Only the fourth one is important, insofar as the solutions to the first 3 (well, 2&3 anyway)stem naturally from getting a consensus on #4:
1) "Me good, artist good, record company bad."
2) Copying music is easy, and "normal", and any damage caused is indirect, so it seems OK. Ooops, this intuitive culture violates the current laws. This seems to be Katz's point. This leads to the general problem (which is sort of a separate thing:)
3)This type of situation severely reduces the legitimacy of the laws involved. Laws that are enforced without legitimacy lead to problems (insert small library proving this here...) Such disbelief in the law erodes civil society. To fix this, we, the people, need to determine what the laws SHOULD be, convince the majority of people that is correct, and set the laws accordingly. That, approximately, is how democracy works (or should). Case in point: In the end, while everyone agrees that THEY should get to drive 90mph, the majority agree that an ACCIDENT at that speed not only kills the driver, but those around him. Ergo, while not liked, speeding laws are accepted. Over time various changes have been made (raise the limit, increase DWI penalties) to fine tune the rules to better support the goal: efficient, fast, but SAFE driving.
To build this kind of consensus for Info. Property, we have to solve the central problem. The problem:
4) What is IP? What are it's limits? What should and shouldn't be illegal?
There isn't an easy answer (for me) to this question, but this is the central dilemma. Now for my next trick (less likely to be "right") I'll try to answer that question:
Posit: I buy a CD. I copy it for my own use in my car stereo.
Problem: Per DMCA, if I happen to have a Cassette player in my car, that's legal. If I have a CD player (or MP3 player) in my car instead,that's illegal.
Meaning: The drafters of DMCA are completely self contradictory in any theoretical sense, and hence are useless to answering this question.
Posit: Electronic medium in no way changes the IP issue.
Problem: Technology DOES change the issue. Not until Gutenburg could you easily, exactly reproduce text. Not until Edison could you accurately reproduce sound. (and not until Dolby et al. could you do a half-credible job of it).
Meaning: We can reference the past for help, but we can't count on it to solve all our problems for us.
Posit: The law is changed so that any copying is legal, as long as you don't SELL it and always keep the true author's name on the work.
Problem: How does the author eat?
Answer: He either lives off the lazy (who pay for convenient distribution systems), and poor (have no computer/copying equipment), and patrons.
For some, this is not acceptable, as many great artists/creators will waste time cowtowing to patrons or getting "real" jobs. For others this works fine, at least for now. There are enough lazy and poor people to support the music industry, and enough lazy people and demi-patrons to support the software industry. (Demi-patron: people/corps who want to insure that support for and future versions of the software will exist - and will pay for that.)
Now we're getting somewhere... It seems that the central issue isn't whether an author is compensated by EACH person who uses his stuff, only that he be compensated sufficiently by someone (or many) to reflect his worth and needs. So how do you legislate THAT? Remember, boys and girls, communism failed. This leads to:
MY answer (or at least a starting point): Copyrights SHOULD exist, in this form: you cannot copy a creation and SELL it, without the agreement of the author. You cannot copy a creation in whole or in substantial part and claim it is your own work (period). The author MAY NOT sell his authorship. He may appoint someone to handle the distribution under terms per contract, but he will ALWAYS retain the rights of an author to his own work, like it or not. You may only legally acquire his/her creation from the author directly, or from a distribution agent operating under a contract with the author. What you can do with that creation is determined by your agreement with the author, or the terms of the distributor's agreement with the author. (And like all copyrights and patents, there should be an expiration date based on publish date after which it is public domain - I'm not going to touch what the length of that "should" be.)
If that agreement is the GPL, of course, everyone can be a valid distributor (if they obey the GPL rules).
If the corp pisses you off - talk to the author directly.
The corp is just a distibution system, and (under this proposed system) the author may fire or go around them at will if they do a poor job. Since he CAN'T sign away his authorship, he can't be put in a situation where he feels he has to: it would be an illegal contract. (Of course a multi-author project complicates things...) Currently, record companies often OWN the songs and practically OWN the authors, thus screwing the whole game. A similar situation exists to some extent in other creative endevours. I believe that is the basic problem. We don't WANT to scam the authors, (well I don't) just the money-grabbing distributor.
Let the authors themselves decide what they want done with their works!
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Only the fourth one is important, insofar as the solutions to the first 3 (well, 2&3 anyway)stem naturally from getting a consensus on #4:
1) "Me good, artist good, record company bad."
2) Copying music is easy, and "normal", and any damage caused is indirect, so it seems OK. Ooops, this intuitive culture violates the current laws. This seems to be Katz's point. This leads to the general problem (which is sort of a separate thing:)
3)This type of situation severely reduces the legitimacy of the laws involved. Laws that are enforced without legitimacy lead to problems (insert small library proving this here...) Such disbelief in the law erodes civil society. To fix this, we, the people, need to determine what the laws SHOULD be, convince the majority of people that is correct, and set the laws accordingly. That, approximately, is how democracy works (or should). Case in point: In the end, while everyone agrees that THEY should get to drive 90mph, the majority agree that an ACCIDENT at that speed not only kills the driver, but those around him. Ergo, while not liked, speeding laws are accepted. Over time various changes have been made (raise the limit, increase DWI penalties) to fine tune the rules to better support the goal: efficient, fast, but SAFE driving.
To build this kind of consensus for Info. Property, we have to solve the central problem. The problem:
4) What is IP? What are it's limits? What should and shouldn't be illegal?
There isn't an easy answer (for me) to this question, but this is the central dilemma. Now for my next trick (less likely to be "right") I'll try to answer that question:
Posit: I buy a CD. I copy it for my own use in my car stereo.
Problem: Per DMCA, if I happen to have a Cassette player in my car, that's legal. If I have a CD player (or MP3 player) in my car instead,that's illegal.
Meaning: The drafters of DMCA are completely self contradictory in any theoretical sense, and hence are useless to answering this question.
Posit: Electronic medium in no way changes the IP issue.
Problem: Technology DOES change the issue. Not until Gutenburg could you easily, exactly reproduce text. Not until Edison could you accurately reproduce sound. (and not until Dolby et al. could you do a half-credible job of it).
Meaning: We can reference the past for help, but we can't count on it to solve all our problems for us.
Posit: The law is changed so that any copying is legal, as long as you don't SELL it and always keep the true author's name on the work.
Problem: How does the author eat?
Answer: He either lives off the lazy (who pay for convenient distribution systems), and poor (have no computer/copying equipment), and patrons.
For some, this is not acceptable, as many great artists/creators will waste time cowtowing to patrons or getting "real" jobs. For others this works fine, at least for now. There are enough lazy and poor people to support the music industry, and enough lazy people and demi-patrons to support the software industry. (Demi-patron: people/corps who want to insure that support for and future versions of the software will exist - and will pay for that.)
Now we're getting somewhere... It seems that the central issue isn't whether an author is compensated by EACH person who uses his stuff, only that he be compensated sufficiently by someone (or many) to reflect his worth and needs. So how do you legislate THAT? Remember, boys and girls, communism failed. This leads to:
MY answer (or at least a starting point): Copyrights SHOULD exist, in this form: you cannot copy a creation and SELL it, without the agreement of the author. You cannot copy a creation in whole or in substantial part and claim it is your own work (period). The author MAY NOT sell his authorship. He may appoint someone to handle the distribution under terms per contract, but he will ALWAYS retain the rights of an author to his own work, like it or not. You may only legally acquire his/her creation from the author directly, or from a distribution agent operating under a contract with the author. What you can do with that creation is determined by your agreement with the author, or the terms of the distributor's agreement with the author. (And like all copyrights and patents, there should be an expiration date based on publish date after which it is public domain - I'm not going to touch what the length of that "should" be.)
If that agreement is the GPL, of course, everyone can be a valid distributor (if they obey the GPL rules).
If the corp pisses you off - talk to the author directly.
The corp is just a distibution system, and (under this proposed system) the author may fire or go around them at will if they do a poor job. Since he CAN'T sign away his authorship, he can't be put in a situation where he feels he has to: it would be an illegal contract. (Of course a multi-author project complicates things...) Currently, record companies often OWN the songs and practically OWN the authors, thus screwing the whole game. A similar situation exists to some extent in other creative endevours. I believe that is the basic problem. We don't WANT to scam the authors, (well I don't) just the money-grabbing distributor.
Let the authors themselves decide what they want done with their works!