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

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

[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.