Czech Copyright Bill Undercuts Copyleft, Artists

Andorin writes "Earlier this month a copy of a draft of the Czech Republic's new Copyright Act [Czech PDF] was leaked to Pirate News. Included among several disturbing provisions are new regulations for 'public licenses' such as Creative Commons licenses and the GPL/BSD licenses. The amendment essentially requires that an artist wishing to use a public license must notify the administrator of a collecting agency, and must prove that they created the work in question. This goes against one of the strengths of Creative Commons and other licenses, namely the ease with which they can be applied. Additionally, collecting agencies will have increased jurisdiction over copylefted and orphaned works. ZeroPaid covers the story, noting that the amendment also reduces the royalties which artists receive from libraries by 40%, with that money instead going directly to publishers."

Comments

Think of the Artists

[whisper_jeff]

Won't somebody please think of the artists?

Isn't that the rallying cry of the copyright cartels?...

Re:Think of the Artists

[idontgno]

Sure. The media pigopolists are thinking of the artists. Specifically, how to get more money out of their hands and into the publishing interest's own.

This kind of legalized extortion isn't reflexive, you know. It takes a fair bit of thinking, plus the scruples of a stoat, to invoke the cause of your own victim in support of your victimization.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the rallying cry of the copyright cartels?...

Well of course. The rules of this game are simple and obvious: 1) Maximize profits 2) justify your means after the fact.

Win the hearts by saying "we protect the little guy" while simultaneously taking for yourself all the value generated by the little guy, and keeping him indentured to you indefinitely. This is nothing new or secret. It happens in plain view of the public all the time.

The public doesn't like to bother checking facts and buys the corporate line, so strategies like this work well.

Rich people got rich by learning how to use their wealth to create even more wealth. So they spend money to lobby their government to pass laws that force an increase in their own wealth, to the detriment of everyone else.

And they win, because we let them.

Re:Think of the Artists

[DarkKnightRadick]

I don't see how restricting an artists rights to apply whatever license they want to their creation is helping them in the least.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people get paid for the work they do, not the work that they did. If a construction worker wants some more money, he has to build another house. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if a performing artist wants more money, he should have to execute another performance.

Artists should be paid for live music. In the modern technological landscape, digital copies are no longer the product, but rather the advertisement.

And besides, even if that wasn't true, there is nothing that says an artist has to be an artist. If artists can't make a living being artists, then they can go get a job that pays, just like the rest of us. I see no evidence that this will result in a complete absence of new music, and if it does then the forces of widespread demand will create new opportunities to profit on music.

So your justification of your outdated business model is crap. Music publishing is an anachronism, and you need to stop taking our freedom away, move into the modern era, and get yourself a real job.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Moryath]

Translated more simply:

If you have the money like the MafiAA does, you TOO can buy incredibly asstarded laws to protect your illegal monopoly price-gouging and put those uppity little "artists" back in their rightful slave-labor places in shitty little countries like the Czech... or UK... or USA...

Re:Think of the Artists

[Red Flayer]

It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if a performing artist wants more money, he should have to execute another performance.

Sure, but what about the recording artists? Should they be left high and dry? Is public performance the only art venue that is deserving of reward?

Re:Think of the Artists

[grahammm]

At one time, unless they self-published, all recording artists started out as live performers who were "discovered" by a talent scout and offered a recording contract.

Re:Think of the Artists

[NeutronCowboy]

Sure, but what about the recording artists? Should they be left high and dry? Is public performance the only art venue that is deserving of reward?

Short version: yes. Long version: More or less. Thanks to autotune, the work done by a recording singer is minimal, and a lot of music can be similarly tuned or fixed by computers.

Re:Think of the Artists

[NeutronCowboy]

I'm sure everyone would be okay with just "making a copy" of their back accounts and distribute it. Hey free culture right?

Ahhh.... now I get it. Music Publishers confuse money with culture. If it has a dollar sign attached to it, it is culture. If it doesn't, it is worthless and should forcibly have a dollar sign attached to it, so that it becomes culture.

As perverse and mindblowingly stupid as that attitude is, I now understand exactly why and how Entertainment Publishers work and think. Please do everyone a favor and snort that bag of coke you have in your desk all at once.

And by the way, HIPAA exists because people do stupid things with medical information, like deny you jobs and ostracize you. If people wouldn't be stupid like you, there'd be no need for HIPAA.

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Most people get paid for the work they do, not the work that they did. If a construction worker wants some more money, he has to build another house. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if a performing artist wants more money, he should have to execute another performance.

Artists should be paid for live music. In the modern technological landscape, digital copies are no longer the product, but rather the advertisement.

Why? Why should artists make money the same way as a builder? Why should artists only be paid for live music? Why on god's green earth would we actually want musical recordings to degenerate into a form of advertising? I can just picture it: the same 30 second clips recorded from an old performance, and horrible camcorder recordings from people sneaking cameras in the audience. Your idea just seems horrible for both artists, legitimate customers, and pirates alike.

The assertion that performing artists need to perform to get more money is idiotic. Most performing artists are also recording artists (some artists are exclusively the latter), and much of their job is making and selling their recordings. There is significant value in the copies of these recordings, and it seems considerably more reasonable that, in order for consumers to come into possession of copies of these recordings, there needs to be some sort of mutual agreement between the artist and the consumer. "Mutual", as in not just the consumer demanding that the artist work a certain way, and provide certain things for free.

And besides, even if that wasn't true, there is nothing that says an artist has to be an artist. If artists can't make a living being artists, then they can go get a job that pays, just like the rest of us.

Well, there's 90-100% of their music-generating hours down the toilet. Is there some shortage of manual labourers that I'm not aware of?

I see no evidence that this will result in a complete absence of new music

That is irrelevant, because the burden of proof lies with you. I can certainly see more than ample evidence that it will result a severe collapse in music production (if not a complete absence), so perhaps you're not looking hard enough.

and if it does then the forces of widespread demand will create new opportunities to profit on music.

Right, because the free market will magically swoop in and save the day. Has it occurred to you that, if people are completely unwilling to pay for music recordings, that they simply won't get music recordings, no matter what free market tricks you use? I mean, you can try embedding the cost into something else that people can't have for free, like a concert ticket, but then that just means that recording becomes a side show at best, and a neglected afterthought at worst. If people don't want to pay for something, unless they can find people willing to do it for free, then they aren't going to get it.

So your justification of your outdated business model is crap.

Hmm. Last time I checked, the "outdated" business model that you're referring to is currently more favoured by both artists and consumers than, say, your suggestion for a business model. I wonder which one is the less feasible?

Music publishing is an anachronism, and you need to stop taking our freedom away, move into the modern era, and get yourself a real job.

Seriously, why do you hate recording artists? If you hate paying for recordings, there are other legal ways of not paying for recordings, other than trying to change the law and force them out of their job. You could, you know, just not buy them. It's pretty easy.

Re:Think of the Artists

[king neckbeard]

Recordings have been nothing but a form of advertisements for virtually all but the megastars for the entire history of recorded music, and session musicians often get paid by the session, and don't have residual royalties. Also, this doesn't mean that nobody will get paid for making recorded music, just that there will not be a continuous source of income from previous work. As for burden of proof, I say it should be laid upon the party proposing a government backed monopoly, not the party proposing the ability to freely spread information.

Re:Think of the Artists

[gclef]

That sort of thing leads to all kinds of abuses. For example, say you have an author who writes something popular. If a printing company starts churning out copies of that & making a mint off of those sales, is it fair that the author gets none of that money? Or, to make it more directly about music, if a band performs live and someone records it, is it fair that the recording person makes all the money from selling the recording of that band? The recorder did almost no work, but, in the environment you're proposing, would make almost all the money. That doesn't seem right to me...

Re:Think of the Artists

[Teancum]

But should the heirs of a recording artist continue to be paid for something that the recording artist did 70 years after they died, which was performed by that artist 50 years before they died? Getting paid for something 120 years after it was done seems a little bit excessive too. There are copyright protections that last even longer than this.

Seriously, do you think that those heirs for a recording in that case is going to possibly encourage any new artist to create new works merely because their great-great grandchildren might get a few extra bucks for something that is otherwise forgotten about by modern culture?

Re:Think of the Artists

[king neckbeard]

You apparently aren't familiar with the practices of any copyright industry. You get a crappy royalty that will never cover your advance on your breakthrough work, and you don't get a decent rate until you make another work. However, you can get a fairly quick turnaround in concert sales with just a hit single.

Re:Think of the Artists

[gclef]

Oh, I'm familiar with the music industry practices...I interned at a record label in college, and they walked me through just how evil their artist contract was. The printing industry is quite different, though, especially in the standard contracts treatment of things like the rights assigned to the publisher, and how long the publisher owns those rights.

The copyright industry isn't just music...and not all of them are as abusive as the big record labels. They all rely on copyright, though, so destroying copyright punishes both the good ones, the bad ones, and the artists. To my eyes, that's not okay.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Mathinker]

> Well, there's 90-100% of their music-generating hours down the toilet.
> Is there some shortage of manual labourers that I'm not aware of?

Well, let's see here. Is that a false dichotomy I smell?

When I look at the (small, non-statistical sample of) musicians I'm familiar with who do side jobs, I find that they tend to do rather more useful things than manual labor. Here's my list:

• Nick Drozdoff - teaches high school physics
• David Julian Gray - Audio/multimedia engineer
• Lev Liberman - Professional voice artist specializing in voice-overs
• Stephen McDonald (Einstein's Wardrobe, Starfly 69) - some version of UK lawyerdom : barrister and/or solicitor

I'm not claiming that no artists do manual labor either before or in parallel with working as performers: Tom Baker was working as a construction worker before he landed the acting job as The Fourth Doctor, for example.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Arccot]

Its funny how many people around here want to change the law to benefit themselves while demonizing others that are trying to do the same.

You expect writers of technical manuals to do public readings now to earn income? Or maybe software writers should offer to personally train users in their programs?

If copyright continues to exist, what are you losing, exactly? The people that are creating duplicatable works that they want to give away will continue to do so. The people that want to charge will continue to do so. If you take away copyright, you eliminate the later with no increase in the former.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Andorin]

Why? Why should artists make money the same way as a builder? Why should artists only be paid for live music?

To answer the intent of your question, because the mechanism through which an artist sells recordings (copyright) is clashing head-on with modern tech, and losing. Copyright is meaningless when digital files can be instantly replicated and shared. If recording artists manage to make livings selling copies despite this, great. Everyone wins. If they fail, they have no one to blame but themselves. If they try to change technology to suit their chosen business model, we throw them on the street.

Hmm. Last time I checked, the "outdated" business model that you're referring to is currently more favoured by both artists and consumers

Sorry, you can't possible say that with a straight face. Traditional copyright is under attack from everyone except big media corporations and government interests.

Re:Think of the Artists

[next_ghost]

Has it occurred to you that, if people are completely unwilling to pay for music recordings, that they simply won't get music recordings, no matter what free market tricks you use?

I fail to see the problem. This is how free market works. You get what you're willing to pay for.

Hmm. Last time I checked, the "outdated" business model that you're referring to is currently more favoured by both artists and consumers than, say, your suggestion for a business model. I wonder which one is the less feasible?

That's nothing more than market inertia. Entertainment industry won't adopt new marketing models because those models can't support dinosaurs this big. Most of the entertainment industry will fall sooner or later with a loud Earth-shaking thud and alternative models will take over because they give the author much more money than the industry. Even though the consumers pay a lot less.

Re:Think of the Artists

[king neckbeard]

I'm aware that the copyright industry isn't just music, but I'm fairly sure that this applies to basically every industry that is copyright based. John Q. Aspiringnovelist gets far, far less than Stephen King per book sold. Other industries may be more prone to licensing such as 10 cents a copy instead of every 8 cents a copy for every copy past a million, but I'm fairly sure that even then, you won't get anything past the advance unless it's unbelievably popular. If the contracts had a clause for retroactive negotiation after a short period of time or a certain number of copies were sold, there might be a more equitable system, but no company is going to do that. I know there's a loophole about a copyright contract and 35 years and something like that, but it's a rather small consolation that is irrelevant in the lion's share of cases.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Red Flayer]

Oh, I fully agree with you on that count. I think the length of the term is ridiculous; I don't think copyrights as a concept are ridiculous.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Andorin]

If copyright continues to exist, what are you losing, exactly?

If copyright in its current form continues to exist, we continue to see gut-churning abuses of it by big corporations and governments alike. It needs reform or it needs to go; preferably the former.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Red Flayer]

Thanks to autotune, the work done by a recording singer is minimal, and a lot of music can be similarly tuned or fixed by computers.

So then more artists can create their own, awesome. There'll be more choices for music appreciators. But does that mean that nothing that is recorded is of value and should be rewarded by the ability to profit from people's desire to be able to listen to it at will?

Besides, I think you're conflating art that is deserving of reward with art that is hard to produce. They are not the same thing.

Re:Think of the Artists

[king neckbeard]

Tech manuals are often for a physical product, and there are academics and volunteers that have shown themselves capable of doing things. There are several ways for software to work outside of copyright, such as the various methods most FOSS uses that don't direcl monetize software. In fact, it's worth noting that most programmers are employed for service, not for making a product. It's all about specially made software for Enterprise X that is probably never seen outside of enterprise X. This is why Java is one of the most popular programming languages despite very little widely used desktop software running on it.

If copyright continues to exist, what are you losing, exactly?

personal freedom? That's sort of a big deal. If you are American and under 30, you may have lost touch with that since the public domain has actually shrank in your lifetime, but copyright is supposed to be for a limited time, and it is based on the public's interests. If copyright fails to be in the public's interest, it is not serving its constitutional purpose and should be reformed or axed.

Re:Think of the Artists

[gclef]

I strongly recommend reading Charlie Stross' "Common Misconceptions About Publishing" series of blog posts...the one about the actual publishing contract is here:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-3-how-books-are-sold.html

To quote one section of it relating to royalties (though, really, read the whole thing, it's interesting):

There's an escalator on royalties. I get 10% on the first 5000 copies of each book, 12.5% on the next 5000 copies, and 15% on all copies of each book sold thereafter.

So, the standard contract already (for publishing) already does slide royalties as sales go up. Sure, big names who will sell more books make more (Charlie Stross is not a starting author anymore, but he's certainly not a blockbuster seller, either)...but the industry is not nearly as rigid as you seem to think.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Anonymous Coward]

The world does not owe anyone success in business - whether in traditional trades or in the luxury-goods trade that music belongs to. And noone should be able to have laws made to artificially keep what in effect is a guild (at best) or a protection racket in business.

If music recordings went away tomorrow the world would continue since they are luxury goods. Stop thinking of artists as God's effing gift to mankind. They are just dilettantes preferring to do what they like instead of providing something others actually need. They are not entitled to any success.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing you aren't a composer. You are just someone who doesn't know anything spouting bullshit.

Why don't you just go to work for nothing too.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Spugglefink]

Most people get paid for the work they do, not the work that they did. If a construction worker wants some more money, he has to build another house.

OK, so what about authors? Am I supposed to write books live on stage? Or just do away with books entirely, and we should say whatever we have to say in live lectures. That's it.

The other side of this whole coin that you're not considering is that construction workers get paid for their time, and what they manage to accomplish in that time is incidental to the payment model. If they sit around half the day waiting on the concrete truck to show up (I've been there; I hate construction work), they're on the clock getting paid. It's entirely possible for a construction worker to get paid for a significant number of hours without accomplishing a thing in that time. Sure, the worker will get fired eventually, but the hours have been worked, and will have to be paid out regardless.

This is all in sharp contrast to writing a book. I spent two years and perhaps 2,000 hours up front before I saw the first penny for my work. It's not possible to get paid for something you did until you've completed it, and all the time invested in that product up to that point is pure speculation. It's nothing at all like working on a clock.

Making music and writing books are similar in many ways, and neither one has a payment model anything like construction work. Comparing the latter to live concert performances is the closest to being a reasonable comparison, but it fails to account for the difference between getting paid to sit around waiting on the asphalt truck and not getting paid for all the endless hours of rehearsal necessary to keep one's chops up. Construction workers get to practice on the job and get paid for it, but music is a demanding bitch. I'm a musician, but by no means anywhere good enough to be a pro, and that's because I am not remotely motivated enough to practice long enough and hard enough to get myself into that kind of shape.

I mean look, I hate the RIAA as much as any noble pirate anarchist, but it annoys me when people blow artistic pursuit off as something trivial to do just because it's perceived as being "fun" by people.

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Recordings have been nothing but a form of advertisements for virtually all but the megastars for the entire history of recorded music, and session musicians often get paid by the session, and don't have residual royalties.

Then why am I finding it so hard to think of a band, local, national, or international who gives away their recordings at cost price to support their tours?

Also, this doesn't mean that nobody will get paid for making recorded music, just that there will not be a continuous source of income from previous work.

How does that work?

As for burden of proof, I say it should be laid upon the party proposing a government backed monopoly, not the party proposing the ability to freely spread information.

The burden of proof did lie with us, a few hundred years ago when copyright was proposed. Now that we've accepted it, and our culture has grown and blossomed so much, the burden of proof now rests with anyone who wants to change it. It's up to that person to prove, beyond anybody's reasonable doubt, that the change will not just be a disaster. Just because you're wanting to "freely spread information", doesn't mean that you're proposing what is best for us.

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Well, let's see here. Is that a false dichotomy I smell?

No. It's really not. The manual labourers comment was far from my point, which was that artists holding side jobs have much less time to function as an artist. I didn't say it was impossible to be an artist while holding down a steady job, just that you don't get nearly the same time to devote to your art as a full time artists.

If we forced artists to work at other jobs, and not pay them for their artistry, we force them to get jobs with pay enough to support them (since their art won't help them), typically with long hours. How are they supposed to find any significant time to complete their works? What if they also have families to feed and otherwise look after? We can't just smooth over all of this, and hope that it all works itself out. We need some proof that any problems caused by getting rid of copyright are outweighed by the benefits.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Musicians have been honored in human society for at least 40k years. shamans, etc. then court musicians, so the wealthy elite could have live performances. then music notation, enabling other artists to copy the composers music accurately. then we got analog recordings, and the largest expansion of music talent and entertainment in human history. now that we have digital recordings, do we really want to shut the door on musicians expanding influence on culture? like, force them to get a "real job", so they wont have the free time to compose music? advanced civilizations allow for extreme specialization of labor. if all one values is work like home construction, you might enjoy life in a country like pol pots cambodia, where they eliminated all bougie culture and the people who create it. We will have to find a way to support musicians and other artists in their efforts to expand our humanity, but going back to "live performances only" without simply giving up on technological civilization would be barbaric. but then only a barbarian thug would seriously think that forcing musicians to get a "real job" is a normal human response to this crisis. would you like fries with that?

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Copyright is meaningless when digital files can be instantly replicated and shared.

No, no, no! Copyright is currently at its most meaningful! It was designed for exactly this kind of possibility, when copying and distributing artworks becomes cheap and trivial. We didn't need copyright when such things were expensive and difficult, because often the benefits were dubious. It was when the printing press became mainstream, and there was potential for other, even faster copying machines, that we needed copyright to counter the increasing ease and temptation of copying. Now, in the internet age, copyright is more relevant than ever!

If recording artists manage to make livings selling copies despite this, great. Everyone wins. If they fail, they have no one to blame but themselves.

If they manage to make a living selling copies despite this, yes they have made a living, but they're also subsidising their own lost sales. They then pass this cost to their customers through higher prices. You say "everybody wins", but a more correct version would be "pirates win, customers and artists don't lose (yet)". If more customers start pirating, or pirates start losing the moral drive to buy music that they like, then the system falls flat on its face.

If they can't make money while people decide to illegally take whatever digital recordings they want for free, I suppose it's their fault for not finding the correct business model, right? OK, take your mind out of the self-entitled consumer position that school education indoctrinates you into, and bring your head into the space of pure reason. What justification do you have that such a business model exists? Or if it does, that we'll end up better off for it? I mean, it's not like artists or publishers like their own business model. It requires them to trust that their own fanbase won't rip them off, and we all know how that turned out! They would much prefer to find some way of making steady income that fairly compensates them for their work. If they heard of such a business model, I'm sure they'd be very excited, and want to give it a go (yes, Big Music publishers included). But, so far, obviously, no one has come up with such a business model. Either the business model requires far too much from the artist (e.g. "give me everything for free", or "make quality, free, full-length recordings as advertisements"), or too much from the consumer (e.g. "OK, fuck it, I'm just going to tour from now on").

Sorry, you can't possible say that with a straight face.

No, that's true. I had a little smirk on my face when I realised that someone was inevitably going to fall into that trap.

It is, in fact, true. Most consumers, whether they pay or steal, prefer to consume works from the copyright business model. And, most artists prefer to release under copyright because, as I said above, of the lack of sensible alternatives.

And while I'm here, I've been meaning to pull you up about your sig.

It's easier to think there's a Slashdot groupthink conspiracy against you than admit your beliefs are not realistic.

If you use the word conspiracy, you don't understand how groupthink allegedly works. There's no organisation, just intellectual isolation of a group of people. Certain views, held at one time by a majority, echo among /.ers. The viewpoint is promoted as fact, and dissent is modded down, further increasing the effect. That is groupthink, and it happens. The same thing happens with biased news networks (except that with them, there sometimes is a conspiracy *cough* Fox News */cough*).

Have you ever noticed how the opinions of /.ers seem so out of phase with the rest of society? It's because we segregate ourselves, and read primarily opinions that we agree with. Most people see this, and conclude that other people are just stupid, but I guess it's easier to think that than admit that you're mind is part of a greater groupthink.

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I fail to see the problem. This is how free market works. You get what you're willing to pay for.

The problem is that, unlike most cases where the free market is applied, "what we want" is considerably different to "what we are willing to pay for". What we want (in general) is recordings, but we aren't willing to pay for them. "You get what you're willing to pay for" was the point; we are not willing to pay for recordings, so we don't get them.

That's nothing more than market inertia.

OK then, perhaps we should wait until the market is ready to adopt such a change. You know, so that we can prove once and for all that it is just market inertia, and not that the idea is clearly infeasible. It just seems more sensible than throwing the system up in the air, and hoping it will reassemble itself as something nice. I think we might be waiting a long time though.

Entertainment industry won't adopt new marketing models because those models can't support dinosaurs this big.

I'm sorry, but how does "supporting dinosaurs" prevent indie artists from trying new business models?

Most of the entertainment industry will fall sooner or later with a loud Earth-shaking thud and alternative models will take over because they give the author much more money than the industry.

So the fairy tale goes. In the real world, when we destroy something valuable, we need proof that it will reassemble into something more valuable. It didn't when I was nine, and it was my mother's favourite vase.

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The world does not owe anyone success in business - whether in traditional trades or in the luxury-goods trade that music belongs to. And noone should be able to have laws made to artificially keep what in effect is a guild (at best) or a protection racket in business.

That's great, except that copyright doesn't guarantee success in the art business. All it does guarantee is that demand will reflect success. If their services are in demand, then they will be successful. Most businesses get that for free, but artistry doesn't. It is absolutely essential for the free market to run, because otherwise we simply don't get what we demand, and the free market ends up useless.

If music recordings went away tomorrow the world would continue since they are luxury goods. Stop thinking of artists as God's effing gift to mankind. They are just dilettantes preferring to do what they like instead of providing something others actually need.

True, but if that's the case, then what's the worry about destroying copyright? Surely, if they're luxury goods, and we don't need them, we can just not buy them, and we'd have the same effect as if we destroyed copyright!

I do think it's a little sad, however, that in response to finding something you don't see a practical use for, your first instinct is to destroy it. Perhaps we don't need artists, but some people, myself included, find life much more tolerable when there's entertainment about. If you want to pack nothing but pure necessities into your life, more power to you, just stay the fuck away from mine.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Andorin]

No, no, no! Copyright is currently at its most meaningful!

I see your point, but you must understand the fundamental problems with enforcing copyright on the Internet. Our computers and the Internet itself are designed around the idea of sharing information (ones and zeroes) with other computers. For the most part these systems are non-discriminatory about the information is; they cannot distinguish between a proprietary, copyrighted work and a public domain work. Additionally, works can be copied perfectly, quickly and cheaply, and easily transmitted over the Internet. It is extremely difficult to effectively enforce copyright in such an environment. Doing so requires either a drastic overhaul of the architecture of the Internet to allow for mandatory DRM, or massive invasions of privacy to require mandatory DRM. It's very simple: A law that creates and regulates artificial scarcity of something is completely screwed in an environment where there is no such thing as scarcity of that something.

Even assuming that copyright is ethically sound in today's world, it's not technically possible to meaningfully enforce. You can advocate copyright all you like, but to do so you ought to come up with a very clever way to make it work online without compromising more important rights, such as free speech, privacy, due process and fair use.

They would much prefer to find some way of making steady income that fairly compensates them for their work. If they heard of such a business model, I'm sure they'd be very excited, and want to give it a go (yes, Big Music publishers included). But, so far, obviously, no one has come up with such a business model.

Let's say that copyright is reformed and drastically weakened, taking a bunch of rights away from artists. Let's say no functioning business model can be found. If it ends up that professional musicians cannot make decent money in such an environment, then, as much as I dislike saying this, they need to go out of business. We have to keep in mind that no individual or company is entitled to a working business model and payment through it. Times change, and as people like to say, businesses must adapt or die. It is not as though such a change would be the end of creativity, as the media companies like to claim. People created before copyright, are freely creating today, and will create long after copyright is just a bad footnote in the history books. (I also think that such a change might be good in that those artists and bands that only care about money- and by definition, produce inferior music- will leave the music scene, making way for musicians that are more passionate about their music and do it because they love it.)

Of course, that assumes that copies-sold is the only way to make money from music, which I seriously doubt. Sure, perhaps nobody has found a business model that is as lucrative as the traditional model, but that's more or less irrelevant. Copyright is pretty screwed up and needs to be reformed to balance it more towards the public and less towards artists and publishers. If that means artists can't make as much as they used to (big-name artists, anyway), then tough on them. Capitalist markets are supposed to allow failing businesses to fail.

It is, in fact, true. Most consumers, whether they pay or steal, prefer to consume works from the copyright business model. And, most artists prefer to release under copyright because, as I said above, of the lack of sensible alternatives.

This is kind of unfair because I'd wager that "most consumers" are unaware of the alternatives, such as copyleft. Right now I can go to Jamendo and surf through thirty-eight thousand music albums, all of which are Creative Commons-licensed and free for me to download and share. I'm sure that everyone has a few professional favorites that can't be replaced by anyone else, but really, if the average person knew they could hop on a

Re:Think of the Artists

[the_womble]

Stop being inchoherent.

Not spending on music does not destroy jobs because they money will either

1) be spent on something else, or
2) be saved in a bank account and lent to someone who will spend on something else (often investing in building a business).

I have no objection to someone taking a copy of my bank account, as long as they leave my copy unaffected.

Re:Think of the Artists

[NeutronCowboy]

There is a range of possible outcomes between becoming a filthy rich artist and being a destitute artist. I would hope that the filthy rich artists are the ones working the hardest - which generally means the performing artists. It doesn't mean no recording artist should be filthy rich, just that the setup should favor the performing artists to become filthy rich.

As far as I can tell, that's not the way it works right now.

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I see your point, but you must understand the fundamental problems with enforcing copyright on the Internet.

I see a challenge, not a fundamental problem. On the other hand, I do see a fundamental problem in convincing people to voluntarily pay for something that they can get for free. Computers are incredibly adept at copying bits, it's true. We can't stop computers from copying bits, but only the narrow-minded would suggest that this is the only method to enforce copyright on the internet. There's DRM, which uses cryptography to make it computationally infeasible to make use of the copied bits. It's distasteful, but it's not like pirates have left us with much of a choice. We can also detect copying and identify copied works, especially when done on public networks. We can also try and change people's hearts and minds. I'm pretty sure there's plenty of potential there, since almost everyone I talk to doesn't quite understand exactly how piracy losses work.

Even assuming that copyright is ethically sound in today's world, it's not technically possible to meaningfully enforce. You can advocate copyright all you like, but to do so you ought to come up with a very clever way to make it work online without compromising more important rights, such as free speech, privacy, due process and fair use.

I started doing exactly that not long ago. Mind you, we actually have a semi-decent method of enforcing now, i.e. allow copyright holders to sue any infringers they suspect, and let any victims of inappropriate investigation techniques countersue. The problem is that a large portion of the population don't find that a deterrent, but plenty of artists are surviving, so it's not all bad.

Let's say that copyright is reformed and drastically weakened, taking a bunch of rights away from artists. Let's say no functioning business model can be found. If it ends up that professional musicians cannot make decent money in such an environment, then, as much as I dislike saying this, they need to go out of business. We have to keep in mind that no individual or company is entitled to a working business model and payment through it. Times change, and as people like to say, businesses must adapt or die.

So what you're saying is, in order to maintain continuity with the rest of the free market, we should just do without art and entertainment? Why? What possible benefit is there in doing that? What could possibly be so evil about selling art that, not only you would be prepared to forgo art completely, you would demand that everyone else forgo art as well?

It is not as though such a change would be the end of creativity, as the media companies like to claim.

You know, I haven't seen anyone genuinely support this strawman. Do you have a quote of anybody claiming this?

What people do claim, myself included, that it is entirely plausible that our culture will regress all the way back to the times before copyright. That is, when the only works of any significance are results of commission and hoarded by rich people, and entertainment for the common man comes from a handful of wandering bards. It's all dandy for the uber-rich, but for us, it sucks. I honestly have no idea why people want to model our culture on that.

I also think that such a change might be good in that those artists and bands that only care about money- and by definition, produce inferior music- will leave the music scene, making way for musicians that are more passionate about their music and do it because they love it.

There are so many things wrong with this statement, I scarcely know where to begin. So far, I can count a false dichotomy (they like music, or they need money), an incorrect use of the phrase "by definition" (unless you genuinely believe that "bad musi

Re:Think of the Artists

[Nrrqshrr]

I am no artist, but I know a couple and I can assure that live concerts are nothing to be enthusiastic about. Roaming the states giving shows that barely cover their own costs (travel, food, insurance, other performers,... label royalties) is not a viable option, unless you give gigs to 50k+ person. And you dont realise that the "pay" you recieve is just based on your invesement, no matter what you work in. Builders invest effort, and thus get paied for their effort. Artists invest time, lots of it, and they should be paied for just that much. A song doesnt write itself over night, and you should realise that if you notice that pretty much most artist release an album per year or so. That, and it looks like you talk about something you dont know on a very biased point of view...

Re:Think of the Artists

[next_ghost]

"You get what you're willing to pay for" was the point; we are not willing to pay for recordings, so we don't get them.

And again, I fail to see the problem. If people want recordings so badly, they'll learn to pay for them.

OK then, perhaps we should wait until the market is ready to adopt such a change. You know, so that we can prove once and for all that it is just market inertia, and not that the idea is clearly infeasible. It just seems more sensible than throwing the system up in the air, and hoping it will reassemble itself as something nice. I think we might be waiting a long time though.

The market was ready 5 years ago. Just look at piracy statistics, they mostly represent demand for simple digital distribution and alternative business models. When we throw the old system up in the air, it won't reassemble itself because it's not capable of doing that since 1930s. It will come down in pieces. The new system has to be built from ground up in its place and we can't start building it until at least a part of the old system collapses and gives us some clear ground to build on.

I'm sorry, but how does "supporting dinosaurs" prevent indie artists from trying new business models?

The dinosaurs do because they control what gets into mainstream media and what doesn't. Right now, if you're not in mainstream media, you don't exist for vast majority of people.

Re:Think of the Artists

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

And again, I fail to see the problem. If people want recordings so badly, they'll learn to pay for them.

Okaaaay... the problem is that the process of learning this lesson will painful and expensive for artists, music fans, and pirates alike. It will painful not only to those who deserve it, but also people who are sucked in such a blunder by association. This is not fair. Of course, no lasting damage will be done, but I think that punishing the entire population for the stupidity of a small vocal subset is not acceptable. So yes, it is a problem.

The market was ready 5 years ago.

So, how can you still claim that it's market inertia? If it could have adopted the change 5 years ago, then why hasn't it done it yet?

When we throw the old system up in the air, it won't reassemble itself because it's not capable of doing that since 1930s. It will come down in pieces. The new system has to be built from ground up in its place and we can't start building it until at least a part of the old system collapses and gives us some clear ground to build on.

Sorry, but why can't we build a new system parallel to copyright? It's trivially easy to release something without copyright while copyright law is in effect, and copyright law has no bearing on such media. If you have such a system, start building it. Nobody is going to stop you.

The dinosaurs do because they control what gets into mainstream media and what doesn't. Right now, if you're not in mainstream media, you don't exist for vast majority of people.

Please note that the "dinosaurs" are not copyright law, and the problem is entirely distinct. What you want to do is use their dependence on copyright to hurt them, even at the expense of everyone else. If you have dinosaurs camping in your public tubes, consider petitioning for better tubes, rather than for nuking their food supply.

Also, to borrow a page from your book of rhetoric, I don't see the problem. The dinosaurs have their positions on the airwaves because they earned it, and certain people only follow mainstream media because they are satisfied with what the dinosaurs are providing them. If indie artists want the same attention, they have to earn it the same way. They have to make themselves worth listening to, and find some other less dominated medium to advertise themselves. Lots of them already have.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Mathinker]

> We need some proof that any problems caused by getting rid of copyright
> are outweighed by the benefits.

You do understand that that sword cuts both ways, right? Especially when the other side isn't a rabid anti-copyrightist-from-ideology but rather someone, like me, who is a "pragmatic copyrightist" who is interested in trying to reform current copyright law into a form which is more beneficial to society as a whole?

But this is all academic, since there can be no "proof" of benefit / deficit since there is no practical way to do a controlled experiment on a whole society over the course of decades. And that ignores the equally large problem of agreeing on a way to quantify the benefit.

Anyway, this law proposal underlines the fundamental problem with copyright law: it's created by people who are more easily swayed by money than abstract benefits like an expanding public domain, increased (but non-taxable) creativity, or even, regretfully, personal freedom.

Re:Think of the Artists

[king neckbeard]

"Then why am I finding it so hard to think of a band, local, national, or international who gives away their recordings at cost price to support their tours?"
Because their record label wants to make money. However, the radio, MTV, myspace, youtube Greatful Dead bootlegs and the like all allow people to listen to music at no cost.

"How does that work?" Somebody funds it. Your favorite band raises money and records an album. Perhaps some philanthropy happens (that's how we got Carnegie hall). Maybe somebody records in a small studio for the love of music.

"The burden of proof did lie with us, a few hundred years ago when copyright was proposed. Now that we've accepted it, and our culture has grown and blossomed so much, the burden of proof now rests with anyone who wants to change it"
The evidence is actually quite poor. especially given that in many cases the system that predates it was basically 'censor all works that are critical of the king/church and let publishers print works that make the king/church look good'. The economics for the internet age have further changed the dynamics of the system, and to assume without evidence that our current copyright system fits it is ridiculous. Nobody questioning the system is why it's so broken in the first place, and that in my lifetime, the public domain has actually shrank.

Re:Think of the Artists

[next_ghost]

Of course, no lasting damage will be done, but I think that punishing the entire population for the stupidity of a small vocal subset is not acceptable.

The "small vocal subset" has no voice in this matter. It takes just a handful of people willing to pay to make the recordings worth it for the artist. Look at Pioneer One or Mister Deity for example.

So, how can you still claim that it's market inertia? If it could have adopted the change 5 years ago, then why hasn't it done it yet?

Because market inertia is all that's left for entertainment industry. The role of the industry is over and when they run out of inertia, the industry is going to collapse. They can't do anything about it, there's no place for them in the future, they can just ride the inertia as long as possible, hurting everybody else in the process. And this agony could last for decades.

Sorry, but why can't we build a new system parallel to copyright? It's trivially easy to release something without copyright while copyright law is in effect, and copyright law has no bearing on such media. If you have such a system, start building it. Nobody is going to stop you.

The system has been under construction for years now. You just need to stop looking up at the dinosaur to see it.

What you want to do is use their dependence on copyright to hurt them, even at the expense of everyone else.

No, I just want to turn the life support off and end their pointless agony which hurts everybody else much more. Let the market take over. We're pumping a lot of resources into the life support in fear that when the dinosaur is gone, our entire culture will go with it. But that fear is irrational. Our culture was here long before the dinosaur and it will survive no matter how big earthquake the dinosaur makes when it finally falls. We're just wasting resources that could be used to build the new system instead. And at this rate, it's going to take decades before the public realizes that there is a new system already in place and we don't need the dinosaur anymore, just like it took years for the public to notice that there's a lot of browsers much better than Internet Explorer.

Re:Think of the Artists

[next_ghost]

That's great, except that copyright doesn't guarantee success in the art business. All it does guarantee is that demand will reflect success.

At least for the past 20 years, copyright law has been written by big media for big media. It was specifically changed to strenghten the monopoly of big corporations and hurt individual artists and startups (see the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig for examples). Free market in the world of culture has been destroyed decades ago and it'll take several more decades to rebuild it from scratch if the dinosaur is kept on life support.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Well publish your works outside the Czech Republic, or even better pay your sales tax outside the Czech Republic.

Re:Think of the Artists

[Andorin]

We can't stop computers from copying bits, but only the narrow-minded would suggest that this is the only method to enforce copyright on the internet. There's DRM, which uses cryptography to make it computationally infeasible to make use of the copied bits. It's distasteful, but it's not like pirates have left us with much of a choice.

DRM doesn't stop piracy. Every DRM scheme that has been released (with the exception of a few schemes like the PS3, which has hardware support for the DRM and is therefore irrelevant) has been cracked. Ubisoft's new always-on DRM was partly cracked 24 hours after its release, with a full crack out within a month. DRM is fundamentally unsound: You're trying to give the customer the keys to the media while simultaneously hiding the keys from them. It just can't work. All it does is piss off legitimate customers when they find that their movies won't play, or their games refuse to start, or their software cripples itself. So it's not only ineffective, but anti-consumer. There's no good business reason to use it.

We can also detect copying and identify copied works, especially when done on public networks.

You can, but the flaw is that this requires an Internet connection to an authentication server- a form of DRM because it means the customer can't enjoy their media offline. If there is no Internet connection involved- for example, with a music CD, which has no business connecting to anything online- you have no chance whatsoever of detecting copies. Installing software to the user's machine that looks for copies is not going to be a popular decision because such software is basically spyware and you couldn't force someone to install it in the first place.

I started doing exactly that [slashdot.org] not long ago.

I will have to respond there after this, because some of your points need addressing.

Mind you, we actually have a semi-decent method of enforcing now, i.e. allow copyright holders to sue any infringers they suspect, and let any victims of inappropriate investigation techniques countersue.

How is this a semi-decent method? One, the chance of getting caught on p2p is very very small, especially if you're at least a little careful about how you do it. When 90% or more of infringements go unpunished, that is not effective enforcement of copyright. Two, the lawsuits are incredibly unfair because of the high cost of defending yourself in court. As we've seen with the US Copyright Group, some rights holders have no problem with indiscriminately targeting people, guilty or innocent, and putting them through the substantial expense of showing up in court and defending themselves, even if they're completely innocent. Rights holders, on the other hand, often have powerful corporate legal teams behind them, with a budget that no single individual could hope to match.

It is not as though such a change would be the end of creativity, as the media companies like to claim.

You know, I haven't seen anyone genuinely support this strawman. Do you have a quote of anybody claiming this?

Below:

If it ends up that professional musicians cannot make decent money in such an environment, then, as much as I dislike saying this, they need to go out of business.

So what you're saying is, in order to maintain continuity with the rest of the free market, we should just do without art and entertainment?

^

What people do claim, myself included, that it is entirely plausible that our culture will regress all the way back to the times before copyright. That is, when the only works of any significance are results of commission and hoarded by rich people, and entertainment for the common man comes from a handful of wandering bar

Re:Think of the Artists

[Red Flayer]

I would hope that the filthy rich artists are the ones working the hardest - which generally means the performing artists.

OK, I see where you're coming from. I happen to disagree -- I would hope the filthy rich artists are the ones that produce the best and/or most popular art [1], regardless of whether it comes from decades of slaving over their instruments (for public performers) or from just a few hours of truly inspired genius (more likely for recording artists).

I don't think you can boil down the value of art to "how hard the artist worked on it". This doesn't account for natural aptitude, genius, or so many of the other things that contribute to great art.

[1] I don't believe popularity is the be-all and end-all of art. But it's a measure of how much that art brings to its audience, which is really what performance and recording art is usually about, right?

Re:Think of the Artists

[sznupi]

How much the concept itself leads, perhaps, to such state of affairs / ridiculous lenghts?

Speechless

[rantomaniac]

I'm stunned. This has to be the most brutal attack on the idea of free culture to date. We're all accustomed to copyright being made more strict, but actively making it harder to release your works under permissive licensing is a new low.
It's like the copyright lobbyists didn't care about keeping a low profile anymore and shouted "we own your government" from the rooftops.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

It costs more money to hide what they're doing and achieve their goals in secret.
They just realized theres no point in hiding it any more.

Its not like the reality tv addicted people of generation-emo will do anything anyway.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Us: It's a bad law.

Them: But, it's a law! There must be a good reason! Why do you think about stuff like this!?!

Re:Speechless

[mwvdlee]

It would be interresting if the same laws were to be applied to all copyright licenses. Want to publishing something closed source? "notify the administrator of a collecting agency, and must prove that they created the work in question".

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Our reply should be: Don't quote laws to us, we carry swords.
Just to keep it Roman

Re:Speechless

[Chris Burke]

I'm stunned. This has to be the most brutal attack on the idea of free culture to date.

Er, more like the most brutal (and direct) attack in recent times, or most brutal attack from the copyright lobby sure... I mean, when it was Czechoslovakia and under the Soviets, I think free culture took a worse beating.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me... Free has little to do with price. And in the case of GPL and LGPL, the price is as follows: "If you use the software you have to provide the source and any possible modifications you might have made to the people you sold/gave the software to." That's the price. Whether you view it as worth nothing or priceless all is in whether you're just a user or a developer.

Re:Speechless

[eleuthero]

It strikes me that the road is in between complete lack of concern (which the parent seems to indicate) and hysteria. The key point of the above argument does not appear to be registration with a collecting agency (unless there are barriers to entry, a group of GPL minded folks could create their own), but rather the stipulation under law changing the royalty schema from artist to publisher. Publishers need bread and butter as well, but this could easily be accomplished through fees to artists for services rendered. The government decidedly does not need to legislate money away from the content creator (though I tend to be opposed to government meddling except where absolutely necessary anyway).

Re:Speechless

[grahamm]

Taking things a bit out of context? It's not actively making it harder, it's just making it so that people actually have to show they have a right to license the content that way.

Yet does the same not apply to any creative work?. Should people who use a commercial licence not also have to prove that they have the right to licence it - and that it is not plagiarism?

Re:Speechless

[rantomaniac]

It's not actively making it harder, it's just making it so that people actually have to show they have a right to license the content that way. How would you like it if you released something under a particular license, and then somebody else got the content, then put it out under some other license which you didn't approve of? Maybe the Czech government just wants to be sure that anything they're being asked to protect in certain ways is actually being done right.

I don't see how it needs special casing, it's copyright infringement. I'm no fan of the Berne Convention, but it requires copyright to be automatic and involve no formal registration. It's only fair to either uphold that treaty for both copyright and copyleft, or neither.
Neither would be the preferred solution. Registration would simplify a lot of things and ensure survival of works throughout the ages if coupled with compulsory archival in national libraries.
You could even legitimately call unauthorized use or fraudulent registration of unregistered works "theft" then.

Re:Speechless

[jedidiah]

> Face it. The age of the freetard is over. It's time to pay people what their work is worth. Freeloader.

What if the AUTHOR declares that price to be ZERO.

Why should a Robber Baron Wannabe such as yourself have ANY say in the matter?

This is an assault on the rights of AUTHORS.

People who whine "freetard" should be all over this.

Of course that word doesn't really mean anything.

Re:Speechless

[king neckbeard]

You do realize that a LOT of infringement actually occurs by proprietary companies, right? FFMPEG, LAME, Busybox, and many other FOSS projects have been repeatedly subject to violations of their licenses. When it comes to track records, 'public licenses' have fared far better than 'standard' licenses when it comes to actually respecting copyright law.

Re:Speechless

[next_ghost]

Yes, there are barriers to entry. The law specifically states that each collecting society has to register with the Ministry of Culture and once it's registered, it has complete monopoly over its assigned area of culture. For example, OSA has monopoly over sheet music and lyrics, Integram has monopoly over music recordings, DILIA has monopoly over literature etc. No other collecting society can register for these areas until these cancel their registration.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Publishers need bread and butter as well

So do horse whip makers. Publishers were very important in the physical media world, but just like horse buggy fitters, their role in a changing world diminishes. CDs are almost dead, DVDs will be following on behind as on demand services replace them, even ereaders are gaining traction, in spite of the ridiculous prices of ebooks. The publishers role will soon be boutique and central portals like itunes. The content creators will be able to cut out the behemoth publishers, unless they manage to buy laws to force all creators into due paying guilds.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

... he who has the gold makes the rules. it shouldn't be true ... but it is. greedy, small-minded, short-sighted, egocentric people direct the world ... not visionaries who care about more than themselves.

Re:Speechless

[Angst Badger]

I'm surprised that it took this long, actually. Charity was only legal in the first place because there was no way for charities to significantly compete with for-profit businesses as long as we were talking about goods and services. Data is any entirely different matter, thanks to the negligible cost of duplication and distribution.

If you think large businesses are going to tolerate kindness and generosity when it cuts into their bottom lines, you are in for a long series of rude shocks. Abundance is bad for business.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how it needs special casing, it's copyright infringement.

If it didn't require special casing, it wouldn't be licensed under a particular license, which vary by scope and substance. Is it so unfair that the Czech government might have some concerns about how to handle it, when they're going to be asked to protect it?

I'm no fan of the Berne Convention, but it requires copyright to be automatic and involve no formal registration. It's only fair to either uphold that treaty for both copyright and copyleft, or neither.
Neither would be the preferred solution. Registration would simplify a lot of things and ensure survival of works throughout the ages if coupled with compulsory archival in national libraries.
You could even legitimately call unauthorized use or fraudulent registration of unregistered works "theft" then.

AFAIK the Berne convention doesn't say diddly-squat about special copyrights, if anything, wanting special rights and privileges would seem to justify some formality. Doesn't the US, for example, require you to register your work to get certain statutory damages?

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet does the same not apply to any creative work?. Should people who use a commercial licence not also have to prove that they have the right to licence it - and that it is not plagiarism?

Sure, if there is a substantial difference, that'd be something to look into, but here's the thing...do you really know that there is such a difference?

Me, I don't know Czech law enough to say what they have to do for other licenses. I doubt you do either.

But me, I'd rather not condemn them in ignorance, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and not do so, until somebody shows otherwise.

Re:Speechless

[tinkerghost]

I don't see how it needs special casing, it's copyright infringement. I'm no fan of the Berne Convention, but it requires copyright to be automatic and involve no formal registration. It's only fair to either uphold that treaty for both copyright and copyleft, or neither.

Legally speaking, there is no copyleft. It's simply a legal issue of licensing a copyrighted work under a royalty free license. The problem isn't with the copyright, it's with the collection agencies and their mandates. Since they are set up to collect for all the works under their purview, copyleft agreements confuse them.

In the US, ASCAP collects for recordings by Spanish, French, and Outer Mongolian artists - those people never actually see any money since they aren't usually registered with ASCAP, but they do collect. According to ASCAP, it is a violation to not pay for the use of the songs, even if the songs have been released under a royalty free license. The only exemption recognized by the law that allows ASCAP to collect is public domain works - so it's possible that they are correct. That is a flaw in the law creating the collection agencies not the copyright law.

The issue is that the vast majority of the works are used under national Mandatory Licensing regulations. This allows venues to use the works without having to negotiate individual use licenses. Because they are built around the ML, individual licensing agreements aren't considered when calculating royalty payments to the collection agencies. There are 2 approaches to resolving the issue:

1. Require registration of "collect" works.
2. Require registration of "do not collect" works.

Given the vast disparity of volume in "collect" vs "do not collect", the easy solution is to require copyleft works to register. This also has many other advantages for the collection agencies:

• Simplified paperwork.
• Shorter search lists - exclude vs include.
• More royalties collected that will never have to be passed to artists.

Since I can't read the original proposed law, I will give it the benefit of the doubt and say it seems to be a step in the right direction in that it at least codifies the right of an artist to remove their work from the mandatory collection pool without having to deposit the work in the public domain.

Re:Speechless

[king neckbeard]

This is not special copyright. This is licensing applied to normal copyright. Berne Convention says copyright is automatic once in a fixed form, and copyleft is waiving some of these rights under certain conditions.

Re:Speechless

[dgatwood]

... but rather the stipulation under law changing the royalty schema from artist to publisher.

Except that if the comment at the bottom of that blog is correct, that's not what has happened. In effect, they increased the artists' royalties by 20% and added an additional publisher royalty equal to 2/3rds of the newly increased author's royalty.

Previous royalty for the author: 0.5 CZK. New royalty 1.0 CZK. Author's part: .6 CZK. Publisher's part: .4 CZK.

But saying that they've increased the author's royalty by 20% and added a publisher royalty isn't as headline-grabbing as saying that they've reduced the percentage of the royalty that authors get.... Why does all the news have to be about twisting reality to create more shocking headlines? A lie of egregious omission is still a lie.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

It strikes me that the road is in between complete lack of concern (which the parent seems to indicate) and hysteria.

Well, that is exactly what I intended to strike you with, so if you did think I had suggested a complete lack of concern, then no, that's not the case, but since you did, however, grasp that there is a better place to be instead of hysteria, it's not a problem, because you got the point. Too bad others would rather decide it's flamebait than think...

To be honest, I am fairly unconcerned, but that's because I have nothing to do with the Czech Republic, and really wouldn't care what they do in their territory, anymore than I'm concerned that the neighboring city is say, raising their property taxes. Nothing wrong with that, being a limited human being, I can't blame myself for devoting my concern to things that matter more directly to me.

The key point of the above argument does not appear to be registration with a collecting agency (unless there are barriers to entry, a group of GPL minded folks could create their own), but rather the stipulation under law changing the royalty schema from artist to publisher.

No, I don't think this was a key part of the discussion. Wasn't even mentioned by the GP for example.

As far as it goes, though, this change is in regards to libraries, who are probably receiving some sort of discounted rate, because well, libraries are often treated differently due to their perceived cultural value. So I wouldn't object to it without more knowledge as to the circumstances.

If I cared to learn them, but I don't, because, well...not worth the bother. It doesn't strike me as inherently unfair though.

Re:Speechless

[eleuthero]

I definitely need to start reading more of the articles instead of just the summaries. Thank you.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not special copyright. This is licensing applied to normal copyright. Berne Convention says copyright is automatic once in a fixed form, and copyleft is waiving some of these rights under certain conditions.

Which I expressed as "special copyright" but if you don't like my choice of phrasing, feel free to suggest a better option. Then you can mentally substitute it.

Re:Speechless

[nospam007]

I hopre some people are busy creating art generators with automatic filled out forms to apply to the agency and bury them in it.

Re:Speechless

[WWWWolf]

I mean, when it was Czechoslovakia and under the Soviets, I think free culture took a worse beating.

Nah, the communist model was fine for free culture. In theory, at least, definitely not in practice (which comes as no surprise). Basically, you don't get to profit from the work - the government does. This might have worked if the artists had actually seen the fruits of that labour: Tetris, for example, definitely wasn't managed well enough to save the Soviet Union. Also, Soviet era was notorious for its censorship; for example, your only chance to create lasting works was to replace the lyrics with -1, Troll.

Re:Speechless

[s73v3r]

Why doesn't someone who is going to put content under a closed license have to prove that they created the work in question? Can't they just as easily (if not easier) take some open source or creative commons content, and put it under a closed license, doing the same thing you described, but in reverse?

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

They are signatories of the Berne Convention. We have a pretty good idea of the basics of their system, specifically automatic copyright protection.

Re:Speechless

[king neckbeard]

Any work that is licensed (which is any work being legally distributed) would be 'special copyright'. With proprietary software, there are probably easily ten times as many licenses in existence as there are for FOSS, and an even more substantial difference when you are talking about the most popular works in the respective fields.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

This stuff tends to follow a cycle. I believe one of the steps is that we brutally massacre them. Can we just skip to that one?

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the communist model was fine for free culture. In theory, at least, definitely not in practice (which comes as no surprise).

Well, when the practice is in name only, what do you expect?

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Basics mean little, especially automatic copyright protection, which does nothing for copyleft provisions that specifically set out to extend it, but with further restrictions.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

and if your work is crap and damages 8000 people.

your life should be forfeit.

and your mother should be force fed baboon smegma.

Re:Speechless

[Chris Burke]

Well yeah, it was basically censorship and suppression of anything that could be construed as anti-Soviet that I was referring to.

Re:Speechless

[king neckbeard]

Copyleft exists entirely within copyright law. There are no extensions or further restrictions. Copyright is by default 'all rights' reserved' and the copyright holder grants some rights to others in all cases.

Re:Speechless

[poopdeville]

It's not "special" at all. Copyright is the right to restrict distribution. The right, not the responsibility or need. You are free to exercise your right, or to not exercise it.

So substitute phrase ought to be "copyright" in place of "special copyright".

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Any work that is licensed (which is any work being legally distributed) would be 'special copyright'.

Yep. That would be the reason they have a license, instead of relying on the default.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 2 approaches to resolving the issue:

1. Require registration of "collect" works.
2. Require registration of "do not collect" works.

Given the vast disparity of volume in "collect" vs "do not collect", the easy solution is to require copyleft works to register.

Disagree. I am pretty sure that there are more "do not collect" works than "collect" works. You appear to confusing number of copies with number of works.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not "special" at all. Copyright is the right to restrict distribution. The right, not the responsibility or need. You are free to exercise your right, or to not exercise it.

So substitute phrase ought to be "copyright" in place of "special copyright".

"AFAIK the Berne convention doesn't say diddly-squat about special copyrights, if anything, wanting special rights and privileges would seem to justify some formality"

Sorry, but no, that wouldn't work, even I know the Berne Convention does say some things about copyrights.

I think you're so interested in proving me wrong that you're just focusing on that, rather than advancing the actual discussion.

Next time, try actually helping, rather than just being hostile. If I'm expressing myself poorly, then I'd much rather you provide helpful suggestions.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose insofar as copyright law allows copyleft to exist, you could say it exists entirely within the sphere of copyright law, but don't tell me that it doesn't have extensions or further restrictions upon it.

Really it seems to me you're not offering disagreement, but just quibbling over language.

So if so, feel free to offer some suggestions as to how to express it better, and if desired, substitute it in yourself.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not know that they don't, nor perhaps do you. As far as it goes, I would have no objection to restrictions upon closed source licensing that serve the same purpose as the ones described in the summary.

Are they needed?

Re:Speechless

[Kazymyr]

Given the vast disparity of volume in "collect" vs "do not collect", the easy solution is to require copyleft works to register. This also has many other advantages for the collection agencies:

        * Simplified paperwork.
        * Shorter search lists - exclude vs include.
        * More royalties collected that will never have to be passed to artists.

And what incentive would an author of copyleft work have to make collection agencies' work easier? They stand to gain nothing from all the extra work.

Re:Speechless

[king neckbeard]

Basically, there is nothing technically unique about copyleft licensing, and it doesn't impose any restrictions that copyright doesn't already grant. There's no way it could. The Berne Convention alone pretty much guarantees all the rights exercised in copyleft, and there's nothing that should be legally distinct about the terms than any other license, such as the EULA for Windows.
Think of it like “How do you carve an elephant?” The answer is “First, get a block of marble and then remove everything that doesn’t look like an elephant.” Copyright gives you a block of exclusions. When you carve out a proprietary license, you take out some exclusions, and when you carve out a copyleft license, you take out some others until you've taken out everything that doesn't look like (for example) the GPL.

Re:Speechless

[next_ghost]

Actually, it IS headline material. This royalty change along with new printer/copier royalties means that school and public library expenses on copyright royalties will more than triple for no reason. The estimated total of new expenses (€ 7 million) exceeds the total annual income of DILIA (€ 6 million), the collecting society which will get most of the money. As of 2009, these expenses were about 30% of DILIA's income (€ 2 million).

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Maybe they've been long overdue for an increase.

When was the previous rate set? Was it set sufficiently long ago that the correction for inflation should have taken the artists up to the new total rate, but instead they get bilked for 80% of the increase? If you're due for a payrise, and then 80% of it gets given to someone else, I think you've got every right to complain that you're not really getting your payrise.

Someone is losing out here, either a chunk of the artists rise is going to the publishers (because inflation should have taken them up to 1CZK), or consumers are losing because in real terms they're now paying more so that publishers can get a royalty where they wouldn't have done before. Or it could be somewhere between the two - depends on the cumulative inflation since the old rate was set.

Re:Speechless

[s73v3r]

If they are needed for open licensing, I would say that they definitely should be used for closed licensing. Moreso because usually you can't inspect the closed licensed products.

Re:Speechless

[xiong.chiamiov]

Excuse me... Free has little to do with price. And in the case of GPL and LGPL, the price is as follows: "If you use the software you have to provide the source and any possible modifications you might have made to the people you sold/gave the software to." That's the price. Whether you view it as worth nothing or priceless all is in whether you're just a user or a developer.

Well, to be pedantic, that is the *cost* of the (L)GPL. The price is 0.

I am not an economist.

Re:Speechless

[tinkerghost]

I actually doubt that there are more works - individual recordings - that are played at venues that are under a no royalty license, than there are works that are under royalty licenses.

Re:Speechless

[tinkerghost]

And what incentive would an author of copyleft work have to make collection agencies' work easier? They stand to gain nothing from all the extra work.

None. However the agencies that do the collecting and the people writing the laws are faced with the choice of make everyone except a small number of people who don't want royalties collected do work, or make that small number of people do more. Note I said it was the easy solution. I never said it was the right solution.

Re:Speechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, there is nothing technically unique about copyleft licensing,

I agree. It's pretty standard contract law. But really, it seems to me, instead of disagreeing with the substance, your problem was with my articulation as such.

To which I say...whatever dude, if you want to suggest a better phrasing, go ahead, make yourself happy.

Re:Speechless

[poopdeville]

Next time, try actually helping, rather than just being hostile. If I'm expressing myself poorly, then I'd much rather you provide helpful suggestions.

Excuse me? This is exactly what I did. You are expressing yourself poorly. I explained what copyright is (the right to restrict distribution of a material), and what that means for your argument. If I hold a copyright on a material, I can choose any license I want, based on my ownership of said copyright. For example, I can grant others the right to distribute my copyrighted materials. Even conditionally. There is nothing special about this. In short, licensing is closer to an issue of contract law.

This sort of thing happens all the time. If the government mandates "cap and trade", they will have turned "surplus" carbon emissions into a kind of "property" which can be bought, sold, and contracted. That doesn't mean that anybody HAS to buy, or sell, or use their surplus. That is up to them. They are given property rights. It is up to the owner of a property to exercise his rights, or not.

Now, what is up with your red herring regarding the Berne convention? Mixing somebody else's quote with mine, and attempting to "substitute" the occurrence is extremely poor rhetoric. Quotations are not referentially transparent. You lost context. In particular: The Berne Convention doesn't mention "special copyrights" because there is no such thing. There are only copyrights, which they do discuss in depth. The mechanism behind what you call "special copyrights" is merely and only copyright as it is known to everybody else. If you make a creative work, you have the right to control how it is distributed. You can choose to not exercise that right, by (1) ignoring that right (effectively but unofficially putting the work in the "public domain") or (2) granting people license to distribute the work, perhaps conditionally as you see fit.

Re:Speechless

[shutdown -p now]

The very idea of "collection agencies" that can collect money and even sue in my name is atrocious in it's very basic concept, so how about option #3: no state-enabled collection agencies?

Re:Speechless

[reverendbeer]

At least in the soviet era, the brutal attack was expected...and even anticipated. After the fall of the "state," everyone expected change. Something like this is kinda like your grandmother hitting you with a baseball bat for eating a chocolate that she gave you.

Re:Speechless

[ewe2]

Us: Because you refuse to think.

Re:Speechless

[the_womble]

How does this affect foreign copyrights? Do Czech collecting agencies now get control of foreign GPL or CC stuff?

For those who think IP is property, this is a massive land grab by the government - a step back towards communism.

Re:Speechless

[tinkerghost]

OK, then every radio, TV station, DJ, and bar has to negotiate it's own license with the copyright owner and conversely every copyright owner has to monitor, track, and collect from every DJ, bar, club, and wedding singer.

Mandatory licensing and the collection agencies go hand in hand. Let's stick with music. What percentage of music is released royalty free? That's both performance royalty and writer royalty. Next, what percentage of that is ever used as a public performance? From basic research, that number is well under 1%. ASCAP collects for the 99+% of copyright owners who want the royalties.

You don't want the royalties from mandatory licensing? You're a fringe case. Should there be an accommodation for that? Yes, but demanding everyone except the fringe cope with the problems created by the lack of Mandatory licensing & ASCAP shows a lack of realism.

Re:Speechless

[shutdown -p now]

OK, then every radio, TV station, DJ, and bar has to negotiate it's own license with the copyright owner and conversely every copyright owner has to monitor, track, and collect from every DJ, bar, club, and wedding singer

Copyright owners can band together and set up collecting agencies for tracks they own. They just shouldn't get any special status from the state to collect for everyone.

Given a database of tracks, validating one's compliance (i.e. how many agencies does one need to pay) is trivial. And I'm not particularly worried about how hard it would be for copyright owners to enforce. Their convenience does not trump everyone else's rights.

Re:Speechless

[tinkerghost]

Copyright owners can band together and set up collecting agencies for tracks they own. They just shouldn't get any special status from the state to collect for everyone.

Why not? Everyone else just got special status to use copyrighted works from the state.

Given a database of tracks, validating one's compliance (i.e. how many agencies does one need to pay) is trivial.

Really? Validation by the copyright owners is trivial when investigating every bar, radio station, and wedding reception? Wow, I had no idea there were so few. Oh, you mean a bar owner making certain his payments went to the right place - oh sure, can't be more than an additional 50 checks a month. Oh, and showing that validation list to the 50 separate agencies that decide to stop in during December isn't going to be an issue either - I mean it's only every song you've played over the last 6 months.

Those collection agencies are there for both sides of the mandatory licensing issue. What you want is all of the benefits of mandatory licensing without any of the restrictions. I said it initially, the proposed law is a step in the right direction because it codifies the right of an artist to opt out of the collection process if they want to. As far as I know, no other country with mandatory licensing had done that yet.

must be piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be "piracy" that is making them broke. The piracy committed by those who claim to be protecting and/or representing them. Disgusting.

Copyleft does complicate the system

[MikeRT]

I admit I was furious on property/creative rights grounds at first, but then it struck me that enforcement of copyleft could become extremely difficult at some point for the government. The government cannot take for granted that you just post some code or a media file, slap a CC license on it and you had every right to do that. As people reuse it and modify it, if it goes to trial, the government has to hunt down the entire chain back to the original content in order to respect due process rights.

Their solution is wrong. The easiest way to solve it would be to pass a law which requires Copyleft to be stated, in writing in a copyright office application. Otherwise, the government would take the approach of saying that if your Copyleft license is violated, it is 100% on you to prove in court since you didn't register it in advance under penalty of perjury.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[rantomaniac]

I don't see how it's fair to demand registration of copyleft and not other copyrighted works. Enforcement of copyright is (and should remain) a private not criminal matter, the government doesn't have to hunt anyone down. I imagine the authors of the work will show up in court if they file infrigement charges.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[2obvious4u]

Better solution, get rid of copyright entirely. Society is producing content at to fast a clip for it to be necessary any more. You produce a work and by the end of the week someone has already produced a derivative work. All this copyright stuff does is slow down progress.

If you are worried about how content creators get paid then you haven't thought about it long enough. Content as a service, that is the new model. If you can't sell your content as a service to customers or businesses then the other option is merchandising, make a physical good that can be confiscated for trademark violations and earn your money off of that.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[WankersRevenge]

Government exists to serve the interests of the people ... not vice versa.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you enough of an expert in Czech Law to tell us for certain that they do not demand registration of other copyrighted materials in some way?

Is it fair to complain about a system if you don't know it very well?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[thijsh]

Technically they do, they always by definition serve the interests of *some* people. In theory this would be the >50% that elected them (note: also never 100%), but in reality it's mostly a small subset unrelated to the democratic process. This is for example why you have lobbyists giving equally large amounts of money to both candidates. This is not because they try to help the democratic process (election) take place, but to insure their demands are met easier than the demands of others *no matter who wins*, thereby undermining the democratic process to at least some extent.

Disallow lobbying with large chunks of cash and you will have a more democratic process again. Or better yet only allow people to sponsor *one* party of their choosing by a limited amount. But the sad irony there is a strong lobby against such legislation...

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Galestar]

enforcement of copyleft could become extremely difficult at some point for the government. The government cannot take for granted that you just post some code or a media file, slap a CC license on it and you had every right to do that.

How is that ANY different from proprietary copyright?? I will rewrite that for you:

enforcement of copyright could become extremely difficult at some point for the government. The government cannot take for granted that you just post some code or a media file, slap a proprietary license on it and you had every right to do that.

In fact, proprietary makes it HARDER to enforce since no-one can see the code and say "Hey! I wrote that! You stole it!"

Also, since when does the government enforce copyleft? Enforcement is a civil matter that is left up to the rights-holders.
Mods, please tell me again why this ignorant comment is modded up?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[eleuthero]

This would seem to sadly indicate that the Czech republic will no longer accept sealed posted mail as proof of creation prior to another (even with your solution). Though, to be honest, I don't know if the "poor man's copyright" ever actually has held up.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[mcgrew]

Personally, I'm for everyone regardless of license being required to register. If the copyright office can't find the rights holder, then the work should be public domain. Not having a registration requirement makes the "orphaned works" problem much worse.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations exist to satisfy demand, not create it.
Laws exist to further justice, not obstruct it.
News exist to inform people of relevant changes, not hide them in a constant stream of spin and meaninglessness.

Startling just how much times change, huh?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Just Some Guy]

Their solution is wrong. The easiest way to solve it would be to pass a law which requires Copyleft to be stated, in writing in a copyright office application.

Easiest for that government, perhaps, but quite frankly I don't give a rat's ass. The Berne Convention says that everything I write, including this post, is copyright to me - automatically. I can't imagine a single legitimate reason why I should have to specifically register my writings in order to distribute them with a Copyleft license, when I have to do no such thing to distribute them with a proprietary license.

Your suggested handling of proprietary licences: "Hey, MikeRT! I wrote this. Want to read it? Here you go! Just don't give it to anyone else, OK?"

Your suggested handling of Copyleft licenses: "Hey, MikeRT! I wrote this. Want to read it? I have to wait for the Copyright Office to return my paperwork before I'm legally allowed to hand it to you."

Ixnay on the idea.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Anonymous Coward]

If I write a book, and wish to live on it, I prefer to be able to sell that book, and not worry about somebody undercutting me or just taking advantage of their lack of costs of writing it.

And no, I don't want to be forced to merchandise it, or hold my hypothetical readers hostage by refusing to release more until I get enough money.

As for Derivative works, some of us get attached to our stories and don't like others messing with them while we're alive. Go figure.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[jimrthy]

I think there are a lot of details you're probably missing. I'm going from the perspective of American copyright, so it doesn't directly apply. Still, the international laws tend to be fairly similar.

I know I should have used a car analogy. I'm sorry.

Let's say I'm some no-name wanna-be who wrote a song, had my no-name band record a demo, and submitted that demo to a record label (no, this isn't the way it generally works in real life). There are 3 different copyrights involved right there. Even if it's only $30 to register those copyrights to keep the labels from stealing the songs...for many "starving artists," that's a week's worth of food.

The situation's probably even worse for an author trying to get a story published. He's almost definitely going to submit several different versions of several different stories before one gets accepted. If s/he has to register for copyrights on each version, s/he'll wind up shelling out more in copyright fees than comes back in royalties until/unless s/he manages to write enough hits to support him/herself and the family. Who's going to stick with it that long?

The situation gets *really* bad when you get into situations like GPL. Do you have to register each "official" release? What happens when someone tries to register a fork? What if you decide to license the next version of your work as BSD?

Come to think of it, this could have been aimed directly against free software, with Creative Commons just a nice little bit of collateral damage.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[MtHuurne]

The government cannot take for granted that you just post some code or a media file, slap a CC license on it and you had every right to do that.

And why not? Unless there is evidence to the contrary, I think there is no problem believing such claims. Putting the burden of proof on the creator stifles creativity. Do I have to take a photo of me in front of my PC to prove that I wrote this comment?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[kyrio]

Is English not your first language? You don't have to "he/she" everything. Using "he" works just fine.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[clarkkent09]

The problem with that naive view is that removing copyright really does remove the incentive to create and gives every incentive to copy. I don't see how it does not. If everyone can copy and sell, r give for free and sell advertising or profit in another way from distributing a book, software program or a movie, the we have a race in marketing instead of a race in creativity. The creator of the work becomes the most disadvantaged party because he is the only one who has to recoup the cost of creating the work (could be many millions in case of say a major software application or a movie etc) to even break even, while for the copiers any money they make out of distributing that work is free profit.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[dkleinsc]

So let's say you write a novel or a symphony. That's a lot of work. Without copyright at all, anybody can take what you wrote, do the equivalent of photocopying it, and make a big pile of cash off of your work without paying you a dime. The ways anything artistic gets created in a world without copyright are patronage systems (e.g. writers and poets in the service of a monarch), folk art (generally not written down until the 18th century or so), or hobbyists (often nobility) who have the spare time to write.

Remember, copyright was originally created to protect writers from publishers, not the system of protecting publishers from the general public that is currently called "copyright".

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Jason Levine]

Copyright still serves a purpose in our society. Let's say I produce a great book, something along the lines of the next Harry Potter. Should a movie studio be able to just take my book and make it into a movie without my permission? Of course not. I should be able to sell the movie rights to whichever studio I wish (or no studio at all).

Of course, the lengths that copyright lasts for these days are ridiculous also. It's very unlikely that my hypothetical "hot new book" will be making me anything but the occassional pocket change 40 years from now. And, even if it somehow manages to make me money, is the fact that my book was in the tiny minority reason to keep all of the non-profit-generating books out of the public domain?

Remember, the copyright deal is that authors get a temporary monopoly of control on their work in order to attempt to make money on it. This gives them the incentive to produce the works. In exchange, the author reliquishes control after a certain period of time and the public gets to decide what they do with it.

I'd like to see copyright revert back to the original 14 years + 14 years of the founding fathers' time. (14 years plus a one time 14 year extension.) If your work was still making money after 14 years, you could renew for another 14 years. If not, or once that second 14 year period passed, the work would be in the public domain. (Renewal gets past any abandonware issues.) How many works from 1982 are still making their creators significant amounts of money?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Shoe Puppet]

A few weeks ago, I read an article about the lack of copyright in Germany in the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Compared to England - where copyright had been introduced a long time ago - there were significantly more books available at cheaper prices. The authors were paid better, too.

Here it is:
Google Translation / Original German

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[king neckbeard]

That assumes that 18th century psychology about the incredibly complex dynamics of motivation for creative activity was accurate, with a fair amount of evidence suggesting otherwise, such as the following article. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,709761,00.html Also, if we reasonably suggest the abolition of copyright and actually get someone to listen, the legislators might pick a happy medium such as a reasonably short term and expansive fair use

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[roman_mir]

You may be moderated as a Flamebait for this comment.

What's funny is just how sane the position is and how it receives wide range of responses.

Yes, copyrights and patents need to be abolished.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[roman_mir]

Except that the actual truth is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum.

Fashion industry shows how profitable it is, especially compared to most other industries, and in Fashion industry there are no copyrights or patents. Sure there are trademarks, but no copyrights or patents at all, and they are highly creative and profitable, thus proving your position inconsistent with reality.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[roman_mir]

Fashion industry proves everybody wrong on this issue, it has no copyright or patent protection (they do have trademarks) and their industry is much more creative and much more profitable than most other (non resource mining) industries.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878401

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[ribott]

In the same way that using "she" works just fine. Right?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[clarkkent09]

Fashion industry shows how profitable it is, especially compared to most other industries, and in Fashion industry there are no copyrights or patents. Sure there are trademarks, but no copyrights or patents at all, and they are highly creative and profitable, thus proving your position inconsistent with reality.

It doesn't really prove anything. Copying the style of clothes is a completely different thing from copying, say, a movie. Poor people buy the cheap knock off but they wouldn't pay for the designer version anyway so the designer doesn't lose anything. Rich people buy the expensive designer version because its all about the label, and possibly higher quality of work and materials even though the style might be the same. Also, fashion industry is resistant to mass copying and distribution in a way that book, software, movie and music industries aren't. There are actual materials to buy and manufacturing of a physical item requiring factories, workers, possibly large initial investment by the copier. Not something that any kid with a computer can do.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[KarrdeSW]

Are you enough of an expert in Czech Law to tell us for certain that they do not demand registration of other copyrighted materials in some way?

Is it fair to complain about a system if you don't know it very well?

If they adhere to the international treaties that they signed decades ago, then they don't.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[devent]

The best example of the lack of copyright is the fashion industry. There is no copyright. Everything you can see on the street or in the store you can copy free and sell it. But are we lacking of fashion? Hell no, the fashion industry is the most creative industry and there are no shortcomings of profits either. Don't believe me: http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html

Only 5% of all book authors and musicians are actually making money off of copyright. At least 95% of book authors are not selling over 5000 copies of their works, the music bands are just getting 1% of each CD sales. Just watch The Surprising History of Copyright and What It Means For... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI

Another example is Metallica. They made $22.8 million from shows and only $1.6 million from album sales. The price for the album is $22.99 (or something I made a quick search) that should be $6.8 million. Even a big band like Metallica makes only 24% profit of a CD sale. Image how much a no name band is making (from http://timothyblee.com/2010/03/02/album-sales-a-trivial-fraction-of-metallicas-revenue/). And of course I like this image http://wussuphater.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/picture-1.png

Sorry, but only the 5% of the most red and most famous artists and book authors are making money from copyright. Anybody else makes no money from it. Copyright was never intended to help or protect the creator. It was historically a law to help publishers and still remains the law to help publisher. Why do you think it's called "copy right", because it protects the right of the publisher to make a copy of your work and to profit from it. The creator have the right to make a copy of his work already, you don't need a law for it.

Another argument, Creative Commons started in 2001. After only 2 years there were already approximately 1 million licenses under a CC license. After 7 years there are estimated 130 million CC licensed works. Here is my graph of their history Here is my prediction of CC works to the year 2015, by then we will have 7.6 billions works under CC.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[clarkkent09]

That is an interesting article but it doesn't prove much. It is no surprise that books were cheaper without copyright, the question is where is the incentive for the authors to write. In case of books, there are incentives other than making money such as reputation - the article specifically talks about science books, or just getting a point of view across such as what we are doing here for free. Unless it was butchered beyond recognition in the English translation, the article doesn't say that authors were paid better than in England at the time but I guess it is possible. In comparison to England where publishers at the time "took advantage of a monopoly" and published books in very small print runs at very high prices, it may have possibly been advantageous for the authors to have their books mass produced and distributed at lower prices even if they didn't get paid for 90% of the sales. I doubt very much that authors would make more in Germany if publishers in England tried to mass market books AND had copyright as well.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[2obvious4u]

Not in the internet age they can't. Do you not read aggregaters like digg? If you post something that isn't yours the internet community busts your ass for it quick and then points people to the original source. Notoriety from what you create should be enforced and people should feel morally compelled to support original artists, but copyright which places fines on user level infringer's isn't right either. Business level infringement is a different story and could possibly still be kept and enforced. Suing Coca-cola for using your song in an advertisement is different than joe fan listening to your song on youtube.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[mcgrew]

Even if it's only $30 to register those copyrights to keep the labels from stealing the songs...for many "starving artists," that's a week's worth of food.

Why should registration have a fee? It could (and I think these days is, I haven't registered a copyright since 1984) be an online form that's automated. You would need no manpower to impliment it except when there was a fight over ownership of copyright.

The situation gets *really* bad when you get into situations like GPL. Do you have to register each "official" release? What happens when someone tries to register a fork? What if you decide to license the next version of your work as BSD?

With free registration there's no problem, and with GPL/BSD the license is there for all to see in the work's registration.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Shoe Puppet]

Unless it was butchered beyond recognition in the English translation, the article doesn't say that authors were paid better than in England at the time but I guess it is possible.

Here's the part that says that (my quick & dirty translation):

The German knowledge initiative led to a curious stituation which sure enough nobody noticed at this time, though: Sigismund Hermbstädt, a long-forgotten professor of chemistry and pharmacy from Berlin, earned a higher royalty with his work "Fundamentals of Leather Work" than the British author Mary Shelley with her famous horror novel "Frankenstein"

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[king neckbeard]

Up to 14 times as many books were produced, presumably of relatively equal value. The state of authors isn't directly of concern, at least not within the British and American traditions where the point of copyright is to enrich the public availability of works. However, it's quite possible that the publishers were actually less capable of extortion of authors without the copyright system.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[clarkkent09]

Fashion would be a good comparison if you could put an Armani jacket in a computer and print out 1,000,000 exact copies of it for free. Since that is not true, the comparison of an industry where, even though you can copy the "style" of the clothes, you still need a damn factory and a lot of investment (and still cannot copy the all important label), to say a kid putting a movie which cost $100 million to make onto the internet and making it instantly available to the whole world for free is completely bogus.

Only 5% of all book authors and musicians are actually making money off of copyright.

And only 1% of athletes make a living out of playing sports so what? If you enter a profession where there is a ridiculously huge amount of competition that's to be expected. People are making money out of those book and music sales, it just might not be the authors. But that's the matter of a contract between them and the fact that marketing which the publisher provides seems to be more valuable when it comes to sales than content creation - otherwise why aren't the authors distributing the work themselves.

Another example is Metallica. They made $22.8 million from shows and only $1.6 million from album sales.

What show can a book writer do? What kind of live shows can Adobe do to recoup the millions it pays developers if the software itself becomes free (as it would without copyright)? How can a movie studio make any money at all if theaters can show the movie without paying anything to the studio and any fool can put their move onto the web or burn DVDs of it and sell them?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[king neckbeard]

actually, copyright was originally created to protect the king and church from heretical or dissenting works, then to support a printer's monopoly established by the former purpose, then to promote the publishing of works for the sake of public education. Any benefits to authors in this chain of events is purely a side effect.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Locke2005]

Not something that any kid with a computer can do. Right... it's something that any kid with scissors, a sewing machine, and a charge account at JoAnne's Fabrics can do!

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[king neckbeard]

A rather large share of movies make their budget back while still in theaters (which could be handled under contract or possibly even funded by movie theaters. They make their actual income selling you popcorn and candy, after all), and there's a lot of fat to cut from the salary by paying A-list actors less. The models would have to change absent of copyright, but that doesn't mean we couldn't adjust or even that the new model wouldn't be better than the old one.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Locke2005]

What kind of live shows can Adobe do to recoup the millions it pays developers if the software itself becomes free? Right, because if GNU/Linux has proven anything, it is that nobody will write software unless you pay them millions of dollars! Viable business models change; the solution is not to rewrite the laws to prop up the old industries that refuse to change their business model. Copyright has only been around for about the last 200 years... are you insisting that nobody wrote any good books or music before copyright was put into place? Granted, before copyright most artists were supported by monarchies and churches in a patronage system, but there is no reason why patronage wouldn't still work.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Better solution, get rid of copyright entirely. Society is producing content at to fast a clip for it to be necessary any more. You produce a work and by the end of the week someone has already produced a derivative work. All this copyright stuff does is slow down progress.

To see why this is too good to be true, try actually restricting yourself freely distributed media, and derivative works thereon. The rapid influx of new works belies the creative stagnation behind them. By the time you've watched the 5th downfall parody, you just want it to end.

If you are worried about how content creators get paid then you haven't thought about it long enough.

And if you're not, then from experience, the chances are you've thought about it just enough to come to a conclusion you want to come up with, but not enough to find the deep flaws behind it.

Content as a service, that is the new model.

If recordings are involved in that service, then the system has the same flaws (you can get an unlimited free service from a P2P network). If recordings are not involved in that service, then the system is already woefully inferior to the system currently in place. Merchandising suffers from that very problem, because it means you reward artists less as musicians, but more as a brand to suck financially dry. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer buying recordings of music made by my favourite bands to buying T-shirts and mugs with their faces on them.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[bmcage]

If a fashion 'artist' creates a new type of cloth, he can patent that just fine. There only is no good protection for a type of shirt. They can protect it, but changing the color a couple of percent is already a new work. The clothing industry does take it's part on patents on products, knit types, ..... At least, the company I know takes European patents for new fibers they turn into finished product.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[devent]

Do we change the laws that the 1% athletes can still make million of $? Why we change the laws so the 5% elite have it better, while the 95% will get it worse?

Yes, the 95% will be worse if you enforce the copyright even more, because they can't take new ideas out of the pool of older works and that is how books, music, movies, software, etc. works. You take ideas from old works and build your own. Only with a rich public domain and many works under copyleft licenses we will flourish and can the society as a whole advance.

The technology is changed, but we make laws so that the 5% elite don't need to adapt and change. That's like we outlaw the steam train so the horse carriage can still be a viable business. We outlaw the steam train for 95% of the population so the 5% horse carriage can make a living.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[clarkkent09]

Not really. To make real money out of selling clothes you need factories, workers, distribution channels, preferably your own retail outlets etc. You also need reputation which is why selling other people's designs under your own brand is not very profitable. Making one or two copies of a clothing item is not the issue here. As Pirate Bay shows you can easily make millions selling advertising while providing other people's content (oh ok, links to other people's content). There is a big difference between copying physical items like in the fashion industry and copying bits.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[dyingtolive]

Actually....

In the past, people tended to use the pronouns he, his, him, or himself in situations like this:
If your child is thinking about a gap year, he can get good advice from this website. A researcher has to be completely objective in his findings.
Today, this approach is seen as outdated and sexist. There are other options which allow you to arrive at a ‘gender-neutral’ solution, as follows:
* You can use the wording ‘he or she’, ‘his or her’, etc.:
If your child is thinking about a gap year, he or she can get good advice from this website. A researcher has to be completely objective in his or her findings.
This can work well, as long as you don’t have to keep repeating ‘he or she’, ‘his or her’, etc. throughout a piece of writing.

Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/page/heshethey/he-or-she-versus-they;jsessionid=082070F581446958B284847E7564A28E
At this point, the only question left to ask is whether yours was made out of an attempt at feeling smugly elitist, or out of general curiosity. Judging from the fact that GPs post was actually quite well written, I'd say the latter of the two.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Locke2005]

To make real money out of bootlegging music you need CD duplicating equipment, workers, distribution channels, etc. That hypothetical "One kid with a computer" isn't making any money at all, so he's a lot closer to my "One kid bootlegging fashions for herself". Although you are correct that duplication of digital information is easy and cheap, that doesn't change the argument. People pay lots of money for name-brand fashions because they like the label, and it's not worth their time to make their own rip-offs. Likewise, people continue to pay money for CDs and DVDs rather than download them from the 'net because their time is valuable, they get better quality buying licensed products, and they usually get physical artifacts with their CD or DVD (e.g. the 3D glasses that came with the 3D movie I bought my daughter). Buying physical CDs or DVD is analogous to buying fashions. Bittorrent competes with iTunes, not with physical disks. Also note that even with the ridiculous copyright enforcement regimes we have in place, bootlegs of physical CDs and DVDs are widely available and cheap, despite the best efforts of the RIAA and MPAA to extort money from children and old ladies that don't own computers.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Monkeedude1212]

Not really. To make real money out of selling clothes you need factories, workers, distribution channels, preferably your own retail outlets etc. You also need reputation which is why selling other people's designs under your own brand is not very profitable.

Also not true. There are many outlets in my city of over a million people that make plenty of money for the proprieter when she is the only one who produces, sells, and distributes her clothes, with nothing but the "retail outlet" that is basically a house which is decorated.

Making one or two copies of a clothing item is not the issue here. As Pirate Bay shows you can easily make millions selling advertising while providing other people's content (oh ok, links to other people's content). There is a big difference between copying physical items like in the fashion industry and copying bits.

But why? It's just an arrangement of bits, just like an arrangement of cloth. I don't see how you are arriving at any of these conclusions.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Andorin]

To see why this is too good to be true, try actually restricting yourself freely distributed media, and derivative works thereon.

This is not hard. I run Ubuntu on both my computers. I get my music from Jamendo, a website that hosts CC-licensed music. I play Nexuiz, a free FPS roughly based off Quake (and I'm not a big gamer). The biggest exception would be movies, as it's harder to find copylefted films, but many of those that I download are old enough that they shouldn't qualify for copyright anymore.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer buying recordings of music made by my favourite bands to buying T-shirts and mugs with their faces on them.

Nothing is stopping you from doing so. Nothing is stopping your favorite bands from selling recordings. Weakened or abolished copyright law will not do this either.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Andorin]

If I write a book, and wish to live on it, I prefer to be able to sell that book, and not worry about somebody undercutting me or just taking advantage of their lack of costs of writing it.

Well, you have a point- without any copyright whatsoever, a big publisher could theoretically grab up all the books they see and flood the market with cheap copies. However, without any copyright whatsoever, that publisher would be undercut just the same as anyone else. And considering that most everyone (even the file-sharing community) seems to be big on attribution, I think you would fare better than anyone else would.

And no, I don't want to be forced to merchandise it, or hold my hypothetical readers hostage by refusing to release more until I get enough money.

That's your choice of business model, but it isn't a reason why a certain obsolete business model should be propped up by the gov't and the public.

As for Derivative works, some of us get attached to our stories and don't like others messing with them while we're alive. Go figure.

Uh... tough. Derivative works don't change your version in any way; they just produce a new version with someone else's creativity mixed in. Which is the entire idea behind producing a creative work.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[king neckbeard]

I believe what he means is that producers of content have their works treated as a service. You know, like how you pay a session musician $200 for a night's work. As for musicians, outside of the Beatles, Eagles, Metallica, and such, there have never been significant profits in music recordings and probably never will be.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I should have used a car analogy. I'm sorry.

Let's say I'm some no-name wanna-be who wrote a song, had my no-name band record a demo, and submitted that demo to a record label.

Will the record label exec play your demo in his car? I think this help you with the car analogy.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[next_ghost]

Your suggested handling of Copyleft licenses: "Hey, MikeRT! I wrote this. Want to read it? I have to wait for the Copyright Office to return my paperwork before I'm legally allowed to hand it to you."

Actually, it's "Hey, MikeRT! I wrote this. Want to read it? I have to wait for the collecting society to return my paperwork before I hand it to you or I'll have to pay them for showing you."

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[he-sk]

The ways anything artistic gets created in a world without copyright are patronage systems...

You sound like this is inherently bad.

Two words: Micro payments.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[he-sk]

Technically they do, they always by definition serve the interests of *some* people. In theory this would be the >50% that elected them (note: also never 100%)...

The trick in a democracy is not maximizing the number of people whose interests are met, but maximizing the number of interests that can be met for everybody.

That is, satisfying only 50% of the interests for 100% of the people is better than satisfying 100% of the interests for 50% of the people.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[roman_mir]

Actually no, not everywhere you can even patent clothes, even a very specific configuration. However in places where you can patent it, it is trivial to go around that by exactly doing what you said - add a centimeter here or there, done.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you have a point- without any copyright whatsoever, a big publisher could theoretically grab up all the books they see and flood the market with cheap copies. However, without any copyright whatsoever, that publisher would be undercut just the same as anyone else.

Which matters little, since the reason why copyright exists is not to protect publishers per se but creators.

Publishers get their protection through such things as contracts with creators.

And considering that most everyone (even the file-sharing community) seems to be big on attribution, I think you would fare better than anyone else would.

But would I, or even society fare better than it would with copyright?

Not so far as I can tell.

That's your choice of business model, but it isn't a reason why a certain obsolete business model should be propped up by the gov't and the public.

Because it's not actually obsolete as a whole. There may be room to disagree over the details(like length), but if you don't agree with the principle?

Well, then it would seem we have nothing in common, so there's nothing to discuss with you about it.

Uh... tough. Derivative works don't change your version in any way; they just produce a new version with someone else's creativity mixed in. Which is the entire idea behind producing a creative work.

Derivative works do have an impact on how people feel. Your lack of respect for that shows your insensitivity and lack of class.

Hardly uncommon traits, but some of us respect others enough that not only would we not do it, we support laws protecting them (and ourselves) from it, rather than give jerks like you carte blanche to do whatever you wish.

Whether it be taking advantage of us, or just doing things we don't like with our creations.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Andorin]

But would I, or even society fare better than it would with copyright?

Would it? I don't know. I do not advocate the full death of copyright because I see its benefits so long as it is applied in a sane manner. I think, however, there are many provisions of copyright law that should be altered or should not exist altogether. Term limits must sharply decline from life+70 years to something between 5 and 20 years (the length itself is debatable but I'd be fine with something in that range). Anticircumvention laws must allow fair use. Fair use itself must be strengthened to fight abuses (no more taking down home movies because they include a few seconds of The Simpsons in the background at one point). Most importantly, noncommercial infringement must be punished much less heavily than for-profit infringement, or not at all (my preference). There is simply no basis to support the argument that noncommercial infringement causes significant harm.

Can copyright be beneficial? Absolutely. Copyright belongs in the commercial marketplace as a safeguard against big corporations, or anyone else, grabbing up new works and rebranding them as their own. Beyond that copyright is a violation of free speech.

Because it's not actually obsolete as a whole. There may be room to disagree over the details(like length), but if you don't agree with the principle?

What's obsolete is the idea that copyright holders should expect payment for every single copy made of a work. This concept simply does not work considering that anyone can easily and quickly copy and share something for practically zero cost. Traditional copyright is based on artificial scarcity, which is incompatible with modern tech.

Derivative works do have an impact on how people feel. Your lack of respect for that shows your insensitivity and lack of class. Hardly uncommon traits, but some of us respect others enough that not only would we not do it, we support laws protecting them (and ourselves) from it, rather than give jerks like you carte blanche to do whatever you wish. Whether it be taking advantage of us, or just doing things we don't like with our creations.

Yeah, we're going to have to fiercely disagree on this, but I too have the law on my side. The right of first sale states that once a legal copy of a copyrighted work is sold to someone, the rights holder no longer has any claim to that copy, except insofar as the new owner violates some other provision of copyright. This means that copyright owners cannot control their customers by saying that their works cannot be used in a certain fashion. Someone could, for example, buy up every copy of your book and burn them right in front of you. No matter how much you might hate them for doing it, they can legally do it because the alternative- allowing artists and publishers to arbitrarily set terms on the usage of their work- is unacceptable.

The creation of derivative works falls under one of the limitations of first sale. I cannot buy a copy of Star Wars: A New Hope, change the names, and resell that as my own work because that's tantamount to plagiarism. However, control of derivative works is something that must be very carefully kept in check because, as I said, derivative works are the lifeblood of creativity. Anything that is created was inspired, even just a little, by something else, or a combination of somethings else. That copy of Star Wars: A New Hope might inspire me to write my own science fiction novel. Perhaps I'll borrow a couple of elements from Star Wars to do so- such as a rebellion against an oppressive galactic regime aided by a young man who, in the process, discovers his potential. Should Lucasfilm be able to sue me for that? Hell no. Inspiration and derivation are what make creativity possible.

With all that in mind, just because you don't like customers doing something with your work doesn't mean you get to l

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't try to fight political correctness -- you'll just be branded a troll.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

So the latter problem then. No significant incentive to release recordings, so the system is woefully inferior. There are already plenty of live performances, and I see no evidence to suggest that destroying incentives to record will increase that number.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

This is not hard. I run Ubuntu on both my computers. I get my music from Jamendo [jamendo.com], a website that hosts CC-licensed music. I play Nexuiz [wikimedia.org], a free FPS roughly based off Quake (and I'm not a big gamer). The biggest exception would be movies, as it's harder to find copylefted films, but many of those that I download are old enough that they shouldn't qualify for copyright anymore.

I too have taken the same approach (also using Jamendo via Ubuntu), but it was hard. I did much searching through their album list, and out of all the ones that I could find with any seeders, I only found one album that I thought was worth the space on my hard disk it occupied. Even then, it wasn't nearly the calibre of most of the other albums I own. I did genuinely want to find a hidden gem; something to tell me that free music could rival, or even best commercial music, but I couldn't find it. Such hidden gems may well have existed, but the fact that I couldn't distinguish them from the dreck, or that I couldn't download them, speaks volumes as to flaws in (the current implementation of) the system.

As for the movies situation, that's kind of a black-eye for your position. You're still relying on movies that, even if they shouldn't be under copyright at this stage, were at one point under copyright. That means that you're still relying on the fruits of copyright to support your entertainment, which means that suggesting the abolishment of copyright would almost certainly harm you (and people like you, doing the same thing) in the long term as well (although not as much as the rest of us).

Nothing is stopping you from doing so. Nothing is stopping your favorite bands from selling recordings.

Well, I can't possibly if they stop selling recordings, and they can't possibly continue to sell recordings if nobody is buying them (this is a very real concern, and you need to prove that this wouldn't happen in order for us to change to your new system). If it was the case that nobody wanted their recordings, then I could live with being marginalised, but if it's just the case that people want recordings and they want them for free, then I have to stand up against such short-sighted stupidity.

I have to ask, if you're already reaping the benefits of a free culture, why are you pursuing this? What benefits could you possibly receive under a different system? I mean, you wouldn't have the faint legal threat when you download your old movies, but if the influx of new movies (all but) stops, then surely that would be a bad trade-off, right?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Andorin]

As for the movies situation, that's kind of a black-eye for your position. You're still relying on movies that, even if they shouldn't be under copyright at this stage, were at one point under copyright. That means that you're still relying on the fruits of copyright to support your entertainment, which means that suggesting the abolishment of copyright would almost certainly harm you (and people like you, doing the same thing) in the long term as well (although not as much as the rest of us).

Ah... I don't recall arguing for the complete abolishment of copyright. I most certainly will argue for a drastic reduction in its length, and would also argue that noncommercial infringement should not be punished as harshly as it is (or at all), but I understand that in a commercial sense copyright has its advantages. Our implementation of it is just really really fucked up.

Well, I can't possibly if they stop selling recordings, and they can't possibly continue to sell recordings if nobody is buying them (this is a very real concern, and you need to prove that this wouldn't happen in order for us to change to your new system)

What makes you think this would happen in the first place? Piracy is rampant today, it has been for a decade, and yet the entertainment industries are doing just fine. The success of iTunes in the face of Kazaa and BitTorrent and such demonstrates that people are willing to pay for their media to support creators they like. Reports that people who download also buy more do this as well. The billion-dollar losses the media giants purport that piracy causes are simply false. There is no basis for the idea that if it were legal to download music for free, nobody would buy music.

I have to ask, if you're already reaping the benefits of a free culture, why are you pursuing this? What benefits could you possibly receive under a different system? I mean, you wouldn't have the faint legal threat when you download your old movies, but if the influx of new movies (all but) stops, then surely that would be a bad trade-off, right?

I follow this subject because it sickens me each time I see another news article about a copyright-related abuse from a big corporation, or from anyone else. I want copyright reform so the abuse will stop.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Ah... I don't recall arguing for the complete abolishment of copyright. I most certainly will argue for a drastic reduction in its length, and would also argue that noncommercial infringement should not be punished as harshly as it is (or at all), but I understand that in a commercial sense copyright has its advantages. Our implementation of it is just really really fucked up.

I didn't realise you weren't advocating the abolishment of copyright. I tend to make that mistake from time to time, since people who wish to legalise non-commercial sharing tend to make the same arguments as copyright abolitionists, and come up with the same rebuttals. I suppose that statements like "long after copyright is just a bad footnote in the history books" you made on our other thread, don't help either.

Well, certainly a length reduction wouldn't hurt, and reducing maximum awards for infringement would be good as well (million dollar damages are excessive in anybody's book). As for the distinction between non-commercial and commercial piracy, this is a subject I have argued about here many times before. It simply comes down to the fact that commercial infringement and non-commercial infringement have no practical differences to the artist. Both cause the same reduction in demand for their product, and both incur an opportunity cost from a lost potential sale. In fact, it would be, if anything, preferable for the artist's work to be commercially pirated, since at least the artist can compete with a non-zero price point. If anything, non-commercial should be banned instead (but preferably both).

What makes you think this would happen in the first place?

A better question would be, "What makes me think this could possibly happen in the first place?" since the burden of proof rests with you, and all I have to do is come up with plausible scenarios. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to elaborate on this (simply because it usually takes a long time), but the gauntlet is thrown, and I'll comply.

There is no basis for the idea that if it were legal to download music for free, nobody would buy music.

There is basis to believe this. It's one of the fundamental assumptions of the free market that consumers are rational, that is, if they are given a choice between buying one of two identical products, and one is priced more cheaply, they will uniformly choose to buy the cheaper product.

Of course, consumers are not always rational. Some have consciences which tell them, on some level, that they owe something to the artist, so they'll make a purchase which gains them literally nothing over the pirated version. Also, we have the law, which is deterrent enough for some people. If we removed the law (or weakened it enough so that people could share as much as they liked), then all that would stand between us and paying for nothing is our consciences. If we did pay for nothing, then there is no fathomable way that the artist will get anything from us, and they would be unable to sell recordings.

Thus, all I need to do is convince you that our consciences are not reliable enough to bet our culture on. All that I need to do to convince myself of this is just observe people on /. when any negative piece of entertainment-related news comes to the front page. A classic example is Infinity Ward's decision to cut out dedicated server support from Modern Warfare 2. There was a slew of people who were saying that they were so angry, they would pirate the game. It wasn't going to help the problem at all, just that it was all Infinity Ward's fault for making them do it.

Notice how flimsy the reason can be in order to justify turning to piracy. They are drunk on their own power, and their moral centre can easily be overwhelmed as soon as they find out that the companies are exercising their own powers in a way that they (the pirates) don't like. What happens when they star

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[king neckbeard]

If a proper system of funding comes along, being funded as a service theoretically means that there is actually a stronger incentive to record, because you won't any money sitting on you laurels. The way to get more money is to record more. To bring back the construction metaphor, the construction worker continuously builds houses because they don't get any money for houses they've already built. Of course, this is relying on the carrot/stick model of motivation, which is questionable when applied to something like creativity. It's quite possible that fixing the education system to stop discouraging creativity would have a bigger impact than the copyright system ever did.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[WNight]

Yeah, you want welfare. You want all the taxpayers to be forced to create an authoritarian society, overreaching copyright law, and a fascist enforcement arm, then use that to threaten people who want to copy your book so that they'll pay you even though they don't need you at this stage, thus monetizing it for you at great cost to society in productivity and freedom.

As for your stories, go fuck yourself. If you don't like what someone else is doing, don't read it.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[Andorin]

As for the distinction between non-commercial and commercial piracy, this is a subject I have argued about here many times before. It simply comes down to the fact that commercial infringement and non-commercial infringement have no practical differences to the artist. Both cause the same reduction in demand for their product, and both incur an opportunity cost from a lost potential sale. In fact, it would be, if anything, preferable for the artist's work to be commercially pirated, since at least the artist can compete with a non-zero price point. If anything, non-commercial should be banned instead (but preferably both).

The core justification behind anti-piracy is that file sharing deprives artists of revenue. This has never been substantiated because it's extremely hard to prove such a claim, but it seems to be the assumption everyone has. Thusly, the idea that piracy causes substantial lost sales is not an idea I accept just because the entertainment industries say it does. Lost sales are the key: Of X downloads, how many of those (Y) would have translated into sales had the downloads not been available? If the price of a work is Z, is Y times Z enough lost revenue to justify anti-piracy provisions? Furthermore, what if X downloads had a beneficial effect on the market, such as increased market share for the work, that partially or completely cancels out Y*Z? Personally I tend to think that noncommercial piracy simply does not have a huge effect. No industries have crashed in the last decade since Napster's debut. Some are, in fact, doing better than ever.

If we removed the law (or weakened it enough so that people could share as much as they liked), then all that would stand between us and paying for nothing is our consciences.

Maybe this isn't such a bad thing. Most people believe in fair deals and are willing to pay for value received. I've had people unexpectedly hand me money after I performed for them some minor task for which they required my assistance, although I was fine with doing it for free. Realistically I don't think the situation then would be all that different from now, because I think most people know that you can find free music and such online, yet iTunes is huge, Amazon is a bit less huge, and as I said, no industries have tanked. Additionally, I believe we are discussing this in another thread, but if artists were able to find a new business model after such a change in law, it would provide further support for them.

Notice how flimsy the reason can be in order to justify turning to piracy. They are drunk on their own power, and their moral centre can easily be overwhelmed as soon as they find out that the companies are exercising their own powers in a way that they (the pirates) don't like.

For most people it's not about little things like how a release is taking too long (I've honestly never seen someone say they're going to pirate something because of this), but huge things that cause massive uproars among even casual fans. Things like... Ubisoft's always-on DRM, which requires you to stay online just to play a single-player offline game. Things like Blizzard's decision to force people to use their real names on the official forums, which they retracted after the public backlash. Things like Sony's music CD rootkit, or Spore's limited-activation DRM, or any of dozens of other examples. The point is that people get pissed off when entertainment companies employ blatantly anti-consumer practices, and this leads people to pirate the media out of principle. In those cases, the piracy itself is not damaging, since there likely wouldn't have been a sale anyway.

Just boycott, and encourage others to do the same. It does all the damage of piracy, but legal, morally sound, and much safer.

Boycotting is the free-market response to customer-hostile media companies, and theoretically it would be the way to keep s

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[kyrio]

Your "new" way is retarded.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[kyrio]

Only because a retard would find the correct method to be sexist.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[selven]

Then make registration $0. Make it even possible to do it online, in such a way that scripts can be written to submit new versions automatically. It's just a formality to ensure that works made by people who don't care about copyright don't get copyrighted.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[toQDuj]

well, businesses are people too! Or so I have been told your legal system works..

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[dyingtolive]

Hey, I don't agree with it either, it feels clunky and doesn't flow well. However, it's from a little place called Oxford. I'm not qualified to tell Oxford they're doing it wrong. Are you?

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[WNight]

Derivative works do have an impact on how people feel. Your lack of respect for that shows your insensitivity and lack of class.

Yeah, and not being able to share your imaginings where those relate to copyrighted characters has an impact on how people feel. The only thing stopping us from having a participatory culture are laws we passed to help increase the public domain - something we no-longer need.

You with your righteous expectations have no room for the existence of others, let alone actually giving a shit about how they feel.

Hardly uncommon traits, but some of us respect others enough that not only would we not do it, we support laws protecting them (and ourselves) from it, rather than give jerks like you carte blanche to do whatever you wish.

You're perfectly happy playing the respect card, as long as it's to respect your feelings. But when it's time to respect others - who don't want to live artificially cloistered in a world of your obsolete dictates, you couldn't give a shit.

You, and other protectionists like you, are leeches on the ass of anyone who actually does something. By demanding others bow to your demands only because you've been there first you're a fine example of the greatest drain on our society.

It's too bad you don't respect people enough to NOT pass laws limiting them.

Jerk.

Re:Copyleft does complicate the system

[kyrio]

Yes, I am.

Publishers' business model failing

[Anonymous Coward]

The business model of publishers and collection agencies is failing, so they buy laws from corrupt governments.

After "piracy" they're going after free, legal competition and governments happily comply shafting their citizens.

Current law isn't much better either

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently the Czech law requires you to pay royalties to collecting agencies regardless of the fact that you are not a member of any such agency and therefore will never get any money of them back.
It doesn't matter that you are only playing music composed by you, you are still obliged to pay.

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[Anonymous Coward]

Not funny, but true and sad :(

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[boarder8925]

Why the fuck was this modded funny?

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know the copyright situation in the Czech Republic but the royalties situation was corrupt everywhere. Bands who released on an indy label and received massive play on local stations wouldn't get a fair royality because local stations were always under represented in the limited sample of playlist stats for a given period.

With the internet, I'd question if we need collection agencies at all. This development and sideline squarking over compulsory licensing in the EU show the agencies also recognise their impending and inevitable redundancy. The berne convention doesn't state that works must be registered to receive copyright protection. So any Czech legislation to this effect would be unenforcable.

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[eleuthero]

How does one get to be a collection agency in the Czech republic? Would the registration fee for the government for such an agency be cheaper in the long run for a group of like-minded individuals committed to open work?

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[arth1]

Currently the Czech law requires you to pay royalties to collecting agencies regardless of the fact that you are not a member of any such agency and therefore will never get any money of them back.
It doesn't matter that you are only playing music composed by you, you are still obliged to pay.

And how is this any different from, say, ASCAP, who demands that you pay a license fee because you potentially could sing songs to which they have grabbed the rights.

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[Anonymous Coward]

That's so East from The Iron Curtainish!

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[next_ghost]

The short answer: You don't. The long answer: The law states that there can by only one collecting agency registered for each area of culture at any given time. Since most of what can be registered already is registered, we're out of luck here.

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that there is a group of mods that just use their mod points to cause chaos. They give posts random mods that make no sence, give plenty of mod points to trolls, give troll mods to people who make insightful, on-topic posts just to piss them off, etc.

There are also more than a few mods that are intellectually lacking, or just weird, and routinely misinterpret posts.

Re:Current law isn't much better either

[Anonymous Coward]

In that way everywhere, in Portugal you can't stage a musical performance without paying the society of authors.

Ah, the ACTA beta test

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that the ACTA beta test is about to begin. Once they've finished the trials in the Czech Republic, they'll start rolling it out through the rest of the western world.

who's behind it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the trail lead back to Walt Disney? Then through the leveraging that's common today, they slowly work these laws into other countries under the argument that "We need to make are laws consistent with other countries"

Re:who's behind it?

[next_ghost]

No, the trail leads to the collecting societies because they get the most out of it. They wrote the law themselves after all, since big media is busy pushing ACTA through Brussels.

Still just a draft

[jDeepbeep]

Although I feel as many others do, that this has obscenely nefarious elements, my indignation is slightly lessened when I remember this is still only a draft. Who here knows about Czech law that can enlighten us on the likelihood of this becoming real/passed/enforced?

Re:Still just a draft

[O('_')O_Bush]

"Who here knows about Czech law that can enlighten us on the likelihood of this becoming real/passed/enforced?"

Depends on who ponies up the cash to pay off the right people. The Czech Republic has some of the highest rates of corruption in the OECD according to wikipedia. Take it with a grain of salt.

Re:Still just a draft

[Anonymous Coward]

The Czech minister of culture denied that the text is not actually authentic in recent interview (http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/210411058080819-hyde-park-ct24/) on CT24 (state-run news channel). He also promised that if there was such a law in the making, there would be a wide public discussion about it.

My opinion is he's being dishonest at best. Consider this: when the Czech Pirate Party asked the Czech Ministry of Culture for the draft, the ministry flatly refused to given them any information. Note that they didn't tell them there was no such law or that they have no information to give them, they actually refused to provide any information about it. According to the Czech Pirate Party, that was a violation of the Constitution of the Czech Republic and several Czech laws, but no one really cares (except for the Czech pirates, but nobody cares for them either - in Czech, they have the reputation of a modern day Mániky - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mánika).

Re:Still just a draft

[Anonymous Coward]

With the political situation right now in Czech Rep no one can really say. Current government is heavy on reforming (or at least they pretent to be). Right now we have much more important problems to handle like lowering state debt, healt and pension reform, etc.
It is possible that this parody of law will not even get a chance to pass. Also this is only a draft and the media attention may have a good influence on its final form.

Copyright to protect companies not works

[iter8]

This seems to me to be more evidence that governments and corporations see copyright only as a means to protect profits, not the rights of individual producers or "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." I wouldn't expect business to be interested anything except short term profits and I guess it's naive to expect a government to take a different view and consider what might be better in the long term.

Re:S peechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Standard issue in the dysfunctional state of Czechs (according to Wikipedia, of turkic origins, not slavs). Highest prices of every day items in the EU, highest prices of communication services in the EU, highest prices of energy & fuels in the EU. Country ruled by economic mafia for good 20 years, whose biggest thieft and a man with obvious blood on his hands, callous Kalousek, has been voted by Brussel's byrocrats as "the best finance minister in EU." That's not a spit in the eye, that's kung-fu kick in the eye! And it will be worse. (P.S.: Even the iPhone costs there 100 euro more per month with Vodafone plan than anywhere else in the EU, with Vodafone plan.)
Czech Republic = a black cancer in the hart of EU, comparable only with Kosovo jihadist mafia.

Pavel007, Amsterdam.

Waiting...

[retech]

I'm waiting to form an opinion until Cory Doctorow posts some long winded treatise on Boing Boing.

copyleft is simple

[OrangeTide]

Or treat copyleft as a license, a form of contract. And settle disputes in a court, presenting evidence that the license was applied to an original creation. Which is how it manages to survive in the rest of Europe.

VIolation of the Berne Convention

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this a violation of the Berne Convention?

According to Wikipedia:

Under the Convention, copyrights for creative works are automatically in force upon their creation without being asserted or declared. An author need not "register" or "apply for" a copyright in countries adhering to the Convention. As soon as a work is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium, its author is automatically entitled to all copyrights in the work and to any derivative works, unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them or until the copyright expires. Foreign authors are given the same rights and privileges to copyrighted material as domestic authors in any country that signed the Convention.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[erikdalen]

Exactly what I was wondering, is Czech Republic leaving WTO?

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[jdgeorge]

Appears that is correct; this draft is not compatible with the Berne Convention.

Of course, it is only a leaked draft, not even a public document, so it has likely not been subjected to normal sanity checks, or by normal, sane Czechs.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[ryzvonusef]

"to normal sanity checks, or by normal, sane Czechs."

I see what you did there :D

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the latest version of ACTA that we haven't seen yet supercedes this language.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[next_ghost]

No, it's not. The registration is required in order to prevent the collecting societies from collecting royalties on your behalf. Since collecting societies have a monopoly, they don't need any contract to collect royalties. This doesn't affect the existence of your copyright, only what you can do with it.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[Anders Andersson]

Indeed it seems so, and the draft creates confusion with respect to the rights of foreign authors. From the EDRI-gram article:

It imposes the obligation to notify collecting societies on authors each time they decide to publish their works outside the strict copyright framework.

Leaving the issue of what "the strict copyright framework" actually covers aside, the draft appearantly imposes this obligation on "authors" rather than "distributors", meaning that a foreign author can technically be subject to Czech law merely by allowing his work to be distributed in the Czech Republic. How many foreign authors will bother even trying to satisfy the bizarre requirements of a single country? I certainly won't; I'd rather use this opportunity to ridicule their legal system.

This suggests to me that if this draft ever becomes law, the obligation will instead be placed on distributors working in the Czech Republic, which in the case of domestic works may very well be identical to the authors. That also seems more in line with the purpose of the notification, to demonstrate that the distributor is (or has permission from) the author, not that the author is the author (which is sort of self-evident).

Still, that only deals with domestic distributors (of physical copies or electronic transmissions). How about transmissions originating outside the country and aimed directly at individual recipients, such as radio broadcasts or Internet downloads? Will Czech residents be prohibited from using foreign hosting services (such as SourceForge, Youtube or Wikipedia) to contribute to our global collection of information and culture without also notifying their collecting societies? How will the obligation be enforced, by threat of monetary penalties or denial of copyright claims?

While the law itself may fly under WIPO:s radar, it will be interesting to see when the first foreign "public license" work ends up in any court, Czech or otherwise, for being distributed in the Czech Republic without passing their national clearinghouse or other paperwork hurdles.

I own the copyright to everything I have written. I'd be happy to help my Czech friends throw this piece of legislation out the window, with or without their legislators clinging on to it.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[Anders Andersson]

The registration is required in order to prevent the collecting societies from collecting royalties on your behalf.

Thank you for the explanation; that's quite different from what the EDRI-gram and Slashdot articles make it look like, and actually similar to what we have in a few other countries (maybe someone can mod you informative). Then the points I made in my earlier comment below become irrelevant in this case.

I'm opposed to the system of collecting societies too, but I'm also living with it, and I don't see that it makes much of a difference with respect to the creation and distribution of publicly licensed works. The members of the collecting societies get an unfair advantage, but the corresponding disadvantage is spread out in such a thin layer over the rest of us that hardly anyone notices.

While the option of registering your work to avoid having some collecting society earn money on it seems appealing, I doubt I'd ever take advantage over it, as that would help legitimize their way of doing business (much like I never "opt out" of receiving advertising I haven't asked for). I prefer to deny them those royalties they don't deserve by avoiding the distribution channels they control instead.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[FoolishOwl]

According to Wikipedia, the Czech Republic is a party to the Berne Convention. So it's possible the courts could stop this.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[next_ghost]

The major WTF of Czech copyright law is that you can get a valid license for some uses only from the collecting society, not from the author himself. Even the author himself has to pay to the collecting society in order to use his own works this way. This provision has to go and it has to go now. That's why the registration is just plain wrong.

Re:VIolation of the Berne Convention

[Anonymous Coward]

Sanity checks? Czechs? Nope. Sanity checks are done BEFORE the laws pass to the Czech parliament. There, the members make "insanity additions" to make themselves interesting. The laws then contradict themselves. My parents are lawyers (in CZ), they have to cope with such "jokes" and hope that someone sends them back to the parliament...

Why?

[Errol backfiring]

Why is it complicated that you create content with a CC license but not complicated that you can basically create anything? How is it more difficult for a CC licensed work of art to trace than for any other newly created work? If complication is an issue, maybe people should not be able to create anything at all! Oh wait, that is exactly the direction we are going...

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe people should not be able to create anything at all! Oh wait, that is exactly the direction we are going...

well, people shouldn't create anything. Unless it is sanctioned by a big media corp and the profits go that media corp. How else are we going to ensure that our entertainment is standardized to the lowest common denominator. Who wants original and challenging entertainment anyway?

This is a good thing. it pushes out some more of the competition for the media corps.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The complication is in the enforcement burden put upon the government.

Namely something outside the norm, which sometimes does increase the cost. Especially given the plethora of options out there. And yes, the CC license does rely upon the government as the ultimate enforcer, if it didn't, then what would be the force behind it? Hiring your own army of ninjas?

Besides, how do you know for sure that this change is a greater burden than the one on works under the regular laws?

Really, how do you know?

Re:Why?

[king neckbeard]

Generally speaking, copyleft licenses are far less likely to result in court action, which is where a lot of the costs go. There has been I think one CC case and two GPL cases that ever made it to court. Cases that make it to court are what cost money. Also, personal infringement is where a lot of additional government resources are going, and copyleft licenses are pretty much only concerned with commercial infringement, which can actually be done in a cost effective manner. The costs to the government are basically 99.99% involved in proprietary licensing.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The costs to the government are basically 99.99% involved in proprietary licensing.

Possibly because 99.999% of the content is still under proprietary license?

Besides, it's not like the registration requires an additional fee, it's just a bit of process, which I'm not even convinced is in excess of the regular system.

Re:Why?

[king neckbeard]

Let me make this crystal clear. Per work, per infringement, per anything, copyleft is far less of a burden for the government. If the government wants to save money, they should actually FAVOR copyleft. This is like putting a heavy tax on more fuel efficient cars that are safer, more reliable, and cost less to build. As for what the regular system consists of, we have a pretty good idea of it because the are part of the Berne Convention, which means copyright is automatic for them.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me make this crystal clear. Per work, per infringement, per anything, copyleft is far less of a burden for the government.

Too bad you have presented no data to support your conclusions. Not that I believe you'd know how things would be if it the balance changed.

I really don't.

As for what the regular system consists of, we have a pretty good idea of it because the are part of the Berne Convention, which means copyright is automatic for them.

Copyright is, everything to do with Copyright in the Czech Republic may not be. In particular, several persons have mentioned that there is a mandatory licensing scheme for radio stations and the like in the country. As such, I can imagine participation in it (ie getting money) does take registration. Opting out...I don't mind it taking registration either.

Re:Why?

[king neckbeard]

SCO and 2 Live Crew alone have been involved in a lot more litigation than copyleft. If you really want, I can hunt down the specific cases that only made it to a single court. Actually, I won't since I'm lazy and you can do it yourself. And it's not that FOSS doesn't get infringed, the SFLC allegedly finds a violation every day, and just sends out compliance notices. Note that this isn't little filesharers, this is entirely industrial scale copyright infringement, which is the really bad kind. The way it sounds, they have their ASCAP with an automatic monopoly, and they collect royalties for everything, and this legislation is about opting out of that. You might have to opt in to get those royalties, but not for their ASCAP to collect them on your works.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

SCO and 2 Live Crew alone have been involved in a lot more litigation than copyleft.

And you think the companies(or people) involved would have behaved differently for some reason just because copyleft principles were in place?

They wouldn't have. Because they are the type who acts in a certain way and then justifies it.

Of course, none of it is a drop in the bucket compared to say Asbestos-related lawsuits.

The way it sounds, they have their ASCAP with an automatic monopoly, and they collect royalties for everything, and this legislation is about opting out of that. You might have to opt in to get those royalties, but not for their ASCAP to collect them on your works.

Yep, pretty standard process there, much like many large mass groups of people with disparate contacts. Not that different than say paying income taxes or health care.

Certainly not about gutting the GPL as some other persons alleged.

Re:Why?

[king neckbeard]

In practice, that is the case. Any copyright holder of the Linux kernel can bring action against someone who infringes (this includes big companies like IBM and even Microsoft recently) and there is no problem finding infringement, and yet no lawsuits appear. SCO, on the other hand, brought numerous lawsuits over copyright that wasn't actually infringed that they didn't actually own the rights to. It may not be about gutting the GPL, but it is an incredibly corrupt practice. The existence of BMI helped put pressure on ASCAP to be less crazy.

Re:S peechless

[eleuthero]

While the above is probably rightly marked flamebait, there is a truth hidden in the midst of it. Czech policies on some level have been causing massive migration of Romi to France and Italy, sparking off the recent debate over who's allowed to be in what country (despite fairly broad travel agreements under EU treaty).

Czech opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst thing is that I am Czech, I live in Prague and I am hearing about this from /.! I do not follow local news too much, but this? This is insane! The tech sphere should be buzzing about this and instead nothing is happening. Makes me sad.

Prove it?

[PhilHibbs]

How do I prove that I created something? When I write something in Wikipedia, do I have to notify the Czech authorities of every update?

Author royalties are not reduced!

[Anonymous Coward]

They got it wrong on ZeroPaid, now the author royalty fee is 100% of 0.5 CZK per book borrowed, the proposal is 60% of 1 CZK.

Garret Raziel

[Anonymous Coward]

I am Czech and if that pass the goverment, I have a plan. I will make a small script that every word I write will send to OSA for proving of opensource.

Re:Garret Raziel

[Shoe Puppet]

To bad the only approved way of registering your work will be to send in a package of 8" floppies by mail.

Orphaned works

[Anonymous Coward]

It is disturbing to see how easy so-called orphaned works get appropriated by these "rights-groups". Oh, we don't know who owns it? Well, I guess then that makes it ours. Anyone got a problem with that? Eh? Didn't think so. Ka-ching!

If it can not be determined who owns IP, then that should revert either to the public domain, or the Crown/State/whatever, but not to some Industry group.

Re:Orphaned works

[Anonymous Coward]

It is disturbing to see how easy so-called orphaned works get appropriated by these "rights-groups". Oh, we don't know who owns it? Well, I guess then that makes it ours. Anyone got a problem with that? Eh? Didn't think so. Ka-ching!

If it can not be determined who owns IP, then that should revert either to the public domain, or the Crown/State/whatever, but not to some Industry group.

As another post indicated, the funds collected through this process (minus a bookkeeping fee) are paid to funding for the arts.

So I think your conditions are met, assuming those details are substantially correct.

Reality Czech

[abulafia]

The government cannot take for granted that you just post some code or a media file, slap a CC license on it and you had every right to do that. As people reuse it and modify it, if it goes to trial, the government has to hunt down the entire chain back to the original content in order to respect due process rights.

Try this:

"The government cannot take for granted that you just post some code or a media file, slap a proprietary license on it and you had every right to do that. As people reuse it and modify it, if it goes to trial, the government has to hunt down the entire chain back to the original content in order to respect due process rights."

In other words, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that intellectual property rights in general are not bought and sold and pass through tons of hands. Witness the entire orphan-work problem. Liberal licenses like CC make it easier to manage these problems, because the entire issue of ownership from the point of the CC license is very straightforward. (It is likely easier backwards as well, because, contrary to the fever dreams of grabby middlemen, there are not, in fact, hordes of eyepatched 14 year olds slapping CC licenses on Elvis mp3.)

Also, I don't know how this works in the Czech Republic, but in the U.S. the government's cost is court time. In civil suits, the litigating parties pays for their own discovery (subject, of course, to outcomes and sometimes other rules). I don't see how the state's costs go up because a license is CC.

A little clarification

[next_ghost]

The article was written in Czech for Czech readers so it doesn't say some facts about Czech copyright law that may not be obvious to foreigners. First, Czech collecting societies have complete monopoly over their culture area once they register. The law also states that collecting societies don't need any contract for collecting royalties from TV, radio and their Internet equivalents. That means that if you start an Internet radio, you have to pay royalties even for most CC-licensed music. The registration is there to opt out from this. This draft is a nice example of what happens when collecting societies get to write copyright law while the big media is busy lobbying somewhere else. They write the law for themselves.

It has a very good chance of passage...

[lexidation]

Take it from someone inside the Czech Republic. The reason: this is still not a full democracy in the Western sense. Corruption is still rampant. And that extends all the way up to Parliament. If you think lobbyists in your country have power over legislators -- try living in this place. Translation: if anyone with an interest in destroying copyleft has enough money or interesting favours to pass to the politicians, the bill gets passed. Meanwhile the Prime Minister, like one of our recent ones, may well turn up standing on a beach in Italy somewhere with a boner. Will the Czech people do anything to protest? Even the ones who understand this issue will not. After fifty years of the old regime, no one feels any power to stop what the politicians do. This is precisely the dynamic they take advantage of to pass things like this. It is the perfect location to set this kind of precedent.

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[Quiet_Desperation]

The reason: this is still not a full democracy in the Western sense. Corruption is still rampant.

Come visit California. I'll bet our political filth creatures, blindfolded and hogtied, can out corrupt yours. I'll even spot your side $20 million in mysteriously missing funds.

One of our state politicians tried to get government buildings designed by the "rules" of Fung Shui. You cannot top that!

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[Anonymous Coward]

...tried to get government buildings designed by the "rules" of Fung Shui.

gee, not sure how relevant this is, but I'm almost certain Fung Shui has been shown (in double blind and double deaf studies) to relieve some serious cases of QD, "quiet desperation." Who knows, this might be a real opportunity to remodel your surrounding energy fields. [ ; P ]

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading Slashdot for a few years, I do not think such nonsense is a Czech particularity. Yes, the corruption is still a bit higher than in the most countries in the north and west, but probably not any worse than e.g. in the south of Europe. But it is definitely cheaper and also easier in a country which is small and where most politicians are still interested more in their own image than the country, and where you do not need to pretend that you are a serious guy, but just pretend you want to give people more money and make everything free, to be elected...

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[TheGratefulNet]

so far, everything you just said about CR seems to equally apply to the US, as well.

we don't have a democracy here (much less a 'full one'). our leaders are untrustworthy and take bribes and follow their own interests.

I guess its true: people all over the world are basically the same. the freedom and lack of corruption you think you'll find by coming here does not exist.

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I am from Czech Republic. I must say that's there no coverage on this topic in our media, so people don't know what is happening here. Nevertheless here's what I'm going to do - I'm going to write a letter to all the institutions that are involved in this law novel and tell them about my frustrations and concerns about this and my freedom. I"m not sure what else could we do, we ordinary people own no media :-)

Perhaps you can ask them directly too, here's the list of czech institutions that are involved in this:

Ministry of Culture: mkcr.cz
OSA: www.osa.cz
OOA-S: www.ooas.cz
Gestor: www.gestor.cz
APKS: www.apks.cz
DILIA: www.dilia.cz
INTERGRAM : www.intergram.cz

We even pay a tax for empty media (cd, dvd, usb stick, hard drives etc.) here, it's totally ridiculous what's happening here..

Thanks and peace to all

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[Quiet_Desperation]

Heh heh. Double deaf. :)

It was never investigated fully, because the news media here can't get their lips off of politician dick long enough to do such a thing as investigative reporting, but I'd wager the assemblyman in question has friends or family involved in the Fung Shui business, and would have first in line for a fat state contract.

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[wormik]

oh .. you must be kidding - I'm czech, living in USA for 10 years .. if I should compare the level of corruption .. US would win 1000% .. the only difference is the level of understanding by common people. In US corruption is so high and invisible .. embedded into "hidden agendas" of so many individuals it's barely traceable .. nevertheless, impact on daily life is so eminent that anyone who has traveled outside US has to admit. btw: what about this argument? Corruption is US has been continuously evolving within the same environment for 300 years. In Czech for 20 years (because of major-major shifts in 1120, 1621, 1918, 1948, 1989-not to be considered as one) .. where would be the corruption better hidden???

Re:It has a very good chance of passage...

[Anonymous Coward]

Take it from someone who actually lives in Czech Rep. It is full democracy and corruption is comparable to Germany and other Western countries. PM is a man, men have boners. So what?
As a lawyer - this draft is closely modeled upon direction of EU, so you are barking at the wrong tree. The cooperation with agencies collecting money is needed. Problem is they follow only their needs not authors', but that is problem even with RIAA, isn't it?

Re:S peechless

[yumyum]

While the above is probably rightly marked flamebait, there is a truth hidden in the midst of it. Czech policies on some level have been causing massive migration of Romi to France and Italy, sparking off the recent debate over who's allowed to be in what country (despite fairly broad travel agreements under EU treaty).

I believe the issue with the Romi is not the right to travel to France and Italy, but the right to stay there. Similar to the U.S. and people staying here beyond their visa limits.

But What is the Copyleft Exactly?

[florescent_beige]

Reading GNU's page on copyleft, it appears to me that copyleft isn't a copyright thing at all, it's a license thing. That is to say, copyleft is a procedure that is applied to a copyrighted work and implemented in the license:

To copyleft a program, we first state that it is copyrighted; then we add distribution terms...In the GNU Project, the specific distribution terms that we use for most software are contained in the GNU General Public License...

So my question would be, if the copyright is still in force, why does the work have to treated differently than any other copyrighted work?

Re:But What is the Copyleft Exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the owner of the copyrighted work wants it to be, and the Czech government apparently has some collective rights management agencies that would like some system for Copyleft works.

Re:But What is the Copyleft Exactly?

[florescent_beige]

Because the owner of the copyrighted work wants it to be, and the Czech government apparently has some collective rights management agencies that would like some system for Copyleft works.

I can see that in theory but I have a hard time imagining the government agency has a workable system to collect royalties on, for example, a file containing source code that is floating around the internet.

I suppose this agency could pursue users of the finished program or application but...isn't it up to the author to decide how much to charge for the program? And via the GPL the author has decided to charge $0.00.

I get the feeling this is intended for artistic works that get performed, or books that get published. Code that gets passed around and compiled...how can you track who has what and what they owe? It seems impossible.

Re:But What is the Copyleft Exactly?

[next_ghost]

Software is safe for now because it's not subject to statutory licenses. However, I'm pretty sure we'll see some lobbying about free software before the law gets to the parliament.

Re:But What is the Copyleft Exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I get the feeling this is intended for artistic works that get performed, or books that get published. Code that gets passed around and compiled...how can you track who has what and what they owe? It seems impossible.

Your feeling would probably be correct, but if they felt a need, they could do like Canada and say, collect a fee with every bit of recordable media and use that?

I doubt they're bothering though.

Re:But What is the Copyleft Exactly?

[next_ghost]

Your feeling would probably be correct, but if they felt a need, they could do like Canada and say, collect a fee with every bit of recordable media and use that?

Czech collecting societies already do that. And it was really funny a few years ago when the growing capacity of thumb drives made this fee inflate up to 30% of thumb drive price.

Make more art

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone in ./ from Czech should paint, write or record some art, how crappy it could be and make a biiiig line for that art registration thingy, maybe they'l think twice then?

What happened to the recording artist before recor

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the recording artist before recording equipment became possible?

And there will still be movies and other bespoke work, where the recording artist gets paid per performance at the moment.

After all, do you know any session player who gets royalties at the moment? Apparently, these session musicians get around OK.

Re:S peechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Could you please inform us, which policies caused such "massive migration" of Romi from the Czech Rep.?

Add this to the GPL to fix?

[swhalen]

Add a provision to the GPL that says that the Czech Republic or anyone subject to their laws is NOT allowed to use any GPL software. Specifically revoke their license to use or modify or distribute GPL programs. Obviously this could also be added to other open source licenses.

I suspect that this addition to the GPL could be generalized and not use the Czech Republic or any specific country name by describing the type of law that would trigger this provision. However, it might be quicker to add a list of countries forbidden to use GPL programs. This should begin to get the idea across that there is no back door to gutting the GPL.

Also trying to make this provision generic could lead to that countries lawyers trying to find loopholes in the description. It shouldn't be too hard to create a procedure to allow adding or removing a country from a "pariah" list when countries do this sort of crap.

Re:Add this to the GPL to fix?

[theCzechGuy]

That's going to be kind of hard to do since at least some of the GPL software is actually copyrighted by Czech programmers.

I'm not even sure what you think that would accomplish apart from ruining lots of people's livelihood and creating substantial profit for the lowlife that came up with the draft in the first place. And how would you implement that? Who would have the right to decide who's on the "pariah" list and who's not? Would you still agree to this if the USA made the list?

Re:Add this to the GPL to fix?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a provision to the GPL that says that the Czech Republic or anyone subject to their laws is NOT allowed to use any GPL software.

Yeah, because the Czech Republic would care. It wouldn't. More likely you'd just find that you couldn't actually take the Czech Republic to court on this issue, and anybody in the country you did try taking to court would just say "These guys are insane, and the terms of their contract violate whatever law or precedent we need to invoke to get this suit thrown out" because well...who do you think runs the court system anyway? And do you think your own country would care about it enough to act? If anything, you'd suddenly find that every country in the world had suddenly decided that these Gnu-Terrorists needed to be shut down.

Because they're insane!

This should begin to get the idea across that there is no back door to gutting the GPL.

And here's the root of your insanity, you believe this was about gutting the GPL. It's not. It never was. Acting like it was? Just another chicken complaining the sky is falling.

Re:Add this to the GPL to fix?

[swhalen]

It sounds like if this law passes the Czech programmers who use GPL are screwed anyway.

The goal would be to put some pressure on countries not to do this kind of thing.

I didn't see any posts with any suggestions (no matter how odd) trying to prevent this law from being duplicated in other countries.

I'd like to see some attempt to push back against this law.

I though I saw somewhere an effort to kill the domains of countries that tried to force RIM to give the government unencrypted traffic.

Maybe something like that would work. If nothing is done, the internet could be gutted quickly by national laws like these.

Right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. So use she if you want. Nobody cares.

How do they make a pile of cash

[Anonymous Coward]

How do they make a pile of cash when you can't? After all, it's as available to the author as it is to everyone else.

geniv

[Anonymous Coward]

hh to je v cr docela normalni :D

If I may offer an alternative viewpoint

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The idea of verifying that the media under free licences is actually free is not such a bad idea. It does, as the summary says, cut into one of the strengths of copyleft licences, but on the other hand, it also strengthens the trust in such a licence. I think (IANAL) that at least part of the burden lies with the consumer to confirm that the work they're licensing is actually licensed that way, so the obvious benefit of this system is that we can look at the license, and say with a greater degree of confidence that we won't be sued down the line for redistributing.

Now, I'm just waiting for such a verification requirement for DMCA takedowns.

So add one line to copyleft / GPL.

[Atrox666]

No rights are granted to the Czech republic or those within its borders.
Sue the fuckers every time someone uses a piece of Linux software or some clip art.
If you don't want to play nice then you don't get to play at all.

Re:So add one line to copyleft / GPL.

[theCzechGuy]

I'll guess you'll have to sue me, a fucker, for using the GPLed software I wrote... well, I had it coming.

Re:So add one line to copyleft / GPL.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's alright, the Czechs can get a license from a local collection agency anyway.

Re:So add one line to copyleft / GPL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing that Pavel Machek can't revoke it's code from kernel retroactively...

Re:What happened to the recording artist before re

[Teancum]

Before musicians had to deal with recording equipment, they had to deal with a printing press that published the music they wrote in a printed form. Sheet music publishers have been fighting copyright for centuries now and it is something that has been an issue for as long as the printing press has been around.

The earliest "recordings" were the rolls of music on "player pianos" that mechanically played back what somebody did at a "recording" piano. Those were very popular and there was even a "piracy" market that developed to "copy" those recording and make "bootleg" copies for others. If you want to get to the heart of the music copyright business, look back to that technology first. It pre-dates Edison's introduction of recording on wax cylinders.

For ordinary "journeymen" musicians (for whom copyright legislation is supposedly written), they usually don't get any sort of payment once the music has been laid down on the recording media with just a few minor exceptions.

Re:What happened to the recording artist before re

[king neckbeard]

The printing press deals with composers, not musicians, and I've seen no indication that the publishers have ever been opposed to copyright, although they may not have been too keen on the changes made in the statute of Anne. Without copyright, a printing press only had value as a printing press, not as the only source to get the music of a specific artist.

Re:S peechless

[eleuthero]

I think it might connect better with the right of a resident of Texas to move to California should he (for whatever reason) desire to do so. While the various EU countries still have significantly more independence than US states do, the European Convention on the Legal Status of Migrant Workers (ETS No. 93), which entered into force in 1983, would appear to protect Roma (apparently I had my vowel wrong) and other migrant workers. For more (the original site appears to be down), see: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:GipP0IL3itoJ:www.coe.int/t/dg3/migration/documentation/Default_conv_en.asp+eu+treaty+migrants&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Re:S peechless

[eleuthero]

I don't know but would assume that people would tend to stay in their countries of origin if a combination of available work, appropriate government policies, nice environment, and social connections all fit together. You are perhaps right to note that Czech Republic policies are not the only cause for migration, but I would suggest that government and cultural issues connected with that government are likely a large part of the problem.

We might see a similar analog in the Central American immigration into the US issue where people come from CA to the US in large part (though not only for this reason) because local governments of origin are corrupt and fail to effectively protect the people and provide opportunities for businesses to safely thrive. Another example might be seen in the North African immigration into southern and central Europe. I do not know much about particular situation, however, and would prefer not to speculate beyond noting the particularly strict regimes in control of many North African countries.

Are there other possibilities here? Of course. Does this offer a reasonable approach to why things might be happening as they are? I think they do. Feel free to disagree (I would appreciate the dialog).

Does this mean authors everywhere must register?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK so as the author of several Free Software "products" whose work may well be used in the Czech Republic would I have to register my works even though I'm not resident there? Does everyone else?

Copyright automatically exists on almost everything written or otherwise concretely expressed. Do we all have to register copyright with the Czech authorities for each and every one of them?

Seems to me that this represents a way to bury them in a mountain of irrelevant registrations.

Re:Does this mean authors everywhere must register

[next_ghost]

No, this doesn't affect software. But if you compose or record a song under CC, you need to register it otherwise Czech collecting societies will collect royalties from Czech Internet radios which play it.

Re:S peechless

[Khashishi]

So they migrate to Italy, where you have Mafias dealing with the highest levels of government..

Re:S peechless

[he-sk]

EU citizens are free to choose their residence and work place in any EU country they wish. There were transitional agreements in place after the last round of EU expansion, but I would have thought that these had expired by now.

IHMO the deportation of Roma from France to Rumania is illegal if they haven't broken any laws.

Re:S peechless

[next_ghost]

I don't know but would assume that people would tend to stay in their countries of origin if a combination of available work, appropriate government policies, nice environment, and social connections all fit together.

Umm, you do realize that you're talking about descendants of nomadic tribes who don't consider settling down, getting education and working like the rest of us as acceptable way of life, right? Most of them were forced to settle down by law less than a century ago. A lot of them will move anywhere if it means they'll get bigger social security cheque there.

Re:S peechless

[Anonymous Cowpat]

(P.S.: Even the iPhone costs there 100 euro more per month with Vodafone plan than anywhere else in the EU, with Vodafone plan.)

Wow, €100 more PER MONTH? It had better cost no more than €-50 per month everywhere else.

Re:S peechless

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, you do realize that you're talking about descendants of nomadic tribes who don't consider settling down, getting education and working like the rest of us as acceptable way of life, right? Most of them were forced to settle down by law less than a century ago. A lot of them will move anywhere if it means they'll get bigger social security cheque there.

Yes. Next ghost is right regarding Roma in the Czech Republic. Czech goverment does it's best to help them (free housing, generous welfare benefits, positive discrimination...), but they still want more, so they sometimes move to the countries with bigger social security cheques. However, there was not any "massive migration" of Roma from the Czech Rep. - it was only very very limited migration which was blew up by the mass media. The most of Roma emigree came back to the Czech Republic as soon as they lost their unemployment and welfare benefits in France, Italy, UK and Canada...

business as usual

[yyxx]

Take it from someone who has lived in the US and Europe: that is a democracy in the western sense. Or, as Churchill put it, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."

In fact, I think the situation is already worse in, say, Germany. AFAIK, there you don't even get the choice of opting out of collection societies, and several societies have government mandated monopolies.

Re:S peechless

[eleuthero]

Interesting possibility - but the same could also be said of North African tribes. I would agree that there is personal involvement and responsibility here - thank you for bring this up. Mooching off society in the form of social security is a potentially large part of the issue. Significant, however, is the clash of government against culture and its impact both in favor of the Roma and against: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/08/eu.politics

Re:S peechless

[belmolis]

The Czechs are as much Slavs as other Slavic peoples. Their language is Slavic and their culture is Slavic.

Re:S peechless

[sisinka]

Not really. The language, yes. The culture and genetics, no. Culturally as well as genetically we remained in the most part Celtic, despite german (around 0 BC), slavic (around 600 AD) and many more invasions. Proofs: the most prevalent pattern of particular genes causing cystic fibrosis among Czechs matches most closely with Irish, Scots and other Celts; we produce the most beer per capita in the world, followed by Irishmen - on the contrary, Slavs drink vodka and likes.

insiders information ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Specialised services of the European Commission are already studying the case ....