Like so much else, copyright has outlived most of its original usefulness. Until the 20th century, there were only two kinds of marketable goods: actual materials like cloth and spices; and ideas. It wasn't until our technological age that *ideas about goods* would become so common and so valuable. Until that time, new inventions were extremely rare and could be guarded as trade secrets.
Much more common were fiction books and philosophical works. The first copyright laws as we know them were enacted to protect the purveyors of ideas. The printing press made it easy to steal a work, but it wasn't hard to trace the whereabouts of the thief, because printing presses were themselves novelties.
Today copyright theft is so frequent and so easy that we don't even consider much of what we do theft. Unlike centuries past, when only a small percentage of the population could get, own, or read a book, today the vast majority of the developed world's population can read. When there are so many trees about, stealing leaves may be illegal, but it's not feasible to worry about it.
Too, today only a few industries rely on copyright for their own protection. Paperbacks are so cheap that it's silly to steal a John Jakes novel for illegal reprinting. The music industry howls about its need for protection, but produces little evidence that such protection protects their sales. Movie studios, ditto. Pirated copies undoubtedly gouge out some profit, but given the available technologies, it's inevitable that there would be some leakage. Countries like Afghanistan hardly pose a major threat to the movie industry's profit margins.
The truly ironic and painful part of intellectual property law is that if you don't fight for your rights, they'll eventually be withdrawn from you. This leads to the absurdity of a record label's lawyers informing Girl Scout troops that they can't dance to the Macarena anymore unless they pay for it. Both the lawyers and the record label executives have to cringe at doing this...it's like kicking little girls, for heaven's sake. But the law makes them do it, or risk forfeiting their rights elsewhere.
Rather than a retooling of existing law, it might be wiser to consider whether the laws are workable at all, given the ease and frequency of violation. Bards didn't copyright their works throughout the Middle Ages, and Homer didn't copyright the Illiad. It would have been futile to try, considering how easy it was to listen and then take it away with you. It was only the choke point of the printing press that made copyright laws feasible, and now that's been done away with. The record and movie industries have tried to introduce new choke points, but with limited success. Time will tell if the huge investment in shaky technology will pay off with some measure of protection. But without having a choke point, there can be no enforcement, and having the law on the books will be so much wishful thinking.
I grant you that this is a sensitive case pitting freedom of speech against commercial interest (which is not always the bogie man). But c'mon...the respondent didn't even answer. He just wanted to throw a tantrum and get us all shouting epithets against the Big Bad Corporation.
It would have been a far more difficult case, in my opinion, had he actually used a single "sucks" site to detail all of the failings and problems of Guinness, then fought it out on the grounds of freedom of thought and speech. But as it is, he just registered sites, made a few snide comments, then didn't bother to write anything for the record. Bad case, bad law. It's just too bad that this tar-covered case will be precedent now.
I, too, have thought for some time about some sort of GPL for published material. Our company does technical communications materials, mostly proprietary. But I've wondered about writing books that would carry a GPL-type license, and distributing them on the Web. All books contain inaccuracies and quirks. A true GPL-style feedback would produce constantly improving material. That's not important to everybody, but it is to many.
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Like so much else, copyright has outlived most of its original usefulness. Until the 20th century, there were only two kinds of marketable goods: actual materials like cloth and spices; and ideas. It wasn't until our technological age that *ideas about goods* would become so common and so valuable. Until that time, new inventions were extremely rare and could be guarded as trade secrets. Much more common were fiction books and philosophical works. The first copyright laws as we know them were enacted to protect the purveyors of ideas. The printing press made it easy to steal a work, but it wasn't hard to trace the whereabouts of the thief, because printing presses were themselves novelties. Today copyright theft is so frequent and so easy that we don't even consider much of what we do theft. Unlike centuries past, when only a small percentage of the population could get, own, or read a book, today the vast majority of the developed world's population can read. When there are so many trees about, stealing leaves may be illegal, but it's not feasible to worry about it. Too, today only a few industries rely on copyright for their own protection. Paperbacks are so cheap that it's silly to steal a John Jakes novel for illegal reprinting. The music industry howls about its need for protection, but produces little evidence that such protection protects their sales. Movie studios, ditto. Pirated copies undoubtedly gouge out some profit, but given the available technologies, it's inevitable that there would be some leakage. Countries like Afghanistan hardly pose a major threat to the movie industry's profit margins. The truly ironic and painful part of intellectual property law is that if you don't fight for your rights, they'll eventually be withdrawn from you. This leads to the absurdity of a record label's lawyers informing Girl Scout troops that they can't dance to the Macarena anymore unless they pay for it. Both the lawyers and the record label executives have to cringe at doing this...it's like kicking little girls, for heaven's sake. But the law makes them do it, or risk forfeiting their rights elsewhere. Rather than a retooling of existing law, it might be wiser to consider whether the laws are workable at all, given the ease and frequency of violation. Bards didn't copyright their works throughout the Middle Ages, and Homer didn't copyright the Illiad. It would have been futile to try, considering how easy it was to listen and then take it away with you. It was only the choke point of the printing press that made copyright laws feasible, and now that's been done away with. The record and movie industries have tried to introduce new choke points, but with limited success. Time will tell if the huge investment in shaky technology will pay off with some measure of protection. But without having a choke point, there can be no enforcement, and having the law on the books will be so much wishful thinking.
I grant you that this is a sensitive case pitting freedom of speech against commercial interest (which is not always the bogie man). But c'mon...the respondent didn't even answer. He just wanted to throw a tantrum and get us all shouting epithets against the Big Bad Corporation. It would have been a far more difficult case, in my opinion, had he actually used a single "sucks" site to detail all of the failings and problems of Guinness, then fought it out on the grounds of freedom of thought and speech. But as it is, he just registered sites, made a few snide comments, then didn't bother to write anything for the record. Bad case, bad law. It's just too bad that this tar-covered case will be precedent now.
I, too, have thought for some time about some sort of GPL for published material. Our company does technical communications materials, mostly proprietary. But I've wondered about writing books that would carry a GPL-type license, and distributing them on the Web. All books contain inaccuracies and quirks. A true GPL-style feedback would produce constantly improving material. That's not important to everybody, but it is to many.