And what will happen to the quality of work produced?
Who can say. Chances are that Sturgeon's law (99% of everything is crap) will hold.
People who do a job out of a love of the game generally do it better than those who are just grinding away to earn a buck.
There are people who do things for the love of it. Doesn't mean they're generally better, just means they have enthusiasm and no one can tell them when to quit.
And there are those who only do it for a buck but are REALLY GOOD at it. It's their creative work that would probably be lost. And that'd be a bad thing.
It won't cause all the hacks to drop off, it'll just reduce the number of good people and hacks. The ratio will probably be the same. I'd prefer the total number of works to be higher.
Haha, astroturf. You assume immediately that because some of us object to rampant violation of copyright (or the elimination thereof) that we: - Agree with the mindless stream of lawsuits - Agree with DRM - Agree with an overreaching and unbalanced copyright law
No, you simply feel that those who are opposed to you are wrong or are here speaking artificially.
you'll get numerous weasels popping up who "just happen" to repeat tired old propaganda we've all heard and dismissed many times before.
Just like all the people who make their examples but only point to musicians, or cite the production costs of a DVD or CD as the only expense in the creation of something.
The question is are "we" better off with less production, when we could have more?
We could easily maintain the current output by fixing the laws. But the people are far too complacent to do so, contented to post on slashdot with whines and gripes.
. If my ability to relinquish copyright in my own work (if that ability exists; there is no provision in copyright law for it)
It exists. You register the copyright and can then commit it to the public domain.
"We've" been "fixing" it for centuries and each fix has made it worse. Time to stop fixing and start dismantling.
Have we? The current status isn't a "fix" but a manipulation via the political process. The copyright we had at the time when the U.S. was founded was truly limited and effective. Eliminating it will contribute nothing except a disincentive.
There's absolutely no reason art should be special.
Ok, I'll produce an awesome miniseries that runs 13 episodes. The catch is that it'll cost you $39 million before you ever get to see it. And if you don't like it, too bad.
Because "controlling your work" requires you to control other people's work too.
Which is why copyright was limited in duration to 14 years with a renewal to 28 (in the U.S., initially.) An entirely reasonable duration.
A person listens to the song and starts whistling the tune sometime later. Does he owe you royalties?
Doubtful, and you'd be looked at funny if you pursued someone for it. The laws are not cold, cruel beasts, they're backed by the judgements of people who may be cold, cruel beasts or sane and look upon a suit for whistling a tune as being ridiculous.
it certainly has no effect on the average consumer.
No effect, none at all. Not on the people employed by that business, the people involved in the production of the work, or the people who enjoy it.
we could also talk about the fact that commercial entities infringe on civic and personal freedoms ever more in their desire for profit. Banks, credit card companies, microsoft, and even game companies (like Blizzard), monitor their users without their consent.
You are fully welcome to cease partaking in their offers. You don't -have- to play WoW but when you do, you're interacting with THEIR systems by your own decision. They state what they'll do as such in their ToS. And if you don't trust them (banks, microsoft) then don't give them your business. I'll buy the infringing on civic and personal freedoms bit when you're forced (by law) to do business with them.
Intellectual property has the nasty effect of stifling thinking and innovation
Does it? I see copyright being used quite effectively in the Free Software world to ensure the openness of GPL software.
and becoming a neo-fuedal or private dictatorship for the rich.
Over works they control. If you have a problem with it, I suggest promoting artists that are more altruistic or pushing your very political agenda and get the laws changed.
Why is it only musicians? There are more artforms beyond music, and not all of them have artists beholden to large companies via contracts. There are many who own the copyrights themselves, what about them?
The only works that remotely match under the fields of Computing and No Copyright are the BSDs, and even those are copyrighted.
GNU is most definitely copyrighted, it just makes very creative and effective use of it. And it's that creative use that encourages a lot of the contributions to it (see the Linux Kernel.)
Yes, we are living C, where C = A + B instead of only A or B.
You're free to act without copyrights, its completely voluntary. Every suggestion I have seen involves unilaterally removing it from the hands of others. If you're referring to the duration and current implementation of copyright then we need to fix it, not remove it.
What, so we should obey the insanity while waiting for the laws to change?
Or you could live the way you think would be better, and encourage copyright-free works and enjoy copyright free works. They can't stop you from doing that.
It's interesting to me that the only post below mine that got modded up was essentially an ad-hominem, and not an attempt to point out why the loss of someone's productive efforts was good or bad.
I'd like to express my support for the Mr. Falkvinger. I look forward to the day when musicians will again be forced to perform live fairly frequently to make a living.
That's great. Now solve the problem for other works than just music. Or do you expect me to make the video games (or film the movie) you just enjoyed live?
I've had enough of this overproduced shit with pitch shifted vocals and talentless anti-creative jingle-like songwriting spawned by the music industry.
That's fine, so don't listen. Eliminating copyright and whatnot would be like dropping a nuke to solve an overcrowding problem. Effective, but it misses the point.
The concept of copyright in music has no moral basis, other than the fact that technology was discovered to record and reproduce music.
Well then by that logic it has no moral basis at all. But it has a very valid legal basis, and one I find acceptible (within proper boundaries that we must re-assert.)
Well you know what? We've discovered technology to distribute this music -- how that is any less of a moral justification I don't know.
Distribution isn't the main cost burden. And until we live in a utopia where everything is free, any work will have costs associated with its production. Copyright helps us relieve that cost, eliminating copyright just forces the producer to eat it whole.
Visual artists make money off of the paintings they sell So you have artists, specifically painters. What about filmmakers, animators, even video game studios?
or through state arts subsidies or private patronage.
So we get works that are funded by limited state subsidies (which will be restricted by all sorts of legal voodoo) or works produced at the behest of those rich enough to have their entertainment produced for them and philanthropic enough to not try and keep it to themselves.
An end to copyright would affect them much less than even musicians.
An end to copyright would force all production costs to be accounted for up front. This places a huge burden on the producer, whether it be an individual or studio, and would limit the cost of production. While limited costs wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, it would also constrain the scope and ability applied to the work. This isn't to say that multi-million dollar works are better than ten thousand dollar works, but when you want something like Battlestar Galactica, you'd have to pay the 3 million per episode ahead of time since you probably won't make it back.
If you're trying to argue that cultural production will stop if copyright is somehow weakened
I hear this posited repeatedly in response to me, and not ever do I say this. But it's the red herring tossed out in an attempt to discredit what is said. Always what will happen is the rate at which new works are produced will drop (significantly, most likely) but never cease. And there's no reason for this drop to be forced.
A reasonable middle position does exist. People probably should be able to make some money off of their creative endeavors. On the other hand, the current duration of copyright in the US is silly - 120 years after creation or 95 years after first publication? That's insane.
Agreed, it is insane. But blatantly violating copyrights like we see today does nothing to correct it. On the contrary, it gives them ammunition to use against us.
Because I had an idea and felt a need to expound upon it.
But I would prefer to do so without having to eat the costs. I can only hope against hope to do so without copyright giving me both the incentive and the means.
The cost for most works today is not in the duplication but in the production. What you describe essentially dooms any artform that can't be performed live, which is a huge number versus the handful that can. It affects more than just writers, it affects anyone whose works can be or are digital in nature.
And no, most people will go for the cheapest version available which will always be the knockoff, be it physical or digital, because they have only the cost of duplication (which is trivial or non-existent, mind you.) Versus the original creator, who has to shoulder the costs of production along with duplication.
This statement gets me:
As laborers realize that their real income comes from billing for labor to-be-done, rather than billing for labor already-done, copyright will quickly dissolve to being useless.
Well, we have this for manual labor today. But then, the houses are built under the auspices of being sold later. You don't expect them to only build on-demand lest they be confiscated upon completion if unsold?
Artists are laborers, and those who realize that their future incomes will be derived from that which can't be easily duplicated by others will be the ones who profit and stay in business.
Copyright gives us the advantage by which we can make a venture on a work of art, whereby we can create something that may not be in demand. This allows artists to gather funding and produce a work without being beholden to someone else's vision. This involves risk but currently copyright allows some way of recovering that risk.
Ignoring copyright throws mud on the efforts of those who honestly do the work, and eliminating it needlessly reduces the amount of work today.
Note that I did not say eliminates. Some people would still create works, but it'd be considerably less (and lower budget) than currently.
2
I agree that the penalties should be reduced significantly.
3
Sure, then you can re-record the song by re-playing all the instruments and re-mastering the audio. Or re-filming that film. Or re-animating that work of animation. Or re-staging and acting out that play. Your copying of a file from one folder to another does not constitute what you just described, and the rest can be solved by limiting duration of copyright to more reasonable levels.
4 It's also a reproduction done without authorization that can (and will) compete with the legit copies in distribution. Make your choice: the free torrent or the physical CD. One compensates the artist and the other doesn't. Huge numbers choose the free torrent, while a handful choose the CD.
Just because a guy spent 4 years in college doesn't mean I should pay him $50,000 a year. Just because a band spent 4 years working on an album doesn't mean that their recorded work is worth a single penny to me. The laws of supply and demand, while restricted by ridiculous IP laws, will still win out in the long run.
If the guy who spent 4 years in college can do what you need done, then you need to pay him. Is it $48000? $52000? If you don't pay him what he's asking he'll take his abilities and go elsewhere. I'm sure if copyright was eliminated a lot of people producing works (good and bad) would do the same. And if that album isn't worth a single penny to you, then you obviously don't like it so don't listen to it. Except you do like it, and are just too cheap to contribute to their efforts.
This reads like the typical "all media must be free, and if it isn't we'll make it free" that I see here a lot. It explicitly sets up a situation where the creators end up holding the bag on costs, while the "people" get the work with no obligation. It's a sure fire scenario to really, really cut down on the number of works that are being made, a situation that leaves us intellectually poorer than fixing copyright would.
But first, both sides need to stop being so greedy.
That's right! Look in your history books and you will see that there were no creative works made before copyright law was around.:-P
Are you playing the fool or actually one?
Did I say they'd not be made? The very sentence you quoted has me saying they'd slow to a trickle which, relative to modern times, is the rate at which they were created. It's the difference between drinking from a freaking firehose versus a garden hose with a crimp in it.
Or do you seriously think anyone will put up $3 million or more per episode of a TV series if they have zero hope of making back what they invested in it?
By that logic, murder must be acceptable because a minority (namely murderers) want their right to kill protected.
Nice straw man. No one has the right to murder. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit to happiness, at least as written in the U.S. Constitution and murder committed by one person overrides the rights of another.
Modern intellectual property law got its start that way those many decades ago, but the path is long lost.
No, it's not long lost. It's just that the people you have to oppose to correct the law are far too powerful. You'd have to equal their political power before you could abolish copyright, but if you had that power you might realize it'd be unwise to eliminate it.
Technology has changed this aspect of intellectual property and folks have ever seen it as righteous to disregard an unfair law.
No, no no. This is SLASHDOTTERS pasting their personal ideals on other people's actions. If you ever stopped and inquired with people who download, it's because they can get all the entertainment they want for FREE. They don't want to EVER compensate creators, because they're just as greedy and selfish as the companies pushing for stronger copyright laws.
Current IP law exacts no toll to balance work-once sell-many.
Sure it does, it holds it outside the realm of the public domain for a duration (excessive, yes) during which the creator can control distribution.
But then, this is slashdot, where the destruction of copyright is the goal first and foremost, never mind that it'd wreck the GPL, CC, and cause the massive flood of creative works being produced today to slow to a trickle (what do you mean you don't want to work for free?)
Slashdot Mirror
Who can say. Chances are that Sturgeon's law (99% of everything is crap) will hold.
There are people who do things for the love of it. Doesn't mean they're generally better, just means they have enthusiasm and no one can tell them when to quit.
And there are those who only do it for a buck but are REALLY GOOD at it. It's their creative work that would probably be lost. And that'd be a bad thing.
It won't cause all the hacks to drop off, it'll just reduce the number of good people and hacks. The ratio will probably be the same. I'd prefer the total number of works to be higher.
- Agree with the mindless stream of lawsuits
- Agree with DRM
- Agree with an overreaching and unbalanced copyright law
No, you simply feel that those who are opposed to you are wrong or are here speaking artificially.
Just like all the people who make their examples but only point to musicians, or cite the production costs of a DVD or CD as the only expense in the creation of something.
"I" am not relevant.
The question is are "we" better off with less production, when we could have more?
We could easily maintain the current output by fixing the laws. But the people are far too complacent to do so, contented to post on slashdot with whines and gripes.
It exists. You register the copyright and can then commit it to the public domain.
Have we? The current status isn't a "fix" but a manipulation via the political process. The copyright we had at the time when the U.S. was founded was truly limited and effective. Eliminating it will contribute nothing except a disincentive.
Ok, I'll produce an awesome miniseries that runs 13 episodes. The catch is that it'll cost you $39 million before you ever get to see it. And if you don't like it, too bad.
Which is why copyright was limited in duration to 14 years with a renewal to 28 (in the U.S., initially.) An entirely reasonable duration.
Doubtful, and you'd be looked at funny if you pursued someone for it. The laws are not cold, cruel beasts, they're backed by the judgements of people who may be cold, cruel beasts or sane and look upon a suit for whistling a tune as being ridiculous.
No effect, none at all. Not on the people employed by that business, the people involved in the production of the work, or the people who enjoy it.
You are fully welcome to cease partaking in their offers. You don't -have- to play WoW but when you do, you're interacting with THEIR systems by your own decision. They state what they'll do as such in their ToS. And if you don't trust them (banks, microsoft) then don't give them your business. I'll buy the infringing on civic and personal freedoms bit when you're forced (by law) to do business with them.
Does it? I see copyright being used quite effectively in the Free Software world to ensure the openness of GPL software.
Over works they control. If you have a problem with it, I suggest promoting artists that are more altruistic or pushing your very political agenda and get the laws changed.
Why is it only musicians? There are more artforms beyond music, and not all of them have artists beholden to large companies via contracts. There are many who own the copyrights themselves, what about them?
The only works that remotely match under the fields of Computing and No Copyright are the BSDs, and even those are copyrighted.
GNU is most definitely copyrighted, it just makes very creative and effective use of it. And it's that creative use that encourages a lot of the contributions to it (see the Linux Kernel.)
Yes, we are living C, where C = A + B instead of only A or B.
You're free to act without copyrights, its completely voluntary. Every suggestion I have seen involves unilaterally removing it from the hands of others. If you're referring to the duration and current implementation of copyright then we need to fix it, not remove it.
Or you could live the way you think would be better, and encourage copyright-free works and enjoy copyright free works. They can't stop you from doing that.
It's interesting to me that the only post below mine that got modded up was essentially an ad-hominem, and not an attempt to point out why the loss of someone's productive efforts was good or bad.
That's great. Now solve the problem for other works than just music. Or do you expect me to make the video games (or film the movie) you just enjoyed live?
That's fine, so don't listen. Eliminating copyright and whatnot would be like dropping a nuke to solve an overcrowding problem. Effective, but it misses the point.
Well then by that logic it has no moral basis at all. But it has a very valid legal basis, and one I find acceptible (within proper boundaries that we must re-assert.)
Distribution isn't the main cost burden. And until we live in a utopia where everything is free, any work will have costs associated with its production. Copyright helps us relieve that cost, eliminating copyright just forces the producer to eat it whole.
Only because the people putting up the money see a possible return on investment (or a tax dodge, thank you uwe boll.)
So you're happy to see what you don't enjoy go away. What if something you do enjoy goes along with it?
And why should they be forced to go away altogether, it just leaves us lesser in the end.
So you have artists, specifically painters. What about filmmakers, animators, even video game studios?
So we get works that are funded by limited state subsidies (which will be restricted by all sorts of legal voodoo) or works produced at the behest of those rich enough to have their entertainment produced for them and philanthropic enough to not try and keep it to themselves.
An end to copyright would force all production costs to be accounted for up front. This places a huge burden on the producer, whether it be an individual or studio, and would limit the cost of production. While limited costs wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, it would also constrain the scope and ability applied to the work. This isn't to say that multi-million dollar works are better than ten thousand dollar works, but when you want something like Battlestar Galactica, you'd have to pay the 3 million per episode ahead of time since you probably won't make it back.
Why do you all keep thinking only in terms of music?
What about forms of art and works that are simply not possible to perform live? Do they have no value?
I hear this posited repeatedly in response to me, and not ever do I say this. But it's the red herring tossed out in an attempt to discredit what is said. Always what will happen is the rate at which new works are produced will drop (significantly, most likely) but never cease. And there's no reason for this drop to be forced.
Agreed, it is insane. But blatantly violating copyrights like we see today does nothing to correct it. On the contrary, it gives them ammunition to use against us.
Because I felt like it.
Because I had an idea and felt a need to expound upon it.
But I would prefer to do so without having to eat the costs. I can only hope against hope to do so without copyright giving me both the incentive and the means.
Sure, someone else will always produce something. But not necessarily the same thing.
Why should we be that much poorer now that instead of having 2 things made, we have one?
and I'm free to cease producing works.
Instead of linking to a site that gives high stature to warez groups that screw the creators over you could have linked to some better sites:
Planetes at Wikipedia
Planetes Official Website in Japanese.
If you can't tell, I don't care one iotia for anidb.
The cost for most works today is not in the duplication but in the production. What you describe essentially dooms any artform that can't be performed live, which is a huge number versus the handful that can. It affects more than just writers, it affects anyone whose works can be or are digital in nature.
And no, most people will go for the cheapest version available which will always be the knockoff, be it physical or digital, because they have only the cost of duplication (which is trivial or non-existent, mind you.) Versus the original creator, who has to shoulder the costs of production along with duplication.
This statement gets me:
Well, we have this for manual labor today. But then, the houses are built under the auspices of being sold later. You don't expect them to only build on-demand lest they be confiscated upon completion if unsold?
Copyright gives us the advantage by which we can make a venture on a work of art, whereby we can create something that may not be in demand. This allows artists to gather funding and produce a work without being beholden to someone else's vision. This involves risk but currently copyright allows some way of recovering that risk.
Ignoring copyright throws mud on the efforts of those who honestly do the work, and eliminating it needlessly reduces the amount of work today.
Note that I did not say eliminates. Some people would still create works, but it'd be considerably less (and lower budget) than currently.
I agree that the penalties should be reduced significantly.
Sure, then you can re-record the song by re-playing all the instruments and re-mastering the audio. Or re-filming that film. Or re-animating that work of animation. Or re-staging and acting out that play. Your copying of a file from one folder to another does not constitute what you just described, and the rest can be solved by limiting duration of copyright to more reasonable levels.
Cause prisons aren't bad until you wake up and realize one was built around you.
Apathy with regards to the erosion of your rights is the luxury of the content, complacent, and lazy.
Quite a few, but they don't want to admit it.
Never mind the sudden loss of the GPL.
Are you playing the fool or actually one?
Did I say they'd not be made? The very sentence you quoted has me saying they'd slow to a trickle which, relative to modern times, is the rate at which they were created. It's the difference between drinking from a freaking firehose versus a garden hose with a crimp in it.
Or do you seriously think anyone will put up $3 million or more per episode of a TV series if they have zero hope of making back what they invested in it?
Nice straw man. No one has the right to murder. Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit to happiness, at least as written in the U.S. Constitution and murder committed by one person overrides the rights of another.
No, it's not long lost. It's just that the people you have to oppose to correct the law are far too powerful. You'd have to equal their political power before you could abolish copyright, but if you had that power you might realize it'd be unwise to eliminate it.
No, no no. This is SLASHDOTTERS pasting their personal ideals on other people's actions. If you ever stopped and inquired with people who download, it's because they can get all the entertainment they want for FREE. They don't want to EVER compensate creators, because they're just as greedy and selfish as the companies pushing for stronger copyright laws.
Sure it does, it holds it outside the realm of the public domain for a duration (excessive, yes) during which the creator can control distribution.
But then, this is slashdot, where the destruction of copyright is the goal first and foremost, never mind that it'd wreck the GPL, CC, and cause the massive flood of creative works being produced today to slow to a trickle (what do you mean you don't want to work for free?)