"Further, I'd add that a few amateur authors who went pro (like myself) might not have been able to do so."
The more I think about this, the more I think this is actually wrong. All of the writers I know are people who will write no matter what - if they can't write one thing, they'll write another. So, I don't think harsher enforcement of copyright in regards to fanfic, etc. would actually stop them writing - I think they'd just move on to writing something different.
Well, I don't know if we can keep this going more than a couple of posts longer (if for no other reason that on my side, these replies take a while to write and I actually have writing work to do, and as a bonus, I AM getting paid by the hour - yipee!), but I am really enjoying this, and you have raised some points I hadn't thought of before.
"There's a lot of quality writing out there. Back in my first post when I was talking about the costs of copyright, I mentioned "perfect enforcement". If there was perfect enforcement, none of this could have existed, right?"
I've definitely got to concede that point. Further, I'd add that a few amateur authors who went pro (like myself) might not have been able to do so. So enforcement is certainly a matter of shades of gray.
"Further highlighting the stark difference between copyright and a "basic property right" is the idea of fair use. It would be ridiculous to say that you can own a piece of property like a tractor, but other people can take it without your permission as long as it's for educational purposes, or as long as they only use it for a very short amount of time, or as long as they're only taking it for criticism. But fair use provisions for education, news reporting, parody, and research are basically telling people, "you can infringe on this person's basic property right, as long as it's on the list of things we think are okay." This makes perfect sense if you think of copyright as a tradeoff between the public and the author, with the intent of "promoting the useful arts," but seems completely backwards if you view copyright as a basic property right. This is one reason I think people like Jack Valenti tried so hard to get rid of fair use exceptions--they felt (rightly so, I think) that in a paradigm where copyright is a basic property right, fundamental to the act of creating a work, fair use exceptions simply don't make sense."
Well, you've highlighted some stuff I've been trying to bash into some of the abolitionist's heads for some time, albeit from a different direction than I often start from. You're right that copyright isn't a basic property right, but I would say that it has to start from that point. I think the big distinction, when it comes down to it, is that copyright is a property right for a property that is shared. Therefore, much of it comes down to where you draw the line between the rights of the owner and the rights of the person it is being shared with. To make matters even more complicated, it is a form of property that specializes in the transmission of ideas, and while I don't mind giving somebody credit for coming up with an idea first (a la a much less insane form of patent law for inventions), that makes it another line that needs to be drawn.
I think, ultimately, we're both seeing eye to eye on what a copyrighted work actually is - it seems to me that where we diverge is on whether copyright law strikes a balance that works. I think it does, and the problem right now is the abuse of it, which itself may be more temporary than I feared, considering the latest news with the RIAA's lawsuits.
"I haven't heard anyone seriously suggest this. All abolitionists demand is that, if I legally obtain a copy of a creative work, I should be legally allowed to duplicate it. Nobody is forcing authors to sell (or give) me a copy of that creative work, however."
Okay - I should have made this a bit clearer - mea culpa - this was a new thought experiment on my side. Basically, it went like this:
Copyright abolitionists want an unlimited right to copy, so with copyright abolished, how would they get it?
The first issue they'd run into, at least as I thought it out, is that while they got rid of copyright, they also got rid of public domain (the two concepts run in tandem; public domain tends to be this umbrella term for those things that aren't in copyright) - so now what's left is a mass of creative works, software, etc., that has no law governing it at all. As well, you haven't actuall
"Likewise; like most people, I most often talk with people whose views are more closely aligned with my own, so discussing the topic with someone well-educated and well-spoken, but with wildly different views, is a pleasant breath of fresh air."
Well, that's the true joy of debate - and at the end, if it's done properly, both people have insights they didn't have before.
"I'm not sure what part of my graph you're considering inaccurate. Certainly it wasn't meant to be exactly perfect, but rather a general description of the basic idea that many abolitionists disagree with: more copyright restrictions result in more creative works being published. It's also meant to show the general principle that the increase you get is much more drastic from "no protection" to "very small protection" than it is from "very large protection" to "a little bit more than large".
"Or, in other words, there are lots of people who will create works with one year copyright protection who wouldn't if they had no copyright protection at all. There are similarly lots of people who would create works with five year copyright protection who wouldn't if they only had one year copyright protection. However, I don't think there are very many people at all (if any) who would create works with a 100 year copyright who wouldn't create that same work with only an 80 year copyright."
Oh - that would be my bad - I thought it was tracking works of art created over time. Okay, I feel silly now.
";-) On a serious note, of course, one of the reasons why the quality is poor in general is likely due to the fact that if an author is good enough to get recognized and published, they can't spend their time writing "illicit" material."
I'm not sure that's the case - when I came up through Doctor Who fanfiction, there were a lot of really good fanfic writers there, people who could go pro if they wanted, and they never did (actually, come to think of it, a lot of the Doctor Who fanfic was an abnormally high quality - perhaps that's just my bias, but it seemed to attract a lot of good writers). They just weren't interested in publishing beyond posting something on a newsgroup.
And, once you're good enough to get paid, most of the media properties that people write fanfiction about also have professional fiction as well, and if you've got the skill, it can be a good place to break into the business (my first professionally published fiction was a Diablo e-book, for example). Also, there is some merit to an implication of your idea - that once a fanfic writer gets good enough and they want to go pro, they move on and start doing their own thing. I used to call fanfic a training ground for new writers.
I think the reason you tend to see the low quality isn't because there's more amateur fiction being written, but instead because the Internet makes it easy to "publish" it (the quotation marks are to differentiate between amateur publication and professional publication). So, I think the same proportion of people who would write crap before are writing crap now, but because they don't have to get past the filter of a submissions editor, they can now inflict their crap on us much more easily.
"I think once we get down to "rights" that you can violate without ever being on the same planet as a person or affecting that person at all, I think we've pretty much left the realm of inalienable rights."
Well, I'd argue that what makes any right inalienable is a statement in a legal document like the US Constitution that it is so - too many people in the world today live without a lot of the rights we consider to be "inalienable" in our society. But, at this point on this particular subject, we're starting to move in circles, I fear.
"'m not sure that I would call "exclusive rights to copy" a "literary legacy," but terminology aside, do you believe that copyright should be lifelong because of some inherent right, or because it is useful to society for it to last that long?"
"For the ink, paper, and profit (and perhaps some tax) for whoever is printing it for you, however, you will have to pay. Contrast this with getting a book for free over the Internet... reading books online looks more appealing all the time, wouldn't you say?"
You know what? If you take away all those other factors, in theory it looks like you might be right - except that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're wrong, for two reasons:
1. Around 2000, the publishing industry hopped on the e-book bandwagon, thinking that with the lower costs to produce, and the lower price point that could be offered, it would be the next big thing. A couple of years later, many, if not most, of them hopped back off the bandwagon - because the sales had been abysmal. I know because I was there. My first book, Demonsbane, was an e-book. It had the Diablo franchise name, it was a good book, and it had good marketing, and at last count, I think it's sold all of 250 copies - and that made me the most successful e-book author at the time in Canada, beating out Robert J. Sawyer.
2. The book I'm co-writing right now is a textbook on ancient humour, and it has been tested for two terms now in my co-author's class. In both cases, it was provided as a free PDF for download. When we asked for comments, we got quite a few, some positive, and some complaints - almost all of which were that the book wasn't a print book. Some even went farther, saying that the way they preferred to study was to write notes in the margins of the textbook, and they couldn't do that with a PDF.
The e-book has its place, but considering the benefits of the print book, and what the market wants, I doubt it will ever be anything but a secondary market for books, and a small one at that.
"Yes, ink, glue, bindings and shipping are non-information goods and thus must be paid for. Why do you need it printed out?"
You mean besides the fact that most people don't want to read full length books on a computer, that a paper book requires no electricity, is easier to read, can be read anywhere there is light, and is generally easier to bring into a classroom?
"I don't have any beef with your claims that the OP doesn't comprehend copyright law, nor am I an abolutionist myself per se, but I wanted to respond to a few of your points to maybe give you more of an idea where abolitionists are coming from."
I took a look at your site and what you wrote, and I have to say that while I do not agree with your stance - I think the problem is clearing up the abuse of copyright and the paranoia that you see in the DMCA, etc. - it's good to be talking with somebody who actually understands the issues.
I'm not sure your graph is right, though - being inside the industry, most of what I've heard is that publishers are having a lot of trouble because they're just being swamped with submissions. I'd go as far as to say that it's the media that makes the difference rather than the law, because right now we're getting more and more swamped with content.
"> This one I find rather funny - there are abolitionists out there who really think that authors sit around creating work under copyright, and then cackle as they put them in a box and never let anybody see them.
"This seems like a straw man to me. Are there really abolitionists who really think this?"
Boy...I wish I could say no to that. One of the more bizarre debates I had on here in regard to copyright issues involved somebody accusing me of being part of a copyright conspiracy (I am not making this up) to create an underclass of people who have no access to content. Even now, I'm, well, not quite sure that to say to it - South Park doesn't tend to get that bizarre...
"I'm not quite sure what the OP wrote that you are responding to here, but it's true that, for example, no one can write a story that takes place in a Star Trek universe due to copyright restrictions. Derivative works cover at least part of what a layman would term as "copyrighting an idea". But again, I'm not quite sure what the OP wrote that you're responding to."
Although I'm not allowed to look at fanfic now (now that I get paid to write, there are creative contamination issues), I still remember the quality of Trek fic being...well...not that high. Are you SURE not being able to write it is a bad thing?
Talking seriously, though, I was talking about misconceptions in general, not the OP's - he didn't mention copyrighting ideas in his article or his post. But, I've heard the charge more times than I can count from abolitionists, and therefore it makes it onto the list.
As far derivative works go, it's a fine line. You can't copyright an idea, but you can copyright the exact implementation of an idea. So, I can't write a Star Trek story, but I can write a story about a starship in the 23rd century with an alien first officer on a mission of exploration, so long as it isn't the Enterprise, Vulcans, or the Federation. Speaking pragmatically, I think that's a pretty good way of doing things - you create your own world, and if you want to share it with other writers you can, but you don't have to.
"Here I have little sympathy for your case. While it's true that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are artificial rights, they're certainly not "just as artificial as copyright". Copyright is something that we can (and should) gladly take away, limit, or extend as it benefits society as a whole. It's more along the lines with "the right to health care" than it is "the right to life" or "the right to free speech"."
Now that is a whole can of worms - the problem is this: some rights are rights that everybody should have. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness I would agree on. But property rights are also on that list, particularly when you've made the property with your own hands - or in the case of a novel, your own fingers and mind. So where do you draw the the line between the rights of the individual and the benefits of society? The most horrific crimes in history have been committed on the grounds that it was for the good of all - hence the need to protect the rights of t
"Me too. I could support property rights as natural to some degree, but not copyright (and especially due to the explicit language in the Constitution explaining why copyright and patents are important). A natural right would seem to need no such explanation."
I agree mostly to that, although I would say that property rights aren't really natural - they don't exist before civilization, and civilization is something made. When it comes down to it, the right to anything isn't natural - it's a protection under the law, and therefore constructed.
And...um...well, I can't really add anything more here. It's nice to be replying to somebody who is intelligent and understands the issues, though.
"In a society without copyright, this would all change. Imagine 1) never having to pay for a school textbook anymore"
Incredible! I had no idea that copyright was responsible for the costs of paper, ink, glue, bindings, and shipping! Can you get rid of gravity by repealing trademark law, because that would just be cool...
"The abolitionists are perfectly aware of what copyright law *is* today, they're just trying to change that."
Bullshit. I'm a professional writer - part of my job requires me to have a working understanding of the law and what it does. My academic training is primarily that of a historian - and that gives me some insight as to how societies develop. And, frankly, I read your article very carefully (both of them, in fact), and you failed to understand copyright law on the reading comprehension level. I'm not surprised that you haven't thought through it. And, frankly, denying that it's there when somebody has simply summarized the letter of the law is one hell of an ostrich impression. You're the one who should be discussing whether it "should be there." Arguing that it isn't there when it's protected under the US Constitution from the get-go, has a history of case law, is recognized by international treaty, and has several other pieces of legislation that have passed in every western country in the world, is just embarrassingly stupid.
I've been reading Slashdot now for a couple of years, and I've seen lots of misconceptions from the copyright abolitionists - so you're not alone. These aren't arguments against the law, or against the theory of the law - and most of these are failures on the reading comprehension level. Here are a few of the more interesting ones, and they're all bullshit:
1. That having something under copyright keeps it away from society.
This one I find rather funny - there are abolitionists out there who really think that authors sit around creating work under copyright, and then cackle as they put them in a box and never let anybody see them. If you're a pro writer, it's publish or perish.
Sometimes, they expand this to mean that something can go out of print and then is harder to get your hands on, but what they keep missing is that this has to do with book sales, not with whether the book is under copyright or public domain. In most, if not all cases, royalties to an author make up very little of the total cost of printing the book. Contacting the author or his/her estate tends to be easy - the recluse author that nobody can contact is pretty much an urban legend at this point. The fact is that when a work enters the public domain, whether it gets printed is dictated by whether it will be profitable to print it, and that is dictated by how well it has stood the test of time. So, life of the author + 50 years in the here and now has very little impact on availability of a work.
(And, don't get me started on fair use, which is guaranteed under copyright law.)
2. That you can copyright an idea.
The sad thing is that while the first one at least is a take on a speculative issue (and, I will concede, possibly not a failure on the reading comprehension level), this one is disproven just by reading the SUMMARY of the law. You cannot copyright an idea (it's PATENT law that allows you to lay claim to an idea). For that matter, in the entire three hundred year history of copyright law, you have never been able to copyright an idea. So anybody who thinks this has obviously never read the law, or failed to understand it on the reading comprehension level.
3. That copyright is more artificial than any other right.
This one requires people to have little or no concept of history. Or current events. The people who claim that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are natural rights seem to be missing the fact that at least half of the world's population lives in places without those rights. They're also missing the fact that the US Constitution was a remarkable document because it DID enshrine those rights in the highest law of the land, making them inalienable in the United States - and that hadn't happened anywhere in the Western world before the American Revolution.
To make things even more ridiculous, the concept of a work of literature as a property protected under law pre-dates the US Constitution by arou
"I think you misunderstand. The point is that copyright is not (or may not be) a natural, inalienable right in the sense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's a right by fiat, de jure, and that may change. Perhaps it should change.
"If, however, copyright is a natural right, then it's a grave mistake to abolish that right, and freedom-loving people should revolt against any ruling body which denies that right."
Unfortunately, I'm too much a historian to accept the idea of a constitutional right as a natural right. A constitutional right certainly is at a higher legal level than a legal right (a right guaranteed by law rather than the constitution), but neither one is natural.
The concept of individual rights is a relatively new one in Western society (I know that ancient Persia had the first human rights code, but Western culture isn't descended from them). In ancient Greece, you had philosophers who speculated about what a person should have, but the value of an individual was determined by how well they met the obligations of society, not by how they operated as an individual (and, Greece and Rome being shame-based cultures, if you stepped out of the group-think mentality, you would become an object of laughter - I know this because I'm co-writing a book on ancient Greek and Roman humour that's due to be published later this year, once the contract is finally signed - the Greek word for the "quack" who steps out of line and acts in a humorous way is "alazon"). For example, in ancient Athens, if you were part of the voting class, you didn't have the right to vote - you had the OBLIGATION to. Failing to show up to meet your obligation could result in severe sanctions, and even expulsion from the city.
The concepts of society and individual rights only really start to co-exist at the end of the Middle Ages, and even there it's an uphill struggle for them (the Magna Carta, for example, is a step in the right direction, but it's a codification of the obligations of the monarchy towards the Barons, not the rights of the individual). What made the U.S. Constitution such a remarkable document in part was that it not only said that everybody should have individual rights, but that they would be protected under the highest law of the land. So, you could write pamphlets disagreeing with the government, and - gasp - NOBODY could lock you up! These rights didn't exist in Europe at the time, and they only start to appear during the French Revolution (which is why a lot of British Romantic authors are writing from France - they had free speech there, and they didn't have it in England).
I find a couple of things in this discussion very ironic.
First, the concept of copyright pre-dates the US Constitution by several decades (the first copyright law appears in 1709/1710), and the concept of intellectual property goes back about two hundred years before that, so the concept of a creative work as property actually is far older than the concept of free speech as an inalienable right.
Second, as has been pointed out several times on Slashdot, copyright is in the original draft of the US Constitution, so in the United States, it IS protected on the same level as freedom of speech.
Is copyright a natural right? Well, I look at the fact that half of the world's population lives under oppressive regimes, and so I would say that while there are rights everybody should have, there is nothing natural about them - like any right, they were fought and sometimes died for. But, in the United States at least, it is a constitutional right.
"All these problems can be seen at once in a paragraph near the opening of his article:
"The problem with a large part of the anti-copyright crowd is that they don't understand or won't admit what copyright entails as a concept. That is the right of the creator of a work to exert some control over how it's used, who can copy and distribute it, and a right to have their authorship acknowledged.
"Notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand there: he presents copy control as a natural and uncontroversial "right" -- and then accuses his targets of simply not understanding (or refusing to admit) that copyright entails that right! But it is precisely this so-called "right" that copyright doubters are questioning in the first place. If he wants to argue that it should be a right, that's fine, but instead he just asserts the right as though it's a fact of nature, beyond reasonable dispute. And again, he conflates control of distribution with acknowledgement of authorship."
Except there is no rhetorical slight of hand - Bulmash was summarizing the Berne Convention, which is the basis for most of the copyright laws in the western world, and a similar model exists in the United States. No slight of hand at all - those are the rights granted by the letter of the law.
This reminds me of a scene in Erik the Viking where the island of Hybrasil is sinking, and all of inhabitants are standing on the last little bit of land, earnestly declaring that the island isn't really sinking as it sinks beneath the waves.
I honestly don't understand why the concept of a right is so hard for guys like this to understand. Seriously, if the law states that you have a right to X, you have a right to X. This is not an obtuse concept. There aren't even shades of gray in this concept.
Sometimes, particularly when reading an article like this, I really feel like I'm living in an episode of South Park.
"Apparently nobody at SOE realized that a future proof engine is of no use unless the game itself has a future."
You have a good point, but you've missed something - a future-proof engine is necessary in the long run for a game that does have a future.
The reason I know this is because I literally wrote the book (which was not a strategy guide) on EverQuest. Back around 2002 I was in San Diego interviewing the team that created the game, and I picked up on a few lessons they learned the hard way (in some cases, comically).
The first, and most important, was that they had to ASSUME there was a future for their game. They paid for not doing that big time with EverQuest.
The thing was that the Verant team thought that they'd be lucky if EQ lasted more than a few months. The projection was that if they were lucky, they might get a few tens of thousands of players. They figured that within a year they'd be working on their next project while getting ready to shut down the EverQuest servers. What actually happened was that they caught lightning in a bottle.
Verant had learned from Ultima Online that you have to be ready for a massive hit on your servers on the first day - so they made sure they had enough servers to cover more than they ever figured they'd get. It was a good move...unfortunately, the bandwidth in San Diego at the time couldn't handle the load, and they caused an internet blackout that lasted for two weeks across the entire city (and yes, I think that's funny as hell). The big problem that taught them the value of a future-proof engine was the first EverQuest expansion, though.
EverQuest was a massive success, had formed a close community, and needed more content. But, while Verant could plan an expansion, their game engine actually couldn't do it. It was built for a game that was projected to handle the needs of perhaps 50,000 players over the course of a year and then shut down, so upwards expandability wasn't a concern. So, they had to spend a lot of extra time rewriting the entire engine so that they could release an expansion in the first place.
That's why future-proof engines are so important - you can't predict lightning in a bottle, and the price of an engine that can't expand upwards is all too often a lot of extra development time that could have been saved if you had thought ahead.
"We appear to have a disagreement at a much more fundamental level."
The difference is that my point of view is backed up by reality and history.
"Unlike yourself, I will not kill other humans to protect rights that are merely granted to me as a boon by my society."
Well, I've been called a greedy monopolist, but this is the first time I've ever been called a murderer. I have nothing more to say to you. Don't bother to reply - I'm not going to bother reading it.
"Oh dear, you're looking at a libertarian and seeing a communist."
"...simply because you have no such right to begin with."
Ugh...please, stop misusing words. Seriously. I've known people who grew up in communist countries. Believe me, when I read your posts I see an uninformed, spoiled anarchist. Not a communist. You can take my word for that. And I know what the words actually mean.
As for not having the rights in the first place, you are absolutely wrong. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that copyright isn't there or declaring that it shouldn't be there isn't going to make it go away. I DO have those rights - the law grants them to me. Just as the law grants you the right of free speech and freedom of travel. ALL rights are artificial. Unfortunately, you're living in a society that has had these rights and freedoms for long enough that you've forgotten that somebody had to fight and die for them. When was the last time you had to defend one of your rights?
Frankly, you're spoiled. We all are to some degree. It's a lot easier to talk about taking somebody's rights or legal protections away when you've never had that done to yourself, or to a family member. But, to take an American example, take a close look at Gitmo. A really close look. Look at all of those people being held without trial, and being mistreated. And then tell me about their natural rights. Seems to me it was really fucking easy to take their rights away. And once you've taken a look at that situation, and seen just how artificial rights truly are, perhaps then you'll realize just precious they are when we do have them. And perhaps then you'll understand just why it is that I fight tooth and nail for mine.
Oh, and by the way, as I've said a number of different times, you CAN'T copyright an idea. You never could. Ownership of an idea is PATENT LAW - try to get it right next time.
Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it, but I'm afraid I can't agree, simply because reality doesn't really reflect what you've said.
"The main flaw with the Berne convention as I see it is that in almost all cases it does not respect for the creator's wishes for their work. By default it makes every work uncopiable unless explicitly licensed by the author, and it doesn't provide any means of locating the author."
Well, that's really not the issue you make it out to be for a couple of reasons:
1. The work starts out in the hands of the creator, so the creator has to make a decision about how to distribute it - and copyright law allows him/her to distribute it however s/he wishes. It can't be copied without permission for a very good reason - preventing a publisher from shafting the creator upon submission by taking the work and publishing it behind the creator's back. But, the first thing a creator has to do is decide what kind of publication s/he wants, so your issue is a, well, non-issue. The creator's wishes are respected from the get-go.
2. It is not the place of copyright law to provide a means of locating the author - that's the author's responsibility. Any law creates a legal framework for people to move around in, but it does not do everything for them. Laws against theft don't hold burglars by the hand and prevent them from robbing your house - they allow you to do something about the theft after the fact. It's still your responsibility to lock your doors at night. That being said, any author who is professional about what they do makes a point of keeping their publishers up to date about their whereabouts, so it really isn't an issue. If you want to reprint an author's work and need permission, they aren't that hard to find.
"Almost all content on the web was posted by authors who don't expect to make money by selling their content, who don't care about their content being copied (at least when proper attribution is made) and usually prefer that their ideas be diseminated this way."
Um...that may be true for some, but certainly not for all, and there are lots of major sites where the content is written by people who are paid to do it. And that's not counting the sites that bring in a revenue from advertising, or are subscription-based.
"Most of who posts on the web is not reachable to give explicit permision, and if reachable now will not be reachable by the same means next year (say when they abandon their old email address in favor of a new spam-free one)."
Actually, my experience with browsing the web has been exactly the opposite - the major sites have current contact information, and I would say that current contact information is much more the norm than the exception.
"The first thing that needs to change is that there should be a requirement that legal protection for copyright holders should be restricted for those who claimed they want such protection in advance, before they can claim infringement, in a standard way that could be used by the accused infringer to check and know that there are restrictions on use."
Okay - so let me get this straight - you're suggesting that in order to protect the creator's wishes, the first thing you need to do is take away their legal rights towards their work unless they opt in to it. Somehow, if you were talking about free speech, I don't think anybody would take too kindly to that philosophy. The beauty of copyright under the Berne Convention is that any author can distribute their work however they want - mainstream publication, Creative Commons, etc. - it is up to them from the get-go. You're talking about adding a completely unnecessary step - particularly since the work starts in the creator's hands in the first place. Simple is better, when it comes down to it.
"No, it's unreasonable. I install communications infrastructure. If I want to leave something for my children, I have to save my money to do so. My children can't go around to the owners of all the networks I installed and collect money after I die. I could leave them my business, but they'd still have to learn how to pull wire and then install new networks if they expect to make any money. Please, tell me why your children should get a different deal."
Well, try this one on for size - I DON'T install communications infrastructure. I create things. The two are not equal.
Now, let's try a comparison that actually has some merit, shall we? Let's say that you make chairs by hand. And they're really good chairs - chairs that people pay top dollar for. Chairs that make your ass celebrate that you use it for sitting. Now, let's say that when you die, you've made a dozen chairs that haven't been sold to anybody yet. Would you not want to leave those chairs for your children?
I create stories and books - and I'm at the very beginning of a career that will hopefully last another forty years at least. You may not call what I create tangible, but a lot of people disagree with you, myself included, and as somebody who actually does create things, I think I'd know a bit more than you would about how tangible they are. So I have something I have created, with my own fingers, to pass on. You, on the other hand, with your installations of communications infrastructure, do not. Perhaps if you owned a company that made wiring for communications infrastructure, your children would get a different deal.
Does that answer your question?
"And none of this even addresses the root issue, that copyright doesn't exist to guarantee you a living"
Odd - I've said again and again that copyright doesn't do that at all - it just guarantees me the right to try, if I so choose. Please get it right next time you try to shoot me down.
"An interesting thing I noticed about the GP is that his signature says he is "Author, the EverQuest Companion, Garwulf's Corner, Diablo: Demonsbane." Who is really going to read or pay for these 14 years in the future?"
How is this relevant to the discussion? I'm talking theory of copyright - I can't help noticing that you're not actually talking about that.
Well, seeing as I just wrote a post refuting all of this - and frankly, your view of history is uninformed - I'm simply going to link to my post, rather than typing it all out again:
"You've never heard of derivative works? We aren't talking about ideas."
I've heard of them - but I think your definition of them is a bit different than mine. I've seen pros work in licensed worlds, but most of us don't actually like to do that - we prefer to do our own thing. And it's when we do our own thing that society is moved forward through artistic means, quite frankly.
"You believe that copyrights are rights, you've said it elsewhere."
They are rights. The word "right" is even in the name. You talk about it as an artificial thing, but how does that separate it from any other right?
There is NO such thing as a natural right. The animal simply does not exist. The rights we have under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and you have under the US Constitution (I'm guessing you're writing from the US, though - I apologize if I'm wrong), were earned, fought for, and in some cases people died for them. And there are still rights that are being struggled for - gay marriage being a prime example. All rights are artificial. It's sometimes hard for us to remember that, because we've been lucky enough to live in a place where we have an abundance of rights that we can take for granted - but there are plenty of places in the world where that isn't the case.
"Good chance you could make a living at it (even with short monopolies!), like everyone else has in the past."
Now this is where you've failed to take something into account - society changed. There's a reason that copyrights have developed the way they are (not counting the idiocy of the RIAA or the overreaction of the DMCA).
History lesson time - up until about the 15th century, human societies tended to have no concept of copyright. So why did things change after the printing press?
Well, there are a couple of reasons for this. Before the 15th century, you certainly had writers, and you had people composing literature - but you tended to lack two things:
1. A literate society where the common person could read the literature (in short, societies had oral cultures).
2. A means of mass producing the literature (in the Roman period, you had scribes and copyists, in the Middle Ages, you had books reproduced by monks).
Now, there are a couple of implications here, particularly on the composition side. If you have a society that is only semi-literate, then the people who can write literature are people who don't need to worry about keeping a roof over their heads in the first place. If they can read and write, it means they could afford an education - perhaps it was in a monastery, but the monastery would take care of them. So, when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales, he was writing for a very small readership that was very wealthy, and he himself was nobility (as I recall, at one point he was a diplomat for the English Crown).
Let's say you did have a concept of copyright prior to the printing press, though, and somebody wanted to pirate Chaucer - well, in order to do this they have to get the vellum, and then copy it out by hand, word for word. Perhaps about a month later, they'd have a copy they could sell elsewhere. At the same time, let's say they wanted to do another form of infringement - attaching their name to it. Well, again, they'd have to copy it, and then put their own name to it, but who would notice? For that to be a benefit, there has to be a literate society. The concept of copyright didn't exist because it didn't need to.
Fast forward to the printing press. Now you have a means of mass producing literature. And, because you can now mass produce literature, books are less expensive, and you can get them into the homes of the common person, and so now you can have widespread literacy. The playing field is changing.
So, let's look at what John Caxton, one of the first English publishers (and the man who published the Morte D'arthur), is dealing with. There is something of a free market economy - he's part of the rising middle clas
Well, frankly, your tone is very inflammatory. Your post suggests that you're the type of person who would have no difficulties with a tyranny of the masses (I don't know if this is the case or not, but you're talking about taking people's rights away, and however you spin it, you're still talking about taking people's rights away).
However, I find this quite funny, because I can't really disagree with the content of your post - because it's pretty much exactly what I said. My words were: "If you think about it, it's simple, covers all the bases, allows for everything from Creative Commons to the Open Source movement to a novelist receiving royalties in any media - and has been around in its current form since the 1970s. I wouldn't call it a broken tool at all. I just wish people would stop panicking because there's a new shiny thing and coming up with daft measures (Vista-style DRM anybody?) to protect against it."
And your words were: "Copyright is an artificial bounty that society has granted to some of its members, but the cost to society of enforcing that bounty has dramatically increased in recent years."
One of these things is very much like the other.
Out of curiosity, did you read all of my post? And have you ever actually read the Berne Convention?
"These works should have moved into the public domain, where new artists could freely use them to create even newer works to enrich society. Instead, the content creation industry got Congress to enrich them by extending unreasonably the time of protection. Congress did not represent the people at large that day."
As a creative artist on a professional, I find that statement incredibly funny. You really have no idea of how we work, do you? You also have no idea of how copyright works - here's a hint: you CAN'T copyright an idea. You never could.
Now - oh my god - somebody like me actually gets to keep the thing he creates and do with it what he will, and even leave it as a legacy for his children. How, um, reasonable. And other people get to take the ideas he suggests and do their own thing with them, and their right to do so is protected under copyright law. How, um, reasonable.
Do some fucking research. Seriously. With all the garbage that people are spouting off as fact on Slashdot and being modded "insightful" for, I'll bet I could say that copyright law demands a human sacrifice for every new title put into print, and people here would believe me.
Well, I'm glad to see more and more people taking a stand against the flagrant abuses of the RIAA - with luck, it will soon get to the point that the RIAA can no longer get away with any of it. However, one statement in the article really bothers me:
"We need not condone infringement to conclude that 19th- and 20th-century copyright law is poorly suited to promote 21st-century knowledge."
Now, I may not be a lawyer, but I am a professional writer, and an author, and part of my profession requires me to have a working understanding of copyright law. So, this statement bothers me for a couple of reasons:
1. It does not differentiate between copyright law and patent law. Copyright law is actually quite good at allowing for the promotion of knowledge, as you cannot copyright an idea - only the exact implementation of one. Patent law, on the other hand, has become very restrictive in regards to the promotion of knowledge, and you CAN patent an idea. (You can patent a tax strategy, for crying out loud.)
2. I don't know enough about 19th century copyright law, but frankly, 20th century copyright law based on the Berne Convention is quite good at what it does, and doesn't really need to be fixed. At best, it needs minor modifications.
Expanding on the second point, there seems to be a "shiny thing" reaction in the copyright industry in regards to the Internet, and it really does miss the point. The RIAA, legislators, and even some lawyers are spending a lot of time panicking in awe at the shiny new Internet and what it can do, and failing to notice that at the end of the day, a work is either infringed or it isn't, just like it was before the 'net. As far as the actual letter of the law is concerned, how it got that way is really unimportant.
(Think of it this way - somebody figures out how to commit a murder over the Internet by making his/her victim's keyboard deliver a deadly electric shock. Do the murder laws now need to be rewritten? Of course not - at the end of the day, it's still murder, plain and simple.)
If you look at the Berne Convention, you see:
1. Respect for the creator's wishes for their work. 2. Ability for the creator to transfer rights and copyright. 3. Allowance for fair use and the use of ideas, but not exact implementations, in derivative works. 4. Allowance for public domain. 5. A recognition that these rights and provisions apply to new media.
If you think about it, it's simple, covers all the bases, allows for everything from Creative Commons to the Open Source movement to a novelist receiving royalties in any media - and has been around in its current form since the 1970s. I wouldn't call it a broken tool at all. I just wish people would stop panicking because there's a new shiny thing and coming up with daft measures (Vista-style DRM anybody?) to protect against it.
I'm afraid you're not the only one. Back in November I was peddling a feature piece to various publishers, and I queried Slashdot about it. An editor wrote me back quite quickly, saying that he might run the piece, although he wasn't willing to pay for it.
Well, I'm a pro writer, so I needed to try to sell it somewhere I'd get paid. That's why I declined to send the rest of it, and decided to query elsewhere.
The reason I informed him that I would never query Slashdot about an editorial again was the letter he had sent me. More specifically, it was the grammar and capitalization in the letter. The first paragraph had no capital letters at all. There were grammatical mistakes that a grade nine student wouldn't make. Speaking as somebody who edits professionally as well, the role of an editor is to make the writer's work shine - so if the editor here couldn't manage basic punctuation and capitalization, how could I ever trust him to edit something I had written?
"I guess my questions were ill-posed, and my comments inflammatory. Sorry."
With that, you just earned my respect. I've seen a lot of people doing ostrich impressions on Slashdot in the copyright debate - it's refreshing to see somebody who is honestly trying to think through the issues and isn't afraid to recognize when they've misstepped.
I notice you do have some misconceptions, though, so perhaps I can help out there a bit.
"When I said that popular culture belonged to publishers and advertisers, I was referring to the fact that copyright owners almost always reserve all rights to their works, making it difficult for elements from their works to be reused in others to further cultural development. You didn't specifically mention anything about this circumstance of modern copyrights, but it is nonetheless a result of it. We watch television, listen to music, and read books that are ultimately all copyrighted and therefore not reusable in new works unless one has permission from a lot of different owners."
Okay - I'm gathering that you're referring to the phrase "All rights reserved," and I can see how you could come to a misconception because of it. So, a bit of legal background for you - copyright is not a single right, but an umbrella term, so to speak, covering a number of different distribution rights. So, if I own the copyright to work X, I can sell the first North American print rights to publisher A, the first European print rights to publisher B, and the first online publication rights to publisher C - and all of these are covered under copyright. By saying "All rights reserved," I am saying that you, the reader, do not have one of these publication rights. So, if you owned magazine D, you cannot go and reprint the article in it without getting my permission first. Or, to take a televised example, if you tape game 5 of the Stanley Cup, "All rights reserved" refers to broadcast and distribution rights - so you can watch your tape to your heart's content, but you can't take it to the local TV station and broadcast it, or make copies for all your friends (those rights belong to somebody else - but you CAN ask for permission, and if the rights aren't already sold/given away, you may get them).
There are limits to this, however - you CAN reprint a reasonable part of it without asking permission, so long as you credit the source. That's called fair use. If it is a story, I can copyright the exact implementation of the story, but not any of the ideas behind it (and this is often confused with patent law, where you can patent an idea - you can do no such thing with copyright). So, if I have a story about an invasion of the brain-eating aliens from planet X, and the world saved by the great hero Duke Duke, you cannot use my exact aliens, planet X, or Duke Duke. But, you can have aliens just like them, a planet just like planet X, and a hero just like Duke Duke, so long as there's just enough of a difference that they're your version, rather than mine. If I saw your story and decided to launch a copyright suit, I would need to prove a point-for-point similarity - in short, I would need to prove that you had simply taken my implementation and filed off the numbers, so to speak.
"There are (at least) two populations of artists; commercial artists who need to sell their works for a living, and those who create art for its own sake and have other sources of income they rely on. The definition of artist is also ambiguous when not talking specifically about commercial artists. Clearly, a commercial artist is one who has sold or is trying to sell his or her work. A generic artist is just someone who is creative and makes things, much more difficult to draw boundaries around. Most of the population fits into the latter category, and they were the ones I was referring to. I think at some point in history (which may be now) the sheer number of these casual artists will essentially replace the commercial artists, or at least a large portion of them, or they will cause commercial
Slashdot Mirror
I think something I wrote wasn't quite right:
"Further, I'd add that a few amateur authors who went pro (like myself) might not have been able to do so."
The more I think about this, the more I think this is actually wrong. All of the writers I know are people who will write no matter what - if they can't write one thing, they'll write another. So, I don't think harsher enforcement of copyright in regards to fanfic, etc. would actually stop them writing - I think they'd just move on to writing something different.
Well, I don't know if we can keep this going more than a couple of posts longer (if for no other reason that on my side, these replies take a while to write and I actually have writing work to do, and as a bonus, I AM getting paid by the hour - yipee!), but I am really enjoying this, and you have raised some points I hadn't thought of before.
"There's a lot of quality writing out there. Back in my first post when I was talking about the costs of copyright, I mentioned "perfect enforcement". If there was perfect enforcement, none of this could have existed, right?"
I've definitely got to concede that point. Further, I'd add that a few amateur authors who went pro (like myself) might not have been able to do so. So enforcement is certainly a matter of shades of gray.
"Further highlighting the stark difference between copyright and a "basic property right" is the idea of fair use. It would be ridiculous to say that you can own a piece of property like a tractor, but other people can take it without your permission as long as it's for educational purposes, or as long as they only use it for a very short amount of time, or as long as they're only taking it for criticism. But fair use provisions for education, news reporting, parody, and research are basically telling people, "you can infringe on this person's basic property right, as long as it's on the list of things we think are okay." This makes perfect sense if you think of copyright as a tradeoff between the public and the author, with the intent of "promoting the useful arts," but seems completely backwards if you view copyright as a basic property right. This is one reason I think people like Jack Valenti tried so hard to get rid of fair use exceptions--they felt (rightly so, I think) that in a paradigm where copyright is a basic property right, fundamental to the act of creating a work, fair use exceptions simply don't make sense."
Well, you've highlighted some stuff I've been trying to bash into some of the abolitionist's heads for some time, albeit from a different direction than I often start from. You're right that copyright isn't a basic property right, but I would say that it has to start from that point. I think the big distinction, when it comes down to it, is that copyright is a property right for a property that is shared. Therefore, much of it comes down to where you draw the line between the rights of the owner and the rights of the person it is being shared with. To make matters even more complicated, it is a form of property that specializes in the transmission of ideas, and while I don't mind giving somebody credit for coming up with an idea first (a la a much less insane form of patent law for inventions), that makes it another line that needs to be drawn.
I think, ultimately, we're both seeing eye to eye on what a copyrighted work actually is - it seems to me that where we diverge is on whether copyright law strikes a balance that works. I think it does, and the problem right now is the abuse of it, which itself may be more temporary than I feared, considering the latest news with the RIAA's lawsuits.
"I haven't heard anyone seriously suggest this. All abolitionists demand is that, if I legally obtain a copy of a creative work, I should be legally allowed to duplicate it. Nobody is forcing authors to sell (or give) me a copy of that creative work, however."
Okay - I should have made this a bit clearer - mea culpa - this was a new thought experiment on my side. Basically, it went like this:
Copyright abolitionists want an unlimited right to copy, so with copyright abolished, how would they get it?
The first issue they'd run into, at least as I thought it out, is that while they got rid of copyright, they also got rid of public domain (the two concepts run in tandem; public domain tends to be this umbrella term for those things that aren't in copyright) - so now what's left is a mass of creative works, software, etc., that has no law governing it at all. As well, you haven't actuall
"Likewise; like most people, I most often talk with people whose views are more closely aligned with my own, so discussing the topic with someone well-educated and well-spoken, but with wildly different views, is a pleasant breath of fresh air."
Well, that's the true joy of debate - and at the end, if it's done properly, both people have insights they didn't have before.
"I'm not sure what part of my graph you're considering inaccurate. Certainly it wasn't meant to be exactly perfect, but rather a general description of the basic idea that many abolitionists disagree with: more copyright restrictions result in more creative works being published. It's also meant to show the general principle that the increase you get is much more drastic from "no protection" to "very small protection" than it is from "very large protection" to "a little bit more than large".
"Or, in other words, there are lots of people who will create works with one year copyright protection who wouldn't if they had no copyright protection at all. There are similarly lots of people who would create works with five year copyright protection who wouldn't if they only had one year copyright protection. However, I don't think there are very many people at all (if any) who would create works with a 100 year copyright who wouldn't create that same work with only an 80 year copyright."
Oh - that would be my bad - I thought it was tracking works of art created over time. Okay, I feel silly now.
";-) On a serious note, of course, one of the reasons why the quality is poor in general is likely due to the fact that if an author is good enough to get recognized and published, they can't spend their time writing "illicit" material."
I'm not sure that's the case - when I came up through Doctor Who fanfiction, there were a lot of really good fanfic writers there, people who could go pro if they wanted, and they never did (actually, come to think of it, a lot of the Doctor Who fanfic was an abnormally high quality - perhaps that's just my bias, but it seemed to attract a lot of good writers). They just weren't interested in publishing beyond posting something on a newsgroup.
And, once you're good enough to get paid, most of the media properties that people write fanfiction about also have professional fiction as well, and if you've got the skill, it can be a good place to break into the business (my first professionally published fiction was a Diablo e-book, for example). Also, there is some merit to an implication of your idea - that once a fanfic writer gets good enough and they want to go pro, they move on and start doing their own thing. I used to call fanfic a training ground for new writers.
I think the reason you tend to see the low quality isn't because there's more amateur fiction being written, but instead because the Internet makes it easy to "publish" it (the quotation marks are to differentiate between amateur publication and professional publication). So, I think the same proportion of people who would write crap before are writing crap now, but because they don't have to get past the filter of a submissions editor, they can now inflict their crap on us much more easily.
"I think once we get down to "rights" that you can violate without ever being on the same planet as a person or affecting that person at all, I think we've pretty much left the realm of inalienable rights."
Well, I'd argue that what makes any right inalienable is a statement in a legal document like the US Constitution that it is so - too many people in the world today live without a lot of the rights we consider to be "inalienable" in our society. But, at this point on this particular subject, we're starting to move in circles, I fear.
"'m not sure that I would call "exclusive rights to copy" a "literary legacy," but terminology aside, do you believe that copyright should be lifelong because of some inherent right, or because it is useful to society for it to last that long?"
Damn - that is such a g
"For the ink, paper, and profit (and perhaps some tax) for whoever is printing it for you, however, you will have to pay. Contrast this with getting a book for free over the Internet... reading books online looks more appealing all the time, wouldn't you say?"
You know what? If you take away all those other factors, in theory it looks like you might be right - except that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're wrong, for two reasons:
1. Around 2000, the publishing industry hopped on the e-book bandwagon, thinking that with the lower costs to produce, and the lower price point that could be offered, it would be the next big thing. A couple of years later, many, if not most, of them hopped back off the bandwagon - because the sales had been abysmal. I know because I was there. My first book, Demonsbane, was an e-book. It had the Diablo franchise name, it was a good book, and it had good marketing, and at last count, I think it's sold all of 250 copies - and that made me the most successful e-book author at the time in Canada, beating out Robert J. Sawyer.
2. The book I'm co-writing right now is a textbook on ancient humour, and it has been tested for two terms now in my co-author's class. In both cases, it was provided as a free PDF for download. When we asked for comments, we got quite a few, some positive, and some complaints - almost all of which were that the book wasn't a print book. Some even went farther, saying that the way they preferred to study was to write notes in the margins of the textbook, and they couldn't do that with a PDF.
The e-book has its place, but considering the benefits of the print book, and what the market wants, I doubt it will ever be anything but a secondary market for books, and a small one at that.
"Yes, ink, glue, bindings and shipping are non-information goods and thus must be paid for. Why do you need it printed out?"
You mean besides the fact that most people don't want to read full length books on a computer, that a paper book requires no electricity, is easier to read, can be read anywhere there is light, and is generally easier to bring into a classroom?
"I don't have any beef with your claims that the OP doesn't comprehend copyright law, nor am I an abolutionist myself per se, but I wanted to respond to a few of your points to maybe give you more of an idea where abolitionists are coming from."
I took a look at your site and what you wrote, and I have to say that while I do not agree with your stance - I think the problem is clearing up the abuse of copyright and the paranoia that you see in the DMCA, etc. - it's good to be talking with somebody who actually understands the issues.
I'm not sure your graph is right, though - being inside the industry, most of what I've heard is that publishers are having a lot of trouble because they're just being swamped with submissions. I'd go as far as to say that it's the media that makes the difference rather than the law, because right now we're getting more and more swamped with content.
"> This one I find rather funny - there are abolitionists out there who really think that authors sit around creating work under copyright, and then cackle as they put them in a box and never let anybody see them.
"This seems like a straw man to me. Are there really abolitionists who really think this?"
Boy...I wish I could say no to that. One of the more bizarre debates I had on here in regard to copyright issues involved somebody accusing me of being part of a copyright conspiracy (I am not making this up) to create an underclass of people who have no access to content. Even now, I'm, well, not quite sure that to say to it - South Park doesn't tend to get that bizarre...
"I'm not quite sure what the OP wrote that you are responding to here, but it's true that, for example, no one can write a story that takes place in a Star Trek universe due to copyright restrictions. Derivative works cover at least part of what a layman would term as "copyrighting an idea". But again, I'm not quite sure what the OP wrote that you're responding to."
Although I'm not allowed to look at fanfic now (now that I get paid to write, there are creative contamination issues), I still remember the quality of Trek fic being...well...not that high. Are you SURE not being able to write it is a bad thing?
Talking seriously, though, I was talking about misconceptions in general, not the OP's - he didn't mention copyrighting ideas in his article or his post. But, I've heard the charge more times than I can count from abolitionists, and therefore it makes it onto the list.
As far derivative works go, it's a fine line. You can't copyright an idea, but you can copyright the exact implementation of an idea. So, I can't write a Star Trek story, but I can write a story about a starship in the 23rd century with an alien first officer on a mission of exploration, so long as it isn't the Enterprise, Vulcans, or the Federation. Speaking pragmatically, I think that's a pretty good way of doing things - you create your own world, and if you want to share it with other writers you can, but you don't have to.
"Here I have little sympathy for your case. While it's true that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are artificial rights, they're certainly not "just as artificial as copyright". Copyright is something that we can (and should) gladly take away, limit, or extend as it benefits society as a whole. It's more along the lines with "the right to health care" than it is "the right to life" or "the right to free speech"."
Now that is a whole can of worms - the problem is this: some rights are rights that everybody should have. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness I would agree on. But property rights are also on that list, particularly when you've made the property with your own hands - or in the case of a novel, your own fingers and mind. So where do you draw the the line between the rights of the individual and the benefits of society? The most horrific crimes in history have been committed on the grounds that it was for the good of all - hence the need to protect the rights of t
"Me too. I could support property rights as natural to some degree, but not copyright (and especially due to the explicit language in the Constitution explaining why copyright and patents are important). A natural right would seem to need no such explanation."
I agree mostly to that, although I would say that property rights aren't really natural - they don't exist before civilization, and civilization is something made. When it comes down to it, the right to anything isn't natural - it's a protection under the law, and therefore constructed.
And...um...well, I can't really add anything more here. It's nice to be replying to somebody who is intelligent and understands the issues, though.
"In a society without copyright, this would all change. Imagine 1) never having to pay for a school textbook anymore"
Incredible! I had no idea that copyright was responsible for the costs of paper, ink, glue, bindings, and shipping! Can you get rid of gravity by repealing trademark law, because that would just be cool...
"The abolitionists are perfectly aware of what copyright law *is* today, they're just trying to change that."
Bullshit. I'm a professional writer - part of my job requires me to have a working understanding of the law and what it does. My academic training is primarily that of a historian - and that gives me some insight as to how societies develop. And, frankly, I read your article very carefully (both of them, in fact), and you failed to understand copyright law on the reading comprehension level. I'm not surprised that you haven't thought through it. And, frankly, denying that it's there when somebody has simply summarized the letter of the law is one hell of an ostrich impression. You're the one who should be discussing whether it "should be there." Arguing that it isn't there when it's protected under the US Constitution from the get-go, has a history of case law, is recognized by international treaty, and has several other pieces of legislation that have passed in every western country in the world, is just embarrassingly stupid.
I've been reading Slashdot now for a couple of years, and I've seen lots of misconceptions from the copyright abolitionists - so you're not alone. These aren't arguments against the law, or against the theory of the law - and most of these are failures on the reading comprehension level. Here are a few of the more interesting ones, and they're all bullshit:
1. That having something under copyright keeps it away from society.
This one I find rather funny - there are abolitionists out there who really think that authors sit around creating work under copyright, and then cackle as they put them in a box and never let anybody see them. If you're a pro writer, it's publish or perish.
Sometimes, they expand this to mean that something can go out of print and then is harder to get your hands on, but what they keep missing is that this has to do with book sales, not with whether the book is under copyright or public domain. In most, if not all cases, royalties to an author make up very little of the total cost of printing the book. Contacting the author or his/her estate tends to be easy - the recluse author that nobody can contact is pretty much an urban legend at this point. The fact is that when a work enters the public domain, whether it gets printed is dictated by whether it will be profitable to print it, and that is dictated by how well it has stood the test of time. So, life of the author + 50 years in the here and now has very little impact on availability of a work.
(And, don't get me started on fair use, which is guaranteed under copyright law.)
2. That you can copyright an idea.
The sad thing is that while the first one at least is a take on a speculative issue (and, I will concede, possibly not a failure on the reading comprehension level), this one is disproven just by reading the SUMMARY of the law. You cannot copyright an idea (it's PATENT law that allows you to lay claim to an idea). For that matter, in the entire three hundred year history of copyright law, you have never been able to copyright an idea. So anybody who thinks this has obviously never read the law, or failed to understand it on the reading comprehension level.
3. That copyright is more artificial than any other right.
This one requires people to have little or no concept of history. Or current events. The people who claim that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are natural rights seem to be missing the fact that at least half of the world's population lives in places without those rights. They're also missing the fact that the US Constitution was a remarkable document because it DID enshrine those rights in the highest law of the land, making them inalienable in the United States - and that hadn't happened anywhere in the Western world before the American Revolution.
To make things even more ridiculous, the concept of a work of literature as a property protected under law pre-dates the US Constitution by arou
"I think you misunderstand. The point is that copyright is not (or may not be) a natural, inalienable right in the sense of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's a right by fiat, de jure, and that may change. Perhaps it should change.
"If, however, copyright is a natural right, then it's a grave mistake to abolish that right, and freedom-loving people should revolt against any ruling body which denies that right."
Unfortunately, I'm too much a historian to accept the idea of a constitutional right as a natural right. A constitutional right certainly is at a higher legal level than a legal right (a right guaranteed by law rather than the constitution), but neither one is natural.
The concept of individual rights is a relatively new one in Western society (I know that ancient Persia had the first human rights code, but Western culture isn't descended from them). In ancient Greece, you had philosophers who speculated about what a person should have, but the value of an individual was determined by how well they met the obligations of society, not by how they operated as an individual (and, Greece and Rome being shame-based cultures, if you stepped out of the group-think mentality, you would become an object of laughter - I know this because I'm co-writing a book on ancient Greek and Roman humour that's due to be published later this year, once the contract is finally signed - the Greek word for the "quack" who steps out of line and acts in a humorous way is "alazon"). For example, in ancient Athens, if you were part of the voting class, you didn't have the right to vote - you had the OBLIGATION to. Failing to show up to meet your obligation could result in severe sanctions, and even expulsion from the city.
The concepts of society and individual rights only really start to co-exist at the end of the Middle Ages, and even there it's an uphill struggle for them (the Magna Carta, for example, is a step in the right direction, but it's a codification of the obligations of the monarchy towards the Barons, not the rights of the individual). What made the U.S. Constitution such a remarkable document in part was that it not only said that everybody should have individual rights, but that they would be protected under the highest law of the land. So, you could write pamphlets disagreeing with the government, and - gasp - NOBODY could lock you up! These rights didn't exist in Europe at the time, and they only start to appear during the French Revolution (which is why a lot of British Romantic authors are writing from France - they had free speech there, and they didn't have it in England).
I find a couple of things in this discussion very ironic.
First, the concept of copyright pre-dates the US Constitution by several decades (the first copyright law appears in 1709/1710), and the concept of intellectual property goes back about two hundred years before that, so the concept of a creative work as property actually is far older than the concept of free speech as an inalienable right.
Second, as has been pointed out several times on Slashdot, copyright is in the original draft of the US Constitution, so in the United States, it IS protected on the same level as freedom of speech.
Is copyright a natural right? Well, I look at the fact that half of the world's population lives under oppressive regimes, and so I would say that while there are rights everybody should have, there is nothing natural about them - like any right, they were fought and sometimes died for. But, in the United States at least, it is a constitutional right.
"He disagrees with the law (including the Berne Convention), period. There is no inconsistency in this."
Disagreeing with the Berne Convention would mean that he's saying that it shouldn't be there. He's saying that it isn't there.
From the article:
"All these problems can be seen at once in a paragraph near the opening of his article:
"The problem with a large part of the anti-copyright crowd is that they don't understand or won't admit what copyright entails as a concept. That is the right of the creator of a work to exert some control over how it's used, who can copy and distribute it, and a right to have their authorship acknowledged.
"Notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand there: he presents copy control as a natural and uncontroversial "right" -- and then accuses his targets of simply not understanding (or refusing to admit) that copyright entails that right! But it is precisely this so-called "right" that copyright doubters are questioning in the first place. If he wants to argue that it should be a right, that's fine, but instead he just asserts the right as though it's a fact of nature, beyond reasonable dispute. And again, he conflates control of distribution with acknowledgement of authorship."
Except there is no rhetorical slight of hand - Bulmash was summarizing the Berne Convention, which is the basis for most of the copyright laws in the western world, and a similar model exists in the United States. No slight of hand at all - those are the rights granted by the letter of the law.
This reminds me of a scene in Erik the Viking where the island of Hybrasil is sinking, and all of inhabitants are standing on the last little bit of land, earnestly declaring that the island isn't really sinking as it sinks beneath the waves.
I honestly don't understand why the concept of a right is so hard for guys like this to understand. Seriously, if the law states that you have a right to X, you have a right to X. This is not an obtuse concept. There aren't even shades of gray in this concept.
Sometimes, particularly when reading an article like this, I really feel like I'm living in an episode of South Park.
"Apparently nobody at SOE realized that a future proof engine is of no use unless the game itself has a future."
You have a good point, but you've missed something - a future-proof engine is necessary in the long run for a game that does have a future.
The reason I know this is because I literally wrote the book (which was not a strategy guide) on EverQuest. Back around 2002 I was in San Diego interviewing the team that created the game, and I picked up on a few lessons they learned the hard way (in some cases, comically).
The first, and most important, was that they had to ASSUME there was a future for their game. They paid for not doing that big time with EverQuest.
The thing was that the Verant team thought that they'd be lucky if EQ lasted more than a few months. The projection was that if they were lucky, they might get a few tens of thousands of players. They figured that within a year they'd be working on their next project while getting ready to shut down the EverQuest servers. What actually happened was that they caught lightning in a bottle.
Verant had learned from Ultima Online that you have to be ready for a massive hit on your servers on the first day - so they made sure they had enough servers to cover more than they ever figured they'd get. It was a good move...unfortunately, the bandwidth in San Diego at the time couldn't handle the load, and they caused an internet blackout that lasted for two weeks across the entire city (and yes, I think that's funny as hell). The big problem that taught them the value of a future-proof engine was the first EverQuest expansion, though.
EverQuest was a massive success, had formed a close community, and needed more content. But, while Verant could plan an expansion, their game engine actually couldn't do it. It was built for a game that was projected to handle the needs of perhaps 50,000 players over the course of a year and then shut down, so upwards expandability wasn't a concern. So, they had to spend a lot of extra time rewriting the entire engine so that they could release an expansion in the first place.
That's why future-proof engines are so important - you can't predict lightning in a bottle, and the price of an engine that can't expand upwards is all too often a lot of extra development time that could have been saved if you had thought ahead.
"We appear to have a disagreement at a much more fundamental level."
The difference is that my point of view is backed up by reality and history.
"Unlike yourself, I will not kill other humans to protect rights that are merely granted to me as a boon by my society."
Well, I've been called a greedy monopolist, but this is the first time I've ever been called a murderer. I have nothing more to say to you. Don't bother to reply - I'm not going to bother reading it.
"Oh dear, you're looking at a libertarian and seeing a communist."
"...simply because you have no such right to begin with."
Ugh...please, stop misusing words. Seriously. I've known people who grew up in communist countries. Believe me, when I read your posts I see an uninformed, spoiled anarchist. Not a communist. You can take my word for that. And I know what the words actually mean.
As for not having the rights in the first place, you are absolutely wrong. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that copyright isn't there or declaring that it shouldn't be there isn't going to make it go away. I DO have those rights - the law grants them to me. Just as the law grants you the right of free speech and freedom of travel. ALL rights are artificial. Unfortunately, you're living in a society that has had these rights and freedoms for long enough that you've forgotten that somebody had to fight and die for them. When was the last time you had to defend one of your rights?
Frankly, you're spoiled. We all are to some degree. It's a lot easier to talk about taking somebody's rights or legal protections away when you've never had that done to yourself, or to a family member. But, to take an American example, take a close look at Gitmo. A really close look. Look at all of those people being held without trial, and being mistreated. And then tell me about their natural rights. Seems to me it was really fucking easy to take their rights away. And once you've taken a look at that situation, and seen just how artificial rights truly are, perhaps then you'll realize just precious they are when we do have them. And perhaps then you'll understand just why it is that I fight tooth and nail for mine.
Oh, and by the way, as I've said a number of different times, you CAN'T copyright an idea. You never could. Ownership of an idea is PATENT LAW - try to get it right next time.
Well, that's an interesting way of looking at it, but I'm afraid I can't agree, simply because reality doesn't really reflect what you've said.
"The main flaw with the Berne convention as I see it is that in almost all cases it does not respect for the creator's wishes for their work. By default it makes every work uncopiable unless explicitly licensed by the author, and it doesn't provide any means of locating the author."
Well, that's really not the issue you make it out to be for a couple of reasons:
1. The work starts out in the hands of the creator, so the creator has to make a decision about how to distribute it - and copyright law allows him/her to distribute it however s/he wishes. It can't be copied without permission for a very good reason - preventing a publisher from shafting the creator upon submission by taking the work and publishing it behind the creator's back. But, the first thing a creator has to do is decide what kind of publication s/he wants, so your issue is a, well, non-issue. The creator's wishes are respected from the get-go.
2. It is not the place of copyright law to provide a means of locating the author - that's the author's responsibility. Any law creates a legal framework for people to move around in, but it does not do everything for them. Laws against theft don't hold burglars by the hand and prevent them from robbing your house - they allow you to do something about the theft after the fact. It's still your responsibility to lock your doors at night. That being said, any author who is professional about what they do makes a point of keeping their publishers up to date about their whereabouts, so it really isn't an issue. If you want to reprint an author's work and need permission, they aren't that hard to find.
"Almost all content on the web was posted by authors who don't expect to make money by selling their content, who don't care about their content being copied (at least when proper attribution is made) and usually prefer that their ideas be diseminated this way."
Um...that may be true for some, but certainly not for all, and there are lots of major sites where the content is written by people who are paid to do it. And that's not counting the sites that bring in a revenue from advertising, or are subscription-based.
"Most of who posts on the web is not reachable to give explicit permision, and if reachable now will not be reachable by the same means next year (say when they abandon their old email address in favor of a new spam-free one)."
Actually, my experience with browsing the web has been exactly the opposite - the major sites have current contact information, and I would say that current contact information is much more the norm than the exception.
"The first thing that needs to change is that there should be a requirement that legal protection for copyright holders should be restricted for those who claimed they want such protection in advance, before they can claim infringement, in a standard way that could be used by the accused infringer to check and know that there are restrictions on use."
Okay - so let me get this straight - you're suggesting that in order to protect the creator's wishes, the first thing you need to do is take away their legal rights towards their work unless they opt in to it. Somehow, if you were talking about free speech, I don't think anybody would take too kindly to that philosophy. The beauty of copyright under the Berne Convention is that any author can distribute their work however they want - mainstream publication, Creative Commons, etc. - it is up to them from the get-go. You're talking about adding a completely unnecessary step - particularly since the work starts in the creator's hands in the first place. Simple is better, when it comes down to it.
"No, it's unreasonable. I install communications infrastructure. If I want to leave something for my children, I have to save my money to do so. My children can't go around to the owners of all the networks I installed and collect money after I die. I could leave them my business, but they'd still have to learn how to pull wire and then install new networks if they expect to make any money. Please, tell me why your children should get a different deal."
Well, try this one on for size - I DON'T install communications infrastructure. I create things. The two are not equal.
Now, let's try a comparison that actually has some merit, shall we? Let's say that you make chairs by hand. And they're really good chairs - chairs that people pay top dollar for. Chairs that make your ass celebrate that you use it for sitting. Now, let's say that when you die, you've made a dozen chairs that haven't been sold to anybody yet. Would you not want to leave those chairs for your children?
I create stories and books - and I'm at the very beginning of a career that will hopefully last another forty years at least. You may not call what I create tangible, but a lot of people disagree with you, myself included, and as somebody who actually does create things, I think I'd know a bit more than you would about how tangible they are. So I have something I have created, with my own fingers, to pass on. You, on the other hand, with your installations of communications infrastructure, do not. Perhaps if you owned a company that made wiring for communications infrastructure, your children would get a different deal.
Does that answer your question?
"And none of this even addresses the root issue, that copyright doesn't exist to guarantee you a living"
Odd - I've said again and again that copyright doesn't do that at all - it just guarantees me the right to try, if I so choose. Please get it right next time you try to shoot me down.
"An interesting thing I noticed about the GP is that his signature says he is "Author, the EverQuest Companion, Garwulf's Corner, Diablo: Demonsbane." Who is really going to read or pay for these 14 years in the future?"
How is this relevant to the discussion? I'm talking theory of copyright - I can't help noticing that you're not actually talking about that.
Well, seeing as I just wrote a post refuting all of this - and frankly, your view of history is uninformed - I'm simply going to link to my post, rather than typing it all out again:
o ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=19010161
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=233553&thresh
"You've never heard of derivative works? We aren't talking about ideas."
I've heard of them - but I think your definition of them is a bit different than mine. I've seen pros work in licensed worlds, but most of us don't actually like to do that - we prefer to do our own thing. And it's when we do our own thing that society is moved forward through artistic means, quite frankly.
"You believe that copyrights are rights, you've said it elsewhere."
They are rights. The word "right" is even in the name. You talk about it as an artificial thing, but how does that separate it from any other right?
There is NO such thing as a natural right. The animal simply does not exist. The rights we have under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and you have under the US Constitution (I'm guessing you're writing from the US, though - I apologize if I'm wrong), were earned, fought for, and in some cases people died for them. And there are still rights that are being struggled for - gay marriage being a prime example. All rights are artificial. It's sometimes hard for us to remember that, because we've been lucky enough to live in a place where we have an abundance of rights that we can take for granted - but there are plenty of places in the world where that isn't the case.
"Good chance you could make a living at it (even with short monopolies!), like everyone else has in the past."
Now this is where you've failed to take something into account - society changed. There's a reason that copyrights have developed the way they are (not counting the idiocy of the RIAA or the overreaction of the DMCA).
History lesson time - up until about the 15th century, human societies tended to have no concept of copyright. So why did things change after the printing press?
Well, there are a couple of reasons for this. Before the 15th century, you certainly had writers, and you had people composing literature - but you tended to lack two things:
1. A literate society where the common person could read the literature (in short, societies had oral cultures).
2. A means of mass producing the literature (in the Roman period, you had scribes and copyists, in the Middle Ages, you had books reproduced by monks).
Now, there are a couple of implications here, particularly on the composition side. If you have a society that is only semi-literate, then the people who can write literature are people who don't need to worry about keeping a roof over their heads in the first place. If they can read and write, it means they could afford an education - perhaps it was in a monastery, but the monastery would take care of them. So, when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales, he was writing for a very small readership that was very wealthy, and he himself was nobility (as I recall, at one point he was a diplomat for the English Crown).
Let's say you did have a concept of copyright prior to the printing press, though, and somebody wanted to pirate Chaucer - well, in order to do this they have to get the vellum, and then copy it out by hand, word for word. Perhaps about a month later, they'd have a copy they could sell elsewhere. At the same time, let's say they wanted to do another form of infringement - attaching their name to it. Well, again, they'd have to copy it, and then put their own name to it, but who would notice? For that to be a benefit, there has to be a literate society. The concept of copyright didn't exist because it didn't need to.
Fast forward to the printing press. Now you have a means of mass producing literature. And, because you can now mass produce literature, books are less expensive, and you can get them into the homes of the common person, and so now you can have widespread literacy. The playing field is changing.
So, let's look at what John Caxton, one of the first English publishers (and the man who published the Morte D'arthur), is dealing with. There is something of a free market economy - he's part of the rising middle clas
Well, frankly, your tone is very inflammatory. Your post suggests that you're the type of person who would have no difficulties with a tyranny of the masses (I don't know if this is the case or not, but you're talking about taking people's rights away, and however you spin it, you're still talking about taking people's rights away).
However, I find this quite funny, because I can't really disagree with the content of your post - because it's pretty much exactly what I said. My words were: "If you think about it, it's simple, covers all the bases, allows for everything from Creative Commons to the Open Source movement to a novelist receiving royalties in any media - and has been around in its current form since the 1970s. I wouldn't call it a broken tool at all. I just wish people would stop panicking because there's a new shiny thing and coming up with daft measures (Vista-style DRM anybody?) to protect against it."
And your words were: "Copyright is an artificial bounty that society has granted to some of its members, but the cost to society of enforcing that bounty has dramatically increased in recent years."
One of these things is very much like the other.
Out of curiosity, did you read all of my post? And have you ever actually read the Berne Convention?
"These works should have moved into the public domain, where new artists could freely use them to create even newer works to enrich society. Instead, the content creation industry got Congress to enrich them by extending unreasonably the time of protection. Congress did not represent the people at large that day."
As a creative artist on a professional, I find that statement incredibly funny. You really have no idea of how we work, do you? You also have no idea of how copyright works - here's a hint: you CAN'T copyright an idea. You never could.
Now - oh my god - somebody like me actually gets to keep the thing he creates and do with it what he will, and even leave it as a legacy for his children. How, um, reasonable. And other people get to take the ideas he suggests and do their own thing with them, and their right to do so is protected under copyright law. How, um, reasonable.
Do some fucking research. Seriously. With all the garbage that people are spouting off as fact on Slashdot and being modded "insightful" for, I'll bet I could say that copyright law demands a human sacrifice for every new title put into print, and people here would believe me.
Well, I'm glad to see more and more people taking a stand against the flagrant abuses of the RIAA - with luck, it will soon get to the point that the RIAA can no longer get away with any of it. However, one statement in the article really bothers me:
"We need not condone infringement to conclude that 19th- and 20th-century copyright law is poorly suited to promote 21st-century knowledge."
Now, I may not be a lawyer, but I am a professional writer, and an author, and part of my profession requires me to have a working understanding of copyright law. So, this statement bothers me for a couple of reasons:
1. It does not differentiate between copyright law and patent law. Copyright law is actually quite good at allowing for the promotion of knowledge, as you cannot copyright an idea - only the exact implementation of one. Patent law, on the other hand, has become very restrictive in regards to the promotion of knowledge, and you CAN patent an idea. (You can patent a tax strategy, for crying out loud.)
2. I don't know enough about 19th century copyright law, but frankly, 20th century copyright law based on the Berne Convention is quite good at what it does, and doesn't really need to be fixed. At best, it needs minor modifications.
Expanding on the second point, there seems to be a "shiny thing" reaction in the copyright industry in regards to the Internet, and it really does miss the point. The RIAA, legislators, and even some lawyers are spending a lot of time panicking in awe at the shiny new Internet and what it can do, and failing to notice that at the end of the day, a work is either infringed or it isn't, just like it was before the 'net. As far as the actual letter of the law is concerned, how it got that way is really unimportant.
(Think of it this way - somebody figures out how to commit a murder over the Internet by making his/her victim's keyboard deliver a deadly electric shock. Do the murder laws now need to be rewritten? Of course not - at the end of the day, it's still murder, plain and simple.)
If you look at the Berne Convention, you see:
1. Respect for the creator's wishes for their work.
2. Ability for the creator to transfer rights and copyright.
3. Allowance for fair use and the use of ideas, but not exact implementations, in derivative works.
4. Allowance for public domain.
5. A recognition that these rights and provisions apply to new media.
If you think about it, it's simple, covers all the bases, allows for everything from Creative Commons to the Open Source movement to a novelist receiving royalties in any media - and has been around in its current form since the 1970s. I wouldn't call it a broken tool at all. I just wish people would stop panicking because there's a new shiny thing and coming up with daft measures (Vista-style DRM anybody?) to protect against it.
I'm afraid you're not the only one. Back in November I was peddling a feature piece to various publishers, and I queried Slashdot about it. An editor wrote me back quite quickly, saying that he might run the piece, although he wasn't willing to pay for it.
Well, I'm a pro writer, so I needed to try to sell it somewhere I'd get paid. That's why I declined to send the rest of it, and decided to query elsewhere.
The reason I informed him that I would never query Slashdot about an editorial again was the letter he had sent me. More specifically, it was the grammar and capitalization in the letter. The first paragraph had no capital letters at all. There were grammatical mistakes that a grade nine student wouldn't make. Speaking as somebody who edits professionally as well, the role of an editor is to make the writer's work shine - so if the editor here couldn't manage basic punctuation and capitalization, how could I ever trust him to edit something I had written?
"I guess my questions were ill-posed, and my comments inflammatory. Sorry."
With that, you just earned my respect. I've seen a lot of people doing ostrich impressions on Slashdot in the copyright debate - it's refreshing to see somebody who is honestly trying to think through the issues and isn't afraid to recognize when they've misstepped.
I notice you do have some misconceptions, though, so perhaps I can help out there a bit.
"When I said that popular culture belonged to publishers and advertisers, I was referring to the fact that copyright owners almost always reserve all rights to their works, making it difficult for elements from their works to be reused in others to further cultural development. You didn't specifically mention anything about this circumstance of modern copyrights, but it is nonetheless a result of it. We watch television, listen to music, and read books that are ultimately all copyrighted and therefore not reusable in new works unless one has permission from a lot of different owners."
Okay - I'm gathering that you're referring to the phrase "All rights reserved," and I can see how you could come to a misconception because of it. So, a bit of legal background for you - copyright is not a single right, but an umbrella term, so to speak, covering a number of different distribution rights. So, if I own the copyright to work X, I can sell the first North American print rights to publisher A, the first European print rights to publisher B, and the first online publication rights to publisher C - and all of these are covered under copyright. By saying "All rights reserved," I am saying that you, the reader, do not have one of these publication rights. So, if you owned magazine D, you cannot go and reprint the article in it without getting my permission first. Or, to take a televised example, if you tape game 5 of the Stanley Cup, "All rights reserved" refers to broadcast and distribution rights - so you can watch your tape to your heart's content, but you can't take it to the local TV station and broadcast it, or make copies for all your friends (those rights belong to somebody else - but you CAN ask for permission, and if the rights aren't already sold/given away, you may get them).
There are limits to this, however - you CAN reprint a reasonable part of it without asking permission, so long as you credit the source. That's called fair use. If it is a story, I can copyright the exact implementation of the story, but not any of the ideas behind it (and this is often confused with patent law, where you can patent an idea - you can do no such thing with copyright). So, if I have a story about an invasion of the brain-eating aliens from planet X, and the world saved by the great hero Duke Duke, you cannot use my exact aliens, planet X, or Duke Duke. But, you can have aliens just like them, a planet just like planet X, and a hero just like Duke Duke, so long as there's just enough of a difference that they're your version, rather than mine. If I saw your story and decided to launch a copyright suit, I would need to prove a point-for-point similarity - in short, I would need to prove that you had simply taken my implementation and filed off the numbers, so to speak.
"There are (at least) two populations of artists; commercial artists who need to sell their works for a living, and those who create art for its own sake and have other sources of income they rely on. The definition of artist is also ambiguous when not talking specifically about commercial artists. Clearly, a commercial artist is one who has sold or is trying to sell his or her work. A generic artist is just someone who is creative and makes things, much more difficult to draw boundaries around. Most of the population fits into the latter category, and they were the ones I was referring to. I think at some point in history (which may be now) the sheer number of these casual artists will essentially replace the commercial artists, or at least a large portion of them, or they will cause commercial