I'm sorry, but I don't understand something here...
Why would the research for this style guide have to be in the Creative Commons?
First of all, unless you're going to be copying and pasting the actual text of the research style guide into your own document, the copyright law regarding the research style guide is irrelevant. You can't copyright an idea, so if you see a good idea in a copyrighted book and you want to use it, there's nothing stopping you (at least on the copyright end - patent law is a much different animal, but that has to do with what the people following your guide have to do, not what you have to do).
Seriously, for this sort of thing, just figure out what's the most intuitive and write it into your document. So long as it's in your own words, you'll be fine.
While this is a fascinating article, I certainly have to disagree with a couple of the statements that have been made (and comment on something I read in the forums).
First off, a creating a copyrighted work does NOT cost nothing. The book I'm working on right now (the World War I account of my great grandfather, who served in the Imperial Russian cavalry) has so far cost around $200 in research materials alone, with another $50 set aside for a book that's coming in soon, as well as around 10 months of my part-time time in research and writing - and I'm only in the first 60 manuscript pages. My projected completion time is now standing at around a year and a half total.
The last book I worked on, which ended up being the launching book of my new publishing company, was around two years of work for me, and fifteen for my collaborator. Price that time out, and you're in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Second, copyright IS taxed, in two ways (at least in my country, which is Canada). First, there is the copyright registration, which is a requirement if you ever want to actually defend your copyright in court (while a copyright technically exists upon creation of the work, you have to register the copyright to prove that it's yours). Second, if you make money off your copyrighted material, there is an income tax on it.
I really wish the RIAA would just die already. I can't count the number of times I've come across people thinking that copyright is a sort of eternal welfare cheque for writers (it isn't - the work has to be profitable for royalties to even appear, and even then you've got to be pretty well established to make more than the minimum wage for your efforts), or that it is a weapon to remove competition (sadly, that one has merit when it comes to the US Patent Office, which is very badly broken from what I've read, but no merit when it comes to copyright - you can't copyright an idea, only the exact implementation of it). And all of those misconceptions come from the actions of the RIAA. Even worse, thanks to the RIAA's legal BS, the idea that we would all be better off without copyright is starting to become an ideology, and that can be very dangerous in the long run.
(Explanation on that last point - the most important thing copyright does has nothing whatsoever to do with the customer. Seriously. What copyright actually does is provide a legal framework that allows creative artists, their publisher/distributor, and other distributors to interact together in a way where nobody gets shafted. Remove that framework, and it becomes a lot harder to get work out there, as all of a sudden the submission process itself has no safety net to keep your work from being stolen out from under you before it ever gets published.)
And finally, on property like desks being taxed by the state (outside of a sales tax, I'm guessing)...um, wow. Just...wow. That actually leaves me speechless. How the hell did they get away with something like that?
PS: Life plus 50/70 is not infinite copyright. By definition, if there is a number, it isn't infinite. Just because YOU may not see the work move into the public domain, doesn't mean it won't. And plenty of material moves into the public domain each year.
"is needed for copyright to work at all. There must be some barrier to copying, or copyright vanishes magically into thin air. Barriers to copying, as is pointed out by many comments here, are like locks, keep 'your friends' from copying, even if they don't stop your enemies.
"The problem is, of course, at a certain point, it doesn't matter. If people can infinitely copy the work with the lock broken, copyrighted works do not have a barrier to copying beyond a trivial investment of time. (And the tools can be near-completely automated.)
"And, without this barrier to copying, copyright does not exist. I don't mean in a moral sense, or a legal sense, I mean in a practical sense. There is no such thing, in society, right now, as copyrights on music. The laws involving them might still exist, but the concept itself exists more in absence."
That is a very bad misunderstanding of what copyright is and does. If the most important thing copyright handled was between the distributor and the end user, then you would be correct. But that's not what copyright was really built for.
When it comes down to it, copyright is a legal framework defining the relationship between creative artists and their distributors. It allows a creative artist to determine how their work is distributed, and to set terms with a distributor of his or her choice, and provides a legal recourse if that distributor abuses that relationship. This is what allows creative artists to be able to submit their work without having to worry about protecting it (in short, to avoid having to use DRM just to get it to a distributor).
So, copyright does exist with or without DRM, and it is very important.
I've got to say it - the big labels really are at the point of deserving a Darwin Award at this point in time. They couldn't do a better job of committing suicide if they tried. Actually, I'd be amazed that if they had any good will left at all.
Each of the mistakes they have made is a killer:
1. Alienating their own creative talent. Copyright exists for a reason, and it isn't what the RIAA would have you believe it is - it's there to protect creative artists from the sort of treatment that the RIAA labels give the recording artists. So, it's now well known that if you sign a deal with one of these labels, they'll shaft you. Now that there are inexpensive alternatives, what do the recording artists need the labels for, anyway?
(For the record, the most important role copyright serves is to provide a legal framework for the interaction between creative artists and those who publish or distribute their work. It's thanks to copyright that a creative artist can submit their work to somebody who can market it properly, without having to worry about that work being stolen by the distributer. The end user, regardless of what the RIAA may say about it, has very little do to with the purpose of copyright.)
Easy solution: STOP SHAFTING THE ARTISTS. In fact, recording artists DO need record labels, as a corporation like a label has the assets to get music out and publicized in a way that a single recording artist could never do on their own. If the recording artists were just treated fairly, instead of being driven into debt while their CD sales make millions, then the record labels would have no difficulty retaining artistic talent.
2. Trying to wipe out new markets. Forget inability to innovate, Napster was a debacle. While it is wrong to pirate music, Napster was a huge opportunity. Imagine it for a minute - an entire community of early adapters, moving all sorts of music around on their own, and most of them people who would buy CDs, as at the time the file format wasn't as high fidelity as a CD. So, what do the labels do? Crush it.
Easy solution: take over the market. How can you get cheaper advertising than Napster? Flood it with high-quality samples for each of your albums, and watch the sales soar. That's the point of a music video, isn't it? Advertising? And these guys will do all of this for you for free! If the labels had adapted Napster instead of trying to crush it, they would have made record amounts of sales in those years.
3. This has to be one of the stupidest moves I've ever seen - starting a legal campaign against their own markets. And, they began it by impersonating police officers. So, now their own customers view them as a bunch of thugs. Then, they go after the students in the universities, which is where their future lifetime customers would be found, and sue them - or try to extort money.
Very easy solution: Stop going after the insignificant filesharers, and actual concentrate on pirates! If you're going to launch a lawsuit, go after somebody who is pressing copies of your CDs and selling them without the rights to, not some guy on a bit torrent. DON'T SUE YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS!
So, in three steps, they've alienated their talent, their distribution streams, and their customers. Who is left?
When these record labels fall, it will be their own fault. There is plenty of space for them, and they certainly could have had a profitable role in the music scene today. But to act with this much stupidity, and then be surprised when the market rejects them, is Darwin Award-worthy material.
The big problem, though, is that they could take copyright down with them, and that would be a very big problem for the rest of the artistic field. The labels may be abusive thugs when it comes to copyright protections, but the rest of us - writers, publishers, artists, etc., do need copyright intact in order to operate, and the image that the labels are creating of what copyright is in both letter and spirit is extremely misleading. The ill will they're spreading could bring the rest of us down.
"Works made for hire under European law typically have a 70-year copyright term, extended to life plus 70 once at least one individual author becomes known, not a 95-year copyright term. Why were the 75-year terms extended to 95 years and not to life plus 70 if the Bono Act was for harmonization? And why was Europe chosen as the target, not some life-plus-100 jurisdiction like Mexico?"
I'm trying very hard to figure out how to answer this, as your argument seems to go from one point to another and, well, I don't know where the hell you're going with this.
As far as my level of knowledge goes, I'm a Canadian trying to keep informed on American issues, since I must do business there on a regular basis. I am not Congress, or the Senate. I do know what I've read, however, and seeing as the primary term of copyright was extended to lifetime plus 70 from lifetime plus 50, matching the main copyright terms with Europe, I would have to agree with what I have read that it was for harmonization, even if there are variations on the work for hire copyrights.
As for why Europe was chosen as the target, according to Martin it is because Europe, which is a huge market for American talent and intellectual properties, had decided to honor copyrights only until they expire in their country of origin, meaning that American copyrights in Europe would expire 20 years earlier than European copyrights - and this could disadvantage American talent trying to compete in those markets, as distributors and producers could use the earlier copyright expiry as an excuse to shut out American talent. That is the stated reason, and it does make some sense, when not dealing with work for hire. Whether you agree with it or not is your own concern. This was explained at length in "Mythology of the Public Domain," and I would suggest reading it.
"A trademark cannot act as an ersatz copyright. Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox. Nor can a trademark or copyright act as an ersatz patent. Sega v. Accolade. Advocates of using the blanket term "intellectual property" to cover copyright, patent, and trademark law often miss this."
Um...yes, that is true. I've argued that there is a difference many, many times on this forum. I'm really not certain why you're bringing this up, though. Mickey Mouse is protected by trademark, "Steamboat Willy" is not. As I understand the law, when "Steamboat Willy" falls into the public domain, Mickey Mouse will still remain in trademark.
I think I may have made a mistake there - the 1976 act, as far as I know, extended the work of dead authors only by 19 years - I don't know how it applied to live authors.
Now this is the sort of article (the original, not the blog entry) that is needed in the copyright debate. It is intelligent, and it raises some interesting questions about how the law works, and how it should work. However, Tehranian does have some issues as far as missing things:
1. He talks about the 1976 Copyright Act, which is a pivotal point for American copyright law, but it would have been nice if he had made reference to the fact that the rest of the Western world, as per the Berne Convention, had those copyright limits already for decades, as well as the fact that the 1976 act only extended works already in copyright by 19 years, and only applied in full to those works created after the law went into effect.
2. He talks about the Copyright Term Extension Act (AKA the Sonny Bono Act) as though it was just snuck through congress without debate, which is not surprising considering his source, which was the other side of the United States vs. Eldred. The thing is, it simply isn't true. Congressional hearings were held on September 20, 1995, with numerous testimonies in regards to the act - three years before the act was enacted. Among the testimonies were librarians concerned with the ability to archive in the face of a copyright extension, with the result that the final act had provisions for archival work 50 years after the death of the author. Tehranian also fails to note that the CTEA was put into place to harmonize with Europe, which was already at lifetime plus seventy years, and had been for some time - the conspiracy theory that it was to save Mickey Mouse holds absolutely no water, as Mickey Mouse is protected by trademark law, not copyright.
As a counterpoint to this article, I would offer "The Mythology of the Public Domain," by Scott M. Martin, which discusses the other side of these issues and was published in a peer-reviewed journal: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf
This piece of garbage actually made my head hurt. One of the things I do to help keep a roof over my head is edit the news stories for the Faculty of Law of the local university, and if one of my writers ever tried to pass me something like this, I would have their head on a plate.
The first four paragraphs are fine. They state the facts, raise questions (which is always healthy), and everything is backed up. And then it descends into ranting and fear mongering.
"It is ironic that the content industry invokes the Constitution to support their position."
No, it isn't. In the face of acts by the FBI and the government that plainly are unconstitutional, this is a laughable statement. The intention of the American founding fathers, as has been mentioned many, MANY times, was to promote science, research, and art by providing some protection for the creators. The American Constitution, however, was built so that it could be amended, as the founding fathers were also smart enough to realize that things change over time. To call upon their intentions is hardly ironic, particularly since those same founding fathers passed the first legal extension to copyright law before the 18th century ended - so the history says that the founding fathers were flexible.
"Recent changes to copyright law influenced by the content industry--most notably the egregious Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act--have undermined the balance by restricting fair use and expanding the length of copyright protection to preposterous durations."
This is where the editorializing starts to get even less subtle, and the factual content pretty much disappears. The word "egregious" is a value judgment completely out of place in a news story, as is the statement that copyright protection has been extended to "preposterous durations." Lifetime plus seventy years is the author's lifetime, plus that of his/her children and grandchildren - in short, the people who knew him/her in life. It is far from unlimited. And just because some corporations have tried to abuse copyright law, that doesn't mean that fair use has disappeared - it hasn't. There is a great distinction between the content of a law and the abuse of that law.
"The steady expansion of copyright law poses a grave risk to creativity and innovation because it threatens to further erode the public domain. Artistic creation will suffer gravely when the cultural heritage of America can be chained down and held ransom."
This is a statement better suited for an op-ed, not the news section. Aside from which, history has already proven it wrong. The writer has conveniently forgotten that the United States has tended to lag decades, and sometimes generations, behind the rest of the world on copyright law. If expansion of copyright law to meet the European standard of length is so terrible, how is it that Europe and Canada, which have been functioning under those terms now for decades, have remained vibrant in their cultures, rather than becoming a literary and artistic wasteland?
"When the public domain shrinks, the potential for modern adaptation of classic works is severely constrained. In the future, innovative companies that want to bring older content into new mediums will be deterred by excessive and unjustifiable licensing costs as a result of copyright expansion."
Another unfounded statement. The public domain is NOT shrinking. In fact, the Sonny Bono act specifically stated that work that had already entered the public domain could not be brought out of it from the copyright extension. The Sonny Bono act also mandated that private letters and correspondences from public figures that had been kept out of the public domain due to lack of publication ("common copyright") would now enter the public domain, vastly INCREASING it.
Aside from which, a cursory knowledge of copyright law leads you to understand that you CANNOT copyright an idea. You can only copyright the exact implementat
I have to say, this was a sort of entertaining thing to read, in part because I've heard all of this before. My first book contract was to write Diablo: Demonsbane in 2000 for Pocket Books - it was even going to be the e-book that would inaugurate the entire Blizzard fiction line. I couldn't lose, right?
So, I write the book, get Chris Metzen drooling over it once he reads it, trying to find me a full-scale Diablo print book to write (which never happened, sadly), and the book is released in October 2000. It spends weeks on the PeanutPress bestseller list.
By the time it had been taken out of "print," it had sold around 500-900 copies. That's it. There are print books that have utterly tanked that sold more copies than that, and as far as e-books go, I was doing WELL.
The e-book revolution that was supposed to wipe out the bookstores and revolutionize the way we read turned out to be nothing more than a pipe dream. Now, the wild claims are being repeated, and it's still a pipe dream.
The reason for this is simple - when it comes down to it, for something to take off, it needs to have a level of utility. You need to be able to offer the customer lots of flexibility, and remove additional steps wherever possible. No matter what happens, when it comes to e-books, the first thing you are doing is adding a step, and a step that requires electricity. And then the internet.
The book I've got coming out in under a month was tested as an e-text with two classes of students at the university where I work. This is one of the top universities in Canada, too - plenty of laptops in class during the lectures. The most frequent complaint we got when the primary author and I asked for comments was that it wasn't a print book. Students like to be able to make notes in the margins, you see - they even said so on their comment sheets.
The simple fact is that the e-book is not going to dislocate the print book any time soon, if ever. The print book has no technological barriers to entry for the readers, while the e-book does. And no amount of idealistic speculation is going to change that.
"Copyright is a fairly recent notion, as it popped up only four hundred years ago or so, and in a small part of the world. Long before that--and today in places were copyright is not respected--culture and content continue to abound."
That is a very simplistic way of looking at things. It assumes, among other things, that all cultures have the same nature, and that therefore copyright isn't necessary. And that is very historically ignorant. The nature of cultures in the past was not the same as it is now.
"Think about all the great poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome. They didn't get a dime when copies were made of their work by amanuenses and sold in the marketplace, but they didn't complain."
Actually, that's not true. We honestly don't know if they were paid royalties or not. We do not seem to have any defenses from the Athenian law courts regarding copying, but that just means that none survived to us - there may or may not have been any. The current documents that have survived suggest that the Athenians were not suing people over copying, but we honestly don't have enough recovered to know for certain.
Aside from which, neither ancient Greece or Rome had a concept of individual rights. People would be sued based on a failure to carry out their responsibilities, but the rights of the individual was a concept that was centuries in the future. There was a concept of obligation, and that went right through to Christian times (for example, in terms of religion, the Romans didn't like the Christians because they didn't fulfill their obligation of joining the rest of their community at sacrifices, meaning that they were not "doing the sacred things" (aka "sacra facere") - and meaning that bizarrely to our conception of religion, the Christians were persecuted for being atheists).
"Indeed, the only time someone had issue with copying, the Roman poet Martial in his Epigrams , it was because another fellow was putting his name on those copies. And even then, Martial didn't demand legal penalties; he just lampooned the guy."
In fact, there was a law I recently learned about passed by the Emperor Augustus that declared that the content being copied belonged to the copyist. That being said, in Ancient Greece and Rome ridicule was a corrective, and it could be very dangerous to somebody. There is at least one case on record of somebody committing suicide because of slanderous poems being written about them (I know because I've spent the last two years working on a book about ancient Greek and Roman humour with a professor of Classics).
I can't speak for the law outside of Europe, but my own inquiries into the history of copyright have suggested that in order for a concept of copyright to develop, there needs to be certain factors in play:
1. A concept of the rights of the individual. 2. The technology to mass produce copies of the work (without this, copying is not an issue). 3. A society capable of mass consumption of the work (for literature, a literate society, etc. - and again, copying is pointless if there is no market to consume it). 4. A free market economy (extremely important, as it means that there is a financial stake for whoever is copying, and whoever creates).
Without all of these, there can be no development of the concept of copyright. As soon as all four appear, however, copyright follows. The Stationer's Log (the earliest form of copyright in England) was at the dawn of this, but copyright as we know it didn't come until 1705 - and at that point, the patronage system was beginning to disappear, society was literate and the printing press had been around for a while, there was effectively a free market economy, and the rights of the individual had become prevalent enough that two revolutions would occur within the century over them. A lot of people may not like to hear this, but copyright did develop naturally as the circumstances developed so that it became necessary.
"I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just hoping that you got my real point concerning the value of unfettered use of Shakespeare's work to the economy at large."
I got your point, and it made a great deal of sense. Ultimately, I would add, it all comes down to balance.
And, I will also admit, your point was quite logical once I realized that you had said "private" instead of "public"...
"Without copyright, would "Fair use" actually have any meaning?"
Not really. The irony when it comes to the "copyright abolitionists" is that without copyright, the public domain wouldn't have any meaning either. As far as I know, the public domain is defined in copyright law - get rid of the law, and you get rid of the public domain too.
"That being said, I'm glad to see some folks with big fat checkbooks getting behind the concept."
Ack, sorry, I misread a word there. You said "private domain," and I thought you said "public domain."
But, in all honesty, Shakespeare has never re-entered copyright. Some editions are copyrighted, but that's because of the editing in notes and whatnot that create a new work. The actual plays themselves are public domain, and can be used however you like.
(This doesn't stop some people from trying to claim the entire thing is copyrighted, but that doesn't actually make it so. I can claim the moon is made of Lego blocks, but it won't make it true.)
"The value of Shakespeare alone to the US economy is in the gazillions. How many school plays & textbooks, theaters, community centers, and even Hollywood studios would disappear if Shakespeare's works went into the private domain with no fair use provision."
Shakespeare has been in the public domain for centuries. Really. Anybody can use or publish it however they want. Fair use has nothing to do with it.
Fair use ONLY applies with works currently in copyright. It does NOT apply to the public domain.
(Right - going to get an aspirin now. My head hurts...)
I hate to say it, but having taken a look at the article and the report, there are very serious issues with the methodology of the article. This report certainly does not indicate what the article suggests - quite frankly, the article is FUD.
But, I'm not going to just make the claim, I'm going to back it up. There are some very suspicious omissions and problems (excluding the terrible math in the article):
1. "Fair Use" industries are defined in great detail (albeit in charts that are sideways, making them unnecessarily difficult to read), with each industry used itemized. However, nowhere are "Copyright" industries defined or itemized. We simply do not have the other side of the comparison. For that matter, the report itself doesn't even make a comparison. Nowhere in the front or back matter did I find anything comparing the monetary value of fair use to the monetary value of copyright. The report makes a statement about fair use and backs it up. The article does no such thing, and does not source its statements about copyright-related industries.
2. This report lists several industries as "Fair Use" industries which are arguably dependent on copyright as well, meaning that in a comparison they must be counted on both sides. They are:
- Internet publishing and broadcasting - Software publishers - Radio & television broadcasting (counted twice in table 1) - Printing and related support activities - Newspaper publishers - Directory, mailing list, and other publishers (for some reason, described exactly the same as "newspaper publishers" - who edited this?) - Other publishers (apparently, these are the OTHER other publishers - yes, it makes my head hurt too) - Motion Picture and Video Industries - Sound Recording Industries - Performing Arts Companies - Agents and Managers for Artists, Athletes, Entertainers, and Other Public Figures - Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers
Frankly, with the abuse like that which is taking place under the RIAA, and the poorly thought out sections of the DMCA, I can see how a report like this can be handy for legislators (although headache-inducing to read online), but the article is just FUD. For a comparison, copyright-dependent industries need to be defined, otherwise you're just pulling numbers out of the air.
I must say, I love the fear-mongering that happens here. Right down to the title of the article. "Copyright Alliance Says Fair Use Not a Consumer Right" - that should be used in writing classes to show how perception of content can be skewed.
Patrick Ross is absolutely correct - he's describing the law and how a copyright notice works. And the fact is that fair use is not a legal right - it is a defense that mitigates the charge of copyright infringement if it ever gets to court. Better put, it is a limitation on copyright law to allow for uses that violate the letter of the law but not the spirit of it.
Furthermore, at no point does Patrick Ross actually say that fair use is wrong or shouldn't exist. He is specifying the law, not morality. And, it is very true that misunderstanding the law can get you into trouble. Understanding what the law is, the intentions of the law, and how it works is very important when you're copying something. If you assume that you have a right to do something you can't, then you can find yourself suffering consequences you wouldn't otherwise if you had done your research.
Unfortunately, a lot of Slashdot posters aren't actually interested in research. And, they want to claim that fair use is free speech, and that it should be a consumer right. Let's look at both in turn.
1. Fair use is not free speech. Free speech, which is a guaranteed right in the United States, Canada (excluding hate speech), and I believe Great Britain, among others, permits you to voice your opinion or thoughts without fear of censorship from the government. It permits you to voice an opinion agreeing with somebody else - but in YOUR OWN WORDS. It is protection from government censorship of your OWN words, not license to copy somebody else's words for your own purposes. The fair use limitation allows you to quote somebody else word-for-word in a limited fashion, but it does not give you carte blanche to simply take somebody else's work and put your own name on it, or redistribute the work of somebody else without their permission. Nor should it - because it isn't YOUR work.
2. Why should fair use be a consumer right? People are willing to assert this, but so far I haven't actually seen a single informed defense of it. Unlike the right to self-defense, which has implication across a wide variety of laws in the criminal code, and is actually used by people, fair use is only applicable in regards to copyright law. And, for that matter, it only becomes an issue when an infringement case appears in court, and it only appears on the side of the defense.
For that matter, who actually uses fair use? Well, in order to use fair use, you have to be a creative artist of some sort, or a publisher, or a performer. Downloading songs onto a computer has nothing to do with fair use, unless you then use a sound clip for another work that you are creating or distributing. Which means, in short, that the people who are using it are NOT the consumers. The only people who need fair use in the first place are people who are reproducing sections of work for their own work, and by definition, this puts them into the ranks of the creative artists, distributors, or performers themselves.
So, no, fair use should not be a consumer right. Consumers do have rights, but if you are going to give a consumer a right, it has to be something that is relevant to them. Giving everybody the legal right to hover five feet off the ground using the power of the mind alone is pointless, because nobody can do that in the first place.
"If you still live in Canada, what are your thoughts about medicare? Your illness could well have bankrupted you if you lived in a society that espoused your libertarian ideals, or worse, you could have been left to die."
First of all, I never said that I was a libertarian. While many of my beliefs are similar to libertarism, that belief system does have it's flaws, and goes a bit too far for my taste. I'm a South Park Conservative if I'm anything, and I do believe that a society does have an obligation to care for its disadvantaged. I also believe that the disadvantaged have an obligation to try to better themselves, and that social assistance should never be something permanent in somebody's life. And, living in Canada, I would say that for the most part my society does espouse my ideals.
As for OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) I think it's an imperfect system, but it's strengths far outnumber its flaws. It could be far better funded, and that is hurting people. The way it handles prescriptions is a bad joke. But, I did receive the care I needed, and it could be much worse.
Well, before I say anything, I'd like to just state where I'm coming from on this. I have two university degrees (both BAs), I'm a published author and a professional writer, and both of my published books so far have been regarding computer games (one was a novella that started the Blizzard fiction line, the other was a reference book on the Everquest phenomenon). I'm 30 years old, single, and politically I'm what you would call a "South Park Conservative." I'm also a Monarchist, but that doesn't show up that often. I'm a member of the Copyright Alliance (which is an educational group rather than an advocacy group - my condition for joining and offering my help was that it represents the law, not whatever corporation is trying to bend it into a pretzel at the time, and so far I have not been disappointed), and I'm trying to start my own non-fiction publisher in the next couple of months.
Ten years ago, I was much more left of centre than I am now. And, the longer I live, the more I'm coming to realize that the old joke "the difference between somebody on the left and somebody on the right is twenty years" is actually quite true. Fifteen years ago, almost all of the games on my computer were pirated. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't really care - I was getting away with it, so it was free swag. Twenty years ago, both of my parents were running fairly successful businesses - my father was the head of a computer consulting company, and my mother was the head of an educational publisher. So I grew up in the upper middle class. That doesn't mean I lived a life of luxury - the recession in the '90s hit us really hard, and even before then, my father brought me up to earn my way through life, rather than spoiling me. I should also add that as a Canadian, my high school experience was not the sort of hell described in Voices from the Hellmouth. There was relatively little indocrination, as I remember it, and individuality was encouraged by the teachers.
So, in the here and now, I'm a copyright advocate and author about to turn businessman. Ten years ago, I was an idealistic university student learning about history and pretty left of centre. So what changed, and why have I told everybody this?
As far as the general question of "nerds" and liberatianism goes, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the "nerds" I know never really left a university mindset. It's not a matter of intelligence - it's a matter of being informed about what is going on, keeping up to date with the social issues involving their rights, and believing that they can fight it out. In a way, they haven't seemed to have made a lot of the mental compromises that the "twenty years" in the joke would have forced on them. And, as somebody who has lost some of that innocence, I envy them a great deal.
But, I think there are also some trends that need to be recognized. Some people would call themselves libertarians who actually aren't. There are a lot of people who have turned intellectual property piracy into an ideology, more out of a sense of entitlement than anything else. And, I've noticed that a lot of these people tend to be on the young side (in their teens or twenties). I think part of that might be that they just haven't had enough time to really have a stake in something yet, and that does give you perspective that you wouldn't have otherwise (or, I could be completely wrong and it's sociopathy, or ignorance, or idiocy, or something else - you never know, and everybody is different).
There are a lot of "nerds" working in computer sciences that have a different issue that I've noticed, and that is that they assume too much. Some of them have turned Open Source into an ideology and can't quite understand why others just care about what works better. A lot of them forget that a lot of people see a computer as a tool that lets them do their email (in short, a sort of electronic hammer), and don't go any farther than that in their understanding - and then attribute why worms and email
Well, taking a look at what your question is, and giving it a good read, there isn't a whole lot I can suggest that hasn't been suggested already. I can update a couple of things, though.
First of all, you seem to be operating under the idea that IP laws are restrictive of what you can do with your own IP. This actually isn't the case. Under copyright law, you can do whatever you want with your own IP. Protecting it, or more specifically, the terms under which you want to share it, on the other hand, is another matter, and how you'll go about it will depend on what it is.
As far as digital timestamps go when it comes to legal proof, that's a tricky one. I honestly don't know if there's a digital proof that will stand up in court. In fact, I'm almost certain there isn't. For that, you'd want to consult a lawyer, particularly since there are a lot of ways a digital timestamp can be faked, and I am not actually a lawyer (I'm a pro writer, but that means I have a working knowledge of the law, rather than an encyclopedic one).
When it comes to copyrightable materials, mailing it to yourself is NOT considered legal proof of copyright. There are too many ways to fake it, and there is not a single court case, at least not one I have ever heard of, where it was considered to be proof. For more information, see this site: http://www.copyrightauthority.com/poor-mans-copyri ght/
(Please note that while you can copyright a story, a piece of music, or a work of art, you CANNOT copyright an idea. Copyright just doesn't work like that. An idea falls under patent law, and has different rules.)
As far as an invention goes, that would be a patent of some sort, and you would want to go through your local patent office. Unfortunately, I don't know a great deal about it except for a few bizarre cases of patents gone mad in the US. However, the patent office will have information about how to patent your invention, so you'll want to consult them.
Should somebody violate your copyright, it is important to be methodical in dealing with them. Keep in mind that it might eventually get to a court case, in which case your own conduct will also be under the magnifying glass. I would suggest beginning with a gentle but firm letter or email informing them that they are infringing and asking them to stop. If they don't, then consult a lawyer and move on from there. Whatever you do, document everything.
And, if I don't miss my guess, that's it in a nutshell...
You know, you are very good at trying to put words in my mouth. The problem is that you have made a number of assumptions about me and my knowledge, and pretty much none of them are right.
"It is funny how people who work with publishers of this and that frequently think they are knowledgeable about copyright after listening to their publishers tell them about the issue."
Now there's a load of bullshit. The reason that any successful writer needs an understanding of copyright law is to PROTECT him/herself from the publishers. My training came from actually reading the laws themselves, interpretations of the laws from commentators, and interpretations from my agents. As a result, I can recognize a bad contract when I see one.
Funny how anti-copyright people tend to accuse those who disagree with them as being in league with distributors and guilty of groupthink or being easily led. Mind you, I've also been called a thief and a murderer because I believe in fighting for my rights under the law, so groupthink is the least of those things I can be accused of.
"You know, you should really write your own dictionary."
And you should go into public relations - I applaud your ability when it comes to spinning the truth. Unfortunately for your argument, "Mister Webster" doesn't actually actually make any mention of things that are CREATED. It does not cover a short story, or a musical tune, or a novel. It covers statistics and research. As I myself said, information is not a created work. Tell me, have you ever thought of joining a smoking lobby? They could use a talent like yours.
And while we're at it, lets talk about that lovely definition of anarchy that you provided. You have talked about it as a political theory, essentially, but the actual meaning of the word comes from Greek - literally "without rule." While an Anarchist (capital "A") certainly believes in wiping out all laws, there is plenty of room in the definition for an anarchist - somebody who wants to be without rule in a smaller way. So, my definition and use of the word actually does hold, and considering that one of the definitions that you yourself quoted was "a state of lawlessness," I would suggest that you read a bit more closely and try to understand how the language works, rather than holding up a dictionary definition and talking down to somebody who has spent the last seventeen years mastering the language.
"As an aside: Is it possible for Canadians to have a discussion without pointing out the fact that they are Canadian?"
Well, maybe if most of Slashdot would stop assuming that the world ends at the American border and that we are Americans, we wouldn't have to specify that. I do live in a different country, and I am proud of that country. And quite frankly, the intentions of your founding fathers are utterly meaningless when it comes to OUR laws.
And, quite frankly, your interpretation of the law is bad enough that I pray to god you never end up in court trying to represent yourself. Your words on the Berne Convention (minus melodramatic bolding):
"It eliminates formalities: This is bad because it means that anybody can claim to have a copyright on anything, and it takes going to court and hiring a lawyer to prove one's innocence or assert one's rights from a false claimant. It basically turns the law on its head by making everyone guilty until proven innocent. I think the RIAA and IFPI have provided ample demonstrations of this principle in action."
Actually, it still is an "innocent until proven guilty" system. If you have to take somebody to court for infringement, you have to prove that they did it, and that the copyright is yours. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff. An accusation of infringement is not proof of infringement, as the recent court decisions in regards to the RIAA have shown. You were paying attention to those, weren't you?
"It eliminates documentation: Stemming from the above point, because anybody can claim a copyright and t
"While I agree with your comment in general, I do not agree with your characterisation of people who oppose copyright as "anarchists"."
Funny - I didn't actually specify who the anarchists are. You're putting words in my mouth. But let us take a look at your points, shall we? I may not be a lawyer, but I am a pro writer, and that does mean I have to have a working knowledge of the law and why it is there.
"People who are opposed to one law are not necessarily opposed to all law or the concept of law in general."
Very true. And I would not call anybody opposed to one law on logical grounds to be an anarchist. I would call somebody who is opposed to that law so that they can take advantage by making an exception for just themselves, however, to be anarchistic. For example, Lawrence Lessig (whose logic I find tends to be a bit on the faulty side, but he does mean well) I would not consider to be an anarchist - he has taken a legal position based on his understanding of the law, history, precedent, and striking a balance between the rights of the consumer and the creative artist. An 18 year old IP pirate who has taken up the cause because he doesn't like paying for music or movies, but god help you if you trample on something he feels entitled to, is anarchistic. He talks a good talk, but deep down inside he only cares about himself - his idea of a balance between the creator and the consumer is whatever gives him the free music, and he doesn't care who it hurts.
"Copyright is a monopoly and is at odds with the principles of laissez-faire capitalism and is a remnant of the monarchical laws of England, laws that the Constitution was meant to protect the citizens of the US from."
Well, seeing as I'm in Cananda, I care a lot more about the Berne Convention than any American laws, but they do affect me, as I do write in the American market whenever I can. Your understanding of copyright is faulty, however. Copyright operates in some ways like a monopoly - the law grants you limited rights to control distribution of your work - but it does not permit you to control anything outside your work, and there the comparison fails. I am currently working on a novel about Vikings. If it was a monopoly, then once the copyright is recognized, I would be able to block anybody from ever using Vikings again in their work. But, I can't. I can prevent somebody from stealing my exact characters, and from distributing my work without my consent. But even there, there are limits, such as fair use. I really suggest that you read the Berne Convention to get a better idea of what copyright is.
"Information is not land and should not be territorialised as such."
True. But a created work is not information. It is a product, and the result of the work of a creator. Before the creator does his or her thing, the created work does not exist. Information, on the other hand, is gathered. It exists prior to somebody writing it down.
"Copyright violates your First Amendment right to Free Speech, especially if you view information as speech (who is to say what I can and cannot sing in public or anywhere?)."
Um, no. Free speech guarantees that the government will not prevent you from speaking your mind. Copyright's main protection is for creative artists when dealing with their distributors (this may come as a shock, but the consumer isn't all that important for most of copyright law). That being said, it has been abused in the past, and certainly there are instances where the RIAA is abusing it now. I have yet to see an interpretation of copyright law that includes humming a tune to be anything other than fair use held up in a court of law. But the abuse of a law is not the letter or spirit of that law, and the difference should be recognized.
"Copyright may have originally been conceived as a form of censorship."
Very true. But things have changed in the roughly 500 years since then. We are living in 2007, not 1507. A lot of things in our society have diffe
I've read through a lot of the ideas on here, and I figure it might be worthwhile to throw some of my own words into the mix.
There are a lot of anarchists on here - they don't like to be called that, but that's what they are. There are a lot of people who wouldn't know copyright law if it hit them in the face, but insist on speaking out as though they're authorities on it. There are people here who are quiet and informed, and quiet and uninformed. There are informed brawlers, soft-spoken lawyers, writers, programmers, and pirates. And, there are a lot of people who would push their own agenda on anything that comes their way, even to the detriment of you and your class.
Trust none of them.
Your students are about to meet somebody who is at the heart of one of the major social issues of our time. Get them reading up on it, make sure they're reading both sides of the issue, and then leave it in their hands. Don't put your trust in Slashdot, or some online forum - if you do that, you're putting it into the hands of a bunch of people who you've probably never met, and who may not even be who they say they are. Put your trust in your students - give them what they need to be informed, and then trust them to understand it (and if they disagree with your conclusions, keep in mind that YOU could be the one who misunderstood something). The most important part of education in the end, the part that ultimately can save you from something terrible, is learning to think critically for yourself and make up your own mind. Let them do that.
"Here are the facts: increasing CO2 in that atmosphere increases the temperature. That is a fact. CO2 in our atmosphere is increasing and isotopic analysis of the carbon in that CO2 proves that it is from the combustion of organic Carbon. THAT MEANS US!!!!!!"
Except that the increase in CO2 in the ice core samples lags behind the rise in temperature by a matter of centuries. So, it seems you have it the wrong way around. Increasing the temperature increases the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Our environmental sins may be legion, but quite frankly, I've read arguments on both sides, and the "deniers" seem to be the ones who actually have the convincing argument. We may have caused pollution en masse, but the Earth is getting warmer on its own. Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on fixing the problems we actually are causing, rather than creating fear and wasting money on a process that isn't our fault?
(And for that matter, why the hell is it so bad for the climate to be changing? It has never been a stable system in the past, so why should we expect it to be stable now? And, as far as I know, a warmer climate would mean that there would be more plant life, and greater fertility in the soil - and frankly, that's a net gain.)
"According to this BMI calculator I'm still way overweight and nearly obese and am currently ridiculously obese in my 40" waist jeans. According to that I should weigh 145 to 195 lbs. 145 lbs? Talk about unhealthy for someone who's 6'2". My Junior year in high school I weight 190-195. I was skinny. Not muscled, not ripped, skinny. Not unhealthy thin, but I would say more than 5-10lbs less than that would have been unhealthy."
Well, I am also 6'2", and I've got to say that if 190-195 is what you consider skinny, then you must be a tall endomorph - because I know I'm an ectomorph, and I'm trying to reach 185 right now. I wouldn't argue that you're big and strong, but 40" sounds like you're pretty stocky.
In my case, I spent most of my life at 145 lbs., and I was a beanpole. And I was on the cusp of being unhealthily thin. I could fight off disease, but sometimes not that well. It took an illness that dropped me to 127 - which is a VERY scary place to be - that made me decide to finally gain some weight. Now, I'm sitting at 175, and while my target is 185, I'm healthy enough that my nutritionist, who doesn't even look at BMI, isn't all that sure I need another ten pounds. I still look quite lean, but I'm fairly strong, I've got decent stamina, and I've got around 30% body fat. And, because of my genetics, I will always put on or drop weight in a way that makes me look lean.
So, I doubt that 180-185 is unhealthily thin for somebody who is 6'2" - and that's coming from somebody who has been unhealthily thin for real.
"Which is a much more detailed way of saying he more or less invented the genre as we know it."
No, it isn't. In fact, it is saying the exact opposite of that. I do not think the word "invent" means what you seem to think it means. To invent something means to create something new. Making something that is already there famous and stately is not invention by any stretch of any imagination.
Tolkien gave the genre legitimacy, but the all of the foundations for high fantasy was placed by other people. If you want to give credit for inventing the sort of fantasy that Tolkien wrote, then it's William Morris, Lord Dunsany, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard who deserve the credit. In fact, much of the memorable material in the genre owes a great deal to Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and L. Sprague de Camp. Michael Moorcock is a huge formative force, and he took his cues from Howard, not Tolkien.
Tolkien is A father of modern fantasy - many people were inspired by him and followed him, and the Lord of the Rings is a work of literature of great merit that will stand the test of time, and that is something - but he is not THE father of modern fantasy. There is a long line before him.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sorry, but I don't understand something here...
Why would the research for this style guide have to be in the Creative Commons?
First of all, unless you're going to be copying and pasting the actual text of the research style guide into your own document, the copyright law regarding the research style guide is irrelevant. You can't copyright an idea, so if you see a good idea in a copyrighted book and you want to use it, there's nothing stopping you (at least on the copyright end - patent law is a much different animal, but that has to do with what the people following your guide have to do, not what you have to do).
Seriously, for this sort of thing, just figure out what's the most intuitive and write it into your document. So long as it's in your own words, you'll be fine.
While this is a fascinating article, I certainly have to disagree with a couple of the statements that have been made (and comment on something I read in the forums).
First off, a creating a copyrighted work does NOT cost nothing. The book I'm working on right now (the World War I account of my great grandfather, who served in the Imperial Russian cavalry) has so far cost around $200 in research materials alone, with another $50 set aside for a book that's coming in soon, as well as around 10 months of my part-time time in research and writing - and I'm only in the first 60 manuscript pages. My projected completion time is now standing at around a year and a half total.
The last book I worked on, which ended up being the launching book of my new publishing company, was around two years of work for me, and fifteen for my collaborator. Price that time out, and you're in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Second, copyright IS taxed, in two ways (at least in my country, which is Canada). First, there is the copyright registration, which is a requirement if you ever want to actually defend your copyright in court (while a copyright technically exists upon creation of the work, you have to register the copyright to prove that it's yours). Second, if you make money off your copyrighted material, there is an income tax on it.
I really wish the RIAA would just die already. I can't count the number of times I've come across people thinking that copyright is a sort of eternal welfare cheque for writers (it isn't - the work has to be profitable for royalties to even appear, and even then you've got to be pretty well established to make more than the minimum wage for your efforts), or that it is a weapon to remove competition (sadly, that one has merit when it comes to the US Patent Office, which is very badly broken from what I've read, but no merit when it comes to copyright - you can't copyright an idea, only the exact implementation of it). And all of those misconceptions come from the actions of the RIAA. Even worse, thanks to the RIAA's legal BS, the idea that we would all be better off without copyright is starting to become an ideology, and that can be very dangerous in the long run.
(Explanation on that last point - the most important thing copyright does has nothing whatsoever to do with the customer. Seriously. What copyright actually does is provide a legal framework that allows creative artists, their publisher/distributor, and other distributors to interact together in a way where nobody gets shafted. Remove that framework, and it becomes a lot harder to get work out there, as all of a sudden the submission process itself has no safety net to keep your work from being stolen out from under you before it ever gets published.)
And finally, on property like desks being taxed by the state (outside of a sales tax, I'm guessing)...um, wow. Just...wow. That actually leaves me speechless. How the hell did they get away with something like that?
PS: Life plus 50/70 is not infinite copyright. By definition, if there is a number, it isn't infinite. Just because YOU may not see the work move into the public domain, doesn't mean it won't. And plenty of material moves into the public domain each year.
"is needed for copyright to work at all. There must be some barrier to copying, or copyright vanishes magically into thin air. Barriers to copying, as is pointed out by many comments here, are like locks, keep 'your friends' from copying, even if they don't stop your enemies.
"The problem is, of course, at a certain point, it doesn't matter. If people can infinitely copy the work with the lock broken, copyrighted works do not have a barrier to copying beyond a trivial investment of time. (And the tools can be near-completely automated.)
"And, without this barrier to copying, copyright does not exist. I don't mean in a moral sense, or a legal sense, I mean in a practical sense. There is no such thing, in society, right now, as copyrights on music. The laws involving them might still exist, but the concept itself exists more in absence."
That is a very bad misunderstanding of what copyright is and does. If the most important thing copyright handled was between the distributor and the end user, then you would be correct. But that's not what copyright was really built for.
When it comes down to it, copyright is a legal framework defining the relationship between creative artists and their distributors. It allows a creative artist to determine how their work is distributed, and to set terms with a distributor of his or her choice, and provides a legal recourse if that distributor abuses that relationship. This is what allows creative artists to be able to submit their work without having to worry about protecting it (in short, to avoid having to use DRM just to get it to a distributor).
So, copyright does exist with or without DRM, and it is very important.
I've got to say it - the big labels really are at the point of deserving a Darwin Award at this point in time. They couldn't do a better job of committing suicide if they tried. Actually, I'd be amazed that if they had any good will left at all.
Each of the mistakes they have made is a killer:
1. Alienating their own creative talent. Copyright exists for a reason, and it isn't what the RIAA would have you believe it is - it's there to protect creative artists from the sort of treatment that the RIAA labels give the recording artists. So, it's now well known that if you sign a deal with one of these labels, they'll shaft you. Now that there are inexpensive alternatives, what do the recording artists need the labels for, anyway?
(For the record, the most important role copyright serves is to provide a legal framework for the interaction between creative artists and those who publish or distribute their work. It's thanks to copyright that a creative artist can submit their work to somebody who can market it properly, without having to worry about that work being stolen by the distributer. The end user, regardless of what the RIAA may say about it, has very little do to with the purpose of copyright.)
Easy solution: STOP SHAFTING THE ARTISTS. In fact, recording artists DO need record labels, as a corporation like a label has the assets to get music out and publicized in a way that a single recording artist could never do on their own. If the recording artists were just treated fairly, instead of being driven into debt while their CD sales make millions, then the record labels would have no difficulty retaining artistic talent.
2. Trying to wipe out new markets. Forget inability to innovate, Napster was a debacle. While it is wrong to pirate music, Napster was a huge opportunity. Imagine it for a minute - an entire community of early adapters, moving all sorts of music around on their own, and most of them people who would buy CDs, as at the time the file format wasn't as high fidelity as a CD. So, what do the labels do? Crush it.
Easy solution: take over the market. How can you get cheaper advertising than Napster? Flood it with high-quality samples for each of your albums, and watch the sales soar. That's the point of a music video, isn't it? Advertising? And these guys will do all of this for you for free! If the labels had adapted Napster instead of trying to crush it, they would have made record amounts of sales in those years.
3. This has to be one of the stupidest moves I've ever seen - starting a legal campaign against their own markets. And, they began it by impersonating police officers. So, now their own customers view them as a bunch of thugs. Then, they go after the students in the universities, which is where their future lifetime customers would be found, and sue them - or try to extort money.
Very easy solution: Stop going after the insignificant filesharers, and actual concentrate on pirates! If you're going to launch a lawsuit, go after somebody who is pressing copies of your CDs and selling them without the rights to, not some guy on a bit torrent. DON'T SUE YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS!
So, in three steps, they've alienated their talent, their distribution streams, and their customers. Who is left?
When these record labels fall, it will be their own fault. There is plenty of space for them, and they certainly could have had a profitable role in the music scene today. But to act with this much stupidity, and then be surprised when the market rejects them, is Darwin Award-worthy material.
The big problem, though, is that they could take copyright down with them, and that would be a very big problem for the rest of the artistic field. The labels may be abusive thugs when it comes to copyright protections, but the rest of us - writers, publishers, artists, etc., do need copyright intact in order to operate, and the image that the labels are creating of what copyright is in both letter and spirit is extremely misleading. The ill will they're spreading could bring the rest of us down.
"Works made for hire under European law typically have a 70-year copyright term, extended to life plus 70 once at least one individual author becomes known, not a 95-year copyright term. Why were the 75-year terms extended to 95 years and not to life plus 70 if the Bono Act was for harmonization? And why was Europe chosen as the target, not some life-plus-100 jurisdiction like Mexico?"
I'm trying very hard to figure out how to answer this, as your argument seems to go from one point to another and, well, I don't know where the hell you're going with this.
As far as my level of knowledge goes, I'm a Canadian trying to keep informed on American issues, since I must do business there on a regular basis. I am not Congress, or the Senate. I do know what I've read, however, and seeing as the primary term of copyright was extended to lifetime plus 70 from lifetime plus 50, matching the main copyright terms with Europe, I would have to agree with what I have read that it was for harmonization, even if there are variations on the work for hire copyrights.
As for why Europe was chosen as the target, according to Martin it is because Europe, which is a huge market for American talent and intellectual properties, had decided to honor copyrights only until they expire in their country of origin, meaning that American copyrights in Europe would expire 20 years earlier than European copyrights - and this could disadvantage American talent trying to compete in those markets, as distributors and producers could use the earlier copyright expiry as an excuse to shut out American talent. That is the stated reason, and it does make some sense, when not dealing with work for hire. Whether you agree with it or not is your own concern. This was explained at length in "Mythology of the Public Domain," and I would suggest reading it.
"A trademark cannot act as an ersatz copyright. Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox. Nor can a trademark or copyright act as an ersatz patent. Sega v. Accolade. Advocates of using the blanket term "intellectual property" to cover copyright, patent, and trademark law often miss this."
Um...yes, that is true. I've argued that there is a difference many, many times on this forum. I'm really not certain why you're bringing this up, though. Mickey Mouse is protected by trademark, "Steamboat Willy" is not. As I understand the law, when "Steamboat Willy" falls into the public domain, Mickey Mouse will still remain in trademark.
I think I may have made a mistake there - the 1976 act, as far as I know, extended the work of dead authors only by 19 years - I don't know how it applied to live authors.
Now this is the sort of article (the original, not the blog entry) that is needed in the copyright debate. It is intelligent, and it raises some interesting questions about how the law works, and how it should work. However, Tehranian does have some issues as far as missing things:
1. He talks about the 1976 Copyright Act, which is a pivotal point for American copyright law, but it would have been nice if he had made reference to the fact that the rest of the Western world, as per the Berne Convention, had those copyright limits already for decades, as well as the fact that the 1976 act only extended works already in copyright by 19 years, and only applied in full to those works created after the law went into effect.
2. He talks about the Copyright Term Extension Act (AKA the Sonny Bono Act) as though it was just snuck through congress without debate, which is not surprising considering his source, which was the other side of the United States vs. Eldred. The thing is, it simply isn't true. Congressional hearings were held on September 20, 1995, with numerous testimonies in regards to the act - three years before the act was enacted. Among the testimonies were librarians concerned with the ability to archive in the face of a copyright extension, with the result that the final act had provisions for archival work 50 years after the death of the author. Tehranian also fails to note that the CTEA was put into place to harmonize with Europe, which was already at lifetime plus seventy years, and had been for some time - the conspiracy theory that it was to save Mickey Mouse holds absolutely no water, as Mickey Mouse is protected by trademark law, not copyright.
As a counterpoint to this article, I would offer "The Mythology of the Public Domain," by Scott M. Martin, which discusses the other side of these issues and was published in a peer-reviewed journal: http://llr.lls.edu/volumes/v36-issue1/martin-original1.pdf
This piece of garbage actually made my head hurt. One of the things I do to help keep a roof over my head is edit the news stories for the Faculty of Law of the local university, and if one of my writers ever tried to pass me something like this, I would have their head on a plate.
The first four paragraphs are fine. They state the facts, raise questions (which is always healthy), and everything is backed up. And then it descends into ranting and fear mongering.
"It is ironic that the content industry invokes the Constitution to support their position."
No, it isn't. In the face of acts by the FBI and the government that plainly are unconstitutional, this is a laughable statement. The intention of the American founding fathers, as has been mentioned many, MANY times, was to promote science, research, and art by providing some protection for the creators. The American Constitution, however, was built so that it could be amended, as the founding fathers were also smart enough to realize that things change over time. To call upon their intentions is hardly ironic, particularly since those same founding fathers passed the first legal extension to copyright law before the 18th century ended - so the history says that the founding fathers were flexible.
"Recent changes to copyright law influenced by the content industry--most notably the egregious Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act--have undermined the balance by restricting fair use and expanding the length of copyright protection to preposterous durations."
This is where the editorializing starts to get even less subtle, and the factual content pretty much disappears. The word "egregious" is a value judgment completely out of place in a news story, as is the statement that copyright protection has been extended to "preposterous durations." Lifetime plus seventy years is the author's lifetime, plus that of his/her children and grandchildren - in short, the people who knew him/her in life. It is far from unlimited. And just because some corporations have tried to abuse copyright law, that doesn't mean that fair use has disappeared - it hasn't. There is a great distinction between the content of a law and the abuse of that law.
"The steady expansion of copyright law poses a grave risk to creativity and innovation because it threatens to further erode the public domain. Artistic creation will suffer gravely when the cultural heritage of America can be chained down and held ransom."
This is a statement better suited for an op-ed, not the news section. Aside from which, history has already proven it wrong. The writer has conveniently forgotten that the United States has tended to lag decades, and sometimes generations, behind the rest of the world on copyright law. If expansion of copyright law to meet the European standard of length is so terrible, how is it that Europe and Canada, which have been functioning under those terms now for decades, have remained vibrant in their cultures, rather than becoming a literary and artistic wasteland?
"When the public domain shrinks, the potential for modern adaptation of classic works is severely constrained. In the future, innovative companies that want to bring older content into new mediums will be deterred by excessive and unjustifiable licensing costs as a result of copyright expansion."
Another unfounded statement. The public domain is NOT shrinking. In fact, the Sonny Bono act specifically stated that work that had already entered the public domain could not be brought out of it from the copyright extension. The Sonny Bono act also mandated that private letters and correspondences from public figures that had been kept out of the public domain due to lack of publication ("common copyright") would now enter the public domain, vastly INCREASING it.
Aside from which, a cursory knowledge of copyright law leads you to understand that you CANNOT copyright an idea. You can only copyright the exact implementat
I have to say, this was a sort of entertaining thing to read, in part because I've heard all of this before. My first book contract was to write Diablo: Demonsbane in 2000 for Pocket Books - it was even going to be the e-book that would inaugurate the entire Blizzard fiction line. I couldn't lose, right?
So, I write the book, get Chris Metzen drooling over it once he reads it, trying to find me a full-scale Diablo print book to write (which never happened, sadly), and the book is released in October 2000. It spends weeks on the PeanutPress bestseller list.
By the time it had been taken out of "print," it had sold around 500-900 copies. That's it. There are print books that have utterly tanked that sold more copies than that, and as far as e-books go, I was doing WELL.
The e-book revolution that was supposed to wipe out the bookstores and revolutionize the way we read turned out to be nothing more than a pipe dream. Now, the wild claims are being repeated, and it's still a pipe dream.
The reason for this is simple - when it comes down to it, for something to take off, it needs to have a level of utility. You need to be able to offer the customer lots of flexibility, and remove additional steps wherever possible. No matter what happens, when it comes to e-books, the first thing you are doing is adding a step, and a step that requires electricity. And then the internet.
The book I've got coming out in under a month was tested as an e-text with two classes of students at the university where I work. This is one of the top universities in Canada, too - plenty of laptops in class during the lectures. The most frequent complaint we got when the primary author and I asked for comments was that it wasn't a print book. Students like to be able to make notes in the margins, you see - they even said so on their comment sheets.
The simple fact is that the e-book is not going to dislocate the print book any time soon, if ever. The print book has no technological barriers to entry for the readers, while the e-book does. And no amount of idealistic speculation is going to change that.
"Copyright is a fairly recent notion, as it popped up only four hundred years ago or so, and in a small part of the world. Long before that--and today in places were copyright is not respected--culture and content continue to abound."
That is a very simplistic way of looking at things. It assumes, among other things, that all cultures have the same nature, and that therefore copyright isn't necessary. And that is very historically ignorant. The nature of cultures in the past was not the same as it is now.
"Think about all the great poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome. They didn't get a dime when copies were made of their work by amanuenses and sold in the marketplace, but they didn't complain."
Actually, that's not true. We honestly don't know if they were paid royalties or not. We do not seem to have any defenses from the Athenian law courts regarding copying, but that just means that none survived to us - there may or may not have been any. The current documents that have survived suggest that the Athenians were not suing people over copying, but we honestly don't have enough recovered to know for certain.
Aside from which, neither ancient Greece or Rome had a concept of individual rights. People would be sued based on a failure to carry out their responsibilities, but the rights of the individual was a concept that was centuries in the future. There was a concept of obligation, and that went right through to Christian times (for example, in terms of religion, the Romans didn't like the Christians because they didn't fulfill their obligation of joining the rest of their community at sacrifices, meaning that they were not "doing the sacred things" (aka "sacra facere") - and meaning that bizarrely to our conception of religion, the Christians were persecuted for being atheists).
"Indeed, the only time someone had issue with copying, the Roman poet Martial in his Epigrams , it was because another fellow was putting his name on those copies. And even then, Martial didn't demand legal penalties; he just lampooned the guy."
In fact, there was a law I recently learned about passed by the Emperor Augustus that declared that the content being copied belonged to the copyist. That being said, in Ancient Greece and Rome ridicule was a corrective, and it could be very dangerous to somebody. There is at least one case on record of somebody committing suicide because of slanderous poems being written about them (I know because I've spent the last two years working on a book about ancient Greek and Roman humour with a professor of Classics).
I can't speak for the law outside of Europe, but my own inquiries into the history of copyright have suggested that in order for a concept of copyright to develop, there needs to be certain factors in play:
1. A concept of the rights of the individual.
2. The technology to mass produce copies of the work (without this, copying is not an issue).
3. A society capable of mass consumption of the work (for literature, a literate society, etc. - and again, copying is pointless if there is no market to consume it).
4. A free market economy (extremely important, as it means that there is a financial stake for whoever is copying, and whoever creates).
Without all of these, there can be no development of the concept of copyright. As soon as all four appear, however, copyright follows. The Stationer's Log (the earliest form of copyright in England) was at the dawn of this, but copyright as we know it didn't come until 1705 - and at that point, the patronage system was beginning to disappear, society was literate and the printing press had been around for a while, there was effectively a free market economy, and the rights of the individual had become prevalent enough that two revolutions would occur within the century over them. A lot of people may not like to hear this, but copyright did develop naturally as the circumstances developed so that it became necessary.
"In Hong Kong, the film and music industries c
"I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just hoping that you got my real point concerning the value of unfettered use of Shakespeare's work to the economy at large."
I got your point, and it made a great deal of sense. Ultimately, I would add, it all comes down to balance.
And, I will also admit, your point was quite logical once I realized that you had said "private" instead of "public"...
"Without copyright, would "Fair use" actually have any meaning?"
Not really. The irony when it comes to the "copyright abolitionists" is that without copyright, the public domain wouldn't have any meaning either. As far as I know, the public domain is defined in copyright law - get rid of the law, and you get rid of the public domain too.
"That being said, I'm glad to see some folks with big fat checkbooks getting behind the concept."
I agree with you 100% on that one.
Ack, sorry, I misread a word there. You said "private domain," and I thought you said "public domain."
But, in all honesty, Shakespeare has never re-entered copyright. Some editions are copyrighted, but that's because of the editing in notes and whatnot that create a new work. The actual plays themselves are public domain, and can be used however you like.
(This doesn't stop some people from trying to claim the entire thing is copyrighted, but that doesn't actually make it so. I can claim the moon is made of Lego blocks, but it won't make it true.)
"The value of Shakespeare alone to the US economy is in the gazillions. How many school plays & textbooks, theaters, community centers, and even Hollywood studios would disappear if Shakespeare's works went into the private domain with no fair use provision."
Shakespeare has been in the public domain for centuries. Really. Anybody can use or publish it however they want. Fair use has nothing to do with it.
Fair use ONLY applies with works currently in copyright. It does NOT apply to the public domain.
(Right - going to get an aspirin now. My head hurts...)
I hate to say it, but having taken a look at the article and the report, there are very serious issues with the methodology of the article. This report certainly does not indicate what the article suggests - quite frankly, the article is FUD.
But, I'm not going to just make the claim, I'm going to back it up. There are some very suspicious omissions and problems (excluding the terrible math in the article):
1. "Fair Use" industries are defined in great detail (albeit in charts that are sideways, making them unnecessarily difficult to read), with each industry used itemized. However, nowhere are "Copyright" industries defined or itemized. We simply do not have the other side of the comparison. For that matter, the report itself doesn't even make a comparison. Nowhere in the front or back matter did I find anything comparing the monetary value of fair use to the monetary value of copyright. The report makes a statement about fair use and backs it up. The article does no such thing, and does not source its statements about copyright-related industries.
2. This report lists several industries as "Fair Use" industries which are arguably dependent on copyright as well, meaning that in a comparison they must be counted on both sides. They are:
- Internet publishing and broadcasting
- Software publishers
- Radio & television broadcasting (counted twice in table 1)
- Printing and related support activities
- Newspaper publishers
- Directory, mailing list, and other publishers (for some reason, described exactly the same as "newspaper publishers" - who edited this?)
- Other publishers (apparently, these are the OTHER other publishers - yes, it makes my head hurt too)
- Motion Picture and Video Industries
- Sound Recording Industries
- Performing Arts Companies
- Agents and Managers for Artists, Athletes, Entertainers, and Other Public Figures
- Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers
Frankly, with the abuse like that which is taking place under the RIAA, and the poorly thought out sections of the DMCA, I can see how a report like this can be handy for legislators (although headache-inducing to read online), but the article is just FUD. For a comparison, copyright-dependent industries need to be defined, otherwise you're just pulling numbers out of the air.
I must say, I love the fear-mongering that happens here. Right down to the title of the article. "Copyright Alliance Says Fair Use Not a Consumer Right" - that should be used in writing classes to show how perception of content can be skewed.
Patrick Ross is absolutely correct - he's describing the law and how a copyright notice works. And the fact is that fair use is not a legal right - it is a defense that mitigates the charge of copyright infringement if it ever gets to court. Better put, it is a limitation on copyright law to allow for uses that violate the letter of the law but not the spirit of it.
Furthermore, at no point does Patrick Ross actually say that fair use is wrong or shouldn't exist. He is specifying the law, not morality. And, it is very true that misunderstanding the law can get you into trouble. Understanding what the law is, the intentions of the law, and how it works is very important when you're copying something. If you assume that you have a right to do something you can't, then you can find yourself suffering consequences you wouldn't otherwise if you had done your research.
Unfortunately, a lot of Slashdot posters aren't actually interested in research. And, they want to claim that fair use is free speech, and that it should be a consumer right. Let's look at both in turn.
1. Fair use is not free speech. Free speech, which is a guaranteed right in the United States, Canada (excluding hate speech), and I believe Great Britain, among others, permits you to voice your opinion or thoughts without fear of censorship from the government. It permits you to voice an opinion agreeing with somebody else - but in YOUR OWN WORDS. It is protection from government censorship of your OWN words, not license to copy somebody else's words for your own purposes. The fair use limitation allows you to quote somebody else word-for-word in a limited fashion, but it does not give you carte blanche to simply take somebody else's work and put your own name on it, or redistribute the work of somebody else without their permission. Nor should it - because it isn't YOUR work.
2. Why should fair use be a consumer right? People are willing to assert this, but so far I haven't actually seen a single informed defense of it. Unlike the right to self-defense, which has implication across a wide variety of laws in the criminal code, and is actually used by people, fair use is only applicable in regards to copyright law. And, for that matter, it only becomes an issue when an infringement case appears in court, and it only appears on the side of the defense.
For that matter, who actually uses fair use? Well, in order to use fair use, you have to be a creative artist of some sort, or a publisher, or a performer. Downloading songs onto a computer has nothing to do with fair use, unless you then use a sound clip for another work that you are creating or distributing. Which means, in short, that the people who are using it are NOT the consumers. The only people who need fair use in the first place are people who are reproducing sections of work for their own work, and by definition, this puts them into the ranks of the creative artists, distributors, or performers themselves.
So, no, fair use should not be a consumer right. Consumers do have rights, but if you are going to give a consumer a right, it has to be something that is relevant to them. Giving everybody the legal right to hover five feet off the ground using the power of the mind alone is pointless, because nobody can do that in the first place.
"If you still live in Canada, what are your thoughts about medicare? Your illness could well have bankrupted you if you lived in a society that espoused your libertarian ideals, or worse, you could have been left to die."
First of all, I never said that I was a libertarian. While many of my beliefs are similar to libertarism, that belief system does have it's flaws, and goes a bit too far for my taste. I'm a South Park Conservative if I'm anything, and I do believe that a society does have an obligation to care for its disadvantaged. I also believe that the disadvantaged have an obligation to try to better themselves, and that social assistance should never be something permanent in somebody's life. And, living in Canada, I would say that for the most part my society does espouse my ideals.
As for OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) I think it's an imperfect system, but it's strengths far outnumber its flaws. It could be far better funded, and that is hurting people. The way it handles prescriptions is a bad joke. But, I did receive the care I needed, and it could be much worse.
Well, before I say anything, I'd like to just state where I'm coming from on this. I have two university degrees (both BAs), I'm a published author and a professional writer, and both of my published books so far have been regarding computer games (one was a novella that started the Blizzard fiction line, the other was a reference book on the Everquest phenomenon). I'm 30 years old, single, and politically I'm what you would call a "South Park Conservative." I'm also a Monarchist, but that doesn't show up that often. I'm a member of the Copyright Alliance (which is an educational group rather than an advocacy group - my condition for joining and offering my help was that it represents the law, not whatever corporation is trying to bend it into a pretzel at the time, and so far I have not been disappointed), and I'm trying to start my own non-fiction publisher in the next couple of months.
Ten years ago, I was much more left of centre than I am now. And, the longer I live, the more I'm coming to realize that the old joke "the difference between somebody on the left and somebody on the right is twenty years" is actually quite true. Fifteen years ago, almost all of the games on my computer were pirated. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't really care - I was getting away with it, so it was free swag. Twenty years ago, both of my parents were running fairly successful businesses - my father was the head of a computer consulting company, and my mother was the head of an educational publisher. So I grew up in the upper middle class. That doesn't mean I lived a life of luxury - the recession in the '90s hit us really hard, and even before then, my father brought me up to earn my way through life, rather than spoiling me. I should also add that as a Canadian, my high school experience was not the sort of hell described in Voices from the Hellmouth. There was relatively little indocrination, as I remember it, and individuality was encouraged by the teachers.
So, in the here and now, I'm a copyright advocate and author about to turn businessman. Ten years ago, I was an idealistic university student learning about history and pretty left of centre. So what changed, and why have I told everybody this?
As far as the general question of "nerds" and liberatianism goes, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the "nerds" I know never really left a university mindset. It's not a matter of intelligence - it's a matter of being informed about what is going on, keeping up to date with the social issues involving their rights, and believing that they can fight it out. In a way, they haven't seemed to have made a lot of the mental compromises that the "twenty years" in the joke would have forced on them. And, as somebody who has lost some of that innocence, I envy them a great deal.
But, I think there are also some trends that need to be recognized. Some people would call themselves libertarians who actually aren't. There are a lot of people who have turned intellectual property piracy into an ideology, more out of a sense of entitlement than anything else. And, I've noticed that a lot of these people tend to be on the young side (in their teens or twenties). I think part of that might be that they just haven't had enough time to really have a stake in something yet, and that does give you perspective that you wouldn't have otherwise (or, I could be completely wrong and it's sociopathy, or ignorance, or idiocy, or something else - you never know, and everybody is different).
There are a lot of "nerds" working in computer sciences that have a different issue that I've noticed, and that is that they assume too much. Some of them have turned Open Source into an ideology and can't quite understand why others just care about what works better. A lot of them forget that a lot of people see a computer as a tool that lets them do their email (in short, a sort of electronic hammer), and don't go any farther than that in their understanding - and then attribute why worms and email
Well, taking a look at what your question is, and giving it a good read, there isn't a whole lot I can suggest that hasn't been suggested already. I can update a couple of things, though.
i ght/
First of all, you seem to be operating under the idea that IP laws are restrictive of what you can do with your own IP. This actually isn't the case. Under copyright law, you can do whatever you want with your own IP. Protecting it, or more specifically, the terms under which you want to share it, on the other hand, is another matter, and how you'll go about it will depend on what it is.
As far as digital timestamps go when it comes to legal proof, that's a tricky one. I honestly don't know if there's a digital proof that will stand up in court. In fact, I'm almost certain there isn't. For that, you'd want to consult a lawyer, particularly since there are a lot of ways a digital timestamp can be faked, and I am not actually a lawyer (I'm a pro writer, but that means I have a working knowledge of the law, rather than an encyclopedic one).
When it comes to copyrightable materials, mailing it to yourself is NOT considered legal proof of copyright. There are too many ways to fake it, and there is not a single court case, at least not one I have ever heard of, where it was considered to be proof. For more information, see this site: http://www.copyrightauthority.com/poor-mans-copyr
However, there are two steps you can take that will secure your copyright. The first is very simple - place on the IP "Copyright (or just the © symbol) [year] [name]," and then list the rights that are reserved or granted. So, an example, using my own name, could be "Copyright 2007 Robert B. Marks. Reproduction under the Open Source License is permitted, all other rights reserved" or "© 2007 Robert B. Marks..." That secures your copyright in regards to the Berne Convention. However, for proper protection, that is not enough - you need to register the copyright with your country's copyright office. There may be a digital way to register it with the office, but that registration is still necessary if you're worried about protecting it. This site seems to be a good general reference: http://www.copyrightauthority.com/
(Please note that while you can copyright a story, a piece of music, or a work of art, you CANNOT copyright an idea. Copyright just doesn't work like that. An idea falls under patent law, and has different rules.)
As far as an invention goes, that would be a patent of some sort, and you would want to go through your local patent office. Unfortunately, I don't know a great deal about it except for a few bizarre cases of patents gone mad in the US. However, the patent office will have information about how to patent your invention, so you'll want to consult them.
Should somebody violate your copyright, it is important to be methodical in dealing with them. Keep in mind that it might eventually get to a court case, in which case your own conduct will also be under the magnifying glass. I would suggest beginning with a gentle but firm letter or email informing them that they are infringing and asking them to stop. If they don't, then consult a lawyer and move on from there. Whatever you do, document everything.
And, if I don't miss my guess, that's it in a nutshell...
You know, you are very good at trying to put words in my mouth. The problem is that you have made a number of assumptions about me and my knowledge, and pretty much none of them are right.
"It is funny how people who work with publishers of this and that frequently think they are knowledgeable about copyright after listening to their publishers tell them about the issue."
Now there's a load of bullshit. The reason that any successful writer needs an understanding of copyright law is to PROTECT him/herself from the publishers. My training came from actually reading the laws themselves, interpretations of the laws from commentators, and interpretations from my agents. As a result, I can recognize a bad contract when I see one.
Funny how anti-copyright people tend to accuse those who disagree with them as being in league with distributors and guilty of groupthink or being easily led. Mind you, I've also been called a thief and a murderer because I believe in fighting for my rights under the law, so groupthink is the least of those things I can be accused of.
"You know, you should really write your own dictionary."
And you should go into public relations - I applaud your ability when it comes to spinning the truth. Unfortunately for your argument, "Mister Webster" doesn't actually actually make any mention of things that are CREATED. It does not cover a short story, or a musical tune, or a novel. It covers statistics and research. As I myself said, information is not a created work. Tell me, have you ever thought of joining a smoking lobby? They could use a talent like yours.
And while we're at it, lets talk about that lovely definition of anarchy that you provided. You have talked about it as a political theory, essentially, but the actual meaning of the word comes from Greek - literally "without rule." While an Anarchist (capital "A") certainly believes in wiping out all laws, there is plenty of room in the definition for an anarchist - somebody who wants to be without rule in a smaller way. So, my definition and use of the word actually does hold, and considering that one of the definitions that you yourself quoted was "a state of lawlessness," I would suggest that you read a bit more closely and try to understand how the language works, rather than holding up a dictionary definition and talking down to somebody who has spent the last seventeen years mastering the language.
"As an aside: Is it possible for Canadians to have a discussion without pointing out the fact that they are Canadian?"
Well, maybe if most of Slashdot would stop assuming that the world ends at the American border and that we are Americans, we wouldn't have to specify that. I do live in a different country, and I am proud of that country. And quite frankly, the intentions of your founding fathers are utterly meaningless when it comes to OUR laws.
And, quite frankly, your interpretation of the law is bad enough that I pray to god you never end up in court trying to represent yourself. Your words on the Berne Convention (minus melodramatic bolding):
"It eliminates formalities: This is bad because it means that anybody can claim to have a copyright on anything, and it takes going to court and hiring a lawyer to prove one's innocence or assert one's rights from a false claimant. It basically turns the law on its head by making everyone guilty until proven innocent. I think the RIAA and IFPI have provided ample demonstrations of this principle in action."
Actually, it still is an "innocent until proven guilty" system. If you have to take somebody to court for infringement, you have to prove that they did it, and that the copyright is yours. The burden of proof is on the plaintiff. An accusation of infringement is not proof of infringement, as the recent court decisions in regards to the RIAA have shown. You were paying attention to those, weren't you?
"It eliminates documentation: Stemming from the above point, because anybody can claim a copyright and t
"While I agree with your comment in general, I do not agree with your characterisation of people who oppose copyright as "anarchists"."
Funny - I didn't actually specify who the anarchists are. You're putting words in my mouth. But let us take a look at your points, shall we? I may not be a lawyer, but I am a pro writer, and that does mean I have to have a working knowledge of the law and why it is there.
"People who are opposed to one law are not necessarily opposed to all law or the concept of law in general."
Very true. And I would not call anybody opposed to one law on logical grounds to be an anarchist. I would call somebody who is opposed to that law so that they can take advantage by making an exception for just themselves, however, to be anarchistic. For example, Lawrence Lessig (whose logic I find tends to be a bit on the faulty side, but he does mean well) I would not consider to be an anarchist - he has taken a legal position based on his understanding of the law, history, precedent, and striking a balance between the rights of the consumer and the creative artist. An 18 year old IP pirate who has taken up the cause because he doesn't like paying for music or movies, but god help you if you trample on something he feels entitled to, is anarchistic. He talks a good talk, but deep down inside he only cares about himself - his idea of a balance between the creator and the consumer is whatever gives him the free music, and he doesn't care who it hurts.
"Copyright is a monopoly and is at odds with the principles of laissez-faire capitalism and is a remnant of the monarchical laws of England, laws that the Constitution was meant to protect the citizens of the US from."
Well, seeing as I'm in Cananda, I care a lot more about the Berne Convention than any American laws, but they do affect me, as I do write in the American market whenever I can. Your understanding of copyright is faulty, however. Copyright operates in some ways like a monopoly - the law grants you limited rights to control distribution of your work - but it does not permit you to control anything outside your work, and there the comparison fails. I am currently working on a novel about Vikings. If it was a monopoly, then once the copyright is recognized, I would be able to block anybody from ever using Vikings again in their work. But, I can't. I can prevent somebody from stealing my exact characters, and from distributing my work without my consent. But even there, there are limits, such as fair use. I really suggest that you read the Berne Convention to get a better idea of what copyright is.
"Information is not land and should not be territorialised as such."
True. But a created work is not information. It is a product, and the result of the work of a creator. Before the creator does his or her thing, the created work does not exist. Information, on the other hand, is gathered. It exists prior to somebody writing it down.
"Copyright violates your First Amendment right to Free Speech, especially if you view information as speech (who is to say what I can and cannot sing in public or anywhere?)."
Um, no. Free speech guarantees that the government will not prevent you from speaking your mind. Copyright's main protection is for creative artists when dealing with their distributors (this may come as a shock, but the consumer isn't all that important for most of copyright law). That being said, it has been abused in the past, and certainly there are instances where the RIAA is abusing it now. I have yet to see an interpretation of copyright law that includes humming a tune to be anything other than fair use held up in a court of law. But the abuse of a law is not the letter or spirit of that law, and the difference should be recognized.
"Copyright may have originally been conceived as a form of censorship."
Very true. But things have changed in the roughly 500 years since then. We are living in 2007, not 1507. A lot of things in our society have diffe
I've read through a lot of the ideas on here, and I figure it might be worthwhile to throw some of my own words into the mix.
There are a lot of anarchists on here - they don't like to be called that, but that's what they are. There are a lot of people who wouldn't know copyright law if it hit them in the face, but insist on speaking out as though they're authorities on it. There are people here who are quiet and informed, and quiet and uninformed. There are informed brawlers, soft-spoken lawyers, writers, programmers, and pirates. And, there are a lot of people who would push their own agenda on anything that comes their way, even to the detriment of you and your class.
Trust none of them.
Your students are about to meet somebody who is at the heart of one of the major social issues of our time. Get them reading up on it, make sure they're reading both sides of the issue, and then leave it in their hands. Don't put your trust in Slashdot, or some online forum - if you do that, you're putting it into the hands of a bunch of people who you've probably never met, and who may not even be who they say they are. Put your trust in your students - give them what they need to be informed, and then trust them to understand it (and if they disagree with your conclusions, keep in mind that YOU could be the one who misunderstood something). The most important part of education in the end, the part that ultimately can save you from something terrible, is learning to think critically for yourself and make up your own mind. Let them do that.
"Here are the facts: increasing CO2 in that atmosphere increases the temperature. That is a fact. CO2 in our atmosphere is increasing and isotopic analysis of the carbon in that CO2 proves that it is from the combustion of organic Carbon. THAT MEANS US!!!!!!"
Except that the increase in CO2 in the ice core samples lags behind the rise in temperature by a matter of centuries. So, it seems you have it the wrong way around. Increasing the temperature increases the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Our environmental sins may be legion, but quite frankly, I've read arguments on both sides, and the "deniers" seem to be the ones who actually have the convincing argument. We may have caused pollution en masse, but the Earth is getting warmer on its own. Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on fixing the problems we actually are causing, rather than creating fear and wasting money on a process that isn't our fault?
(And for that matter, why the hell is it so bad for the climate to be changing? It has never been a stable system in the past, so why should we expect it to be stable now? And, as far as I know, a warmer climate would mean that there would be more plant life, and greater fertility in the soil - and frankly, that's a net gain.)
"According to this BMI calculator I'm still way overweight and nearly obese and am currently ridiculously obese in my 40" waist jeans. According to that I should weigh 145 to 195 lbs. 145 lbs? Talk about unhealthy for someone who's 6'2". My Junior year in high school I weight 190-195. I was skinny. Not muscled, not ripped, skinny. Not unhealthy thin, but I would say more than 5-10lbs less than that would have been unhealthy."
Well, I am also 6'2", and I've got to say that if 190-195 is what you consider skinny, then you must be a tall endomorph - because I know I'm an ectomorph, and I'm trying to reach 185 right now. I wouldn't argue that you're big and strong, but 40" sounds like you're pretty stocky.
In my case, I spent most of my life at 145 lbs., and I was a beanpole. And I was on the cusp of being unhealthily thin. I could fight off disease, but sometimes not that well. It took an illness that dropped me to 127 - which is a VERY scary place to be - that made me decide to finally gain some weight. Now, I'm sitting at 175, and while my target is 185, I'm healthy enough that my nutritionist, who doesn't even look at BMI, isn't all that sure I need another ten pounds. I still look quite lean, but I'm fairly strong, I've got decent stamina, and I've got around 30% body fat. And, because of my genetics, I will always put on or drop weight in a way that makes me look lean.
So, I doubt that 180-185 is unhealthily thin for somebody who is 6'2" - and that's coming from somebody who has been unhealthily thin for real.
"Which is a much more detailed way of saying he more or less invented the genre as we know it."
No, it isn't. In fact, it is saying the exact opposite of that. I do not think the word "invent" means what you seem to think it means. To invent something means to create something new. Making something that is already there famous and stately is not invention by any stretch of any imagination.
Tolkien gave the genre legitimacy, but the all of the foundations for high fantasy was placed by other people. If you want to give credit for inventing the sort of fantasy that Tolkien wrote, then it's William Morris, Lord Dunsany, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Robert E. Howard who deserve the credit. In fact, much of the memorable material in the genre owes a great deal to Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and L. Sprague de Camp. Michael Moorcock is a huge formative force, and he took his cues from Howard, not Tolkien.
Tolkien is A father of modern fantasy - many people were inspired by him and followed him, and the Lord of the Rings is a work of literature of great merit that will stand the test of time, and that is something - but he is not THE father of modern fantasy. There is a long line before him.