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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.'"
I have to make the same point I always make in these articles (by the way, isn't this like the third Pirate Party submission in the last month?)--if you do away with copyright laws, you do away with the GPL. The GPL is a copyright license that requires copyright law to have any legal power over what people do with GPL code. Go ahead and take a look at how many times the term copyright appears in the GPL:
- "'The Program' refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as 'you'. 'Licensees' and 'recipients' may be individuals or organizations."
- "All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met."
- "However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so."
And so on. Without copyright laws, the GPL is powerless.
The purposes of the copyright monpoly vary between legislations, so there is not "one" purpose.
In the United States, it is "to promote the progress and the useful arts", nothing more, nothing less. That is a direct quote from the constitution.
Well, record labels do provide many services to artists, starting from financing them when they're starting up, their professional help, their experience and their marketing channels. This isn't exactly free either. Here is a list of costs for advertising related stuff:
Optional mailing labor for CD $1.00 each
Optional mailing labor for CD+vinyl $1.50 each
Optional BDS tracking $1000
Optional Mediabase tracking $1000
Optional R&R Indicator tracking $1000
Optional Quarterbacking $100 00
College Radio (8 weeks) .$ 2500 .$ 2500 .$ 6000 .$ 2000
Jazz, Blues, Folk, Americana, Piano (up to 100 stations)
CMJ charting for URBAN, metal, electronic, jazz, world, AAA, (250 stations), or non-
charting for alternative
CMJ Top200 Charting (up to 500 stns; incl extra phones) $ 4000
CMJ Top200 Charting (up to 700 stns; incl extra phones
and CMJ core stations)
Regional (non charting, any genre) (50 stations)
Commercial Specialty Mixshow (8 weeks)
National Mixshow (BDS Level - 100 stations) $15,000
Mixshow (up to 70 stations, college & commercial) $ 6000
Dance Mixshow Charting (100 stations) $ 4000
Regional (non-charting) (10 stations) $ 6000
Commercial Regular Rotation for AC, Pop, R&B (8 weeks) .$ 7000 .$20000 .$ 1500/station
75 stations (small markets) $ 4000
150 stations (small markets)
R&R indicator stage 1 (small markets - 10 stations) $15000
R&R indicator stage 2 (medium & small markets - 25 stations).$30000
BDS Promotion (7-10 stations) $15000
FMQB charting (100+ stations, medium and small) $20000
R&R CHR/Pop Indicator (medium and small markets - 50 stations) $40000
Regional (non-charting) (10-15 stations) $8000
FMQB AC tracking (optional) $ 400/mo
High-Level AC Promotion (includes field staff)
(additional)
High-Level Pop/Urban Promotion (includes field staff) $40000
(additional)
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (unrated mkt) $ 200/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (small mkt) $ 500/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (medium mkt)
Commercial Regular Rotation for Rock, Alt, Urban (8 weeks) .$ 15000 .$ 1500/station
R&R indicator stage 1 (small markets - 10 stations)
R&R indicator stage 2 (medium & small markets - 25 stations) $ 30000
Regional (non-charting) (10-15 stations) $8000
BDS Promotion (7-10 stations) $15000
High-Level Promotion Urban (includes field staff) $40000
(additional)
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (unrated mkt) $ 200/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (small mkt) $ 500/station
High-Level station giveaways or commercials (medium mkt)
Commercial Regular Rotation for AAA or Smooth Jazz (8 weeks) .$20,000 .$ 200/mo
50 station special (medium and small) $ 8,000
FMQB / R&R charting (75 stations, all sizes)
Regional (non-charting) (20 stations) $ 2500
FMQB AAA tracking (optional)
High-Level Promotion (includes field staff) $10000
(additional)
Commercial Regular Rotation for Country (8 weeks)
Small market non-charting (50 small stations)
Copyright laws are to preserve the right of copying the work for the copyright holder.
The point of copyrights (and patents) is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for a limited time the exclusive right to use the work(s) to the person(s) who created them as they see fit.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Use the second link.
The original source of this message is the column on Techdirt named It is time to stop pretending to endorse the copyright monopoly. The ITWorld reporter (the first link in the story) muddles the message to some degree, and also introduces heavy bias into the story (see the headers over the comments section, for instance).
The original message is that yes, the copyright monopoly (or four/five monopolies) are ridiculous, but we should stop pretending to support them all while criticizing the draconian laws that are de facto needed to sustain them. IT World muddles this to that we should stop "following" the copyright monopoly laws. That is a different message (which I might have said too, but not in this particular article).
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.
He sounds like a typical politician, making big bold lies that are more descriptive of how he sees the world than how it is.
People do, generally, follow copyright. Millions of people buy books or DVDs or music or software. Those that don't often give reasons like "I wanted to try it before buying it" or "It's not available for sale [where I live]/[in a format I want]" or "I can't afford it anyway", suggesting that they would follow the laws given the right circumstances.
It's good that people generally follow these laws, because the core idea of copyright (that creators have a right to be reimbursed for their hard work) is a good one.
Now, the statement that "Copyright laws are ridiculous" is unambiguously true. Any law that suggests the unauthorized download of MP3s causes trillions of dollars worth of damage to the economy is clearly insane. But suggesting that we should have no protection for creators at all is equally insane. It's just a nice fiery soundbite intended to get his supporters all worked up, so that they'll donate more or participate in get out the vote efforts, etc.
We need copyright reform, and hopefully the pirate parties draw attention to that fact. But copyright abolition is a cure worse than the disease.
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.
Let's not pretend that copyright doesn't have a good purpose. If I create a new product (w/o a patent), it can take time for other people to copy it. They have to reverse engineer it, and figure out how everything works. And their copy might not be as good as my version.
But with books, music, software... It can be copied the day it's released. And every copy is an exact perfect duplicate. My copy is just as good as another persons copy.
And that difference, means it would be nearly impossible to monetize anything except physical products. So copyrights are needed and are important.
BUT that doesn't mean it should be protected for a 100+ years. Is the phone from 1876 as important today as it was then? Is last decades music listened to as much as music that was released last week? Are books from 100 years ago as popular as today's bestsellers? Copyrighted material becomes worth less as time passes.
After 10 years or so, very few copyrighted works are worth more than a fraction of what they were originally.
So set a 10 year copyright. I would even go for 15 years.. but that's starting to become excessive.
Allow any work to be copyrighted for 1 year without paying any fees. Let that be the "copyright from the moment your pen touches the paper".
Beyond Year 1, the cost of extending a copyright should be $0.01 * 2 ^ (Year #).
So, renewing the copyright for Year 2 costs $0.04.
Year 10 is $10.24
Copyright protection for a decade is affordable for anyone, and sometimes cheaper than coffee.
Year 20 is $10,485.76
Year 30 is $10,737,418.24
Year 40 is $10,995,116,277.76
So it provides everybody with a reasonable measure of copyright protection.
It provides corporate entities a way to keep copyrights on things that are very profitable.
It ensures that all works will eventually fall to the public domain.
Why not?
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.
(Nitpicky edit)
"To promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts..."
(/Nitpicky edit)
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Damnit, my strike tags on your "the" got edited out! Now I'M going to get nit-picked.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Well, record labels do provide many services to artists
That's a hell of a way to spin it. Who do you think ultimately pays for the advertising, the studio time, the costs of live shows, etc.?
The customer, like in every business? Of course, record labels also take risk of the band not succeeding and them making a loss.
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?
These sorts of "great works" or "direct performances" remain uncopyable today. You can bring up a picture of the Sistine Chapel on a great big TV if you want, but it pales to insignificance when compared with standing inside it.
Non-sequitur. I never suggested anyone should work for free.
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.
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.
The assumption that no one respects copyright laws is wishful thinking, extrapolating from "none of my friends" or "no one I know" to assume that everyone thinks that way. It's incorrect.
I respect copyright, for one. So do many people I know, including - not coincidentally - a lot of musicians, writers, artists, and actors. Not just as it applies to their own work, but as it applies to others' work. It isn't just faceless corporations on one side of the debate, and people on the other.
I used to ignore copyright... until I started producing works of my own, and realized that the effort that goes into creating a really great song, an entertaining movie, a well-crafted story, or a well-rendered illustration deserves compensation. I also happen to think that copyright terms are ridiculously long, and often too restrictive. But those problems don't negate the worthwhile goal outlined in the US Constitution: to promote the arts by giving creators temporary control over their work.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Copyright law has been largely unified via the Bern convention (USA signed on in the 1980s) and later WIPO.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Unless you reach a level of popularity that borders on lottery-winning luck, you will not see millions from your label contract. The labels may steal from the consumer's pockets, but they are also throttling the money out of the artists naive enough to sign to them.
"Useful Arts" actually refers to patentable handicraft; the consitution's motivation for the patent monopolies. This is the same word as you see in "artisan".
"Progress of Science" refers to knowledge subject to the copyright monopolies.
I was just reading about this in Lessig's book, "Free Culture" today. I can't recommend the book enough!
I never knew Walt Disney's Steamboat Mickey infringed on Steamboat Bill, Jr which infringed on the song Steamboat Bill. Ironic, isn't it? Too bad the madness isn't stopping anytime soon...
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
That's the one thing remaining that the labels actually do, they front the band money much like an angel investor would for a company, but unlike the angel, they demand 100% ownership.
The rest of it isn't actually things the label contributes since 100% of it is charged against the band's paltry royalties. That's how a band can have an album go double platinum and never get a check from the label.
Commercial Regular Rotation for Rock, Alt, Urban (8 weeks) R&R indicator stage 1 (small markets - 10 stations) .$ 15000
R&R indicator stage 2 (medium & small markets - 25 stations) $ 30000
Regional (non-charting) (10-15 stations) $8000
BDS Promotion (7-10 stations) $15000
This looks like it was cut and paste from some sort of official spreadsheet or list. Wasn't there a massive antitrust lawsuit back in the 1970s where the government came down down hard on Pay for Play radio stations? The snippet I pasted above looks to my untrained eye like prices for playing singles. Could you expand on where you got this info, DCTech?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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...
And they only loan the artists a bunch of money and won't give them a cent until it is paid back. link
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.
No one's forcing them to do any of those things. I think we need to get past the idea that if you invest money that you deserve a profit, and any laws that protect that profit are good ones.
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).
Please, I'm begging you: stop trying to negotiate as though the other side was rational and honorable, and would honor any agreement for the long term.
That's how they get us, every time. They pretend that they'll act like human beings, and then they push for more. Every time. Because that's what sociopaths do: they see the pie and they want it all. And they're willing to be patient if it gets them what they want. And make no mistake: what they want is the whole thing, forever, and every one of us paying them, regardless of how much we use or enjoy.
The only way to counter that is to act as irrationally, and in the other direction. It's not that there can't be a sane middle ground; it's that as long as we advocated for a sane middle ground, we got extended and renegotiated into the current situation. If we keep trying to negotiate for a sane middle ground, we're the ones to blame when the next Mickey Mouse preservation act passes. We're the ones to blame when the public domain starts to shrink. We're the ones to blame, until we start acting as sociopathic as corporations, including being so utterly charming that our point of view seems as reasonable as theirs, so the sane middle ground must be the right compromise.
Strange.. it has always been my take that this is waht usually deters budding artists, and it isn't the issue of being paid.
First: many kids in school start learning to draw all on their own. They cover the insides of their binders and notebooks in cute, sometimes inventive gaphiti. Teachers get angry with them for "wasting their time", when in reality the teachers want them to do homework rather than draw.
This denouncement of the activity sends a destructive message that these activities are not worthwhile, at a particularly important point in neural development. Specifically, the creation of neurons for skills honed later in life happens during childhood, with aggressive pruning happening in teenage to young adult years. "Motor memory" and other intrinsic manipulation abilities develop at this time. By distracting from artistic development and interest in childhood, we literally program people to avoid becoming artists, and sabotage the ones that still persist, despite this message and even being penalised for their persistence.
Second: people believe nobody will want their art. Since art supplies are expensive, lessons to "properly" use those supplies are expensive, and the prospect of producing crap that they can't even give away, people avoid dabbling with artwork.
Third: if they produce art, how do they share it? (Art is impotent unless shared with others.) Recent trends with things like deviant art and other internet art communities have made this easier, but so far only a handful of artforms are able to be shared this way. For example, sculpture is particularly hard to share online, unless created in a purely digital form.
So, if you want people to make art, the better way to incentivize them is to stop telling kids that they need to stop seeking artistic output, show people that even horrible dross has aesthetic followings, and to help artists find those followings.
Notice that nowhere was any money involved.
The best thing that money does, is provide a tangible measure of demand for a genre of artwork. That's all.
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...
I'm not sure Avatar is a very good example: I thought I read that it was largely financed by James Cameron himself, so it probably would never have been made if it weren't for him ponying up his own money, and he instead had tried to rely on getting some studio to finance it entirely.
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.
There's the problem. The copyright section from the U.S. Constitution has been quoted many times in this discussion and on others with emphasis added but here's a new emphasis: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Most of today's "rights holders" are not the creators. Instead of quibbling over duration of copyright, just make the rights non-transferable. That would really get fought tooth and nail by big media, but it strikes at the heart of the matter.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Any musician that I have been exposed to in the past few years was through jamendo. I typically browse to the category of music I am interested in listening to and then randomly play a few albums until I find something that I like.
The publicity given by the record label has certainly not reached me
To Share Is To care
Has this even the slightest relation to the things copyright holders go to court these days? (ie: digital copies of of movies)
-- no sig today
Your civil rights? Really, you have a civil right to enjoy someone else's works without paying them?
I assume the GP meant that our rights to privacy, free speech and a fair trial are being sacrificed in the name of hunting "pirates".
The DMCA can be (and is) used to suppress free speech. A corporation can issue a take-down notice to a third-party hosting provider such as YouTube, and since the third party has no interest in contesting the take-down notice in court, the corporation gets its way even if the material is legal.
The proposed SOPA bill is even worse, since it'll allow courts to shut down entire sites if one of their users upload infringning content. Since it's impossible for a site such as YouTube to check every clip users upload, the RIAA and MPAA will have the legal right to shut them down any time the want. The hosting providers will survive only as long as they please the copyright holders and do everything they say, including banning perfectly legal content.
There is no such thing is intellectual property.
I repeat: There is no such thing as intellectual property.
Information ceases to be your sole property the second that it leaves your head, and since the invention of language, once broadcast in any way a piece of information becomes infinitely reproducible, and by their very nature all recordings of any kind, be it written words, pictures, or sounds, are also infinitely reproducible. Improvements in recording and publishing technologies, from woodblock printing, to the phonograph and typewriters, all the way to cassette tapes and networked computers, have made producing and duplicating information increasingly trivial. No form of information is technically scarce.
However, copyright laws and patents achieve their desired ends by attempting to create an artificial scarcity of information through legislative fiat. They in effect commoditize information which is inherently unlike a commodity, giving it scarcity and therefore market value. In the process of doing this however, much of the information's value is lost because its maximum potential utility is curtailed by limiting the number of parties which can use it, and by giving exclusive rights to a certain party over who can retain, utilize, and duplicate a piece of information, information access is effectively monopolized.
This is harmful to the value of information and those who use it, the creation of privileged monopolies over pieces of information practically ensures that they will be abused, and it fails to address the original problem of compensating authors. On the other hand, it confers extraordinary rights and privileges to rights holders who own copyrights and patents, frequently for information which was never created by them personally. Additionally, how is it just that someone should continue receiving compensation for work that they are no longer performing? How is it just that someone should be compensated for work that they never did? The absurdities of patent and copyright law immediately begin compounding on one another after even cursory examination.
Having said that, the act of producing original information and original records of that information can be readily commoditized. It is scarce - only so many people can produce a desired piece of information or a desired record, and from them only so many hours of work can be extracted. It is valuable - the production of new information benefits society, and maximally benefits society when information can be freely utilized by any party. Intellectual property is imaginary, but intellectual labor is a very real service which is the sole property of the intellectual laborer. Its value can be decided, it can be quantified, and it can be sold. Ensuring that intellectual laborers are adequately compensated for their work is of paramount importance to society.
In the case of patentable products which can be produced by industry, or for the processes used to create those products, wherever a patent is applicable, the intellectual laborers working for an industrial company or consortium of companies should negotiate their own pay. If they don't get paid enough, they don't produce work. Auctioning of services, prize competitions, and so on could be used to compensate the inventors for the production of inventions alongside regular contracts. As for the companies themselves, which use the monopolization of inventions to protect themselves from competition, any one industrial company does not have unlimited resources and is therefore incapable of using or producing every available invention. Those companies will still be tasked with producing products as efficiently and effectively as possible, without the purely artificial constraint of copyrights and patents applying to them. They will still have to decide how to best reach the market. The competition will simply be more fierce, and this is entirely desirable.
In the case of cultural artifacts and the recorded arts which can be copyrighted, the above still applies, and