Copyright Law for the Future: Control & Creativity 174
ablair writes: "MacSurfer is linking to a truly excellent article by Stanford Law's Lawrence Lessig, on the copyright balance between Control & Creativity. A must-read for those interested in everything from the RIAA-mp3 battles to the way GPL & BSD Licenses should be."
Ads Free Version (Score:2)
No-Ads [gilder.com]
MIT? Nope - CERN. (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe even a few scientists at CERN [web.cern.ch]...
Cheers,
Ian
Re:MIT? Nope - CERN. (Score:1)
Re:MIT? Nope - CERN. (Score:1)
Re:MIT? Nope - CERN. (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the big misunderstandings in our days is not that the WWW was invented by the same people who had invented the Internet, but that the WWW was the same as the Internet.
The fact that this misunderstanding made it's way into the article may raise some doubt on the author's understanding of the technology that he is talking about. I don't say that Lessig really does not know the difference between the WWW and the Internet, but we should not let too many misunderstandings drip into the discussion. People will copy the misunderstandings and add some new.
Re:MIT? Nope - CERN. (Score:1)
Is copyright necessary at all? (blatant pimping) (Score:4, Interesting)
I do believe that it has to become easier and more efficient, which is why I've worked on a system for more efficient donations [buskpay.com]. Processing donations is a lot easier than processing verified, mandatory payments, and the issues that kill a micropayment system aren't really a problem for a microdonation system. With an open system like this, you can implement the allocation process in all sorts of interesting ways, such as integration with what you choose to view, or to file for repeat viewing. Convenience is absolutely key, and crufty web services like Amazon Honor System are just not going to cut it for allocating a dozen nickels and pennies per hour.
However, it would be irresponsible to drop copyright before this concept is proven on the market. It can be tested perfectly well without changing copyright law. The competitive advantage of a free (gratis) product is obvious, and if people will pay, free products will displace products with a mandatory cost. If they pay more for free (libre) products, then these will be the best strategy for profit-seeking developers.
Eventually, copyright would just seem pointless. But this can only happen when the users take responsibility for rewarding good products.
Re:fuck you for an intelligent post (Score:1)
if you could further elucidate the point you are trying to make about Lessig's "black hole of copyright" point, we would most appreciate it.
Re:black hole? (Score:1)
Re:black hole? (Score:1)
Re:Is copyright necessary at all? (blatant pimping (Score:1)
And none of that "Oh I could copy the movie and sell it" because you could bet the ONLY place you could watch that movie is in the theater, and they will search you before you go in. There needs to be a copyright law but it needs to be fair and sane.
Re:Is copyright necessary at all? (blatant pimping (Score:2)
And why exactly is it that the amount of money Joe Shmoe is entitled to is related in any way to the amount that MGM makes?
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-- this is not a
Re:Is copyright necessary at all? (blatant pimping (Score:2)
we need a good balance that is fair to all, not one that favours one side over another.
Re:Is copyright necessary at all? (blatant pimping (Score:1)
Didn't Stephen King try this with "The Plant"? Not that I read that, so I wouldn't know if it constituted a "good" story, but *shrug* IIRC the contribution rate was fairly low.
Irony (Score:3, Funny)
Ironic, huh?
No, not really (Score:1)
What's more, he defines "free" as something that can be copied without permission, or something that requires permission, but the permission is given neutrally. I'd guess this article lies in the latter case.
"the philosopher of our age" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"the philosopher of our age" (Score:2, Informative)
Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about this example - think back to the days where a personal cd player cost around $150, sucked batteries etc, etc. Think of what the CD industry was before Columbia House (and scamming their ass hard). It sucked, virtually nobody had cds - why? well, because the ability to play awesome quality music / not have to ff, etc, etc wasn't worth the cost.
I have no idea how the entertainment industry can think that their attempts at DRM, etc can compete with "free" or at the very least "cheap alternative" sources like the radio or the cds burned by polly the pirate. You can't change the mindset of people who were raised to turn on the tv / radio and tune to whatever station and get a program without any hastle.
The cat is out of the bag, more people use the "illegal" services than use the legal - hell - if you use a commercial DRM supporting player - i.e. rio 600 - there is actually value lost - the interface is a fucking pain compared to how i get files to my rio volt (cd mp3 player). Not that diamond could ever make software worth a damn anyways (hw kicks ass), but still . .
Now the video industry has something that actually might save their ass - DVD special features, the fact that data speeds over the net are slow and the lack of a comercial player for DIVX on your TV - which are the only things that are preventing DIVX from being in almost every household.
Quality sure as hell isn't stopping people - the new 4.12 divx codec looks damn near dvd quality at full screen if postprocessing is set to max (needs a good box tho, about 1 GHz, damn).
What can I say, this isn't a financial war they are fighting, but one against a mindset, and they are approaching it the wrong way.
Huh? (Score:2)
Huh? I don't know what you are talking about here and I suspect that you don't either.
In the early/mid 80s, when CDs took off, they were the most quickly and widely adopted media of all time. In 1984, I was a young 20 something guy and I got a home CD player for something like $250. I also got a good tape deck and recorded my CDs for portability to a good Sony Walkman that cost >$125. I wasn't extravagent in my music habits and I wasn't unusual among my peers. Most 20 somethings and older who had jobs in those days I knew had CD players at home. Most College kids had CD players in their dorms by the late 80s, IIRC.
I remember well it was just about 1983-84 that albums, ALL mass market albums, still came out on vinyl first and then the CD would follow for popular titles in 2-4 weeks. I recall buying the vinyl for an album I just had to have and then getting the CD after awhile when the record started sounding trashed. Then sometime around late 1984/1985, you'd see the CDs at the same time or even before vinyl was available.
The record stores changed over to carrying as many CDs as vinyl or casette tapes by 1986-1987. By the end of the 80's vinyl was marginalized. The record stores had mostly CDs, with a healthy selection of casettes.
I don't know that Columbia House had anything to do with this at all. In fact, they were trailing the curve, selling excess production of CDs a year or two after these same CDs had been in the stores.
Sure, CDs became ubiquitous in the 90s when home players plunged below $100 and portable players became more common, but the wide acceptance of CDs had nothing to do with Columbia House.
I agree with your points about DRM, etc. One of the big wins of CDs for me was the fact that I could make a fairly good tape to carry with me and still have the CD to listen to at home. I probably wouldn't have bought CDs had I not been able to make them portable. I was never into trading tapes, either. The few times that I did get a tape to listen to from someone, I would go out and buy the CD to have a clean copy. I recall distinctly listening to Paul Simon's Graceland, with permission from my office mate, on a boom box I had in my office in 1987 from a tape I'd made of the CD at home. My office mate loved it and went out and bought the CD. This was a win for the Record Industry. Sad that they can't learn from their own history.
The Home Recording Act was a boon to them, just as the VCR was a boon to the movie industry. Their greed could be their ruin. If they insist on DRM and copy protection schemes, they'll lose me as a customer for new music. Today, I listen to music a lot on computers at work. I'm not going to buy media that might require me to buy another copy in the future when I change players. Forget it, no way. I'll just buy used CDs and become an oldies freak before I buy any kind of media that makes it more difficult for me to use.
Ironically, I recall liking Microsoft software years ago because it never required dongles and I could always make backup copies. And, I never "shared" my copy with anyone. Microsoft, with their "Product Activation" seems to have forgotten this lesson.
Mechanical Rolls and Napster (Score:4, Interesting)
P2P sharing is a completely different idea though, in the digital world, it becomes much harder to track distribution of products, and much easier to distribute, thus making it much harder for Congress to regulate P2P. If one tried to force a P2P service to pay those industries whose products it distributes, how would one keep track of all the media and account for it with the volume that goes over each network, or even the bigger problem, how would a service stay in business when it has to pay for transactions when there will most likely be other services out there which will not comply for various reasons. It's not possible for Congress to simply legislate on the internet, any legislation enacted in the spirit which Lessig is talking about would require a complete overhaul of how we interact with the internet in some way, most likely infringing on free speech as well.
As every type of media becomes digital and easily able to be distributed, its not possible for Congress to deal with digital mediums as it did with player pianos. I'm afraid that this is one situation where we are going to have actually tread new ground instead of relying on previous cases. I'm not sure exactly how we should legislate internet distribution, or even if we should, but I know that any effective or meaningfull legislation won't be based on any previous copyright ideas.
Unfortunately, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mechanical Rolls and Napster (Score:2)
Re:Mechanical Rolls and Napster (Score:1)
Seeing how much power the RIAA and MPAA has over American citicens is kinda wicked. The fact that your goverment allows the industry to rule you, and leaves you only the freedom to get a laywer, seems utterly uninspiring.
And you would think American law only applied to Americans? I think that the DeCSS where a Norwegian 13/14-year old boy was wanted to show up in a California court?
What is pure greed, is evil. And what is evil, is not to be given power.
Re:Mechanical Rolls and Napster (Score:1)
On the long term you may be right: copyright may become difficult to enforce when everyone has a 100mb connection to the internet.
But why should we bother too much about tomorrows problems when we have todays to solve. Napster is just as the player pianos a new service that gives a big improvement over what was available. The legislator should interfere as it is obvious that leaving it to the industry and the judges may take many years before a final agreement is reached.
The real unknown is how many people will choose for the legal version and how many will stick with the illegal file exchanges. Nobody knows. But if you find a solution where most people choose a legal exchange you have will have the moral clout to pursue the illegal minority.
I think it will take some time for the music industry to find the right formula (pricing; how to deal with rare recordings; international aspects; other languages). But let's start with putting them on the right track and stop them from their senseless obstructive policies.
Re:Mechanical Rolls and Napster (Score:2)
This same concept could be applied to P2P networks. If a piece of content is available over the P2P network, the company has to pay the compulsory license fee, or remove it from their network. They would pay it once, not for every download like the content creators would like.
I agree that monitoring things on a transactional level would be next to impossible. However, that kind of monitoring isn't what Lessig is talking about.
What Larry doesn't get... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, the Law gets its authority from democratically elected government. The Government gets its authority from the people, as conveyed through the democratic process (voting). If the Government has control over the information the people have access to, then they have the ability to manipulate people's ability to make an informed voting decision. This corrupts the very democratic process from which the law gets its authority.
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:1)
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:2)
There are actually a few other positions on this, but they all come down to the same thing: Either power eminates from God, or the King, or it eminates from the People. One of these leads to the persecution of the majority by the minority. The other leads to the persecution of the minority by the majority. Granted only these two options, I choose the latter.
Laws are only effective... (Score:2, Interesting)
The internet is a medium where we can vote a referendum without going to the polls. No matter what the courts or congress decide, music will be shared. Napster may be dead, but we now have Gnutella.
I just realized something. You always hear that you need to "do something about it," implying voting or writing your congressman about an issue. We need to "speak up." Well, it occurred to me that we are saying something, we're lobbying in our own way All the millions of people out there sharing information freely are saying "I believe this should be available to me, in this format, at this price." We just aren't talking in the way congress, the government, and the industry wants to listen to.
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in the real world, however, the U.S. government bans certain types of speech for reasons of obscenity (e.g., child pornography), or for reasons of public safety (e.g., incitement to riot), or for reasons of consumer protection (e.g., truth in advertising), or for reasons of commercial value (e.g., DMCA). Not to mention the classification of information for purposes of defense and protection of political reputations.
Those restrictions will change over time, but they are not going to all go away. People who live in the real world need to consider how they should be applied. Just waving them away as philosophically inappropriate means that you can't separate the bad restrictions (IMHO, DMCA) from the good ones (IMHO, truth in advertising).
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:1)
People will always try to control the way others communicate. The government should regulate this situation to ensure they don't get the power to do that.
Why Lessing is Delusional (Score:2)
I don't mean to be rude, but Lessing is in denial. His essay showed brilliant insight on every concieveable angle accept for one: that copyright monopolies are bad to begin with.
It reminds me of those in the 80's who insisted that their is no problem with communisim, but merely the way it was applied, or those in the 1830's who insisted that the problem wasn't slavery but merely our policies on slave treatment. Their elloquent conclusions were worthless because they just didn't get it, if the premise is wrong then everything else is useless
The same is true with copyrights, they restrict freedoms and GROW to restrict more by their very nature. Back in 1776 it might have been bearable, but now in the information age it's not! We simply need to get rid of them even if that means defiance and mass civil-disobedience. Copying for my benefit, the benefit of others, or even for commercial profit is no more wrong then refusing to go to the back of the bus. I'm sorry if some people don't like that, but they are just half to going to get used to it.
Re:Why Lessing is Delusional (Score:2)
This is a big perfectionist's misconception...
1. First of all, let's avoid right and wrong, they're too subjective and vague.
2. Let's apply a universal purpose to our argument: Increase the quality of life
3. By doing 1 and 2, I can now replace right and wrong with effective and ineffective.
Now, Let's re-example your premise with our substitution:
If the premise doesn't effectively increase the quality of life then derivative ideas from that premise are also useless.
I don't know... Maybe you shouldn't get too specific, and maybe you should keep spinning your opinions with vague notions like good and bad rather than specific objectives and quantifying. Keep it up, and you'll may have a nice career in politics...
Oh yeah... Nice comparison of communism to slavery, you're the first person I've seen compare them without juxtaposing them...
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:2)
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:1)
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:1)
Re:What Larry doesn't get... (Score:1)
Suicide by political contributions, perhaps.
My hero (Score:3, Interesting)
This article should be required reading for anybody interested in intellectual property. No black-and-white stuff here. But the people who most need to read it, and the ones that I sincerely hope will, are the seven old men and two old women who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Future of Ideas (Score:2)
Lawrence Lessig is an excellent, intelligent writer who likely strikes a chord with many Slashdot readers. I highly recommend reading his book "The future of Ideas". I got a copy for my dad for Christmas, and he, even while being a computer novice, now sees the poignant issues Lessig introduces.
Incidentally, my dad has now given the book to me, so that I can learn to express my thoughts on the issue much more coherently. I've been discussing the issues with my dad and friends for years, but hopefully now I'll be able to explain my position with more clarity.
Re:The Future of Ideas (Score:2)
Re:The Future of Ideas (Score:2)
There already has been [slashdot.org] a review on Slashdot.
A diferent viewpoint - The Art of Programming ... (Score:1)
Free resources (as stated by Lessig) are effectively entities which have yet to be subscribed an economic value through elaborate technical transformations. Oil was basically a inflamable seepage from the ground until industrialists figured out a way to convert it into kerosene (which saved the whales from being hunted to death) and subsequent catalytic conversion into many synthetic downstream products. Similarly many bits of code have yet to find their niche and Lessig makes the valid point that if their original creators don't have much of a clue, then excessive control means they will never be adapted for something more useful (oak->java, tcl->expect, etc).
LL
icrosoft's Really Hidden Files--important news! (Score:1, Informative)
From the summary:
a fitting end... (Score:1)
to the article.....:)
"Lawrence Lessig is professor of law at Stanford Law School and author of The Future of Ideas, from which this is excerpted. Reprinted with permission of Random House"
VV
Internet Renaissance Act (Score:1)
I would just like to recommend one little change. I think that a precondition to a copyright on software should be that the publisher either distribute it with the source code, or publish the communication interfaces (network protocols, file formats) and place the source code in escrow. Such a system would combat the winner take most result described by Nicholas S. Economides [usdoj.gov].
Re:Internet Renaissance Act (Score:1)
Lovely ideas, but how will we convince the holders (Score:2)
That's the biggest obstacle, in my mind.
Re:Lovely ideas, but how will we convince the hold (Score:1)
This assumes we need to convince them. It would be far preferable to compel the corporations to a shorter copyright and a reasonable use of patent (i.e., one that does not include software), among other things.
For those of you about to respond along the lines of "But they have so much money and influence it would be practical to convert them", I suggest you will never be able to convert them until they have found another way to subvert your freedom; you will never convert them. Don't place such a high value on practical considerations that you forgo your freedom. I suggest reading this RMS interview [mgross.com] where (towards the end) he gets into valuing the practical too much.
same battle, different venue (Score:2)
Who are these elements? Essentially they fall into two camps:
- the folks who profit from the status quo and suspect that the change will reduce their favored status; and
- the Luddites, people who're afraid of change simply because they want things to remain the way that they are, or more likely the way that they imagine things are, and refuse to adapt to what the future might bring.
So far in human history very few societies have been successful in suppressing change. And all of these societies have eventually fallen to others who didn't repress the changes and instead used them to gain an advantage over their neighbors. In today's world, where change is coming at an ever-accelerating pace, a society that refuses to embrace change is doomed to be left behind to flounder about in the past while others move into the future.
People who accept change and attempt to use it to better the lives of themselves or others are wheat; those who refuse change, the Luddites and those like them, are chaff. In the grand scheme of things nobody misses the chaff when it's gone, because it was useless to begin with. Chaff is discarded, with nary a thought given to its fate.
We see the battle between the wheat and the chaff quite clearly in the 21st century because change is occurring at such a rapid pace. The Luddites scream loudly and long, picking this change or that to vent their fears upon, because there are so many new things that challenge their desire for life to remain stagnant. This isn't a slow process as in past centuries, eventually gaining steam over the course of lifetimes; today it happens in the space of years or months, one revolution of technology after another. The Luddites don't have a chance to die out and be replaced by newer, younger generations who aren't so invested in the status quo. They're being challenged, again and again, by the change they fear so much, changes which are increasingly alien to a mind-set that refuses to accept that the world is rushing into the future regardless of their personal whims.
What this means to those of us who do accept the future and try to make sense of it, or even to shape it in a fashion that does more good than harm, is that the Luddites represent a powerful, if minority, view backed by all the money invested in the status quo. And as money and power are always concentrated in the status quo, since those who have the power and money maintain the status quo to preserve their own privilege, this is a force to be reckoned with.
Since the Luddites don't have time to die off and be replaced, they instead try to put the brakes on the future through the passage of legislation designed to halt progress in its tracks. As a solution this is a damned silly way to do things; in today's world it's impossible to make change 'stop' in any real sense of the word. The Luddite solution is a pathetic one, in essence a retaliatory backlash of little effect or importance. Instead of offering real solutions to thorny problems posed by new technology and innovation, they instead attempt to ban innovation altogether and return society to a past where the technology didn't exist. Trying to put the genie back in the bottle is a futile effort, one that often ends up harming people in the process.
Not that the negative effects of trying to prevent change ever trouble the Luddites. By definition these folks are invested in a world view solely defined by their own ideas of how things should be; if the reality challenges the fantasy they indulge in they have no qualms about trying to force reality into a more pleasing mold regardless of who gets harmed in the process. Luddites are inherently selfish lot with little regard for others.
In today's world the Luddites are attempting to legislate their fantasies into reality; the fact that such legislation does nothing whatsoever to halt progress hasn't yet made an impact upon them. They think that if they just pass enough laws that somehow, in some mysterious way, change will stop. For the rest of us this is mostly annoying; although a few of us have been harmed by these laws the vast majority are relatively unaffected. This won't last.
Eventually the Luddites will discover that their laws aren't putting the brakes on progress and that the majority of their neighbors are happily walking into the future regardless of their efforts. When this occurs the Luddites will become violent, as pitiful reactionaries always do, although their violence will almost certainly be orchestrated through the instrument of government. When this happens, when the majority finally clue into the fact that the Luddites will use any means at their disposal to keep their fellow citizens trapped in the 20th century with them, that's when the real war will begin. This is when you'll see flagrant violations of the Constitution in the name of 'the common good', as well as government-backed efforts involving force to shut down any enterprise which challenges the status quo. It could be argued that such things are already beginning to take place in the United States as the Luddites become increasingly vocal and ever-more-willing to enforce their views at the expense of others, with a government eager to accommodate whoever has the cash.
It's possible that the Luddites might win in the U.S. They have the money and the power, and Americans are far removed from their freedom-loving ancestors. The heritage that formed a nation through blood and death is thin indeed in today's society, where so long as the people get their bread and circuses they're willing to look the other way. Most Americans today don't think freedom is worth fighting for, much less dying for, especially if they can still catch their favorite TV shows for a decent price.
But even if the Luddites win here, there are plenty of places elsewhere that'll happily seize on what the future has to offer and use it to their advantage. And then, like empires of the past, the nation of America will become chaff and left to rot in it's own backward, Luddite garbage, a second-class 20th century power in a 21st century world. As an American I'll mourn what happens my nation, but the rest of the world will treat us like the chaff we are - useless and best forgotten.
The question is: is there still enough of that revolutionary heritage left in the majority of us to embrace the future and fight the Luddites, even if it means that the fight might become violent? Or are there simply not enough of us left that care that much? By violence I don't mean armed revolution, but rather a willingness to say "that law isn't right, that law doesn't make sense in this new world, and I won't obey it even if it means that the government might hurt me and punish me for my disobedience". As someone who will someday soon be a father and wishes his daughter to grow up in a free society this question isn't at all academic.
I'm beginning to think that there aren't enough of us willing to take that risk, and that America will indeed fall by the wayside. If that's the case, if the battle is already lost before it's even picked up steam, then perhaps I'd better serve my child by moving her to a place that's still invested in the future. Letting her grow up in a country trapped in the past seems to be the worst possible disservice I could do her, especially if she's surrounded by moralistic Luddites bent on shaping her to their backwards, anachronistic point of view - or punishing her if she refuses to conform.
What do you think?
Max
balancing creativity and copyright (Score:1)
anyway, the point is if you let copyright win every time, you have no idea what future you might be killing.
Royalties and copyright quetions (Score:1)
1. What started the whole royalties system that hollywood now operates on? It seems to be unique to that industry. For instance, if I am a house painter and I paint someone's house I get X dollars. Period. No royalties. I don't get an extra 50 cents each time someone sees the house (a performance) nor do I even get additional money when the house is sold to someone (publication). How did this start and why doesn't the rest of the world recognize how fubar that is? Why aren't the creative works of everyone else benefitting from that system?
2. In the case of film, who owns the copyright? If the copyright period is creator's lifetime + 70 years who is it measured off of? the screenwriter? the director? the producer? It actually all seems to be work for hire by the studio in which case is it the 95 year period or does the studio have the right to keep it alive idefinately?
I honestly don't know the answers but what really makes me wonder is why nobdy else in the country even asks the questions.
Re:Royalties and copyright quetions (Score:1)
Re:Royalties and copyright quetions (Score:2)
But if you take a photograph of your newly painted house, you have created a piece of endlessly replicable intellectual property. Nobody needs to start at the beginning to make thousands of copies of your photograph. All they need is one copy and, without copyright, your photograph could be used commercially in thousands of places without one penny reaching you for all 'work' you put in when creating the photo. The government, through copyright, is ascertaining that no one can profit from your work without compensating you and giving you recourse to the courts if you find someone who has taken your work and used it without your permission.
By the same token, however, you don't have to go back to the beginning and retake the photo either. You can sell it over and over again on the exact same amount of work. This is where I believe the 'limited times' part of the Constitution is most important. Since you don't have to do any more work to have more copies, there needs to be a limited period during which you can collect on that work. Otherwise, you end up with people (sometimes not even related to the creator) collecting money on work that was done years and years ago. If you can't collect enough during 20 years to make the creation worthwhile, either it wasn't worth creating or you need some lessons in marketing. We don't need life +70 copyrights, and we don't need 'work for hire' copyrights at all.
Re:Royalties and copyright questions (Score:1, Interesting)
I've already mentioned this perviously in this topic, so I'll mention why it works.
Reasonable profitable lifetime of a work: If Peter Jackson dies after winning the oscars, his defacto wife gets royalties for Lord of The Rings for 50 years.
That's long enough for her to live on and bring up children. Life + 25 would mean royalties for LoTR film 2 and film 3 would be active for just 24 & 23 years.
However if he lives to be 'eleventy one' then he effectively has 60 years in his lifetime plus 25 for the children to profit.
This is a very fair system for young authors and their families, stars like Elvis or Buddy Holly would be going into public domain now.
The point is, a 20 year limit wouldn't work even with software. Look at 30 year old Unix:
Unix is still considered a valuable collection of works even though everyone can afford supercomputers now.
Missing the point -- again (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, I think he has misses the point. He says (I paraphrase) that the internet has the possibility to fundamentally change the system, but that we are simply using it to recreate the old system on a larger/different scale.
Cable television, he also says, was the first Napster. But I think both of these are completely wrong.
As has been pointed out before, and as bears pointing out again, Napster was a file sharing service which allowed people to share files they already had on their computers. Napster itself generated no content, not even content copied from other providers. It was not a one to many medium, as cable television certainly is.
As far as I see it, Napster was really a search engine -- but one with an interesting usage agreement. "We will tell you where to find music on other people's computers, but only if you run our software and agree to share your music." And you didn't even really have to share your music, if you didn't want to! Napster worked because of the fact that a lot of people thought it was a really cool idea, not because they provided better content.
How would a compulsory licensing scheme work for something like this? It wouldn't at all. It doesn't even apply. Are you going to say that facilitating the transfer of a music file over the internet, even if that file doesn't pass through your server, and even if both parties may in fact already legitimately have license to the file makes you subject to a fee (although, apparently, this is what the courts decided)? Otherwise you're left with charging everyone who uses the service for files that are downloaded from their machines.
Furthermore, the internet has the capability to be as many things as people desire simultaneously. It is not limited to reconfigured one-to-many offerings and commercial ventures. Nor is it limited to free exchange of ideas. Internet bandwidth is not unlimited, but neither is the "bandwidth" of a person. The beauty of a computer network is that it is an on demand service, and one person can seek out whatever he or she wants.
Cable television, radio, film: all of these are bound by issues of streaming. There are a limited number of TV or radio stations, even on cable or satellite, and they all broadcast only in real time. Therefore, a decision has to be made regarding what is available. Likewise, movie theaters can only show a certain number of movies per day, and so they must choose to show those they think will make the most money.
But look at video rental! Video rental is more like a file-sharing model: you can get whatever movie you want (as long as you can find the right video store), and you can watch it when you want. Movies come from many different studios and directors, and video stores facilitate finding them. Unlike non-commercial file-sharing, there is copy protection built into the movies, however, so that when you want to watch one, you have to pay for the privilege.
I can envision a real-world/napster hybrid: "Here is a list of club members and the movies/CDs/books they own. If you are a member of the club, you have the right to request a copy of any movie/CD/book owned by a club member. If more than one member owns the work, you may choose which member to ask. Having received a copy of the work, you are now considered to own it also and may receive requests for copies." I am pretty sure that there are clubs like this for trading, especially, DVDs.
Finally, while there may be much more commericial content available electronically than before, it is also easier than ever for an individual to create his own content.
The internet is not a book, it's paper.
Phil
Re:Missing the point -- again (Score:1)
You join, and offer in a bunch of stuff (software, music, etc.) You then say you'd like some stuff from the group (same sort of things) and stub files for it get put on your hard disk.
Whenever you want something, the server sees if somebody has it and they're not using it. If they aren't, it gets sent to you to replace the stub files on your disk, and THEIR COPY GETS REMOVED AND REPLACED WITH THE STUB FILES. Effectively, both the product and the license are transferred to you. When you finish with it, someone else can grab it off you.
Effectively, this would just be the Internet equivalent of a bunch of mates sharing CDs and software, etc., which is entirely legal in most cases (as long as they kept to the software licenses by deleting it from their HDs when it was transferred).
Could this "internet kibbutz" enable fully legal content sharing and save money for all those involved?
Here is the baseline point though (Score:1)
artistic works have no economic value (Score:2, Interesting)
Content creators have it tough in this time. They are told to make money off their content, but the content sellers (time/warner, random house, etc) will help you do that only if you the content creator agree to the terms for selling content. The author has little flexibility in negotiating with the content provider if they want to make a profit.
In the early 1990's I felt that intellectual endeavors had zero economic value. I was not disparaging the pursuit of wealth or even making a cynical comment about the publishing market (I was an unpublished writer). I was merely stating what I felt to be an obvious point. The market cannot properly assess the value of artistic objects. My creative writing was (I felt) terrific, and yet no publisher would take a chance. And why would they? They had a bottom line to worry about, and I was not so naive to believe that any of my creative works would be a cash cow for a publishing company.
5 years later, the Internet was upon us, and suddenly, I no longer had to worry about getting published. Everybody and their 15 year old brother could publish a decent web page. It was a glorious time, but it threatened the livelihood of content creators (who probably weren't making a lot of dough off selling content anyway).
For me, nothing had changed. My goal was widespread distribution. Since I could accomplish that without begging a publisher to back me, I no longer needed publishers anymore. And nothing really had changed because I operated under the assumption that no economic value was to be gained from writing fiction to begin with.
Even though many artists/intellectuals are resigned to their output having no commercial value, most people still like the idea of buying the book at the bookstore or renting the video. Time Warner/Blockbuster/Random House are content facilitators. They provide easy access to art in a medium we prefer. In other words, TW/Blockbuster is offering a convenience service, not content. For that reason, content providers should not have the ability to restrict content in order to offer us the convenience of providing it for a price.
Of course, maybe what I say doesn't apply so much to the movie world, with lavish budgets and special effects. But then again, perhaps the big studio film came about only because of the aggregation of power of the Hollywood film industry. And remember, individuals now can produce special effects comparable to what studios coudl do 10 or 20 years ago.
Perhaps it is idealistic to believe that content creators should offer their content for free. After all, they have to buy their videocams, their PC's and their hosting service. And a lucky few find it immensely rewarding, so obviously they would want corporate backing. But at the moment, there are few advantages for content creators to hand over rights to a convenience/distribution service like Time/Warner/AOL. Profits are puny, and the restrictions on access are contrary to the artist's hope. One example concerns my friend's newspaper articles. His newspaper refuses him access to his own articles. And his articles remain in this database, totally inaccessible except for those willing to pay a fee to access it.
Free and commercial content have coexisted and will continue to do so. Even though we may complain about the strictness with which content providers guard the content they have bought, at least distribution companies are helping to make artistic works available (at a price) to the general public. There are thousands of music bands out there that nobody has ever heard of; MTV and Time/Warner have the power to provide the infrastructure and the publicity and distribution. Perhaps that is unnecessary, but without content providers like this, would we lose the common cultural heritage that makes us a culture?
Robert Nagle, idiotprogrammer Austin TX
The key point (Score:2)
The same solution is possible in the context of music on the Net. But here, rather than balance, the rhetoric is about "theft" and "crime." Congress should empower file sharing by recognizing a similar system of compulsory licenses. These fees should not be set by an industry set on killing this new mode of distribution. They should be set, as they have always been set, by a policy maker keen on striking a balance. If only such a policy maker were somewhere to be found.
What that last sentence means is that Congress makes laws. If we want good laws, we need good Senators and Congressmen. We seem to have a shortage of them, however, especially on this issue. Rick Boucher is the only one who comes to mind.
This cannot be said enough: In a democratic society, the people are the government. If you want good people (specifically on this issue) in Congress, vote them in! Ignore the paid advertisements by PACs supporting/slamming one candidate or another over some meaningless hot button issue. Find out where the candidates stand on the issues that matter and vote based on that. Get your friends to vote that way. Fax (mail letters are ignored now due to anthrax concerns) your Congress-critter and state your opinion, clearly and concisely. (That makes them take notice more than anything else.) Get your friends to do so as well. If you find that your representative doesn't know the first thing about this "freedom of information" thing, do your best to educate them, from the standpoint of someone who put them in office, and who can take them out.
This is your government, people. If it fails, it's because you failed it.
Re:The key point (Score:1)
This is not a troll. People being the government is one of the problems with this country. If there are any generalizations one can make about people, it is that they are stupid, ignorant, and that they generally prefer to stay that way. People will always believe the prettiest, glossiest advertisement, and they will always be able to be manipulated by the PACs. This is by design, because if they had any genuine critical thinking ability, they would not be ready to go to war over ridiculous things, they would constantly be questioning the government and their elected officials, far less products would get sold, etc. The whole system would actually fall apart if people cared to educate themselves and make informed decisions. There isn't a better alternative than democracy, but democracy has a lot of problems, as we see. It almost encourages the shameless mass manipulation that we see in the media, especially in politics, every day. If the only thing that matters is what the public wants, well, then you (as government official or potential gov official, or advertiser) manufacture wants and desires when necessary, and you create aversions to things that the person doesn't really not like. You most certainly never do anything to encourage real critical thought.
I used to think that people were basically good and needed to be educated to do what they already knew was right, but on the basis of the almost limitless stupidity and selfishness I have observed in my thirty years, I hold little hope that people will improve. We are in The Matrix, as it were, a matrix of deception that the media, advertisers, and government weave about us every day, and like the movie, there are ridiculously few who actually want to wake up.
The problem with democracy is that it is ultimately founded on people. As are all governments, in different ways. As long as people are, well, people, government will fail to do the job that it purportedly is designed to do. If it fails, it is because we failed it, as you say, but ultimately it is just because we are people, being people. The human being is always the limiting factor, and to the extent that you make the average human being the limiting factor, your system will fail, or at best be mediocre. Democracy believes in the abilities of the average joe, and for that reason it is deeply suspect. A meritocratic dictatorship would be much preferable. Instead, we have elected the epitome of mediocrity and self-complacent stupidity. That is where the average always tends.
Yet another legal dweeb (Score:3, Insightful)
Rip, mix, burn.
After all, it's your music.
Apple, of course, wants to sell computers. Yet their ad touches an ideal that runs very deep in our history. For the technology that they (and of course others) sell could enable this generation to do with our culture what generations have done from the very beginning of human society: to take what is our culture; to "rip" it--meaning to copy it; to "mix" it--meaning to re-form it however the user wants; and finally, and most important, to "burn" it--to publish it in a way that others can see and hear.
What this guy is defending is that everyone should have the right to "backup" their music and re-master it as they see fit.
Thats a good idea.
What the article completely misses is that that is not what people do with ripped audio. Of course groups like the RIAA shouldn't [and for the most they don't] crack down on ripping software. Its the P2P stuff they should kill and for several good reasons
1. P2P takes up a huge amount of bandwidth, specially at schools where people might actually try todo research or otherwise need bandwidth for positive goals
2. P2P sharing is illegal for the most part since what people "share" is copyrighted material.
3. P2P clients are often buggy and wreck computers or install Gator clients! evil!
Its one thing to be allowed to rip audio [which you are] and its quite another to be prohibited from "sharing" it [which you are].
Tom
Reasonable definitions of 'limited time' (Score:1)
Many wouldn't I'm sure, but suppose Winamp honoured a copyright bit on files, and did not play those which had not entered the public domain. 99% of people wouldn't bother to find a cracked version. If you want to keep up with the latest music trends then you could buy the CD, maybe it would improve the quality of their offerings too. Actually, I can't see how *that* could get worse
I suppose though that this will never happen while Hollywood has their hand in the cookie jar
That'll do, pig, er, Larry. (Score:2)
Software copyrights are an abomination. We grant a government monopoly, albeit a much thinner monopoly than the one granted for patents, and get nothing in return.
No revelation of source code, and, given the long terms, no public domain software. For all the talk of nasty patents, at least patents expire within a lifetime and require publication of their underlying process.
One way or the other, if software is to be protected by warping the free market -- which is what a monopoly does, something must be given back to society to offset the disturbance.
The case for longer patents (Score:2)
The article says: The urgency in the field of patents is even greater. Here again, patents are not per se evil; they are evil only if they do no social good. They do no social good if they benefit certain companies at the expense of innovation generally. And as many have argued convincingly, that's just what many patents today do.
I'm not sure this statement of the problem corresponds with the reality.
Patents are crucial for innovation because they allow the inventor, usually a corporation, to recover his investment and make a profit. However, most inventions, typically over 80%, are not commercially successful. Therefore, patent holders must make enough money on successful inventions to pay for the total cost of a research and development and make a profit.
Because corporation cannot know in advance what innovations will by commercially successful, the only market-driven method of encouraging innovation is to increase the return on successful innovations.
The fact only a few patents are commercially successful leads to a lottery mentality in innovation. The larger the payoff in a lottery, the more people who will buy tickets even though the chance of winning becomes smaller. Similarly, in the process of innovation, the higher the return on a successful innovation, the more innovations will be devised in the hope of getting a commercially successful one.
One can imagine that in the high-risk, high reward environment, innovation would be greatest because the more innovative products one has, the greater the chance of a huge success.
The traditional criticism of how patents stifle innovation is that corporations will buy patents on new products that threaten their existing products and then suppress them. This problem suggests that patent laws should be changed so that patents should simply expire from lack use rather than have a fixed expiration date.
There's reason to think that in practice most products become obsolete before their patents expire. This behavior is what you would expect from a high rate of innovation, which a high return on patents encourages.
Re:The case for longer patents (Score:2)
Some inventors don't even apply for patents, but let their inventions become a free boon for society (such as the inventor of matches, and numerous creators of pharmaceuticals.) A lot of very innovative inventions were created for private use and only spread when others noticed how much easier it could make life.
Porn will save all of us! (Score:1)
I never really thought about it, but we are actually very lucky that the primary use of P2P networks (ala Morpheus) is to distribute porn. After all, the DMCA (and other legislation) point towards devices and services whose "primary purpose is to circumvent" copy protections. Since the primary use of P2P stuff is porn, it actually helps us!
So go forth young, horny men, and download more porn! You are doing a service to your fellow geeks!
Deeply flawed arguments (Score:1)
When talking about intellectual property he quotes a dissenting opinion of Judge Alex Kozinski. The idea is that we allow private land, but think that it is good if separated by "public streets, roads and highways". Of course we do. But Lessig thinks that this is an argument for intellectual property being put in the public domain by law. In the case of streets, etc., if it is thought that it is in the public interest to take someone's land for public purposes, the land is *bought*. It is called "eminent domain". Fair market value is paid.
So, if he thinks that Mickey should be in the public domain, for reasons of public interest, then pay fair market value for him.
We already do something like this. Go to a public art gallery and look at a painting. Either it was a gift, or it was bought.
A second mistake. He says that when we listen to the radio, we hear tunes for free. Actually, we pay for hearing those tunes when buying things advertised on the radio (if a commercial station) or by paying taxes (if non commercial).
Blah!
Best wishes,
Bob
Re:Deeply flawed arguments (Score:2)
Society agrees to ensure that creators get paid for the use of their creation for a *limited time*; in return, it is EXPECTED by society, which is paying taxes to support IP, that certain fair-use rights will be preserved while that protection ensues, and that after a limited time the work will transfer to the public domain.
Congress continually retroactively and proactively extending IP-terms violates this agreement.
Furthermore, the author being able to prevent certain people from using their work violates that agreement. A more resaonable system would be where the author/creator/programmer has no right to control whether or not people can use his software nor how they use it but is entitled licensing or royalty fees. This is what Lessig proposes.
Again, let me correct you in your deluded attempt to assert that people should have IP-rights in the same sense they have property-rigths. IP is NOT physical property. If I say something to my friend, I have no right to prevent him from repeating it to everyone else. Once an idea/invention/whatever leaves your mouth, you have no right to control whether or not people repeat/distribute it -- that's a violation of their free speech rights. But for a limited time [i.e., 5 years for software (as software is obsolete after that time), 10 years for music (as no one buys 10 year old music), 10 years for movies, 10-15 years for books, and 10-15 years for patents (NO patents on "business models", btw)] authors should be able to get royalties off of the use of their work, but not be allowed to control its use. The royalties should be fixed rate.
Re:Deeply flawed arguments (Score:2)
In response to "Software isn't obsolete in 5 years"
Of course it is. Windows 95? Garbage. Same with Windows 98. Tombraider? May still be fun, but obsolete and not a seller. Descent 3, one of the best game ever? Obsolete, not a seller anymore. As for UNIX, its original IDEA is still in USE today. The original UNIX has long been dead. Btw, had anyone tried to patent UNIX back then, like they would today, the vast vast innovation done on UNIX through IRIX, AIX, HP-TRU, OSX, BSD, Linux, etc etc, would NOT have occured. My argument isn't that "no one buys it" after 5 years -- just that the sales are drastically reduced; your examples are meaningless. Thus, its the right time to have IP wear off. Furthermore, having it wear off after 5 years allows the software in public domain to contribute to modern projects in some useful way. Remember, IP is a system designed with the PUBLIC INTEREST in mind -- to promote maximum progress, and to GIVE BACK to the public in exchange for them protecting author's IP with THEIR tax dollars.
As for your example of classic books, again, same thing. Yes, they're great books -- but not sellers. Besides, the goal of IP is NOT to allow authors (or their relatives) to profit off of ONE work indefinately, but to provide an incentive for authors to create. I suggest a 10-20 year protection on books, as they lose selling power slower than other IP...this gives the authors plenty of time to recover the cost of investment, and obtain some profit. After that time, it then falls into the public domain, and the PUBLIC is repaid for their TAX dollars being used to protect an authors Intellectual Property PRIVILEDGES. Furthermore, the fact that the book enters the public domain soon after released, means it is still very much clearly culturally relevant: in other words, of maximal utility.
Remember, original "intellectual property rights" last 14 years. Not life + 75 years. Remember, the SOLE purpose of IP is to promote progress. Progress means that the public needs to get free access to ideas after a brief and reasonable period of time.
What rubbish, especially the part about how fixed rate royalties is communism. You might as well argue in favor of information-fascism.
Re:Deeply flawed arguments (Score:2)
Your examples are trivial and largely irrelevant. Pointing to a few examples where software, books, movies, whatever, isn't either obsolete or a non-seller (that is, sells in trivial quantities) after 5-20 years doesn't negate the fact that most are. Sure, UNIX has been at the heart of computing for the past several decades...but its not the same UNIX that was originally released from Bell Labs. That UNIX is long dead, and there's no reason why the code from that shouldn't be public domain. Same thing with Linux -- the Linux kernel available today differs significantly from that 5 years ago. MS Windows? Win95 and WinME were separated by 5 years, and have considerable differences beyond the GUI. No reason why Win95 shouldn't be public domain now.
Sure, there are some books which sell for decades, even hundreds, of years after their release in significant numbers. But MOST DON'T. And even for those that do, an author and (after he's dead) his family shouldn't be able to profit for a hundred+ years on somewthing which only took a few years to create. No significant extra incentive is provided to authors by promising them life +75 years profit -- certainly not enough to offset the loss the public suffers from these works being controlled and unavailable to everyone.
Your arguments that the "family" deserve to profit off of an artists work is ridiculous. Holding IP is like a title, a position. If I'm a professor at a university, I have the right to that position, but not the right to pass it onto my son -- who doesn't deserve it and didn't work for it -- after I'm dead. An author's "family" did not create his work, thus they don't deserve to hold the work's IP rights. America is, aside from a democracy, largely a meritocracy.
As for "registration" for copyrights, patents, etc, who said it has to be expensive? The costs of registration could be paid for by the state. Registration IS necessary for copyrights, because copyrights are intended to cover ORIGINAL work. Under the current system, everything you say or write is automatically copyrigthed...that's obsurd. I shouldn't be able to say some quick catchy phrase like, "We are all slowly, but surely, dying," copyright it and then sue someone else who says or writes that. The idea of registration is to prevent people from trying to fraudulently copyright things which aren't original works, or which are trivial/insignificant.
As for your talk of "living off 2cents a copy from your works," you misunderstand my argument. I never said any such thing. What I said is that artists should be able to profit -- for the alotted time -- off of their works, but not to control how their works are used. Compensation without control. Authors, for example, would be compensated for people who obtained their books, or read their books on TV, but would not have the right to prevent anyone from using their work in any way, so long as they were compensated.
You should also note that while having works transfer to the public domain quicker, while not allowing artists to capture the full market value of their works, also alleviates them from expenditures they would have to make themselves. True, they wouldn't be able to profit off of books for more than 15-20 years; but they would also have free access to any book of such age. The cost to them is more than made up for by the fact that they'd have less restricted, free access to much more information. But from your arguments, it seems like you think that artists and their families "deserve" to be compensated for an infinite period of time (practically speaking, from the authors pov, as he dies) for a work which took a finite amount of time and effort to create. This is clearly nonsense. If a woodsman carves a fine chest, which is artful and beatiful, that took a finite period of time to make; like in the case of a writer, it also took some creative license. The woodsman does not get to profit off of the chair forever; he gets to sell it once and that's it. There's no reason to elevate artists above working society such that they get paid the rest of their lives for work which took perhaps a year to create.
For your clarification, let me post my suggestions for IP-protection terms for inventions, books, music, movies, and software.
1. Software. Copyright should last 5 years. This allows the developer plenty of time to make a significant profit off of his program, and also puts the program in the public domain at a time in which it still has relevance and is not an artifact useful only for "educational purposes".
2. Music. Copyright should last 10 years. This allows the muscician plenty of time to make a significant profit off of his music, and also puts the music in the public domain at a time when most people can still easily relate to it.
3. Movies. Copyright protection should last 10 years. This allows the movie-producers plenty of time to make a significant profit off of their movie, and also puts the movie in the public domain at a time when it will still be culturally relevant.
4. Books. Copyright protection should last 20 years. This allows the author plenty of time to make a significant profit off of his book, and also puts the book in public domain at a time when it will still be culturally relevant to most people.
5. Inventions. Patent protection should be afforded to individuals who actually invent something; there should not be patents on "life forms". Nor should corporate raiders in the US be able to patent something that was pioneered by indigenous peoples, but which the corporations contributed nothing to. Limited patent protection should last 15 years, and should be strict in its granting. Every trivial invention that comes along does not deserve a patent. Business methods do not deserve patents. Furthermore, patents should account for alternate and independant invention. Patents should not be awarded which give an inventor the rights over any invention whihc accomplishes a specific ends, only over his particular implementation. Patents should also recognize the rights of "second comers". Many people may be working on a particular way to do something; just because one person comes up with a solution a day before the other 9 doesn't mean the other 9 should be locked out.
6. Combination works. Any work somehow combining any combination of the aforementioned should be protected piecemiel.
7. The year by year exention plank, up to a maximum of 50% more time. If the owner of an IP work can show that they still make significant profits off of their work (i.e., perhaps 10% of the selling volume from the first year released), then they can get a yearly renewable exention.
Remember, in the beginning, intellectual property protection as established by the Founding Fathers only last 14 years. There's nothing wrong with short protection terms; nor do they decrease innovation. Rather, they increase it by reducing the cost of entry...artists/inventors have a larger public-domain pool to draw from in making their work when shorter terms exist. Furthermore, short terms force creators to create more. One-time-wonders can't make money the rest of their lives off of one book, song, whatever; they have to continue producing things, continue working for most of their lives, just like the average person does.
Re:Deeply flawed arguments (Score:2)
Not always.
In the front of virtually every property, there is access taken for things such as sidewalk, underground water, electrcity, telephone. As a property owner, you aren't given compensation for this (in fact, in the case of water, sometimes you pay for the privledge). Everyone has decided that its a benefit for everyone to have access (including the landholder). Now this isn't 100% correct and when the government does something to decrease the value of my physical property, then the *first* owner is generally compensated. But by allowing access to the public, I can make the same argument that the value of the copyright/trademark is increased.
As to your example of "mickey mouse", no one is arguing that copyright holder shouldn't be able to exploit those rights. But its a stretch to say Disney should have perpetual copyright limitation.
Mickey Mouse as a trademark? Sure. But why should Disney keep copyrights to an 80 year old cartoon? It serves the public better if those cartoons are now public domain. Two immediately come to mind: (1) there's an incentive for Disney to create new Mickey Mouse cartoons (2) The public freely gets to see "steamboat willy" as free entertainment.
Imagine if Beethoveen's relatives had the right to prevent any public performances of the 9th symphony. Whose interests are served? Why should the creation of a book, painting, music, video be a perpetual money making machine? The concept of "Intellectual Property" forces us to torture logic as it is. Why force us into a future where everthing you do or say could potentially be the property of large corporations. We're very rapidly headed that way now, and that future isn't especially appealing for me.
Conservative Judges Won't Buy It (Score:1)
So with the judicial system an unlikely source for help, what's left?
There's Congress. There, the rights holders have grossly disproportionate access. It's just a fact. If you contribute you get a lot of access. If you don't, you get very little.
So, fight where you have the advantage, which is on the Net. Politicians need money, for sure, but they also need votes. At the end of the day (at least until all this destroys our political system as well), that is where the power is.
It's nice to lay out the legalities, and even necessary to do so, but there is a political aspect to this that in my view is much more important.
Copyright term sets tax deduction! (Score:2)
95 vs 75 years matters. Fine -- let's take them at their word!
Under the US Income Tax Code, expenses to make/buy long-term assets are
treated very differently from other running expenses. If you buy a 2k$
computer, a 20 k$ business car, a 10 M$ building or a 1 G$ chemical plant,
you _don't_ get to deduct against income the whole cost of these things
in the year spent. You are forced to spread the cost out [amortize] over
an estimate of the useful life of the asset. This principle should hold
true for all long-term assets, most particularly copyrights.
Now I have no idea how long the economically useful life of a copyright
is. It probably varies from weeks for a newspaper story to decades for
a novel. Our beloved IRS probably has even less of a clue. But I bet
the copyright owner has a pretty good idea. So I'd let the copyright
owner set the term of his copyright (subject to maximum), but force him
to write-off all production costs over that term!
If an owner was willing to keep the term less than a year, then they
could write-off all expenses as they do now. But if they wanted a
75 year copyright term, they could only write off 1.33% of total expenses
per year over 75 years. That's a long time to wait for the tax back,
and I very seriously doubt any businessman would go that long. Most
likely 5 or 10 years would be the economic optimum.
I like this concept because it is voluntary and making these sorts
of trade-off are very normal in business. The owner has income and
cost projections, and can chose a term to match. I also see no problem
in allowing a copyright holder to accelerate deductions by shortening
the term. Lengthening the term is obviously out of the question.
Re:Copyright term sets tax deduction! (Score:2)
Re:Copyright term sets tax deduction! (Score:2)
But for the others, say books, the publishing houses pay quite a bit for the rights to publish. The cost for these rights should also be written off over the copyright period. The publisher would "persuade" the author that they don't want to see a long copyright.
Mr. Lessig needs to think harder about software (Score:3, Insightful)
...because he clearly doesn't understand it, although it's probable that no one does, really.
Lessig proposes some rather reasonable approaches to balanced protection for various types of creative work.
I think his proposal for software is completely unworkable, although I'm very glad I read it, because the reasons *why* it's unworkable led me to some interesting ideas.
Lessig proposes a five-year term, renewable once (okay so far) with registration required. A total ten-year limit is eminently reasonable based on the short lifespan of software, in fact, ten years may arguably be too long. Where I see a problem is with Lessig's requirement that software be registered to obtain copyright protection.
Which version do you have to register? All of them? Software isn't like a painting, or a book, which you write once and never substantially modify. Sure, a second edition of a book may have some typos fixed, but I've never seen the author go back and make corrections to flaws in the plot (even if they should :-) ). Bug fixes and feature enhancements, minor and major, mean that software never really stops changing (until it stops being used). Because of this, our current system of automatic copyright protection is really important for software. It means that every time I go back and modify some of my code, the result is copyrighted just like the original. Even if I go modify some open source code, my changes are automatically copyrighted as well, which is very important for open source (although it introduces some almost intractable complexities as well, which lead to the FSF's suggestion that the copyright to GPL'd software be assigned to them).
So how would registration of software work? Would the copyright office have to run a giant CVS server? Security would be very hard. Then again, maybe that would be a good thing; copyright registration would require disclosure of source to the government and concomitant risk of public disclosure. Or maybe the CVS tree should even be public: the only way to obtain legal protection against copying would be to effectively publish the source code? The ramifications of that idea are interesting. It would certainly be a huge boon for the progress of the art and science of software engineering -- want to see how the scheduler in Windows XP compares to that in Solaris? Go look. Programmers would be able to take the best ideas from other programmers as long as they just use the insights and don't copy the code -- just like authors and musicians do.
OTOH, mandatory disclosure of code might also destroy the software industry entirely. Need an operating system? Just download a copy of the AIX source code and build it yourself. No need to pay IBM unless you get caught, and catching everyone would be very difficult.
What has become clear to me, at least, is that software is *fundamentally* different from books, movies, paintings and inventions. Maybe our real problem isn't in the ways we apply copyright and patent law to code, maybe the real problem is that we need an entirely different approach. We need to find a way to provide balanced protection that can permit individuals and companies to benefit from the cost and effort of software development. Stallman would have programmers be like bricklayers or lawyers; paid by the hour for services rendered, but IMO that also stifles some kinds of software development. Games are the common example, but who knows what other kinds of high-risk, high-reward types of software there might be, where there has to be a good chance of a massive payoff before anyone is willing to take on the challenge. Stallmans's ideal only works in situations where either (a) the software can be created piecemeal, and the pieces can be sufficiently useful to someone willing to pay for them or (b) there is some way of organizing and collecting from a large group of beneficiaries (street performer protocol maybe? I'm skeptical).
Lawrence Lessig is definitely one of the major thinkers of our day on the issues of Intellectual Property in the Internet age, and even he doesn't have any idea how to deal with software. It's a hard problem because code is so *many* different things, all at the same time. It's not like anything the law has dealt with before.
Natural copyright more important than ever (Score:3, Insightful)
Natural copyright is more important for software than it is for a lot of other media because it is so often revised (though some code has a longer fixed life, like various versions of malloc() which have been around and unchanged forever because they need to be predictable).
It is still important for other works, too, though. As an author, you may have to show several revisions of your book to your editor ("take out the scene with the dead horse and make the lighthouse worker a spaceman") before it is accepted for publication. All of these versions need automatic copyright protection.
Natural copyright also helps deal with the issue that corporations tend to have more money to throw around than individuals. What if you are dirt poor, and truly can't afford to register your copyright? There are actually people out there in the US who cannot afford to pay anything whatsoever. They should not be denied copyright protection.
Re:Mr. Lessig needs to think harder about software (Score:2)
I don't disagree that software is fundamentally different from other works, but I would like to point out a slight error in your post.
You state that:
Software isn't like a painting, or a book, which you write once and never substantially modify. Sure, a second edition of a book may have some typos fixed, but I've never seen the author go back and make corrections to flaws in the plot (even if they should :-) ).
Now that just isn't true. Remember that I loaned your wife The Mayor of Casterbridge in France? The 30 page preface to the edition that I had explained how the work had evolved and changed substatially over time. There were at least three major editions that differed greatly from one another. A more recent example would be The Hobbit. The way in which Bilbo obtained the his magic ring was changed after The Lord of the Rings was published in order to make it mesh better with the trilogy.
Finally as was mentioned here on /. recently, how many different versions of Bladerunner are there? What about the differences between Almost Famous and Untitled? Does the latter have a separate copyright? I have no idea.
My point is that even in the past authors refined their works. Now that DVD's are popular despite the /. crowds weak efforts to boycott, the existence of many different versions of a work is not spectacular nor is it limited to software. I also have no idea how copyright law treats these works.
BTW, want to borrow my Superman Special Editon DVD? It has some of the cool scenes that were in the ABC edit but not all of them. I KNEW that when I saw it on TV as a kid it was different than it had been in the theater!
Speaking of patents and software (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
copyright's purpose: to enlarge the public domain (Score:1)
It's true the words "public domain" (an analogy to the law governing public lands) weren't part of the terminology at first. But the concept, that all those intangible works of the human mind, customarily called writings and inventions, that are voluntarily communicated to mankind belong by right to all mankind, has always been part of the constitutional system devised for such intangible works. (Note that only intangibles are specified. The principle says nothing whatever about the proper policy to be taken toward any tangible item--not even toward tangible items incorporating works of the mind. Nor does the principle even apply to all intangibles. Only to those intangible works of the human mind that are conventionally designated "writings" and "inventions" and that are voluntarily set before the public.) According to Thomas Jefferson, the purpose of patent law is to "enlarge our conveniences". (Letter to Oliver Evans, January 16th, 1814). According to Benjamin Franklin, "as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously." (Autobiography.) According to the U.S. Supreme Court:
The aim of the patent laws is not only that members of the public shall be free to manufacture the product or employ the process disclosed by the expired patent, but also that the consuming public at large shall receive the benefits of the unrestricted exploitation, by others, of its disclosures....The public has invested in such free use by the grant of a monopoly to the patentee for a limited time. --Scott Paper Co. v. Marcalus Mfg. Co., Inc., 67 USPQ 193, at 196 (Stone, J.) (Emphasis added.) The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to copyright.
Of course, thanks to patent and copyright law, authors and inventors don't need to contribute to the public domain gladly, freely, and generously, as Franklin wishes they would. These laws enhance the odds that they can get a return from their investment. They get a better chance than they otherwise would have to be paid a reasonable price for their contribution. The theory is that this will make the writing and inventing trades more profitable, on the average, than they would otherwise be, so that more writings and inventions will be added to the public domain. Society is not obliged to do this; nevertheless it has generously done so. But at least in the case of copyright law, the public's generosity in setting up this system has not been received with thanks. Instead, we have been burdened by demands for ever-greater monopoly privileges.
70 after death ot too long (Score:1)
I was a bit surprised to see Lessig advocating 70 years after the person's death for non-published works. He generally takes the view that things should be released into the public domain as soon as practical, because then it becomes available fresh material for other to draw upon. Yes here he is advocating withholding a letter someone writes in his 20's for say another 120 years (assuming he lives to 70).
Letters and other personal correspondence are the primary source for biographers! Surely he does not advocate the primary sources of unauthorised biographers for 120 years?
Make it cost more each time you renew (Score:1)
Alternatively, make the renewal a percentage of the royalties that have been paid on that copyright.
Re:you gotta put it in your mouth (Score:1)
Re:Danger (Score:2, Funny)
Re:You almost do. (Score:1)
Read him again (Score:2)