That explains why people always look so confused when a baseball player steals a base, or a lover steals a kiss, or a plagarist stole someone's idea, or a cute girl stole their heart, or a blowhard stole their thunder, etc. Because the FIRST THING people think of when they hear steal is "loss of previously owned property". No, the only people who have (or claim to have) any trouble at all understanding what steal means are morons who try to pretend that copyright infringement ISN'T stealing.
There's no legal aspect to stealing bases in baseball, or stealing a kiss in love, etc. But on the other hand, if someone said that my lighting a cigarette in an area where smoking was prohibited was arson, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to point out how that's wrong. Before I went to law school and learned about it, I once annoyed a policeman by using robbery and burglary as synonyms. Which they're not, and in any case, neither described the circumstances anyway.
I'm sure most of the people here find it at least a little irksome when they hear people call a monitor a computer, and a CPU a hard disk. Or when a person says that not having enough RAM requires deleting files from a drive. At the very least it tends to expose the person using those terms incorrectly as someone who just doesn't know much about computers, and who shouldn't be treated as a knowledgeable user.
Copyright infringement is a legal issue; 'stealing' is a different one. They're not the same, they're not even vaguely similar. The histories, the policies, the elements of the offense, the defenses -- they're all very, very different.
Calling infringement by loaded terms like theft or stealing doesn't help conversations. It's just an inarticulate slur. If you're interested in having an honest discussion about copyright, it won't harm you to use the proper terminology. Unless you have no real argument, and just want to stir up unthinking passions. If that's the case, why call it stealing? Call it murder or terrorism or something; still inaccurate, but you get more of a punch.
With your example of the later inventor of fire, well, that wouldn't matter, since it'd be long since been prior art. (Also, fire isn't a patentable subject matter, being a natural phenomenon, however, if you come up with a new and novel way to create a fire, that can still be patentable).
Substitute fire with the wheel, if you prefer. As for prior art, that's not the point I'm trying to make. Would you say that a person who independently came up with an invention that has been in common use since prehistory is an inventor of that thing? Regardless of patentability? I don't think so. Regardless of timeframe, the guy who comes in second will at best be remembered as a bit of trivia as the runner up. The real inventor is the guy who is first.
Do italic tags not work anymore? In that case let me revise my post for clarity:
First to file doesn't mean that a non-inventor can file for a patent.
I don't think that a later inventor is an inventor, really. Suppose that I had never seen, used, or so much as heard of fire. If I develop fire entirely on my own, does that make me an inventor of one of the most important technologies in human history, or does it make me merely a genius who is way behind his time? I don't think that people would say that's invention, and at that point there's only a gap in time between the real inventor and the latecomer, and whether it's millennia or months or minutes, there's no qualitative difference.
Second the copyright laws, which are derived from the same clause of the Constitution, allow for independent creation.
By authors, as opposed to inventors. In copyright, there's no requirement of novelty; originality is the main thing. (A pretty good argument could be made that were novelty required, copyright would grind to a halt; authors usually aren't that creative) I think that this distinction is inherent in the terminology used.
I think that it is possible that a person could be considered the author of _a_ poem, which coincidentally happened to be identical to another poem written earlier by a different author, but that's because authorship is bound up in provenance and thus the originality requirement. Being author of the second poem doesn't make you author of the first, or even on equal standing with the earlier author.
Inventors get an entire invention to themselves, regardless of later independent development. Bell invented the telephone. Not 'his' but 'the.' I think there's an important distinction.
(Also do bear in mind that while copyright allows for independent creation in theory, in practice even moderately similar works will probably result in the later author found to infringe; I've never heard of two authors fighting over absolutely identical works where the later author was found not to infringe.)
Second, proving priority under a first to invent system is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. First to file is a simpler system.
At least it can be done. You'd sacrifice a just result for a mere cost savings -- not even a saving of tax dollars, really, but to save the money of the parties themselves, who could easily choose not to fight over it, or to settle.
Why not a compromise? Come up with a way to run an interference that is easier, quicker, and cheaper, but still results in the actual inventor -- the first inventor -- getting the patent. I'd have no qualms with that.
First to file doesn't mean that a non-inventor can file for a patent.
I don't think that a later inventor is an inventor, really. Suppose that I had never seen, used, or so much as heard of fire. If I develop fire entirely on my own, does that make me an inventor of one of the most important technologies in human history, or does it make me merely a genius who is way behind his time? I don't think that people would say that's invention, and at that point there's only a gap in time between the real inventor and the latecomer, and whether it's millennia or months or minutes, there's no qualitative difference.
Second the copyright laws, which are derived from the same clause of the Constitution, allow for independent creation.
By authors, as opposed to inventors. In copyright, there's no requirement of novelty; originality is the main thing. (A pretty good argument could be made that were novelty required, copyright would grind to a halt; authors usually aren't that creative) I think that this distinction is inherent in the terminology used.
I think that it is possible that a person could be considered the author of _a_ poem, which coincidentally happened to be identical to another poem written earlier by a different author, but that's because authorship is bound up in provenance and thus the originality requirement. Being author of the second poem doesn't make you author of the first, or even on equal standing with the earlier author.
Inventors get an entire invention to themselves, regardless of later independent development. Bell invented the telephone. Not 'his' but 'the.' I think there's an important distinction.
(Also do bear in mind that while copyright allows for independent creation in theory, in practice even moderately similar works will probably result in the later author found to infringe; I've never heard of two authors fighting over absolutely identical works where the later author was found not to infringe.)
Second, proving priority under a first to invent system is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. First to file is a simpler system.
At least it can be done. You'd sacrifice a just result for a mere cost savings -- not even a saving of tax dollars, really, but to save the money of the parties themselves, who could easily choose not to fight over it, or to settle.
Why not a compromise? Come up with a way to run an interference that is easier, quicker, and cheaper, but still results in the actual inventor -- the first inventor -- getting the patent. I'd have no qualms with that.
It's also unconstitutional, and contrary to the overall goals of the patent system. The US Constitution requires that patents only be granted to inventors, as opposed to johnny-come-latelies. And the goal of the system is not the granting of patents for its own sake, but to encourage the invention, disclosure, and bringing to market of novel, non-obvious, useful inventions, so that they can meaningfully enter the public domain. Granting rewards to people who can more swiftly negotiate bureaucracy doesn't encourage actual inventors at all.
I have seen plenty of laws that have weird side effects and are prone to be abused.
Sure. That doesn't have to happen, but sometimes people make mistakes, sometimes errors creep in due to the political process, and sometimes hidden 'features' are snuck in. If possible, problems like that should be fixed once found, but this is not always easy, again due to the politics involved.
I would suggest that mathematicians and the likes write the laws, because they tend to know how to apply logic.
Of course, you'd probably do that at the expense of clarity. This is a common complaint: write something plainly, and it's subject to various interpretations; write something precisely, and it's too difficult for people to understand. It's very difficult, and very rare to manage both.
I don't have a problem with abolishing software patents -- at least until it appears that it would be more beneficial to the industry to have them, than to not have them -- but you're quite wrong about much of the rest. First, lawyers don't really care about work for other lawyers. The professional courtesy joke is just a joke. Second, there is a reason that laws tend to be written by lawyers; that's the field we work in. You'd probably want an architect to design your house, an engineer to design your bridge, a plumber to install your plumbing, and a computer programmer to program your computer. A law written by a layperson is prone to not be a very well-written law that accomplishes its intended purpose and lacks bad side effects.
Why not? How is software unlike any other industry? If you're going to go on that old exception about algorithms and "all software is math," then that argument has lost many times and is unlikely to ever succeed. You're going to need a really good policy argument to explain why we should strip IP protection from a multi-trillion dollar industry, particularly in this economy.
Software isn't inherently undeserving of patent protection, but it is presently inappropriate to grant patents in that field.
The purpose of patents is to encourage the invention, disclosure, and bringing to market, of patentable inventions (i.e. novel, nonobvious, useful, etc.) which otherwise would not have been invented, disclosed, and brought to market. It's an artificial subsidy, and should only be applied where it is necessary, and never where it is redundant, because there are costs involved. In most cases it's not really possible to tell, particularly on the level of a specific patent for a specific invention. However, the software industry is fabulously inventive, is very good at bringing things to market, and almost inevitably seems to involve disclosure, at least to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
Frankly, the software industry doesn't need patents. It isn't being spurred on to greater heights of inventiveness, etc. by the availability of patents. In fact, the costs of patents (read broadly; not just the cost of getting one, but the minefield) are probably dragging it down. We'd better achieve the desired goals of the patent system if we didn't grant patents in that field. At least not for the time being. Eventually, the industry may settle down, and it would become appropriate to grant patents in the field, but that time isn't now. Business methods are the same sort of thing; patents aren't acting as a necessary incentive, and aren't doing more good than harm.
So one of the reasons we should strip those protections is to turn a multi-trillion dollar industry into something even bigger. We don't need to chain ourselves to anchors in this economy.
If you started from a state of nature, people would tend to band together for mutual reasons, such as defense and engaging in projects that are impractical or impossible for one person to do alone (e.g. building an aqueduct). Legitimate governments get set up in order to administer these things efficiently, and may levy taxes by mutual consent in order to fund them (e.g. everyone benefits from the aqueduct, but if you can't spare time from your farm to help build it, you would need to pay someone else to build it for you, perhaps in food so that the builder doesn't need to spend their time on their farm).
If someone claims some property for themselves that no one else believes is theirs, or avoids their obligations, they are likely to get punished, in ways ranging from fines (people who don't pay their taxes get property seized), to exile from the community that they're trying to free ride on, to imprisonment or execution.
Governments and polities today are much more complex, but are basically the same. If the government is legitimate, it derives its power from the consent of the governed, and likely has democratic features (what with enlightened despots being rare on the ground). While there should be some protection for the minority, lest they suffer from mob rule, the majority is still apt to be in charge. Property rights throughout history have been limited to what a person can defend themselves, or what other people are willing to consent to, because a naked claim of ownership that isn't backed up by force or the consent of others is, and always has been, worthless. If high taxes on the wealthy are desired, wealthy people will either need to stock up on weapons to defend their property (unlikely to work given how few wealthy people there are) or will need to submit. Or they have to wage a propaganda war to convince the majority to deny their own economic interests, in favor of the interests of a wealthy elite that they'll never be members of, which has been popular lately. If they can't convince people to act foolishly, don't submit to taxes, and can't physically protect themselves from literally everyone else, they're apt to get punished.
I am not sure how you think things ought to work, and whether things could realistically work in whatever fashion you'd like.
No, that was probably a Mac Plus. It's very difficult to tell, due to the poor lighting and lack of focus, but I think it had the name printed on the front (which previous Macs did not have), and in any case, a Mac 128k would not have been a good computer to have as late as 1989.
Softman's not a very good case for this; the software was resold but it was never opened or run, though you might want to take a look at Specht v. Netscape. I'd suggest instead looking at ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg on the one hand, and Klocek v. Gateway on the other, for whether or not EULAs apply.
The problem with EULAs, it seems to me, is really a subset of the problem with adhesive contracts in consumer transactions. It's yet another area where reform is needed.
Yes it is. A copy is defined as a material object in which a work is fixed such that it can be perceived directly or via a machine. If you have a program on a CD and write a duplicate to the hard drive, that's a new material object (the HD) in which the program is fixed, so it's a new copy. If you take that copy and write it into RAM, the RAM is a new object in which it's fixed. This has been (crappy) settled law for quite some time.
If you own a copy of the software, there's an exception in the law that permits you to load it into memory, modify it as necessary in order to get it to work, and make backups. It doesn't apply if you merely license software, however; then you're stuck with whatever the license allows or disallows, which is why EULAs are a pretty important thing.
If it was, every person on earth would be liable for 5 trillion counts of copyright infringement.
That sounds about right. Copyright law is completely awful, and heavily weighted in favor of the interests of publishers and copyright holders against the public.
If copyright can only protect your work from free copies for a year, many of your potential customers will wait until they can get a free or cheap copy and your financial incentive is limited to match what you can reasonably hope to sell in the first year.
Well, we'd be good on newspapers and most other periodicals. Novels might have to accelerate their timeline for hardcovers and paperbacks, or switch to a single trade format, but could probably do okay. TV shows would likely be fine, though they would feel the loss of second run syndication money, so budgets could go down (not that big budgets are entirely necessary merely for good TV). Movies would have a difficult time, and would have to vastly speed up their timeline from box office to home video and rental to PPV, premium cable, basic cable, and broadcast. But it's been running pretty fast now (some movies are on DVD within only a couple of months of their theatrical release) and while again this could drive revenues down, I think we'd still have a movie industry. Software could be tough; while it doesn't need a very long term, it may need more than just a year.
Overall though, I'd be willing to try it. And I'd point out that right now, many potential customers _could_ wait until they can get a cheaper copy (get the paperback instead of the hardcover, get the rental movie instead of going to the theater), but that this not only hasn't destroyed the publishing industries yet, it has generally helped them. Movies make more from home video and rental than box office now, for example. Their marketing departments are very good at getting people to buy the new thing now, rather than wait. Or better yet, buy it now and buy it again later.
In the other direction, if copyright of your work extends to three generations, and you have the opportunity and talent, you can invest twenty years of your life in the holodeck project with the incentive of being able to provide financially not only for your self, but also for your grandchildren. Your incentive is tremendously increased to work on the more valuable project.
People say this, but in practice, it seems not to work.
The reason is probably this: most creative works have no copyright related value at all. Of the small number that do, most realize that value very very quickly. TV news realizes it within minutes, while newspapers get a good fraction of the day. But no one buys yesterday's newspaper or watches the 6 o'clock news from last week. Books can usually manage somewhere between 18-24 months. Movies can probably squeeze out 3-5 years; maybe more from various movies of the week and such. But generally, the vast majority of the copyright-related money that is ever going to be derived from a work will be derived quite soon after it is published in a given medium.
Some works defy these odds, and have extremely long-lasting value, and are often quite valuable even at the beginning.
But the chances of producing that kind of work are roughly like those of winning the lottery. It happens, but it probably won't happen to you.
If a person spent every penny they earned over a span of twenty years buying lottery tickets, hoping that by winning the jackpot, they would be able to provide financially for themselves and their family for generations to come, we would call that person a moron, and we would probably hope that their family walked out on them.
Still, that's basically what you're suggesting.
I don't mind holding out some sort of carrot for authors, and I don't mind if most authors never recoup their expenses, and I don't even mind that most artists never make it big -- or even moderately -- at all. But our policy should nevertheless be geared around what usually happens (works are flops or at best moderate, short-term successes), and produce results that are the best for the general public. If some people can manage to become zillionaires based on that, then good for them, but making people rich is not the point.
Tell you what, you tell me about a digital good that has natural scarcity and I'll happily entertain this new concept. Until then, it's time to wake up and realize that digital goods are just not as valuable as you think they are.
Fingers and toes. And I value mine pretty highly.;)
However the tangible asset itself has not necessarily been purchased.
I don't think that most of us are interested in buying the master. Copyright deals with the intangible; were works (as opposed to copies those works are fixed within) tangible, we never would have needed copyright to begin with. Ordinary personal property law would've worked fine.
the composing artist should be compensated. Just because it's old is no excuse for it to become free property. Paul and Ringo are still kickin it.
Sorry, I don't follow. Why should they be compensated? Why should it matter whether they're alive (setting aside the old question of Paul)? Surely copyright law should do whatever is best for the public at large. If this happens to involve compensating artists, then fine, but if not, then also fine. And the time period should likewise be whatever is best for the public. This might be the life of the artist, but could just as easily be a fixed term of years. In any event, it's apt to be quite short, as most copyrights are economically worthless, and of the few that have worth, the vast majority see all of it realized within a timespam of minutes to a couple of years. The law should deal with what's realistic, and what is common for most works and most authors. It should not be structured around the idea that everyone is a superstar and everything is a hit. That would be as crazy as ultra-high taxes on the principle that everyone will win tens of millions of dollars in the lottery, and could easily afford it.
By your logic just because the grain is old you should be allowed access to it without compensation to the person who originally produced it.
So long as the quantity of grain in the silo is not reduced, sure, why not?
Imagine that someone invented a Star Trek style replicator tomorrow. Anything you put into it, it can scan the pattern of, and make more of them. Naturally the first thing that would be made would be replicators for every man, woman, and child. But once everyone has a replicator... what happens to a lot of industries? We no longer need to farm huge quantities of land to feed everyone. Now a fisherman only needs to catch one fish, in order to have an effectively infinite amount of fish for the rest of his life. The issue of hunger would be solved, so long as people didn't restrict the use of replicators.
But it would also be impossible to make a living as a farmer, or fisherman, or rancher. (Though at least we know they wouldn't starve) Likewise, chefs would have a hard time of things. There may be some monotony in diets; without much commercial incentive, who will invent the next Caesar Salad or Bananas Foster or Boneless Chicken? There would be some hobbyists, who like to tinker, and amateurs, but probably a lot fewer chefs or farmers. Restaurants might continue to exist, but more as spaces to socialize, since you can bring your favorite recipe on a disk and have it zapped into existence for you.
Is it better to let people starve if it props up the industry that fails to meet their needs? Or should we take care of everyone, even if that means that some people have to completely rethink what they do for a living?
I'd say that we should do the latter.
Obviously we aren't there yet, but we have a similar situation with creative works, which can be replicated trivially, though creating new ones takes some extra effort. Right now we have a bunch of restrictions to prop up the industry, but it isn't actually necessary that we do this. We could stop doing it tomorrow, and see what happens. God basically created the universe in such a way that these things can be replicated, and I wonder if we're mishandling it. It doesn't matter that food is more immediately vital for survival than art. In an ideal world, we'd all get to enjoy all the creative works we liked, however we liked, and if our world isn't ideal, surely we have some obligation to improve it.
helping yourself to someone's work without compensating them in any way is just
Hell, a simple reform of the statute would cure a lot of copyright-related ills. The main problem has to do with corruption of government and the concentration of power in private hands, rather than the public at large or legitimate governments. How we fix that, I don't know. Lessig has moved to that area, as he feels that until it is fixed, no meaningful progress can be made on copyright anyway.
And Russia might be free, but things are not all strawberries and cream over there, from what I hear. We in the west really should've worked harder at helping them out instead of dumping them into the deep end of the free market right away.
I discussed this elsewhere, but basically, some things can qualify for protection both under copyright and trademark. A sufficiently artistic logo could. But a name cannot be copyrighted; only trademarked. And even then, the trademark doesn't prohibit any use of the mark, only some uses.
As for foreign language marks, IIRC it basically is going to involve what the perception of the relevant segment of the public thinks. If the owners of fancy, expensive watches can read Greek, things may turn out differently than if they cannot. I'd have to research it for more information; I've never had that situation arise.
In copyright law, 'copy' is a term of art, meaning a tangible object in which the intangible work has been fixed. For example, a blank piece of paper, onto which a poem is written, is a copy.
And the original copy is still a copy, and there is no special treatment for it.
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That explains why people always look so confused when a baseball player steals a base, or a lover steals a kiss, or a plagarist stole someone's idea, or a cute girl stole their heart, or a blowhard stole their thunder, etc. Because the FIRST THING people think of when they hear steal is "loss of previously owned property". No, the only people who have (or claim to have) any trouble at all understanding what steal means are morons who try to pretend that copyright infringement ISN'T stealing.
There's no legal aspect to stealing bases in baseball, or stealing a kiss in love, etc. But on the other hand, if someone said that my lighting a cigarette in an area where smoking was prohibited was arson, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to point out how that's wrong. Before I went to law school and learned about it, I once annoyed a policeman by using robbery and burglary as synonyms. Which they're not, and in any case, neither described the circumstances anyway.
I'm sure most of the people here find it at least a little irksome when they hear people call a monitor a computer, and a CPU a hard disk. Or when a person says that not having enough RAM requires deleting files from a drive. At the very least it tends to expose the person using those terms incorrectly as someone who just doesn't know much about computers, and who shouldn't be treated as a knowledgeable user.
Copyright infringement is a legal issue; 'stealing' is a different one. They're not the same, they're not even vaguely similar. The histories, the policies, the elements of the offense, the defenses -- they're all very, very different.
Calling infringement by loaded terms like theft or stealing doesn't help conversations. It's just an inarticulate slur. If you're interested in having an honest discussion about copyright, it won't harm you to use the proper terminology. Unless you have no real argument, and just want to stir up unthinking passions. If that's the case, why call it stealing? Call it murder or terrorism or something; still inaccurate, but you get more of a punch.
With your example of the later inventor of fire, well, that wouldn't matter, since it'd be long since been prior art. (Also, fire isn't a patentable subject matter, being a natural phenomenon, however, if you come up with a new and novel way to create a fire, that can still be patentable).
Substitute fire with the wheel, if you prefer. As for prior art, that's not the point I'm trying to make. Would you say that a person who independently came up with an invention that has been in common use since prehistory is an inventor of that thing? Regardless of patentability? I don't think so. Regardless of timeframe, the guy who comes in second will at best be remembered as a bit of trivia as the runner up. The real inventor is the guy who is first.
Do italic tags not work anymore? In that case let me revise my post for clarity:
First to file doesn't mean that a non-inventor can file for a patent.
I don't think that a later inventor is an inventor, really. Suppose that I had never seen, used, or so much as heard of fire. If I develop fire entirely on my own, does that make me an inventor of one of the most important technologies in human history, or does it make me merely a genius who is way behind his time? I don't think that people would say that's invention, and at that point there's only a gap in time between the real inventor and the latecomer, and whether it's millennia or months or minutes, there's no qualitative difference.
Second the copyright laws, which are derived from the same clause of the Constitution, allow for independent creation.
By authors, as opposed to inventors. In copyright, there's no requirement of novelty; originality is the main thing. (A pretty good argument could be made that were novelty required, copyright would grind to a halt; authors usually aren't that creative) I think that this distinction is inherent in the terminology used.
I think that it is possible that a person could be considered the author of _a_ poem, which coincidentally happened to be identical to another poem written earlier by a different author, but that's because authorship is bound up in provenance and thus the originality requirement. Being author of the second poem doesn't make you author of the first, or even on equal standing with the earlier author.
Inventors get an entire invention to themselves, regardless of later independent development. Bell invented the telephone. Not 'his' but 'the.' I think there's an important distinction.
(Also do bear in mind that while copyright allows for independent creation in theory, in practice even moderately similar works will probably result in the later author found to infringe; I've never heard of two authors fighting over absolutely identical works where the later author was found not to infringe.)
Second, proving priority under a first to invent system is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. First to file is a simpler system.
At least it can be done. You'd sacrifice a just result for a mere cost savings -- not even a saving of tax dollars, really, but to save the money of the parties themselves, who could easily choose not to fight over it, or to settle.
Why not a compromise? Come up with a way to run an interference that is easier, quicker, and cheaper, but still results in the actual inventor -- the first inventor -- getting the patent. I'd have no qualms with that.
First to file doesn't mean that a non-inventor can file for a patent.
I don't think that a later inventor is an inventor, really. Suppose that I had never seen, used, or so much as heard of fire. If I develop fire entirely on my own, does that make me an inventor of one of the most important technologies in human history, or does it make me merely a genius who is way behind his time? I don't think that people would say that's invention, and at that point there's only a gap in time between the real inventor and the latecomer, and whether it's millennia or months or minutes, there's no qualitative difference.
Second the copyright laws, which are derived from the same clause of the Constitution, allow for independent creation.
By authors, as opposed to inventors. In copyright, there's no requirement of novelty; originality is the main thing. (A pretty good argument could be made that were novelty required, copyright would grind to a halt; authors usually aren't that creative) I think that this distinction is inherent in the terminology used.
I think that it is possible that a person could be considered the author of _a_ poem, which coincidentally happened to be identical to another poem written earlier by a different author, but that's because authorship is bound up in provenance and thus the originality requirement. Being author of the second poem doesn't make you author of the first, or even on equal standing with the earlier author.
Inventors get an entire invention to themselves, regardless of later independent development. Bell invented the telephone. Not 'his' but 'the.' I think there's an important distinction.
(Also do bear in mind that while copyright allows for independent creation in theory, in practice even moderately similar works will probably result in the later author found to infringe; I've never heard of two authors fighting over absolutely identical works where the later author was found not to infringe.)
Second, proving priority under a first to invent system is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. First to file is a simpler system.
At least it can be done. You'd sacrifice a just result for a mere cost savings -- not even a saving of tax dollars, really, but to save the money of the parties themselves, who could easily choose not to fight over it, or to settle.
Why not a compromise? Come up with a way to run an interference that is easier, quicker, and cheaper, but still results in the actual inventor -- the first inventor -- getting the patent. I'd have no qualms with that.
Oh, was there finally a case that decided that otherwise patentable plots (novel, etc.) were not patentable?
It's also unconstitutional, and contrary to the overall goals of the patent system. The US Constitution requires that patents only be granted to inventors, as opposed to johnny-come-latelies. And the goal of the system is not the granting of patents for its own sake, but to encourage the invention, disclosure, and bringing to market of novel, non-obvious, useful inventions, so that they can meaningfully enter the public domain. Granting rewards to people who can more swiftly negotiate bureaucracy doesn't encourage actual inventors at all.
I have seen plenty of laws that have weird side effects and are prone to be abused.
Sure. That doesn't have to happen, but sometimes people make mistakes, sometimes errors creep in due to the political process, and sometimes hidden 'features' are snuck in. If possible, problems like that should be fixed once found, but this is not always easy, again due to the politics involved.
I would suggest that mathematicians and the likes write the laws, because they tend to know how to apply logic.
Of course, you'd probably do that at the expense of clarity. This is a common complaint: write something plainly, and it's subject to various interpretations; write something precisely, and it's too difficult for people to understand. It's very difficult, and very rare to manage both.
I don't have a problem with abolishing software patents -- at least until it appears that it would be more beneficial to the industry to have them, than to not have them -- but you're quite wrong about much of the rest. First, lawyers don't really care about work for other lawyers. The professional courtesy joke is just a joke. Second, there is a reason that laws tend to be written by lawyers; that's the field we work in. You'd probably want an architect to design your house, an engineer to design your bridge, a plumber to install your plumbing, and a computer programmer to program your computer. A law written by a layperson is prone to not be a very well-written law that accomplishes its intended purpose and lacks bad side effects.
Why not? How is software unlike any other industry? If you're going to go on that old exception about algorithms and "all software is math," then that argument has lost many times and is unlikely to ever succeed. You're going to need a really good policy argument to explain why we should strip IP protection from a multi-trillion dollar industry, particularly in this economy.
Software isn't inherently undeserving of patent protection, but it is presently inappropriate to grant patents in that field.
The purpose of patents is to encourage the invention, disclosure, and bringing to market, of patentable inventions (i.e. novel, nonobvious, useful, etc.) which otherwise would not have been invented, disclosed, and brought to market. It's an artificial subsidy, and should only be applied where it is necessary, and never where it is redundant, because there are costs involved. In most cases it's not really possible to tell, particularly on the level of a specific patent for a specific invention. However, the software industry is fabulously inventive, is very good at bringing things to market, and almost inevitably seems to involve disclosure, at least to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
Frankly, the software industry doesn't need patents. It isn't being spurred on to greater heights of inventiveness, etc. by the availability of patents. In fact, the costs of patents (read broadly; not just the cost of getting one, but the minefield) are probably dragging it down. We'd better achieve the desired goals of the patent system if we didn't grant patents in that field. At least not for the time being. Eventually, the industry may settle down, and it would become appropriate to grant patents in the field, but that time isn't now. Business methods are the same sort of thing; patents aren't acting as a necessary incentive, and aren't doing more good than harm.
So one of the reasons we should strip those protections is to turn a multi-trillion dollar industry into something even bigger. We don't need to chain ourselves to anchors in this economy.
On top of that, Apple has so far never named a product with a '2'. There is no Macbook 2, no iPod touch '2', no iPhone 2 etc.
But there was the Lisa 2, back in 1984. Then, the next year, it was followed up by the Macintosh XL. Here's an old brochure.
The three rule was broken a long time ago, when the LC III came out, and was a big success.
'the life of Olaudah equiano' which was his autobiography written in the early 19th century during the fight to end slavery in Britain.
Late 18th century, IIRC.
As for the loss of books, read 'Double Fold' by Nicholson Baker. What goes on at libraries will infuriate you.
Well, precision is what's most prized, but it often comes at the cost of simple, concise writing. It's pretty difficult to manage all three.
No, that sounds about right.
If you started from a state of nature, people would tend to band together for mutual reasons, such as defense and engaging in projects that are impractical or impossible for one person to do alone (e.g. building an aqueduct). Legitimate governments get set up in order to administer these things efficiently, and may levy taxes by mutual consent in order to fund them (e.g. everyone benefits from the aqueduct, but if you can't spare time from your farm to help build it, you would need to pay someone else to build it for you, perhaps in food so that the builder doesn't need to spend their time on their farm).
If someone claims some property for themselves that no one else believes is theirs, or avoids their obligations, they are likely to get punished, in ways ranging from fines (people who don't pay their taxes get property seized), to exile from the community that they're trying to free ride on, to imprisonment or execution.
Governments and polities today are much more complex, but are basically the same. If the government is legitimate, it derives its power from the consent of the governed, and likely has democratic features (what with enlightened despots being rare on the ground). While there should be some protection for the minority, lest they suffer from mob rule, the majority is still apt to be in charge. Property rights throughout history have been limited to what a person can defend themselves, or what other people are willing to consent to, because a naked claim of ownership that isn't backed up by force or the consent of others is, and always has been, worthless. If high taxes on the wealthy are desired, wealthy people will either need to stock up on weapons to defend their property (unlikely to work given how few wealthy people there are) or will need to submit. Or they have to wage a propaganda war to convince the majority to deny their own economic interests, in favor of the interests of a wealthy elite that they'll never be members of, which has been popular lately. If they can't convince people to act foolishly, don't submit to taxes, and can't physically protect themselves from literally everyone else, they're apt to get punished.
I am not sure how you think things ought to work, and whether things could realistically work in whatever fashion you'd like.
I liked the shot of the original Mac
No, that was probably a Mac Plus. It's very difficult to tell, due to the poor lighting and lack of focus, but I think it had the name printed on the front (which previous Macs did not have), and in any case, a Mac 128k would not have been a good computer to have as late as 1989.
Softman's not a very good case for this; the software was resold but it was never opened or run, though you might want to take a look at Specht v. Netscape. I'd suggest instead looking at ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg on the one hand, and Klocek v. Gateway on the other, for whether or not EULAs apply.
The problem with EULAs, it seems to me, is really a subset of the problem with adhesive contracts in consumer transactions. It's yet another area where reform is needed.
Loading software into memory is not a copy.
Yes it is. A copy is defined as a material object in which a work is fixed such that it can be perceived directly or via a machine. If you have a program on a CD and write a duplicate to the hard drive, that's a new material object (the HD) in which the program is fixed, so it's a new copy. If you take that copy and write it into RAM, the RAM is a new object in which it's fixed. This has been (crappy) settled law for quite some time.
If you own a copy of the software, there's an exception in the law that permits you to load it into memory, modify it as necessary in order to get it to work, and make backups. It doesn't apply if you merely license software, however; then you're stuck with whatever the license allows or disallows, which is why EULAs are a pretty important thing.
If it was, every person on earth would be liable for 5 trillion counts of copyright infringement.
That sounds about right. Copyright law is completely awful, and heavily weighted in favor of the interests of publishers and copyright holders against the public.
Invisible monsters are often good for this.
Yeah, good luck with that. Authors, songwriters, and other artists in the current system generally either end up being very rich or penniless.
There's probably few enough of them that become very rich that we can discount them as a statistical aberration.
If copyright can only protect your work from free copies for a year, many of your potential customers will wait until they can get a free or cheap copy and your financial incentive is limited to match what you can reasonably hope to sell in the first year.
Well, we'd be good on newspapers and most other periodicals. Novels might have to accelerate their timeline for hardcovers and paperbacks, or switch to a single trade format, but could probably do okay. TV shows would likely be fine, though they would feel the loss of second run syndication money, so budgets could go down (not that big budgets are entirely necessary merely for good TV). Movies would have a difficult time, and would have to vastly speed up their timeline from box office to home video and rental to PPV, premium cable, basic cable, and broadcast. But it's been running pretty fast now (some movies are on DVD within only a couple of months of their theatrical release) and while again this could drive revenues down, I think we'd still have a movie industry. Software could be tough; while it doesn't need a very long term, it may need more than just a year.
Overall though, I'd be willing to try it. And I'd point out that right now, many potential customers _could_ wait until they can get a cheaper copy (get the paperback instead of the hardcover, get the rental movie instead of going to the theater), but that this not only hasn't destroyed the publishing industries yet, it has generally helped them. Movies make more from home video and rental than box office now, for example. Their marketing departments are very good at getting people to buy the new thing now, rather than wait. Or better yet, buy it now and buy it again later.
In the other direction, if copyright of your work extends to three generations, and you have the opportunity and talent, you can invest twenty years of your life in the holodeck project with the incentive of being able to provide financially not only for your self, but also for your grandchildren. Your incentive is tremendously increased to work on the more valuable project.
People say this, but in practice, it seems not to work.
The reason is probably this: most creative works have no copyright related value at all. Of the small number that do, most realize that value very very quickly. TV news realizes it within minutes, while newspapers get a good fraction of the day. But no one buys yesterday's newspaper or watches the 6 o'clock news from last week. Books can usually manage somewhere between 18-24 months. Movies can probably squeeze out 3-5 years; maybe more from various movies of the week and such. But generally, the vast majority of the copyright-related money that is ever going to be derived from a work will be derived quite soon after it is published in a given medium.
Some works defy these odds, and have extremely long-lasting value, and are often quite valuable even at the beginning.
But the chances of producing that kind of work are roughly like those of winning the lottery. It happens, but it probably won't happen to you.
If a person spent every penny they earned over a span of twenty years buying lottery tickets, hoping that by winning the jackpot, they would be able to provide financially for themselves and their family for generations to come, we would call that person a moron, and we would probably hope that their family walked out on them.
Still, that's basically what you're suggesting.
I don't mind holding out some sort of carrot for authors, and I don't mind if most authors never recoup their expenses, and I don't even mind that most artists never make it big -- or even moderately -- at all. But our policy should nevertheless be geared around what usually happens (works are flops or at best moderate, short-term successes), and produce results that are the best for the general public. If some people can manage to become zillionaires based on that, then good for them, but making people rich is not the point.
Tell you what, you tell me about a digital good that has natural scarcity and I'll happily entertain this new concept. Until then, it's time to wake up and realize that digital goods are just not as valuable as you think they are.
Fingers and toes. And I value mine pretty highly. ;)
However the tangible asset itself has not necessarily been purchased.
I don't think that most of us are interested in buying the master. Copyright deals with the intangible; were works (as opposed to copies those works are fixed within) tangible, we never would have needed copyright to begin with. Ordinary personal property law would've worked fine.
the composing artist should be compensated. Just because it's old is no excuse for it to become free property. Paul and Ringo are still kickin it.
Sorry, I don't follow. Why should they be compensated? Why should it matter whether they're alive (setting aside the old question of Paul)? Surely copyright law should do whatever is best for the public at large. If this happens to involve compensating artists, then fine, but if not, then also fine. And the time period should likewise be whatever is best for the public. This might be the life of the artist, but could just as easily be a fixed term of years. In any event, it's apt to be quite short, as most copyrights are economically worthless, and of the few that have worth, the vast majority see all of it realized within a timespam of minutes to a couple of years. The law should deal with what's realistic, and what is common for most works and most authors. It should not be structured around the idea that everyone is a superstar and everything is a hit. That would be as crazy as ultra-high taxes on the principle that everyone will win tens of millions of dollars in the lottery, and could easily afford it.
By your logic just because the grain is old you should be allowed access to it without compensation to the person who originally produced it.
So long as the quantity of grain in the silo is not reduced, sure, why not?
Imagine that someone invented a Star Trek style replicator tomorrow. Anything you put into it, it can scan the pattern of, and make more of them. Naturally the first thing that would be made would be replicators for every man, woman, and child. But once everyone has a replicator... what happens to a lot of industries? We no longer need to farm huge quantities of land to feed everyone. Now a fisherman only needs to catch one fish, in order to have an effectively infinite amount of fish for the rest of his life. The issue of hunger would be solved, so long as people didn't restrict the use of replicators.
But it would also be impossible to make a living as a farmer, or fisherman, or rancher. (Though at least we know they wouldn't starve) Likewise, chefs would have a hard time of things. There may be some monotony in diets; without much commercial incentive, who will invent the next Caesar Salad or Bananas Foster or Boneless Chicken? There would be some hobbyists, who like to tinker, and amateurs, but probably a lot fewer chefs or farmers. Restaurants might continue to exist, but more as spaces to socialize, since you can bring your favorite recipe on a disk and have it zapped into existence for you.
Is it better to let people starve if it props up the industry that fails to meet their needs? Or should we take care of everyone, even if that means that some people have to completely rethink what they do for a living?
I'd say that we should do the latter.
Obviously we aren't there yet, but we have a similar situation with creative works, which can be replicated trivially, though creating new ones takes some extra effort. Right now we have a bunch of restrictions to prop up the industry, but it isn't actually necessary that we do this. We could stop doing it tomorrow, and see what happens. God basically created the universe in such a way that these things can be replicated, and I wonder if we're mishandling it. It doesn't matter that food is more immediately vital for survival than art. In an ideal world, we'd all get to enjoy all the creative works we liked, however we liked, and if our world isn't ideal, surely we have some obligation to improve it.
helping yourself to someone's work without compensating them in any way is just
Hell, a simple reform of the statute would cure a lot of copyright-related ills. The main problem has to do with corruption of government and the concentration of power in private hands, rather than the public at large or legitimate governments. How we fix that, I don't know. Lessig has moved to that area, as he feels that until it is fixed, no meaningful progress can be made on copyright anyway.
And Russia might be free, but things are not all strawberries and cream over there, from what I hear. We in the west really should've worked harder at helping them out instead of dumping them into the deep end of the free market right away.
I discussed this elsewhere, but basically, some things can qualify for protection both under copyright and trademark. A sufficiently artistic logo could. But a name cannot be copyrighted; only trademarked. And even then, the trademark doesn't prohibit any use of the mark, only some uses.
As for foreign language marks, IIRC it basically is going to involve what the perception of the relevant segment of the public thinks. If the owners of fancy, expensive watches can read Greek, things may turn out differently than if they cannot. I'd have to research it for more information; I've never had that situation arise.
In copyright law, 'copy' is a term of art, meaning a tangible object in which the intangible work has been fixed. For example, a blank piece of paper, onto which a poem is written, is a copy.
And the original copy is still a copy, and there is no special treatment for it.