b. Disclosure of APIs, Communications Interfaces and Technical Information. Microsoft shall disclose to ISVs, IHVs, and OEMs in a Timely Manner, in whatever media Microsoft disseminates such information to its own personnel, all APIs, Technical Information and Communications Interfaces that Microsoft employs to enable -
i. Microsoft applications to interoperate with Microsoft Platform Software installed on the same Personal Computer, or
ii. a Microsoft Middleware Product to interoperate with Windows Operating System software (or Middleware distributed with such Operating System) installed on the same Personal Computer, or
iii. any Microsoft software installed on one computer (including but not limited to server Operating Systems and operating systems for handheld devices) to interoperate with a Windows Operating System (or Middleware distributed with such Operating System) installed on a Personal Computer.
To facilitate compliance, and monitoring of compliance, with the foregoing, Microsoft shall create a secure facility where qualified representatives of OEMs, ISVs, and IHVs shall be permitted to study, interrogate and interact with relevant and necessary portions of the source code and any related documentation of Microsoft Platform Software for the sole purpose of enabling their products to interoperate effectively with Microsoft Platform Software (including exercising any of the options in section 3.a.iii).
Notably missing is any provision to allow free software to compete on even grounds with MS and the rest of the industry. At least, that's how *I* interpret this. Free software teams visiting Redmond as ISVs? It'd certainly be interesting, but I don't think they're going to let it happen.
Actually, in copyright law (unlike patent law), if two people independently come up with the same work then both are granted copyright over it (and it does happen, although infrequently. Little stuff like Haiku or part of the riff from Enter Sandman (if you'll remember, there was a suit over that a bit more than a year ago)). Your objection doesn't really apply to copyright-like privilege; only patent-like.
The objection only applies to "intellectual property" anyway (rather than public goods in general). With other public goods, such as fireworks displays or efforts to remove pollution from the environment, they simply have no application.
IP is unique in that a task can be repeated without causing any more benefit than the first instance of the task. The reason copyright works the way it does is that a second independent author isn't actually gaining any benefit from the first author, and people who buy the works of the second aren't either.
So you see the problems with your objection. It doesn't actually apply to most public goods, and even for the ones to which it does apply, it is predicated on a false understanding of copyright law, and a false understanding of the question (as what I said was, monopoly over the *benefit* of the public good. Clearly the second independent author does not actually benefit from the actions of the first, but rather benefits from similar actions performed by himself).
I still see your position, if carried out to consistency, mandating (for instance) that it be illegal to watch a fireworks display without permission from the creator.
I can't continue this, if you keep ignoring half of my points, including the most important and repeated ones. Rather than answer the minor points you bothered to address, I will restate my main points, leaving you nothing else to answer.
There appears to be no relevant difference between authorship and other public goods. You have certainly had opportunity to point one out, but have failed. Applying copyright-like treatment to other public goods shows its absurdity as a right applying to all public goods, as opposed to an expedient applying to public goods only when it is in the interests of society.
If there is some reason people should be believed to have a right to compensation for public goods, you have not listed it. There are instances of public goods where we both agree that people should not have a right to compensation; you have not explained the basis for your inconsistency. If there is some reason people should be believed to have a right to monopoly over the benefits of their public good, you have not listed it. There are instances of public goods where we both agree that people should not be able to monopolize the benefits; you have not explained the basis for your inconsistency there either.
Please:
Explain the criteria for deciding whether a public good should be compensated by government through forced taxation and direct payment.
Explain the criteria for deciding whether the benefits of a public good should be monopolized by the author.
My contention, as I hope you realize, is that the criteria in both cases is whether society will benefit from such actions. A consistent individualist, it seems to me, could support neither.
> this "street performer" thing you are so fond of
What makes you think I'm "fond of" it? I never even mentioned it, except once -- in reply to your original mention of it.
> BUt IMO it works pretty well for radio stations.
It's not *used* for radio stations. Radio stations are based on advertisements, who pay based on ratings.
> Maybe for upper/middle class Americans who live near the city, yes. For most people, it won't be.
No, that's where it ALREADY is. In any case, tracking disc sales would be exactly as accurate as the current system, which is based on tracking disc sales. You really have no basis for criticism on the ability to track. Either way, copying from friends is not the most cost effective way to obtain music, if we take licensing out of the equation.
> Simply put, NONSENSE. Anyone can write a review of the article that the scientist publishes.
I know that. Man, you need to pay attention to the context here (second time you've forgotten it after a few levels of quoting). I know that monopoly would not be granted to the scientist over his discovery. The point is that your previous justification of copyright applies also to the discovery. In order for you to be consistent, you must support the ability of the scientist to prevent other people to use his discovery for their own benefit.
> Copyright does not enable him to extort a damn thing.
Let me emphasize: I never said it would. Only that, from your previous statements, one must conclude that he *should* be able to extort whatever he chooses, and that it is a violation of his rights for someone not to allow him to do so.
> You could argue that all rules should only be made for the benefit of society and noone has any rights beyond that. And maybe that's good enough for the average Marxist, or utilitarian ( who are both concerned primarily with the "good of society", but measure this in different ways ) The problem with this is that it sets the scene for a "tyranny of the majority". So I don't really agree with your point of view. The fact that something might seem "better for society" is not in itself a justification.
If not the good of society, what is the justification of copyright? If we are to value individual rights above all, we should not have a copyright system at all. Nor should we encourage any public goods with money from taxation. The only reason copyright has to exist is its benefit to society; when that reason no longer exists, no reason is left. Copyright is a type of subsidy, granted by government, to encourage a public good for the good of society. If you are opposed to government subsidy meant to benefit society, it is absurd of you to support copyright.
> In the example you mention ( a scientific discovery ) there are several differences.
WTF? Are you just trying to avoid answering the question? WHAT is the difference? How many times do I have to repeat the question before you answer it? This is the fourth time!
> > However, they would have access to orders of magnitude more information. > There are already public libraries and radio shows. I doubt that it would make a whole lot of difference.
Public libraries are very limited. Radio even more.
> > A person could have every piece of music ever recorded in his personal collection. > (a) The utility of this would be somewhat limited. > (b) Not really true anyway, because you'd still need to pay for media and distribution.
(a) I think you're wrong. I think people would listen to a lot of music that they wouldn't otherwise. I know of many people who listen to less music because more is unaffordable.
(b) The infrastructure that will be in place in one or two years will be capable of streaming music into homes for a low monthly fee. This infrastructure would be implemented much faster and would be cheaper if there were free market competition in the area of music-content delivery, but it's being built for other reasons anyway. Already portable mp3 players exist, in spite of the low availability of music in mp3 form (one has to rip music oneself -- my personal experience with that is that older discs tend not to rip successfully or download, typically over a very inconvenient modem line). If there were competition in music-content delivery, these would be far more popular, available, and affordable.
And it's not just music; all copying costs are continually decreasing. The cost of reproducing a book will soon be negligible, as display technology makes e-book readers as pleasing to the eye as paper (they're already somewhat popular simply for being convenient. They would be much more popular if the amount of books available electronically was not so small).
> For example, how many people would be prepared to write down on their tax form that they purchased 100 pornographic videos last year ? Basically, what this idea says is "give up your right to privacy or we'll retrench your favourite artist".
But that problem doesn't apply when the information is anonymous. For example, if I buy a porno from wildsex.com, there may be a way for me to make this anonymous, or there may not. But the fact that a transfer has been made is already impossible for me to disguise; wildsex.com will know it no matter what I do. Now, if I were able to get my porn on PPV, except without the payment part, and the cable company were to report the number of porno viewings to the government -- information it already makes available to the publisher of the porno, and which the publisher of the porno can make available publically -- I don't see how I could claim my privacy had been violated. The theory behind copyright is that the author is notified every time a copy is made. The theory behind my unnamed plan is that the government is notified every time a copy is made. I don't see any appreciable difference, from a privacy standpoint. In either case, the only way to keep hidden the fact that an anonymous person made a purchase of pornography is to not purchase pornography. In either case, my secrecy is entirely in the hands of the company from whom I receive my porno.
It's a possibility that people would trade porn among themselves, even if all the would-be-copyrighted porn was freely available. That wouldn't be trackable. But I don't think this would happen more without copyright than it would with copyright. With copyright, such actions are actually profitable; without it, they are merely paranoid, more costly, and, though they would be more convenient without copyright than they are now, would be more inconvenient than going through other channels either way.
That's assuming people don't volunteer their watching habits (as they do now and is the primary basis of television and radio), and that we must resort to tracking copying as we do now in other media. But I don't consider this likely. It'd be in people's interests to volunteer their watching habits to the government just as it is right now to volunteer them to Nielson; and it'd be in the producers interests to encourage people to volunteer it.
> BTW, with the inventor
What inventor?
> In the example with the scientist, typically, they will be funded by a university. This works well for scientists. It also works well for musicians, some of whom are also publically funded ( again, by universities ). However, I don't see why this model need be practised to the exclusion of the copyright system.
First of all, the scientist has been not-hired for a reason -- most musicians make music without being hired to make it, yet demand that others (who agreed to nothing) to pay them or not own copies. (If he was hired by someone, then he would be entitled to payment; it would instead be his employer who would not be). And the problem with allowing the scientist to copyright his discovery is that it will increase the number of people who will be bald and have scales on their faces. It is better for society to have use of the discovery publically available. It is better than not for the scientist for him to be able to extort a price based on the utility of his discovery (rather than the cost), but he is in no way entitled to this. It is better than nothing for the scientist to be reimbursed for the cost (including time) of making the discovery, but he is also in no way entitled to that. It is better for society to reimburse him in some way, to encourage such things, but that doesn't at all lead to the conclusion that he is entitled to reimbursement.
By the way, I'm not saying that copyright must be excluded, I'm just saying it should.
It appears that you agree that there is no difference between authorship and other public goods (as you have listed none). This seems to me to lead to the conclusion that authorship should be encouraged by society by whatever means is most beneficial to society, and that authors have no rights beyond that. Do you agree?
> > If you think my undercutting your prices and beating you in business is "dispossessing" you, then.. well.. then your comments have no place in a capitalist society;) > You are not competing fairly !
So? I'm still not dispossessing you of it; I'm possessing myself of it. Now you ask me "you don't see a problem with this?" Whether or not I see a *problem* with it is a totally different question than whether I see it as *dispossession*.
> But you'll have one hell of a hard time explaining to the American people why it's in their best interests to pay more taxes.
Actually, the economics of it are simple enough for everyone to understand. Let's say that authors are, in total, payed the same under the new system as they are now. In that case, people would, on average, spend the same amount of money. However, they would have access to orders of magnitude more information. A person could have every piece of music ever recorded in his personal collection. All for, on average, the same amount of money as is being payed for information right now. Now let's say that authors are payed twice as much. Twice as much money, for thousands of times more information. What a rip off, right? Now, if the biggest artists recieved half as much money as they do now, and that money was used to give, in greater proportions, money to smaller artists, that would encourage the creation of works even more than currently. Not only more access to music, but more music actually being in existence due to increased incentive -- all for the same amount of money as is being payed now. All that, plus greater opportunity for semi-popular authors who can't quite live exclusively off royalties. All for paying in taxes what is currently being payed already. The public may not be convinced to do away with copyright and implement this system, but it *won't* be because they don't think it would be a good value. Anyone can see that it would.
> And as such, obviously problematic.
Once again, problems which are impossible for me to address, as you failed to list any of them.
The music industry already allows radio to exist, despite not having complete accuracy in either number of listeners or number of times played per song. Payment from advertisers to television producers is based entirely on usage, yet there is still plenty of incentive to produce shows. And these are all hacked-on systems without any support from the government or the manufacturers of media equipment. And future technology is only going to make things easier. There's no reason to believe people would not cooperate, and cooperation is already enough to yield results in well-funded fields such as television. As current ratings systems show, universal cooperation is not necessary. So, I have no idea what your objections are. If you want me to address them, you're simply going to have to tell me what they are.
> > Right, and in the face of that sort of competition, CD's would obviously become much cheaper than they are now. > As I said, I don't think that kind of competition is fair, because it completely ignores the fact that the artists contribution, and only recompenses distributors.
That makes absolutely no sense in context. I was talking about using music sales to track music popularity, and using that data to pay artists out of the public treasury. So what the hell are you talking about?
Let me list for you another public good, after which I will again ask you (as you did not answer before) what the difference is between authorship and other public goods. Let's say I'm a scientist, and for some personal reason (i.e. nobody hired me to do it) I do some research on some common commodity, investing a great deal of time and money in this research. In the end, I discover that a chemical in said commodity causes female baldness and facial scales. As it appears to me, you would have neither users nor manufacturers of said commodity allowed to use my discovery for their own personal benefit, until they pay me a price of my choosing. I have met your criteria -- I have done work to make the discovery. My effort clearly has value (i.e. utility, as opposed to exchange-value) and should, by your criteria, therefore be compensated. The problem with allowing people to freely use this discovery for their own gain is that it assigns zero economic worth to the discovery and research process -- the only way to be compensed is by distribution (except for the other ways, which all have obvious problems (too obvious to list)). Am I correct in my characterization of your position on such a discovery?
And what is the difference between authorship and other public goods?
Uhh, no. No matter how many times I copy it, you still have the idea. You can still use it. If you think my undercutting your prices and beating you in business is "dispossessing" you, then.. well.. then your comments have no place in a capitalist society;)
> Ah yes, freeloader friendly. Sure to be popular on slashdot because you get something for nothing.
Taxes are not "nothing".
> Someone can just burn "warez" copies that are just as good sound-quality wise.
Right, and in the face of that sort of competition, CD's would obviously become much cheaper than they are now. It costs a lot less to mass produce CD's than it does to burn them from your home, just like it costs a lot less to mass produce chairs than it does to build them yourself from materials from homedepot. There aren't usually patents on chairs, but people still don't build their own. Another case in point: cheapbytes.com. Of course, portable discs may be obsoleted altogether by rewritable storage devices or streaming over broadband, but there are ways to track those as well. Indeed, as you point out those can be tracked with much greater accuracy; actual listening can be tracked.
> As for this idea of tracking devices, this idea is objectionable from a privacy standpoint.
Well, it could obviously be voluntary. Think something like Nielson, only with a larger sample size (or not. If Nielson's samples are enough for reasonable accuracy, then there you go. However, technology allowing, a 100% sample size would obviously be ideal).
> My creation is being widely used but I'm not getting payed. Does this not seem unjust?
That's the classic public goods problem. Unfair as it may be, it is not something I would call unjust, for the reason that you had the option of expending effort on something that is *not* a public good instead. That a person chose to take action that would have a beneficial effect on people with no obligation to pay him is not sufficient to show that he has a *right* to payment, even though it would be fair for him to be payed. And, IMO, the fairness ends when payment exceeds cost anyway. But that's another discussion.
If I plant some trees and, through various methods, cut my CO2 emissions in half thus benefitting the entire world, do I have a *right* to payment? In the US, I can recieve payment at least for some of those methods, in the form of tax breaks, but do I have a *right* to those tax breaks, or are those merely a privilege offered by the government to people for acting in a sociable manner? I contend the latter. Why is authorship any different from other public goods?
Ironic that you use this word. Copying something of yours doesn't dispossess you of it.
> A software license is also a type of contract. Like money, copying restrictions are necessary to make the contract work.
You're dodging the point about the money analogy not being applicable, but in any case, a software license only applies to people who agree to it.
> I think this says it all. You want to dispossess the authors of their creative work and give it back to the "comrades".
Whom are you quoting? I never said "comrades". Why is it that this "Marxist rhetoric" has no place in this discussion? You fail to explain anything, apparently opting instead for the ad hominem innuendo approach. Why don't you explain exactly why what I specifically said "has no place" here?
> The SEC regulations are also put their by "acts of government", but this does not mean that they should not be there.
I never said that copyright should not exist because it is an act of government. I merely said that it is an act of government; one intended to solve the public goods problem of authorship.
> I would ask you what you propose in the place of the copyright system.
Rather than answer you here, I'll direct you to my previous post, here.
> On the other hand, if neither is, then you are still wrong, because they are not "in a vacuum" -- the copyrighted work is there as well.
As a matter of fact, you are incorrect. The copyrighted work is a Haiku, and one of the adults has memorized it.
> How do we decide who gets funding ?
Based on usage.
> There are definitely problems using this model as a replacement for the copyright system
> I am not clear on how theft always requires force.
Whatever. The point is that government-enforced monopolies require a force of a different kind than defensive. They require force taken against a peaceful action for the sole reason that it will attract consumers.
> > Copy protection is unprecidented. > I am not clear on what you mean by this.
You tried to compare copyright to property rights. But you can't. They're nothing similar. You seem to agree that they are unprecidented, and that therefore your comparison was invalid, so I won't go on.
> > It's one thing to protect an asset from being taken, and quite another to prevent it from being copied. > You could say the same about money. The problem is that copying money degrades the currency.
You're incorrect. The problem is that copied money can be fraudulantly passed off as money certified by the government. Money is, really, a type of contract. The reason it can't be copied is that one cannot sign another's name to a contract. It has nothing to do with the government owning the information contained on the money. It's not a valid comparison. See the other fellow's post below. I'm shocked that so many people use this example as support of copyright. It's a totally different situation! Like I said, copyright is unprecidented. Or at least, an unprecidented solution to the common publics good problem.
> > Well, government-enforced monopoly is not a free market. > The government have a monopoly on printing dollar bills, so you could equally argue that this is not a "free market".
When the government does have a monopoly on coining currency, that *ISN't* a free market. You obviously haven't been keeping up with your anarchist literature... Government monopoly on currency has been a somewhat significant issue historically.
> The fact that you recognise creative works ( or more precisely, the right to control a creative work ) as having an owner does not violate the definition of free market.
Yes, it does. It limits what two consenting adults can do alone in a vacuum. That's a violation of free market.
> > Why would they? If the government is granting someone privilege, why would they voluntarily surrender it? > At least we agree that the copyright abolitionists are primarily trying to make life less profitable for the authors of creative works.
What are you, a 3rd grader? Obviously you know that the purpose of copyright abolition is to make information more freely accessible to people. The less profitable nature of the creation of information is merely a side-effect. Why would I want authors to make less profits?
> I see. So is your proposed solution in this instance "government" ?
No, my proposal is that the current solution in place is an action of government, in spite of the fact that it is not treated as such by people such as you.
> I think someone else mentioned something like "go move to Havana and listen to the state orchestra" -- kind of blunt, but you get the idea, huh ?
Actually, I don't. What are you trying to say? That if I don't like the laws, I should move? Well, how about if I don't like the laws, I'll just ignore them. If you don't like that, move somewhere they can enforce the laws. See how annoying and stupid that argument is? It's an appeal to might. It doesn't at all show that your point is valid, and it's kind of out of place since, at the time, *I* have the might.
> The problem is that with creative works, we really need some kind of market place, so that consumers can vote, instead of the government dictating the terms to consumers.
That's exactly like something I proposed earlier in this thread (RMS's suggestion)! Go look it up. Maybe you'll be pleased.
> The problem is that with creative works, we really need some kind of market place, so that consumers can vote, instead of the government dictating the terms to consumers. In some sense, the idea of having the government directly control creative content is more of a violation of free market principles
Well, I agree that taxation and government subsidies are violations of the free market. However, if we want a straight free market, we won't have subsidies OR copyrights, which are actually a type of subsidy. If we don't, we have to choose the best solution on its merits, not on rights. Of course I don't think that we should have "the government directly control creative content". In fact, I was rather miffed when government subsidies to art were stripped in NYC a couple months back for content... But we do have protections against such things. It did work out, in the end. I don't see how extending the realm of government subsidies of the arts to popular music would create any more of a problem. The problem with the copyright form of government subsidy is simply that it is not the most beneficial to society.
Anyway, I'd *much* rather have copyright than some system based on taxation, because a system based on taxes will *never* support the kind of variety we enjoy today. The religious right will veto Trent Reznor's albums because they encourage gratuitous sex. Rap albums will get no funding, because some rap star says something misogynistic.
Uhh, the system I suggested would be based on usages, not democracy. I agree that the straw man you suggest would be worse than copyright.
Technology can't make copyright infringement ubiquitous, any more than it makes burglary ubiquitous.
What major advances have there been in burglary technology!? None that *I* know of. At least, none on the scale of copying technology, and none like the copying technology we can reasonably predict will soon exist (like broadband in the home, cheap storage through giant hard drives and new types of WORM media, freenet, etc).
The price of copying for people with the latest greatest tech is now close to zero. The price of burglary, though not easily quantified, is certainly large. Burglary entails all sorts of risks, like being caught, being shot, or not being able to sell your stolen goods. It also has a cost, in time, effort, and skill. Copying has none of these things. What are you talking about?
The very notion of property requires the use of force.
Not really. It only requires the prevention of force. Of course, the prevention of force generally must be done via force. But no force other than the prevention of force is required for private ownership of property. This is not the case for copyright.
(This is, of course, a broad definition of force that includes the threat of force).
The fact that force must be used to protect the copyright holder does not mean that there is somehow something "wrong" with copyrights.
I never said it did. Why are you quoting the word "wrong"? I never called it "wrong" at all -- whom are you quoting??
As for "nothing wrong with circumventing people's means to compensation", well I don't see how it's substantially different from theft.
Well, the difference is that theft harms the person who is robbed, whereas copyright infringement merely fails to benefit the person whose copyright is infringed.
I don't see how copyrights are an obstruction to a "free market". You could use the same reasoning to argue that laws forbidding counterfeiting are somehow an "obstruction" to the free market.
Counterfeiting is really only objectionable so long as it is used for purposes of fraud. Laws against actual counterfeiting (if they exist; I'm not sure) are meant to prevent fraud through the use of counterfeit bills, much like laws against gun ownership are meant to prevent murder through the use of guns. But it's easy to see that there's nothing wrong with either in themselves, and if the motive behind gun control was economic, you could say it was a violation of the free market.
The fact that an asset is intangible does not mean that the law should not recognise and protect it.
Copy protection is unprecidented. PROPERTY protection entails *guaranteeing a person rights to his property*, not guaranteeing his ability to monopolize reproduction of his property. It's one thing to protect an asset from being taken, and quite another to prevent it from being copied. It doesn't fit into the category of property in the traditional sense. However, it *does* fit into the category of public goods in the general sense.
It seems that some musicians survive well in the free market
Well, government-enforced monopoly is not a free market. Metallica's unorthodox use of the word aside, music in general is not a commodity, but recordings are. There *could* be competition in the sale of these commodities, but the government prevents that.
It seems that some musicians survive well in the free market -- consumers are certainly free to boycott bands that don't use the "street performer protocol", but it seems that consumers are voting for the copyright system in droves, with their wallets.
Uhm, what? That's exactly the effect of violations of a free market. They give an advantage to someone. Thus, everyone votes with their wallets for the person who is violating the free market. For instance, let's say the government granted a certain publisher copyright arbitrarily (i.e. without having permission from the author), like governments used to do. People would vote with their wallets for that publisher, because all the other publishers have the government-created disadvantage of being illegal. Another example is slavery. People will vote with their wallets for slavery, because slave-labor is incredibly cheap, and therefore offers a competitive advantage over payed labor. Violations of the free market that *don't* give someone special privilege don't matter, and they don't exist because nobody bothers to lobby for them. It's when people start to vote with their dollars that there is a problem.
By the way, I am very glad you raised the notion of free markets. Tell me this -- if the "street performer" thing and all these other freeloader-friendly models are really superior to the copyright model, why haven't they prevailed, when the current law allows copyrights and other models to co-exist ?
Why would they? If the government is granting someone privilege, why would they voluntarily surrender it? Why would people not voluntarily surrendering government privilege be evidence that the government should continue granting privilege? I don't follow you at all. Anyway, copyright hasn't yet existed anywhere near as long as slavery. I'm sure we agree that slavery is bad -- why don't you tell me why slavery prevailed for so long?
Copyrighted works are not really "information". And I don't see why they are a "public good". I see this point of view as one step away from simply declaring that "property is a public good".
Uhm, but declaring "property is a public good" makes no sense. You obviously don't know what the term "public good" means, so let me explain. A public good is something that, in a free market, is altrustic. They are things that, while they may benefit me, also benefit other people (i.e. the public) equally, and therefore are not in my own personal self-interest, if they cost me anything. An example is clean air. It benefits everyone -- including me -- for me to produce my product in an environmentally-safe way. But it benefits everyone else equally, and costs only me. So, depending on the degree of cost and the degree of benefit, it's often in my self-interest to pollute. Another example is policing. If I hire someone to police my block, that will protect me. But it will also protect my neighbors. If there's really a need for extra policing, it's in my best interests not to pay for a guard and hope someone else in the neighborhood does. If everyone on the block combines to form a pool to pay a guard together, it's in my best interests not to join -- they'll pay either way, and I'll get the service either way. Etc. Information fits well into that category. It's a common problem, and the usual solution is government. But nobody looks at other public goods situations as if rights are involved. Information is just another public good, and copyright is one way of fulfilling it -- a bad way, IMO, but that's really a separate issue from whether or not it is merely a tool to encourage public goods, or a right.
Let's not pretend for a moment that there is anything "peaceful" about what is in fact a large scale attempt to circumvent the artists primary means of compensation.
There's nothing in principle wrong with circumventing peoples' means of compensation -- especially when those means require the use of force. Not that I support unbridled capitalism, but to a certain extent we can say that if your occupation couldn't support you on a free market, you have no place complaining when it fails to support you. Information is a public good. There are ways for the state to encourage or compensate those, but nobody has a *right* to compensation for one, unless there was some agreement made beforehand.
Analogies don't usually prove anything, but they often can provide a reductio ad absurdum for principles used to reach a conclusion. The principle that people have a natural right to be compensated for their effort, even from people who wouldn't buy it on a free market, is bunk. I can give a host of examples where you would agree that it is not, and I've already given several in this thread, including the one in my first post. If there is some other principle by which Metallica can be said to be owed compensation for its music, it has yet to be stated.
Sure, the law is not a moral absolute, but "information wants to be free" is certainly not a moral absolute either
When did I ever say "information wants to be free"?
> Copyright does not limit who can access information
I don't think you understood my meaning. When copyright is in place, fewer people will be able to access any given piece of information than would if copyright were not in place.
> You cannot walk into a court of law for a copyright violation and say to the judge, "Artists don't have that right!".
I never said you couldn't, but it's not relevant. You couldn't walk into a court of law 300 years ago as a slave and say "but slave-owners don't have that right!" either, but it doesn't mean the argument is invalid. The judge's opinion is of no more value than the opinion of anyone else.
So, to sum it up, who should we listen to about rights? You, who wants to plant your garden and then make a much-failed copyright example out of it, or the law, under which the rest of our social organization lives and functions? I'll listen the law.. not to a IP thief.
First of all, if you want to listen to the law, at least listen to it correctly -- copyright infringement is not considered theft by law.
You cannot appeal to the law in a debate about what the law should be, i.e. you cannot appeal to the status quo. If copyright is to be considered a right only because it is a law, then it makes no sense to say that copyright should be a law because it is a right. That is circular, and its validity leads to the conclusion that no law should ever be changed. Your definition of "right" is clearly not what was meant by the previous people who defended copyright -- at least if we interpret their arguments in a way that makes them coherent.
And please, don't just say my analogy is "much-failed". You haven't explained *why* it is a failure. What if I said nothing about your post except that your argument was "much-failed"? What could that demonstrate? Even if I had a valid criticism, how could you respond to that blanket statement?
Sure you can make a garden that you don't want people to stand on your grass and look at it with out paying. Sure you can't stop them from looking from the street. You can stop them from digging it up, taking it to the landscapers, getting a copy of it made, and throwing it back into your yard more or less where it was. Just because something is easy to copy, doesn't necessarily make it information.
You're over-extending the analogy. It causes no physical harm to Metallica's originals for me to make copies of their albums. What you describe is analogous to breaking into Metallica's house, stealing their recordings, copying them, and returning them. A better analogy for you to use is taking pictures of my garden, and then planting similar gardens elsewhere. However, actually copying gardens is impossible. The analogy was intended to give an example of a public good which nobody can claim a right to restrict the enjoyment of.
What reason is there to restrict copying of my garden, other than the physical harm it causes? If my garden could be copied perfectly without any harm to me -- as is the case with music -- why would that be disallowed? You see, your argument is based on an over-extension of the analogy
Information is how something is done, a description of it, the wording used, etc. Information is not the product it refers to (such as a reading of a particular piece of poetry) in my book.
You may not consider the information contained in recordings to be information*, but it's a trifle. I do. The solution for you is simple: whenever you see me use the word "information", instead of saying that word in your head, say to yourself the phrase "information, including that on recordings".
* I wish I knew of another term for the information contained on a music CD, instead of "information contained in recordings", but I know of no such word. I understand that I'm implicitly assuming my own correctness, but it is mandated by the language, or at least the limit of my knowledge about it.
How about this: Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we want musicians to be able to be professionals; that we want it to be possible to earn a living producing music. If we accept this premise, then we must resolve the question of how they are to get paid. Before you dismiss copyright law, please suggest an alternative.
The burden of proof? Oy. Well, I have always liked the alternative suggested by RMS. There are two parts of the equation; the source of income, and the decision about where the income should go. For the first, a few options are: taxes on the hardware used to play music (stereos, blank cds, etc), taxes on the sale of music, taxes on radio, and taxes in general. (The latter three, perhaps, would not exist in the way they do now without copyright, and I do not advocate any of them personally. I would be happy with general taxes being the source).
The other part (deciding who gets payed what) is the more difficult. Right now, each artist gets payed a certain amount for each record bought. This could be continued, but that would require a lot of taxes. The more reasonable solution (again not original from me) is to devise a sliding scale, (the specifics of which would be devised after some research on the matter). This would mean more money for less popular artists, and still no artists whose recordings remained fairly popular would starve. Performances would still be a source of income. I don't see a moral problem with a sliding scale, because copyright here is an expedient, not a right (you obviously don't recognize the difference, but what can I say? That is a deeper philosophical disagreement than can be resolved on slashdot). And besides, the cost to the artist of producing 100M albums is the same as the cost of producing 100K (capitalism may be an expedient itself, but most people agree when it comes to specific examples that cost, if not the limit of price, should at least be the basis of it).
This raises the problem of accounting for what albums people listen to, if they are mainly produced by individuals copying themselves. But that problem could be solved several ways, and could actually produce better results than the accounting we have now. Music players (both hardware and software) could track listening habits and send out the information (rather than taxing music hardware, perhaps requiring it to have this capability) -- and tracking information use could provide a much more fair representation of artists' popularity than their album sales do now. Or people could list albums they got in the last year on their income tax forms (same as the census works). If serious bandwidth becomes ubiquitous, people could get all their music from central servers, either streaming (allowing listening to be tracked) or saved (allowing as much information to be gathered as is now). Lots of other methods could be devised.
Another system I saw suggested on slashdot was the "street performer protocol". http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/ index.html... but I don't think this could work for smaller artists, so I don't advocate it.
Keeping copyright, but having it only apply for a short duration -- say five years for music, but the duration depending on the norms of the specific industry (e.g. music, software, novels, text books, reference). This depends on the technical feasibility of enforcing copyright, which is soon to disappear, so I don't advocate it either, at least long term.
Someone else here on slashdot also suggested that the cost of music production could be greatly reduced by reducing the editing done of music. This could circumvent a lot of the need for capital in music production. One take in the studio costs a fifth as much as five, after all. People could even skip the studio's altogether and record live shows.
Also, the lack of any system at all is an alternative system. My estimation is that we will be plunged into this system once technology makes copyright infringement as ubiquitous as speed limit violation. If the amount of information produced suffers too much, some other system will be devised. If not, well then everything will work out, just like it did before copyright. I don't think I hold any burden of proof to show that this would be worse than copyright -- copyright is action that requires continual expenditure of resources and violation of rights. The burden, therefore, lies with you. However, I didn't really want to turn this into a debate over whether there should be copyright. I just wanted to explain why I don't think copyright monopoly is a right rather than a privilege granted for expediency.
I apologize for the form of this post; there's too much information here for me to have the time to present well. I'm sure I've come off as rambling, but at least I've let you know that I do have an alternative that allows artists to be payed. Not as much, of course, but I think that's OK. I don't think we're going to reach agreement here, because you don't seem to hold any regard for the notion of innate (as opposed to government-created) rights, or the idea of low information availability as a great evil. These are certainly debatable issues, but ones I'd rather not get into here.
> However, we *DID* give the artists the right to > withhold music.
I thought I dealt with the law-is-authority-on-rights argument in my post. Just because the democratic government says so, don't make it so. And, really, move to another country? Think of a government agent as a regular person with no authority. Could he justify actions with that excuse? Could he come into your house and take your property (calling it taxation) and then say "if you don't like it, move to another house"? No, of course not. He's going to need a much better argument for taxes than that. And so it is with copyright.
Besides, our government has decided that our government is not an authority on rights, but rather that it only does its best at *discovering* rights, which are pre-existing and properties of the natural universe. It even has lots of "checks and balances" intended to weed out mistakes at this process of discovery. So, even if you think government is authority, you must hold that laws are not authority on rights.
> You talk about "peacefully sharing information > that will result in greater profits". First off, > you're making a big assumption.
What assumption? I think my language there was unclear. Just to reduce confusion, I will restate that sentence in a more specific manner. What I meant to say was, "... people feel that artists have a right to restrict people from peacefully sharing information if that restriction will result in greater profit for those artists".
If you knew that's what I meant, then I don't know what to say. I don't know to what assumption you refer.
> Secondly, *IT IS > NOT YOUR INFORMATION TO SHARE*.
Your only basis for this is an appeal to the law. But I find appeals to the law unconvincing, for reasons previously stated (and as yet unanswered).
> It is actually a crime to attempt to see past a > visual barricade on public property.
Really, you shouldn't bother refuting a factual error in an analogy when there are dozens of other fitting analogies without that error. I'm sure you can think of a public good that one can do yet from which one cannot restrict people from benefitting. An example is planting trees to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. This benefits everyone, but you can't charge people for it. Another, more similar to my original example, is a fireworks display. You can charge admission on a park, but you can't use the law to restrict people from watching it from outside the parks' boundries. Many other public goods also fit.
Don't let my lack of legal knowledge about fences distract you from the content of my argument!
OOH! I just noticed: slashdot fixed the several-month-old bug that replaced > (and etc) when messages are previewed. Joy!:)
Really, keeping private information secret is nothing like "owning" information, or having extrapolations of real property rights apply to information. It's a totally different situation.
But, in essence, a person isn't really harmed by being seen going to the bathroom. It makes people embarrassed, but I don't think anyone can claim that people have a right not to be embarrassed. Not that I'm against "peeping Tom" laws...
I think maybe I didn't state my views clearly enough. I'm not against the violation of rights in all circumstances. Sometimes it's for everyone's benefit that people be restricted from doing something that can be considered a right. Property ownership, for example, is violated by taxation, and at least in principle this can, overall, benefit everyone. It does in the United States, at least. I think copyright must be evaluated based on its merits and flaws -- it can't be decided merely by appealing to natural right. But if anybody is going to appeal to rights, it only makes sense that it's the owners of the physical media in which copying takes place, not the "owners" of the information copied.
So, don't think of it as an argument *against* copyright. It's not intended to be one, and as you point out, it doesn't make a good one. What it is, is a refutation of a specific argument *for* copyright. And at that task, it seems to be successful to me.
Not a *right*. I've said before that while I don't see this as a *major* problem with the GPL, as I doubt many people have interest in sharing derivative binaries they can't copyright, I *would* have a problem with someone using it to harass people who shared sourceless binaries. (I don't know if removing the source clause would create a loophole... if it did, I would of course favor patching that loophole somehow. This is in anticipation of someone pointing out some way the GPL would lose some other power without the source clause). But I'm not against using copyright to prevent other people from restricting copying. It's really pretty ingenious, actually.
Anyway, don't get the idea that I'm wholesale against the idea of violating peoples' rights. There are essential rights and non-essential rights, and both the non-essential and even the essential ones can be violated under special circumstances (taxes as an example of the former, killing in self-defense as an example of the latter).
I *am* against copyright, but not against rewarding public goods, even if it means violating some rights. Copyright does some good by encouraging the creation of information, but it also does some harm by reducing the number of people who can access information, and the ways they can access it. They also do harm by restricting the creation of derivative works, and thus resulting in needless duplication of works (the GPL has this same problem, or at least fails to solve it). In my opinion, the harm outweighs the good often enough that another system could be much better overall.
Anyway, apologists of "intellectual property" (not to mention taxes) have absolutely no place appealing to rights. There are decent arguments for copyright, but that is one of them. Free sharing of music is as much a right as is not paying taxes is, if not more so.
(Quoting Ulrich) it's about the perception of what my rights are on the Internet, it's about the perception of how people have become so comfortable with the computer as a tool that they feel they have a right to these things.
Wow. This is exactly how I feel about copyright. People have become so comfortable with copyright as a tool to reward artists, that they (artists and others) feel that artists have a right to prevent people from preacefully sharing information if that will result in greater profits. Copyright is (in public opinion) no longer a tool to reward artists, but rather artists actually own the information that they copyright. It is that attitude that allows copyright and information ("intellectual property") law to go out of hand with restrictions, like on what you can peacefully *do* with information once you have it (DMCA), or absurdly long limits on copyright, or the lack of any exceptions for people who need information they cannot afford.
(Quoting Seumas) Just because Metallica is unbelievably successful doesn't mean they ow[e] anyone a damn thing.
Just because Metallica authored their music, doesn't mean copiers of it owe anyone anything either. Sure, the law may say they do, and apparently you hold the law in some authority, but the very fact that the law (democratic or otherwise) has been so patently wrong (and contradictory) proves that in actuality it is no authority. Nobody owes Metallica anything. They don't have any right to restrict the peaceful actions of others, just to increase profitability.
I cannot create a magnificent garden in my front lawn and then claim a right to prevent people from looking at it without paying me. Nor can I create one in my back lawn and claim any right to prevent people from looking at it through whatever peaceful means is available to them, like going into my next door neighbor's lawn, who charges less than me for the service. Sure, this discourages the creation of for-profit gardens. And so it is with public goods. When public goods are necessary, and the market cannot provide them, government interjects by infringing on non-essential rights of the people, e.g. by taxing and building roads, or using the law to restrict people from seeing my garden, or hearing my music. But still, let's not forget where the rights are in this case. I have put effort into my garden, but that doesn't mean I own the view it creates, even if the law were to disagree.
Even if my work benefits others, I have no right to restrict the benefit to others who won't pay me. If I'm not comfortable with this I always have that famed third option: not working on projects that will benefit people who won't pay me.
if the conspiracy theories about MS Kerberos were true
Oh yeah, "conspiracy theories". Microsoft was just found guilty of such a "conspiracy" in a US court of law. And the Halloween documents indicate that such "conspiracy" is a common and intentional MS strategy.
It's not a "conspiracy theory", but an extrapolation of their past behavior, to say that MS's ultimate strategy is that a person will have to choose between an entirely non-MS setup and an entirely-MS setup, rather than have any application compete on its individual merit. "De-commoditize protocols & applications", eh?
Lawyers suck. Except this one. Wow. Again I say: Wow.
This is why I am positive that slashdot is going to have its ass reamed in court over this. You know what lawyers say -- good lawyers can't be good people too!!
Slashdot Mirror
The objection only applies to "intellectual property" anyway (rather than public goods in general). With other public goods, such as fireworks displays or efforts to remove pollution from the environment, they simply have no application.
IP is unique in that a task can be repeated without causing any more benefit than the first instance of the task. The reason copyright works the way it does is that a second independent author isn't actually gaining any benefit from the first author, and people who buy the works of the second aren't either.
So you see the problems with your objection. It doesn't actually apply to most public goods, and even for the ones to which it does apply, it is predicated on a false understanding of copyright law, and a false understanding of the question (as what I said was, monopoly over the *benefit* of the public good. Clearly the second independent author does not actually benefit from the actions of the first, but rather benefits from similar actions performed by himself).
I still see your position, if carried out to consistency, mandating (for instance) that it be illegal to watch a fireworks display without permission from the creator.
There appears to be no relevant difference between authorship and other public goods. You have certainly had opportunity to point one out, but have failed. Applying copyright-like treatment to other public goods shows its absurdity as a right applying to all public goods, as opposed to an expedient applying to public goods only when it is in the interests of society.
If there is some reason people should be believed to have a right to compensation for public goods, you have not listed it. There are instances of public goods where we both agree that people should not have a right to compensation; you have not explained the basis for your inconsistency. If there is some reason people should be believed to have a right to monopoly over the benefits of their public good, you have not listed it. There are instances of public goods where we both agree that people should not be able to monopolize the benefits; you have not explained the basis for your inconsistency there either.
Please:
- Explain the criteria for deciding whether a public good should be compensated by government through forced taxation and direct payment.
- Explain the criteria for deciding whether the benefits of a public good should be monopolized by the author.
My contention, as I hope you realize, is that the criteria in both cases is whether society will benefit from such actions. A consistent individualist, it seems to me, could support neither.What makes you think I'm "fond of" it? I never even mentioned it, except once -- in reply to your original mention of it.
> BUt IMO it works pretty well for radio stations.
It's not *used* for radio stations. Radio stations are based on advertisements, who pay based on ratings.
> Maybe for upper/middle class Americans who live near the city, yes. For most people, it won't be.
No, that's where it ALREADY is. In any case, tracking disc sales would be exactly as accurate as the current system, which is based on tracking disc sales. You really have no basis for criticism on the ability to track. Either way, copying from friends is not the most cost effective way to obtain music, if we take licensing out of the equation.
> Simply put, NONSENSE. Anyone can write a review of the article that the scientist publishes.
I know that. Man, you need to pay attention to the context here (second time you've forgotten it after a few levels of quoting). I know that monopoly would not be granted to the scientist over his discovery. The point is that your previous justification of copyright applies also to the discovery. In order for you to be consistent, you must support the ability of the scientist to prevent other people to use his discovery for their own benefit.
> Copyright does not enable him to extort a damn thing.
Let me emphasize: I never said it would. Only that, from your previous statements, one must conclude that he *should* be able to extort whatever he chooses, and that it is a violation of his rights for someone not to allow him to do so.
> You could argue that all rules should only be made for the benefit of society and noone has any rights beyond that. And maybe that's good enough for the average Marxist, or utilitarian ( who are both concerned primarily with the "good of society", but measure this in different ways ) The problem with this is that it sets the scene for a "tyranny of the majority". So I don't really agree with your point of view. The fact that something might seem "better for society" is not in itself a justification.
If not the good of society, what is the justification of copyright? If we are to value individual rights above all, we should not have a copyright system at all. Nor should we encourage any public goods with money from taxation. The only reason copyright has to exist is its benefit to society; when that reason no longer exists, no reason is left. Copyright is a type of subsidy, granted by government, to encourage a public good for the good of society. If you are opposed to government subsidy meant to benefit society, it is absurd of you to support copyright.
> In the example you mention ( a scientific discovery ) there are several differences.
WTF? Are you just trying to avoid answering the question? WHAT is the difference? How many times do I have to repeat the question before you answer it? This is the fourth time!
> There are already public libraries and radio shows. I doubt that it would make a whole lot of difference.
Public libraries are very limited. Radio even more.
> > A person could have every piece of music ever recorded in his personal collection.
> (a) The utility of this would be somewhat limited.
> (b) Not really true anyway, because you'd still need to pay for media and distribution.
(a) I think you're wrong. I think people would listen to a lot of music that they wouldn't otherwise. I know of many people who listen to less music because more is unaffordable.
(b) The infrastructure that will be in place in one or two years will be capable of streaming music into homes for a low monthly fee. This infrastructure would be implemented much faster and would be cheaper if there were free market competition in the area of music-content delivery, but it's being built for other reasons anyway. Already portable mp3 players exist, in spite of the low availability of music in mp3 form (one has to rip music oneself -- my personal experience with that is that older discs tend not to rip successfully or download, typically over a very inconvenient modem line). If there were competition in music-content delivery, these would be far more popular, available, and affordable.
And it's not just music; all copying costs are continually decreasing. The cost of reproducing a book will soon be negligible, as display technology makes e-book readers as pleasing to the eye as paper (they're already somewhat popular simply for being convenient. They would be much more popular if the amount of books available electronically was not so small).
> For example, how many people would be prepared to write down on their tax form that they purchased 100 pornographic videos last year ? Basically, what this idea says is "give up your right to privacy or we'll retrench your favourite artist".
But that problem doesn't apply when the information is anonymous. For example, if I buy a porno from wildsex.com, there may be a way for me to make this anonymous, or there may not. But the fact that a transfer has been made is already impossible for me to disguise; wildsex.com will know it no matter what I do. Now, if I were able to get my porn on PPV, except without the payment part, and the cable company were to report the number of porno viewings to the government -- information it already makes available to the publisher of the porno, and which the publisher of the porno can make available publically -- I don't see how I could claim my privacy had been violated. The theory behind copyright is that the author is notified every time a copy is made. The theory behind my unnamed plan is that the government is notified every time a copy is made. I don't see any appreciable difference, from a privacy standpoint. In either case, the only way to keep hidden the fact that an anonymous person made a purchase of pornography is to not purchase pornography. In either case, my secrecy is entirely in the hands of the company from whom I receive my porno.
It's a possibility that people would trade porn among themselves, even if all the would-be-copyrighted porn was freely available. That wouldn't be trackable. But I don't think this would happen more without copyright than it would with copyright. With copyright, such actions are actually profitable; without it, they are merely paranoid, more costly, and, though they would be more convenient without copyright than they are now, would be more inconvenient than going through other channels either way.
That's assuming people don't volunteer their watching habits (as they do now and is the primary basis of television and radio), and that we must resort to tracking copying as we do now in other media. But I don't consider this likely. It'd be in people's interests to volunteer their watching habits to the government just as it is right now to volunteer them to Nielson; and it'd be in the producers interests to encourage people to volunteer it.
> BTW, with the inventor
What inventor?
> In the example with the scientist, typically, they will be funded by a university. This works well for scientists. It also works well for musicians, some of whom are also publically funded ( again, by universities ). However, I don't see why this model need be practised to the exclusion of the copyright system.
First of all, the scientist has been not-hired for a reason -- most musicians make music without being hired to make it, yet demand that others (who agreed to nothing) to pay them or not own copies. (If he was hired by someone, then he would be entitled to payment; it would instead be his employer who would not be). And the problem with allowing the scientist to copyright his discovery is that it will increase the number of people who will be bald and have scales on their faces. It is better for society to have use of the discovery publically available. It is better than not for the scientist for him to be able to extort a price based on the utility of his discovery (rather than the cost), but he is in no way entitled to this. It is better than nothing for the scientist to be reimbursed for the cost (including time) of making the discovery, but he is also in no way entitled to that. It is better for society to reimburse him in some way, to encourage such things, but that doesn't at all lead to the conclusion that he is entitled to reimbursement.
By the way, I'm not saying that copyright must be excluded, I'm just saying it should.
It appears that you agree that there is no difference between authorship and other public goods (as you have listed none). This seems to me to lead to the conclusion that authorship should be encouraged by society by whatever means is most beneficial to society, and that authors have no rights beyond that. Do you agree?
> You are not competing fairly !
So? I'm still not dispossessing you of it; I'm possessing myself of it. Now you ask me "you don't see a problem with this?" Whether or not I see a *problem* with it is a totally different question than whether I see it as *dispossession*.
> But you'll have one hell of a hard time explaining to the American people why it's in their best interests to pay more taxes.
Actually, the economics of it are simple enough for everyone to understand. Let's say that authors are, in total, payed the same under the new system as they are now. In that case, people would, on average, spend the same amount of money. However, they would have access to orders of magnitude more information. A person could have every piece of music ever recorded in his personal collection. All for, on average, the same amount of money as is being payed for information right now. Now let's say that authors are payed twice as much. Twice as much money, for thousands of times more information. What a rip off, right? Now, if the biggest artists recieved half as much money as they do now, and that money was used to give, in greater proportions, money to smaller artists, that would encourage the creation of works even more than currently. Not only more access to music, but more music actually being in existence due to increased incentive -- all for the same amount of money as is being payed now. All that, plus greater opportunity for semi-popular authors who can't quite live exclusively off royalties. All for paying in taxes what is currently being payed already. The public may not be convinced to do away with copyright and implement this system, but it *won't* be because they don't think it would be a good value. Anyone can see that it would.
> And as such, obviously problematic.
Once again, problems which are impossible for me to address, as you failed to list any of them.
The music industry already allows radio to exist, despite not having complete accuracy in either number of listeners or number of times played per song. Payment from advertisers to television producers is based entirely on usage, yet there is still plenty of incentive to produce shows. And these are all hacked-on systems without any support from the government or the manufacturers of media equipment. And future technology is only going to make things easier. There's no reason to believe people would not cooperate, and cooperation is already enough to yield results in well-funded fields such as television. As current ratings systems show, universal cooperation is not necessary. So, I have no idea what your objections are. If you want me to address them, you're simply going to have to tell me what they are.
> > Right, and in the face of that sort of competition, CD's would obviously become much cheaper than they are now.
> As I said, I don't think that kind of competition is fair, because it completely ignores the fact that the artists contribution, and only recompenses distributors.
That makes absolutely no sense in context. I was talking about using music sales to track music popularity, and using that data to pay artists out of the public treasury. So what the hell are you talking about?
Let me list for you another public good, after which I will again ask you (as you did not answer before) what the difference is between authorship and other public goods. Let's say I'm a scientist, and for some personal reason (i.e. nobody hired me to do it) I do some research on some common commodity, investing a great deal of time and money in this research. In the end, I discover that a chemical in said commodity causes female baldness and facial scales. As it appears to me, you would have neither users nor manufacturers of said commodity allowed to use my discovery for their own personal benefit, until they pay me a price of my choosing. I have met your criteria -- I have done work to make the discovery. My effort clearly has value (i.e. utility, as opposed to exchange-value) and should, by your criteria, therefore be compensated. The problem with allowing people to freely use this discovery for their own gain is that it assigns zero economic worth to the discovery and research process -- the only way to be compensed is by distribution (except for the other ways, which all have obvious problems (too obvious to list)). Am I correct in my characterization of your position on such a discovery?
And what is the difference between authorship and other public goods?
Uhh, no. No matter how many times I copy it, you still have the idea. You can still use it. If you think my undercutting your prices and beating you in business is "dispossessing" you, then.. well.. then your comments have no place in a capitalist society ;)
> Ah yes, freeloader friendly. Sure to be popular on slashdot because you get something for nothing.
Taxes are not "nothing".
> Someone can just burn "warez" copies that are just as good sound-quality wise.
Right, and in the face of that sort of competition, CD's would obviously become much cheaper than they are now. It costs a lot less to mass produce CD's than it does to burn them from your home, just like it costs a lot less to mass produce chairs than it does to build them yourself from materials from homedepot. There aren't usually patents on chairs, but people still don't build their own. Another case in point: cheapbytes.com. Of course, portable discs may be obsoleted altogether by rewritable storage devices or streaming over broadband, but there are ways to track those as well. Indeed, as you point out those can be tracked with much greater accuracy; actual listening can be tracked.
> As for this idea of tracking devices, this idea is objectionable from a privacy standpoint.
Well, it could obviously be voluntary. Think something like Nielson, only with a larger sample size (or not. If Nielson's samples are enough for reasonable accuracy, then there you go. However, technology allowing, a 100% sample size would obviously be ideal).
> My creation is being widely used but I'm not getting payed. Does this not seem unjust?
That's the classic public goods problem. Unfair as it may be, it is not something I would call unjust, for the reason that you had the option of expending effort on something that is *not* a public good instead. That a person chose to take action that would have a beneficial effect on people with no obligation to pay him is not sufficient to show that he has a *right* to payment, even though it would be fair for him to be payed. And, IMO, the fairness ends when payment exceeds cost anyway. But that's another discussion.
If I plant some trees and, through various methods, cut my CO2 emissions in half thus benefitting the entire world, do I have a *right* to payment? In the US, I can recieve payment at least for some of those methods, in the form of tax breaks, but do I have a *right* to those tax breaks, or are those merely a privilege offered by the government to people for acting in a sociable manner? I contend the latter. Why is authorship any different from other public goods?
Ironic that you use this word. Copying something of yours doesn't dispossess you of it.
> A software license is also a type of contract. Like money, copying restrictions are necessary to make the contract work.
You're dodging the point about the money analogy not being applicable, but in any case, a software license only applies to people who agree to it.
> I think this says it all. You want to dispossess the authors of their creative work and give it back to the "comrades".
Whom are you quoting? I never said "comrades". Why is it that this "Marxist rhetoric" has no place in this discussion? You fail to explain anything, apparently opting instead for the ad hominem innuendo approach. Why don't you explain exactly why what I specifically said "has no place" here?
> The SEC regulations are also put their by "acts of government", but this does not mean that they should not be there.
I never said that copyright should not exist because it is an act of government. I merely said that it is an act of government; one intended to solve the public goods problem of authorship.
> I would ask you what you propose in the place of the copyright system.
Rather than answer you here, I'll direct you to my previous post, here.
> On the other hand, if neither is, then you are still wrong, because they are not "in a vacuum" -- the copyrighted work is there as well.
As a matter of fact, you are incorrect. The copyrighted work is a Haiku, and one of the adults has memorized it.> How do we decide who gets funding ?
Based on usage.
> There are definitely problems using this model as a replacement for the copyright system
None you bothered to mention.
Great quote! ;)
Hmm, guess that settles the issue
Whatever. The point is that government-enforced monopolies require a force of a different kind than defensive. They require force taken against a peaceful action for the sole reason that it will attract consumers.
> > Copy protection is unprecidented.
> I am not clear on what you mean by this.
You tried to compare copyright to property rights. But you can't. They're nothing similar. You seem to agree that they are unprecidented, and that therefore your comparison was invalid, so I won't go on.
> > It's one thing to protect an asset from being taken, and quite another to prevent it from being copied.
> You could say the same about money. The problem is that copying money degrades the currency.
You're incorrect. The problem is that copied money can be fraudulantly passed off as money certified by the government. Money is, really, a type of contract. The reason it can't be copied is that one cannot sign another's name to a contract. It has nothing to do with the government owning the information contained on the money. It's not a valid comparison. See the other fellow's post below. I'm shocked that so many people use this example as support of copyright. It's a totally different situation! Like I said, copyright is unprecidented. Or at least, an unprecidented solution to the common publics good problem.
> > Well, government-enforced monopoly is not a free market.
> The government have a monopoly on printing dollar bills, so you could equally argue that this is not a "free market".
When the government does have a monopoly on coining currency, that *ISN't* a free market. You obviously haven't been keeping up with your anarchist literature... Government monopoly on currency has been a somewhat significant issue historically.
> The fact that you recognise creative works ( or more precisely, the right to control a creative work ) as having an owner does not violate the definition of free market.
Yes, it does. It limits what two consenting adults can do alone in a vacuum. That's a violation of free market.
> > Why would they? If the government is granting someone privilege, why would they voluntarily surrender it?
> At least we agree that the copyright abolitionists are primarily trying to make life less profitable for the authors of creative works.
What are you, a 3rd grader? Obviously you know that the purpose of copyright abolition is to make information more freely accessible to people. The less profitable nature of the creation of information is merely a side-effect. Why would I want authors to make less profits?
> I see. So is your proposed solution in this instance "government" ?
No, my proposal is that the current solution in place is an action of government, in spite of the fact that it is not treated as such by people such as you.
> I think someone else mentioned something like "go move to Havana and listen to the state orchestra" -- kind of blunt, but you get the idea, huh ?
Actually, I don't. What are you trying to say? That if I don't like the laws, I should move? Well, how about if I don't like the laws, I'll just ignore them. If you don't like that, move somewhere they can enforce the laws. See how annoying and stupid that argument is? It's an appeal to might. It doesn't at all show that your point is valid, and it's kind of out of place since, at the time, *I* have the might.
> The problem is that with creative works, we really need some kind of market place, so that consumers can vote, instead of the government dictating the terms to consumers.
That's exactly like something I proposed earlier in this thread (RMS's suggestion)! Go look it up. Maybe you'll be pleased.
> The problem is that with creative works, we really need some kind of market place, so that consumers can vote, instead of the government dictating the terms to consumers. In some sense, the idea of having the government directly control creative content is more of a violation of free market principles
Well, I agree that taxation and government subsidies are violations of the free market. However, if we want a straight free market, we won't have subsidies OR copyrights, which are actually a type of subsidy. If we don't, we have to choose the best solution on its merits, not on rights. Of course I don't think that we should have "the government directly control creative content". In fact, I was rather miffed when government subsidies to art were stripped in NYC a couple months back for content... But we do have protections against such things. It did work out, in the end. I don't see how extending the realm of government subsidies of the arts to popular music would create any more of a problem. The problem with the copyright form of government subsidy is simply that it is not the most beneficial to society.
The price of copying for people with the latest greatest tech is now close to zero. The price of burglary, though not easily quantified, is certainly large. Burglary entails all sorts of risks, like being caught, being shot, or not being able to sell your stolen goods. It also has a cost, in time, effort, and skill. Copying has none of these things. What are you talking about?
(This is, of course, a broad definition of force that includes the threat of force).
I never said it did. Why are you quoting the word "wrong"? I never called it "wrong" at all -- whom are you quoting?? Well, the difference is that theft harms the person who is robbed, whereas copyright infringement merely fails to benefit the person whose copyright is infringed. Counterfeiting is really only objectionable so long as it is used for purposes of fraud. Laws against actual counterfeiting (if they exist; I'm not sure) are meant to prevent fraud through the use of counterfeit bills, much like laws against gun ownership are meant to prevent murder through the use of guns. But it's easy to see that there's nothing wrong with either in themselves, and if the motive behind gun control was economic, you could say it was a violation of the free market. Copy protection is unprecidented. PROPERTY protection entails *guaranteeing a person rights to his property*, not guaranteeing his ability to monopolize reproduction of his property. It's one thing to protect an asset from being taken, and quite another to prevent it from being copied. It doesn't fit into the category of property in the traditional sense. However, it *does* fit into the category of public goods in the general sense. Well, government-enforced monopoly is not a free market. Metallica's unorthodox use of the word aside, music in general is not a commodity, but recordings are. There *could* be competition in the sale of these commodities, but the government prevents that. Uhm, what? That's exactly the effect of violations of a free market. They give an advantage to someone. Thus, everyone votes with their wallets for the person who is violating the free market. For instance, let's say the government granted a certain publisher copyright arbitrarily (i.e. without having permission from the author), like governments used to do. People would vote with their wallets for that publisher, because all the other publishers have the government-created disadvantage of being illegal. Another example is slavery. People will vote with their wallets for slavery, because slave-labor is incredibly cheap, and therefore offers a competitive advantage over payed labor. Violations of the free market that *don't* give someone special privilege don't matter, and they don't exist because nobody bothers to lobby for them. It's when people start to vote with their dollars that there is a problem. Why would they? If the government is granting someone privilege, why would they voluntarily surrender it? Why would people not voluntarily surrendering government privilege be evidence that the government should continue granting privilege? I don't follow you at all. Anyway, copyright hasn't yet existed anywhere near as long as slavery. I'm sure we agree that slavery is bad -- why don't you tell me why slavery prevailed for so long? Uhm, but declaring "property is a public good" makes no sense. You obviously don't know what the term "public good" means, so let me explain. A public good is something that, in a free market, is altrustic. They are things that, while they may benefit me, also benefit other people (i.e. the public) equally, and therefore are not in my own personal self-interest, if they cost me anything. An example is clean air. It benefits everyone -- including me -- for me to produce my product in an environmentally-safe way. But it benefits everyone else equally, and costs only me. So, depending on the degree of cost and the degree of benefit, it's often in my self-interest to pollute. Another example is policing. If I hire someone to police my block, that will protect me. But it will also protect my neighbors. If there's really a need for extra policing, it's in my best interests not to pay for a guard and hope someone else in the neighborhood does. If everyone on the block combines to form a pool to pay a guard together, it's in my best interests not to join -- they'll pay either way, and I'll get the service either way. Etc. Information fits well into that category. It's a common problem, and the usual solution is government. But nobody looks at other public goods situations as if rights are involved. Information is just another public good, and copyright is one way of fulfilling it -- a bad way, IMO, but that's really a separate issue from whether or not it is merely a tool to encourage public goods, or a right.Analogies don't usually prove anything, but they often can provide a reductio ad absurdum for principles used to reach a conclusion. The principle that people have a natural right to be compensated for their effort, even from people who wouldn't buy it on a free market, is bunk. I can give a host of examples where you would agree that it is not, and I've already given several in this thread, including the one in my first post. If there is some other principle by which Metallica can be said to be owed compensation for its music, it has yet to be stated.
When did I ever say "information wants to be free"?I don't think you understood my meaning. When copyright is in place, fewer people will be able to access any given piece of information than would if copyright were not in place.
> You cannot walk into a court of law for a copyright violation and say to the judge, "Artists don't have that right!".
I never said you couldn't, but it's not relevant. You couldn't walk into a court of law 300 years ago as a slave and say "but slave-owners don't have that right!" either, but it doesn't mean the argument is invalid. The judge's opinion is of no more value than the opinion of anyone else.
First of all, if you want to listen to the law, at least listen to it correctly -- copyright infringement is not considered theft by law.You cannot appeal to the law in a debate about what the law should be, i.e. you cannot appeal to the status quo. If copyright is to be considered a right only because it is a law, then it makes no sense to say that copyright should be a law because it is a right. That is circular, and its validity leads to the conclusion that no law should ever be changed. Your definition of "right" is clearly not what was meant by the previous people who defended copyright -- at least if we interpret their arguments in a way that makes them coherent.
And please, don't just say my analogy is "much-failed". You haven't explained *why* it is a failure. What if I said nothing about your post except that your argument was "much-failed"? What could that demonstrate? Even if I had a valid criticism, how could you respond to that blanket statement?
What reason is there to restrict copying of my garden, other than the physical harm it causes? If my garden could be copied perfectly without any harm to me -- as is the case with music -- why would that be disallowed? You see, your argument is based on an over-extension of the analogy
You may not consider the information contained in recordings to be information*, but it's a trifle. I do. The solution for you is simple: whenever you see me use the word "information", instead of saying that word in your head, say to yourself the phrase "information, including that on recordings".* I wish I knew of another term for the information contained on a music CD, instead of "information contained in recordings", but I know of no such word. I understand that I'm implicitly assuming my own correctness, but it is mandated by the language, or at least the limit of my knowledge about it.
The other part (deciding who gets payed what) is the more difficult. Right now, each artist gets payed a certain amount for each record bought. This could be continued, but that would require a lot of taxes. The more reasonable solution (again not original from me) is to devise a sliding scale, (the specifics of which would be devised after some research on the matter). This would mean more money for less popular artists, and still no artists whose recordings remained fairly popular would starve. Performances would still be a source of income. I don't see a moral problem with a sliding scale, because copyright here is an expedient, not a right (you obviously don't recognize the difference, but what can I say? That is a deeper philosophical disagreement than can be resolved on slashdot). And besides, the cost to the artist of producing 100M albums is the same as the cost of producing 100K (capitalism may be an expedient itself, but most people agree when it comes to specific examples that cost, if not the limit of price, should at least be the basis of it).
This raises the problem of accounting for what albums people listen to, if they are mainly produced by individuals copying themselves. But that problem could be solved several ways, and could actually produce better results than the accounting we have now. Music players (both hardware and software) could track listening habits and send out the information (rather than taxing music hardware, perhaps requiring it to have this capability) -- and tracking information use could provide a much more fair representation of artists' popularity than their album sales do now. Or people could list albums they got in the last year on their income tax forms (same as the census works). If serious bandwidth becomes ubiquitous, people could get all their music from central servers, either streaming (allowing listening to be tracked) or saved (allowing as much information to be gathered as is now). Lots of other methods could be devised.
Another system I saw suggested on slashdot was the "street performer protocol". http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/ index.html ... but I don't think this could work for smaller artists, so I don't advocate it.
Keeping copyright, but having it only apply for a short duration -- say five years for music, but the duration depending on the norms of the specific industry (e.g. music, software, novels, text books, reference). This depends on the technical feasibility of enforcing copyright, which is soon to disappear, so I don't advocate it either, at least long term.
Someone else here on slashdot also suggested that the cost of music production could be greatly reduced by reducing the editing done of music. This could circumvent a lot of the need for capital in music production. One take in the studio costs a fifth as much as five, after all. People could even skip the studio's altogether and record live shows.
Also, the lack of any system at all is an alternative system. My estimation is that we will be plunged into this system once technology makes copyright infringement as ubiquitous as speed limit violation. If the amount of information produced suffers too much, some other system will be devised. If not, well then everything will work out, just like it did before copyright. I don't think I hold any burden of proof to show that this would be worse than copyright -- copyright is action that requires continual expenditure of resources and violation of rights. The burden, therefore, lies with you. However, I didn't really want to turn this into a debate over whether there should be copyright. I just wanted to explain why I don't think copyright monopoly is a right rather than a privilege granted for expediency.
I apologize for the form of this post; there's too much information here for me to have the time to present well. I'm sure I've come off as rambling, but at least I've let you know that I do have an alternative that allows artists to be payed. Not as much, of course, but I think that's OK. I don't think we're going to reach agreement here, because you don't seem to hold any regard for the notion of innate (as opposed to government-created) rights, or the idea of low information availability as a great evil. These are certainly debatable issues, but ones I'd rather not get into here.
> However, we *DID* give the artists the right to
> withhold music.
I thought I dealt with the law-is-authority-on-rights argument in my post. Just because the democratic government says so, don't make it so. And, really, move to another country? Think of a government agent as a regular person with no authority. Could he justify actions with that excuse? Could he come into your house and take your property (calling it taxation) and then say "if you don't like it, move to another house"? No, of course not. He's going to need a much better argument for taxes than that. And so it is with copyright.
Besides, our government has decided that our government is not an authority on rights, but rather that it only does its best at *discovering* rights, which are pre-existing and properties of the natural universe. It even has lots of "checks and balances" intended to weed out mistakes at this process of discovery. So, even if you think government is authority, you must hold that laws are not authority on rights.
> You talk about "peacefully sharing information
> that will result in greater profits". First off,
> you're making a big assumption.
What assumption? I think my language there was unclear. Just to reduce confusion, I will restate that sentence in a more specific manner. What I meant to say was, "... people feel that artists have a right to restrict people from peacefully sharing information if that restriction will result in greater profit for those artists".
If you knew that's what I meant, then I don't know what to say. I don't know to what assumption you refer.
> Secondly, *IT IS
> NOT YOUR INFORMATION TO SHARE*.
Your only basis for this is an appeal to the law. But I find appeals to the law unconvincing, for reasons previously stated (and as yet unanswered).
> visual barricade on public property.
Really, you shouldn't bother refuting a factual error in an analogy when there are dozens of other fitting analogies without that error. I'm sure you can think of a public good that one can do yet from which one cannot restrict people from benefitting. An example is planting trees to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. This benefits everyone, but you can't charge people for it. Another, more similar to my original example, is a fireworks display. You can charge admission on a park, but you can't use the law to restrict people from watching it from outside the parks' boundries. Many other public goods also fit.
Don't let my lack of legal knowledge about fences distract you from the content of my argument!
OOH! I just noticed: slashdot fixed the several-month-old bug that replaced > (and etc) when messages are previewed. Joy! :)
But, in essence, a person isn't really harmed by being seen going to the bathroom. It makes people embarrassed, but I don't think anyone can claim that people have a right not to be embarrassed. Not that I'm against "peeping Tom" laws...
I think maybe I didn't state my views clearly enough. I'm not against the violation of rights in all circumstances. Sometimes it's for everyone's benefit that people be restricted from doing something that can be considered a right. Property ownership, for example, is violated by taxation, and at least in principle this can, overall, benefit everyone. It does in the United States, at least. I think copyright must be evaluated based on its merits and flaws -- it can't be decided merely by appealing to natural right. But if anybody is going to appeal to rights, it only makes sense that it's the owners of the physical media in which copying takes place, not the "owners" of the information copied.
So, don't think of it as an argument *against* copyright. It's not intended to be one, and as you point out, it doesn't make a good one. What it is, is a refutation of a specific argument *for* copyright. And at that task, it seems to be successful to me.
Anyway, don't get the idea that I'm wholesale against the idea of violating peoples' rights. There are essential rights and non-essential rights, and both the non-essential and even the essential ones can be violated under special circumstances (taxes as an example of the former, killing in self-defense as an example of the latter).
I *am* against copyright, but not against rewarding public goods, even if it means violating some rights. Copyright does some good by encouraging the creation of information, but it also does some harm by reducing the number of people who can access information, and the ways they can access it. They also do harm by restricting the creation of derivative works, and thus resulting in needless duplication of works (the GPL has this same problem, or at least fails to solve it). In my opinion, the harm outweighs the good often enough that another system could be much better overall.
Anyway, apologists of "intellectual property" (not to mention taxes) have absolutely no place appealing to rights. There are decent arguments for copyright, but that is one of them. Free sharing of music is as much a right as is not paying taxes is, if not more so.
I cannot create a magnificent garden in my front lawn and then claim a right to prevent people from looking at it without paying me. Nor can I create one in my back lawn and claim any right to prevent people from looking at it through whatever peaceful means is available to them, like going into my next door neighbor's lawn, who charges less than me for the service. Sure, this discourages the creation of for-profit gardens. And so it is with public goods. When public goods are necessary, and the market cannot provide them, government interjects by infringing on non-essential rights of the people, e.g. by taxing and building roads, or using the law to restrict people from seeing my garden, or hearing my music. But still, let's not forget where the rights are in this case. I have put effort into my garden, but that doesn't mean I own the view it creates, even if the law were to disagree.
Even if my work benefits others, I have no right to restrict the benefit to others who won't pay me. If I'm not comfortable with this I always have that famed third option: not working on projects that will benefit people who won't pay me.
It's not a "conspiracy theory", but an extrapolation of their past behavior, to say that MS's ultimate strategy is that a person will have to choose between an entirely non-MS setup and an entirely-MS setup, rather than have any application compete on its individual merit. "De-commoditize protocols & applications", eh?
THANK YOU, for a dose of sanity. I agree completely.