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Pirate Party Leader: Copyright Laws Ridiculous
smitty777 writes "Rick Falkvinge, better known as the leader for Sweden's Pirate Party, recommends doing away with copyright laws since no one is following them anyway. FTA: '...he uses examples from the buttonmakers guild in 1600s France to justify eliminating the five major parts of copyright law today. The first two are cover duplication and public performance, and piracy today has ruined those. The next two cover rights of the creator to get credit and prevent other performances, satires, remixes, etc they don't like. Falkvinge says giving credit is important, but not worthy of a law. Finally, "neighboring rights" are used by the music industry to block duplication, which Falkvinge rejects.'"
People don't make art just because they need a quick buck.
Any artist of any form worth their salt is doing it because they geinuinely like the artform, and would do so pay or no pay.
This coming from a musician who uploads his music for free download on the internet.
Proper attribution is a part of the moral rights due to an author (and is the only unquestionably valid and supportable aspect of Copyright, IMHO).
Yes.
Your implication is that without public funding or Copyright, creative works would no longer be produced. History demonstrates how ridiculous this is.
Your implication is that without public funding or Copyright, creative works would no longer be produced. History demonstrates how ridiculous this is.
You need a history lesson.
Most of our great works were produced under a system of patronage or direct performance before there existed means of coping.
Even Shakespeare worked for money.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It is a limited time. Pirate people just seem to want that limit to be about zero seconds, producers want as much as possible. Obviously both sides are foaming retards who shouldn't get what they want.
Actually, this comes off the royalties paid to Artists. No wonder many of them do not see a cent of royalties because they are still "in the red".
For the record company it is easy to get a better price than what you see here, but the artist will not see it, the record company lives off the arbitrage.
In the end, many successful modern artist go direct to the Internet and bypass this sinkhole.
So....our civil rights are being forfeited so the music and movie industries to subsidise musicians/movies?
What was the ratio between cost and profit on Avatar again? Somehow I don't think cost comes in to it - they are rolling in it.
This is one thing that confuses me: at what point did casual entertainment become a useful art?
Actually, copyright laws GRANT, not preserve, the exclusive right of copying the work to the copyright holder. More correctly, the copyright laws curtail the rights of everyone but the copyright holder to make copies for a limited time.
This is a considerably different from laws against theft which simply prescribe legal penalties for violating the rights of property that exist independently of those laws.
That is, copyright legislates against a right for a limited time as part of a bargain to cause more works to exist. Property laws support rights that exist independently of the laws.
Given that, the looters are doing a very different thing than the copiers.
It might be a "limited time" if they didn't keep extending it whenever the material of large companies starts to get close said limit. I'm pretty sure the Founding Fathers didn't put this provision in the Constitution so that Mickey Mouse was still "a protected work of art" 200 years from now...
I doubt it. Consider the last few Metallica and Red Hot Chili Pepper albums. They get paid bigger bucks than ever and they aren't even trying.
The best, most unique art I've seen was painted by community college students with good grades and recognition in the gallery being their only motivation.
Being paid for the work only encourages pandering to the preferred styles of those who have enough money to pay $100 or more for a small painting. Most digital graphic designers are almost always slaves to their customers' requirements.
The simple fact is vast quantities of creative works were produced before Copyright existed, and increasing quantities have been (and continue to be) created since without any thought given to Copyright. The implication that Copyright is an essential part of creative works doesn't stand up to even a cursory examination.
The big difference is that historically the larger the effort and cost of the work, the larger the effort and cost to copy it. No one is going to pay to copy the Sistine Chapel. And to copy a painting required a skilled artist and almost as much effort as making the original. Even a book would have to be copied by hand with a fountain pen or typeset by hand with a primitive printing press.
Today, whether it's a book or song written by one person or a $200M movie, they are trivially easy and cheap to copy, and if the creators are not given at least some window of time before copying it were freely allowed, there is no way many of these works (especially movies) would make back the initial expense. Then again, that limitation could probably be more like 2-3 years (at which point most movies have made 95%+ of what they will ever make) instead of 120!
The original purpose of Copyright law was very fair - to allow someone to cover their production expenses and make a living before becoming part of the public domain. Now it's been perverted to allow giant media corporations a near permanent dynastic protection to anything they do...
Because you don't want Disney causing runaway inflation just to keep Mickey out of the public domain.
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all the grandstanding bold wordage in your post, pales in the face of the fact that your senator and congressman doesnt give two shits about what you think.
they wont change anything. even if 99,999% of the society wants it. and there is no way to elect those who will change it. as evidenced by how the very basic first rule of the modern society, habeas corpus - that was there since magna carta - has gone to cinders with the recent legislation those people have produced. let me stress this again :
they dont give shit about what you think and they wont change that law of the land. and you cant elect or be elected without being filthy rich. only 1-3% of society is filthy rich. system works for them regardless of what you desire or wish
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You mean many modern artists who have used previous record company contracts to build a substantial nation-/worldwide fan base. Although there are a few counterexamples (the exceptions that prove the rule), they are fairly few in number.
Does this mean that artists get screwed? Yes and no. The artists may not make a lot (if any) money, but their expenses can be covered and it's a good opportunity, due to the nationwide promotion and touring, even if the recording doesn't pan out. If you are in the right place at the right time with the right amount of business savvy and right mindset, you can parlay this promotion into a successful music career, even if you don't make a lot of money on the record company deal itself.
Even better, the record company may drop you after the first couple albums, freeing you with your (now) national contacts to make decent money afterward (at least more money faster than if you played struggling regional artist for years).
The main issue is to go into the process with your eyes wide open - they will try to screw you. But you can screw back and take any advantages you get. Chances are you won't make money on the record contract, but you can use the contacts and fan base gained in the process to promote your career long afterward and, if you're smart enough, "fail successfully".
That is all.
Actually, the copyright monopoly is a balance between the public's interest in availability of culture, and the SAME public's interest in having new culture created.
Individuals and creators and the copyright industry are not stakeholders in that balance, but beneficiaries of the monopoly (just like Blackwater Security or whatever their name is this week is a beneficiary of United States foreign policy, without that meaning that they get a seat at the drafting table).
I used to respect copyright somewhat, but as I engaged in more creative activities, learned the realities of the economics of copyright. and became aware of the history and philosophy behind copyright, I began to grow more and more opposed to it. TFA points out how it really is an outdated notion using the economic tools that fit in the era of guilds but not today.
As for 'deserving' compensation, that's a laughable idea. Effort itself doesn't deserve compensation. In order for me to make money, I have to be doing something that something is willing to pay me for. Even copyright doesn't give direct compensation for effort, and the sensible principles of US law demonstrated in Feist v. Rural mean that even for getting the copyright monopoly must provide something besides just effort, namely originality.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
An "angel" offering fame and fortune but demanding complete ownership of the artist sounds more like a deal with the devil to me.
Well, the Devil is supposed to be a fallen angel...
Suppose a person had memorized a book or a passage from it, or learned to play a song on their own instrument. Copyright can prevent a person from being free to speak or otherwise offer their own knowledge to a willing listener. There's no more important right a person can have than that.
We all had that right till some asshole came along and invented Intellectual Property. There isn't exactly a natural right to be paid for you work either you know, especially for a REPRODUCTION of your work. We all just play a legal fiction in the name of progress.