, most modules are still unavailable for 7.

Heck, some useful modules are even unavailable for 6, such as views_ticker. Or are there any other tickers that show titles of nodes of a view? There are plenty which show all nodes of a certain type, or featuring certain taxonomy keywords, or from a hand-picked list, but no tickers based on a view. For that you have to stay with 5.

With drupal, you've got a good excuse for wearing last year's fashion: your favourite module or theme is still unavailable.

Re:Umm, are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, clearly you didn't watch the video.

They have interview clips with the young, creative fashion designers. As one such designer said of the mall store rip-offs: "Well, the mall customers are not our customers. It doesn't really matter."
Or something to that effect.

Don't care about Copyright?

[Statecraftsman]

She said (paraphrasing), "Open Source. Those people decided they wanted nothing to do with copyright."

She's a little bit wrong there when you consider that the GNU General Public License uses copyright as the vehicle through which the license is enforced. What she meant to say was that the free software movement requires people be able to copy and modify their software as part of the definition of software freedom. Not quite as good for a sound bite but a truer meaning for those who care.

Re:Don't care about Copyright?

[David Jao]

She said (paraphrasing), "Open Source. Those people decided they wanted nothing to do with copyright." She's a little bit wrong there when you consider that the GNU General Public License uses copyright as the vehicle through which the license is enforced. What she meant to say was that the free software movement requires people be able to copy and modify their software as part of the definition of software freedom. Not quite as good for a sound bite but a truer meaning for those who care.

Your claim is not correct either. Just because the GNU GPL uses copyright as a vehicle to enforce the license does not mean that the FSF wants, endorses, or supports software copyright. In fact, if you search through Richard Stallman's writings and speeches, he makes it pretty clear that using software copyrights in the GPL is merely his way of making the best of a bad situation. Although the GPL uses software copyrights, the FSF does not support software copyright, by any means.

For example, in "Why Software Should Not Have Owners", Richard Stallman writes:

Digital technology is more flexible than the printing press: when information has digital form, you can easily copy it to share it with others. This very flexibility makes a bad fit with a system like copyright.

That's a clear and unambiguous statement against software copyright. The motivation for the GPL and copyleft is described as follows:

I figure that since proprietary software developers use copyright to stop us from sharing, we cooperators can use copyright to give other cooperators an advantage of their own: they can use our code.

In summary, it's not entirely correct to say that the FSF wants anything to do with copyright just because the GPL uses copyright. It's more accurate to say that the FSF wants nothing to do with copyright, but that practical considerations forced them to participate in the copyright system against their will.

Of course, it's certainly true that not all developers agree with the FSF, but if you're going to cite the GPL as an example of the free software community's stance on software copyright, then you are obliged to give greater weight than usual to the FSF's position on software copyright in this context, because the FSF created the GPL.

Please get your facts right in TED talks!

[Qubit]

TED talks might be "ideas worth spreading," but unfortunately Johanna Blakley is spreading nothing but half-truths and misconceptions about FOSS in her talk.

Don't get me wrong -- I have no impression that she's acting with malicious intent. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she was supportive of the open source business model. But regardless of intent, her voice carries great weight when she's given the microphone at a TED talk.

11:50
"Open source software. These guys decided they didn't want copyright protection. They thought it'd be more innovative without it."

False. Some FOSS developers eschew some of the protections granted to them through copyright law and grant everyone very permissive licenses to their code. Other developers have used a clever hack to create a body of "copyleft" work -- code that can be used and expanded upon, contingent upon derivative works being distributed under the same terms as the original work.

Very few FOSS developers put their code into the public domain.

13:50
Around this point she shows a chart.

The chart has two axes:
X: "Property (Art)" -> "Free (Utility)" and
Y: "Physical Fixed Expression" -> "Idea/Digital Manifestation".

The left two quadrants are colored grey and have "COPYRIGHT PROTECTED" written above them. The right two quadrants and colored white and have "NOT COPYRIGHT PROTECTED" above them.

She plots "OPEN SOURCE CODE" on the chart exactly in between "Idea/Digital Manifestation" and "Free (Utility)", placing it on the right hand, "NOT COPYRIGHT PROTECTED" side of the chart.

At least for the moment, computer code is copyrightable in the US. And as I stated before, most FOSS code is copyright protected.

I think that Blakley has a lot of interesting ideas, and certainly knows more about the fashion industry than I, but she's needlessly negligent in her characterization of how FOSS interacts with copyright law.

Perhaps I should write her a polite letter...

Re:Umm, are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the IT manager for a fashion company and as far as I can tell there is not much point in copy protection in our market.
A range lasts only 3 months (ie a 'season') so by the time something new is out and proven popular it's too late to copy it because we're already moving onto the next season.

Our designers build their labels by staying ahead of the curve, and our target market is 'cool' kids who don't settle for anything less than the latest. It's sort of self regulating.
Sure the Mall stores come out with clones of last years popular stuff, but people that buy that junk were never our target market to begin with.

Re:Flawed Analogy?

[Hognoxious]

as to the fact that you can't copyright the exterior design of them.

You don't need to, it's covered by design patents.

Re:Sadly unlikely to happen

[Jesus_666]

The trademark only applies to the Gucci label, though. You're perfectly fine if you rip off the same designs for your "Cucchi" brand. Replace all the Gs with Cs and you're set.

Re:Flawed Analogy?

[smooth wombat]

Fashion is an interesting case because it's exempted from copyright laws

Actually, it's not completely exempt because there have been numerous cases of copyright in the fashion industry. For example, Van Halen suing Nike over a criss-cross pattern on a line of sneakers Nike produced. Anthropologie has sued Forever 21 (see below for a separate case) over copyright infringement for nine garments. We also have Diane von Furstenberg suing Target (see separate case below) for copyright infringement as well as other issues.

There is the case of jewelry company Merit Diamond Corp that sued Samuels Jewelers and Rogers Jewelers because their design of certain pieces of their jewelry was copies of Merit's. A similar case involved Tacori vs Beverly Jewelry Company Ltd for copyright infringement of ring designs.

Most lawsuits in the fashion industry revolve around trademark and patent infringement such as the case against Paris Hilton, Coach vs. Target and Trovata vs Forever 21.

However, to prove your point about the fashion industry and copyright, see this article from the NY Times from March which talks about this very subject.