Copyrights/Patents are Public Domain? 298
x3 sent us a link to an article running on InfoWorld that talks intelligently about intellectual property and the public domain. Its an extremely well written piece summing up what many readers of this site probably feel about the subject.
Very quotable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Very quotable (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, it implies some absolute sense of right and wrong
I would then argue that there are laws which were appropriate for the time they were created, but have since been outdated. It seems that technology could certainly be a (if not the) major factor in the process of laws becoming outdated.
I'd like to think others can come up with some good examples of this, but for starters, consider child labor laws. This link [go.com] explains why these laws were "good" in the 1930s and then proceeds to discuss the implications for today.
-- jetlag --
Re:Very quotable (Score:4, Interesting)
Tell Congress (Score:2, Interesting)
Interesting.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno. Just a thought.
Funny.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to the topic, I think you're right. If you look at musical history, you'll notice a lot of borrowing going on. I mean, even now. Danny Elfman's Batman theme resembles in no small way a piece of music for piano and orchestra by Rachmoninoff. I forget which one, but I think it's the 2nd...
An interesting point of the suppression of ideas created by this: Mozart was accused and had to stand in front of the king (mebbey) when he was a younger child. His crime? He had copied the mass music at church by keeping it in his head and writing it out when he got home. So, could we give Mozart the credit for being the first person to violate some form of artistic licensing? I would've liked to see the RIAA there on that one...
Now, let's think. If artists of that time period weren't allowed to copy from each other (Mozart was commended after he demonstrated how he did it) would we have even heard of any classical European master outside of the Bach family? I'm probably exaggerating (and I'm sure anyone who thinks so will prove me wrong) but the point of the matter is: the same technology (music in their days, computer in ours) that is supposed to bring us together can either do so, or can seriously put a cramp in my style.
Target
That's right.... (Score:4, Funny)
Just make sure they file an Affadavit describing what brain cellls they expect to find it in, but they should expect to find a fight on their hands.
Re:Funny.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pop music coined the term "cover version" for wholesale copying of songs. A lot of "borrowing" goes on in the music industry. Recently one of the most well known pop music producers, Pete Waterman, admitted to more or less copying classical pieces. (Which were IIRC public domain anyway.)
An interesting point of the suppression of ideas created by this: Mozart was accused and had to stand in front of the king (mebbey) when he was a younger child. His crime? He had copied the mass music at church by keeping it in his head and writing it out when he got home. So, could we give Mozart the credit for being the first person to violate some form of artistic licensing?
Depends if that was the oldest example of something like copyright being applied to music. Musicians copying from other musicians probably dates back to the invention of music.
Re:Interesting.. (Score:5, Funny)
And here I thought it was Esperanto.
[Ba-dum-ching!]
Sorry... couldn't resist. It was just too... "there".
Wow, nicely put. (Score:2)
Re:Wow, nicely put. (Score:2)
Yep, really nice of him - a day off for Steve and he still gets the pay check. Of course, there's always the risk that they'll hire the guy who wrote the letter and show Steve the door ...
Having said that, I think that the article was pretty much on the money. It's unfortunate that it's a concept about which Joe and Janet Sixpack don't have time to give a rat's bum - to them, it (the patent/copyright madness) is an indirect and/or societal cost at best and they're too busy trying keep up with the direct ones.
Patents vs. Trademarks and Copyrights (Score:5, Informative)
An interesting thing to note is that a lot of institutions like universities are much more concerned over there rights to intellectual property outside of patents... Gatorade for instance has well run past a patent expire date. The trademark and the license to use it by Pepsico is worth millions every year to the University of Florida. 5 million I think...
Duration of trademark rights (Score:2)
Trademarks can last different periods based on what kind of trademark
Trademarks last until the mark becomes a generic term (Aspirin® died in the USA as part of WW1 reparations; Kleenex® and Xerox® are on life support). This can approach perpetuity.
Re:Duration of trademark rights (Score:2)
No. Your are wrong. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Duration of trademark rights (Score:2)
It's a little more complex, if you have either a made up term or something used outside its usual comtext then you can probably quite happily use it as a trademark so long as you defend it. If you try to use a simple description of your product or business it will probably get laughed out of court.
This is why Aspirin became a generic term - Bayer wasn't paying enough attention to the use of the term until it was too late.
Completly different example, Bayer lost their trademarks to "Asprin" and "Heroin" because their country was defeated in a war.
The most important point (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a bit off. (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of copyright (and patent) laws isn't to spread new ideas--that goal would be done much easier if it was simply illegal to hide an idea.
Copyrights (and patents, but not trademarks) exist so the creators of new ideas / written works CAN make money, and thus are encouraged to keep on making new things.
Ergo, the often-quoted balance between "public good" and "private benefit" that is copyright. The private party wants to enjoy as much economic beneift as possible from their works. The public wants to just enjoy the works, as cheaply as possible and as often as possible.
Copyright is how we pay authors, artists, and computer programmers. (Let's just ignore the GPL for this ONE argument, can we?). It's not that it's main purpose isn't to make money; it's that we as a society are "hiring" IP producers to make IP, and if they don't continue to produce a re-evaluation of their agreement (copyright law) might be in order.
Re:Just a bit off. (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of copyright is indeed to spread new ideas. The theory is that, without some kind of protection, authors would never release their works or ideas to the public. They'd keep them tightly locked away. Copyright, in exchange for the authors releasing their works, grants them a limited-term (note the limited in there) monopoly. Then the work passes into the public domain, where anyone can use it however they want.
Its the same with patents. You can get a government-defended protection on your invention, but you have to release the details of that invention to the public.
Re:That seems a bit off as well (Score:3, Interesting)
It assumes that someone who wants to write will write... They just won't make the book available to the general public. There were plenty of painters and writers before copyright was invented, but the general public got to see their work very rarely.
Remember, one of the most artistically revolutionary periods in our history, the European Renaissance, happened centuries before copyright was invented!
author forgot one thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The people in power wish to stay in power and they do that by bending to the will of the people that fund them (RIAA, MPAA, Disney, the like). The government does not serve the people anymore, if it ever did, It serves the businesses, the people who make the "campaign contributions," the holders of the intelectual property.
Re:author forgot one thing (Score:2, Insightful)
"Government does not serve the people anymore, if it ever did. It serves the business..."
Your analysis reminds me of a rather famous speech by a rather famous president. In the last paragraph of his address, he said:
"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
The simple miracle here is that in the United States the people are empowered to change this system. The founding fathers, political reformers, and suffragists cannot save us from apathy.
I don't mean to minimize the difficulty in affecting meaningful change in this area (especially in the current media environment dominated by large corporations). However, I do intend to suggest that we have the means to affect change.
Re:author forgot one thing (Score:2, Insightful)
We are led to beleive that, yes. But the simple fact is the people in power are controlled by corporations who do not have our best interests at heart. The people who aren't controlled by corporations don't have the money to replace the people who do. And people aren't going to band together to vote on this one issue because nobody knows about it. The media, who can (and should be) informing the people about this issue are ignoring it for one simple reason: they are owned by corporations who will profit (or at least think they will) from extended copyright terms and DRM.
However, I do intend to suggest that we have the means to affect change.
By voting in a different coporate-owned lackey?
What Evil Corporatins Forces You To Buy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Last I looked, music isn't addictive. If this issue was a important to mainstream America as it is to you, they'd do something about it. However, it isn't that important to them, for good reason.
If this issue was as important to real people as the typical
People have no more right to "free" music than they have a right to free books, free newspapers, free automobiles, or free whatever.
Re:What Evil Corporatins Forces You To Buy? (Score:2, Insightful)
It isn't important to them because it hasn't affected them yet. They haven't been threatened with C&D's or put in jail or fined for something they thought was reasonable and should be legal. Just because they don't care doesn't make it right.
People have no more right to "free" music than they have a right to free books, free newspapers, free automobiles, or free whatever.
Bullshit. First of all, an automobile is a physical thing that you can be deprived of the use of by someone taking it from you. You can't deprive someone of the use of an idea, song, book or newspaper by copying it. Second, the whole idea of copyright was to promote the publication of ideas to further science and the arts, not to create an artifical market for economic gain.
Re:What Evil Corporatins Forces You To Buy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit. First of all, an automobile is a physical thing that you can be deprived of the use of by someone taking it from you. You can't deprive someone of the use of an idea, song, book or newspaper by copying it.
Bullshit, an automobile is NOT a physical thing.
An automobile is not more physical then a music CD.
90% of the money you pay for an automobile is:
o Savtybelts, invented by Saab. Patented. Granted to the public without fee for use without licens fee.
o Airbag, invented by ???
o Electronic stability system, invented and patented by Bosch.
o Anti blocking brakes, invented and patented ??? Bosch, I asume.
o Electronic ignition and electronic injection
o Robotic manufactoring lanes, manufactoring technology and know how,
o modern material like plastics -- hard inflamable, carbon fibres and aluminium alloys
o engines made from magnesium and aluminium alloys
o Steel mixtures, steel plants for production
o aluminium frames
o unbrakable glasses, sunlight blocking, anti heating
o tiers by Bridgestone, lasting 50k miles
I do just stop here. You can continue the reign of topics which are nearly non physical and cover only KNOWLEDGE, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY and similar stuff nearly endless.
I repeat: 90% of the costs of a car. 90% of the price you pay for a car, you do not pay for that few kilograms metal and plastics. Neither do you pay it for the look or the name of the brand. You pay it for the astronomic high number of working hours spend by scientists and engineers in labs to figure minimal improvements showing up each year in a new product line of a car maufactor.
90% of our economy is based on "making knowledge to money". Without intellectual property, 90% of YOU all would be out of job. The only working jobs currently needed are: farmers, medical, truck drivers, house builders, craftmen. Just count the number of farmers needed to feed 1,000,000 people. In all industries you probably know about, the amount of workers is astonishing low. It decresesd to 1% of the amount it had around 1900.
We are no longer a workers society, in fact we are not a workers society since the end of world war II. We are a society of people offering service to other people, like booking a journey and booking a flight or dishing a meal in a restaurant.
And how do we come to be able to offer such a service? Bu having the knowledge how to do it! By having the knowledge to build up "machines" taking over a hughe amount of "work".
However a lot of services are dying right now. The get replaced by pure knowledge. The knowledge of a business man knowing how booking should work and the knowledge of a programmer who knows how a monkey can book a flight via the internet.
Second, the whole idea of copyright was to promote the publication of ideas to further science and the arts, not to create an artifical market for economic gain.
In our days the whole idea, and the soule necessity of IP laws is: to create an artificial market. Indeed. Without that market we had riots in the streets, as only a few of us had a job, a income and money to spend for food.
You only see that your "god given right" to take a DVD movie is covered by IP laws. You only see: "I like to have a movie for $5
You hate comunism
As long as you only see the tip of the ice berg
Its intersting that so many people are concerned about that stuff. So easy to circumvent: don't by music from RIAA corporations anymore. Don't buy DVDs of Time Warner or who ever you dislike. Don't go into the movie theatres.
Just buy private sold music and private made movies. And then? No money for the big business
Its easy to stand up and to go for change. But no: you want the stuff those guys make. You only do not want it for the price they charge.
Alternative: stop using your internet connection
Stop using electric current. The plants producing the current are 30 years old, surely payed off. The lines bringing the current are old, either. The oil is incredible cheap
For what do you pay electric current, then? For nothing of course. According to your logic at least.
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
P.S. a better IP law surely is needed, but abolishing IP laws is not the way to go
That miracle is merely propaganda. (Score:3, Insightful)
patents in the early days.... (Score:3, Informative)
Few examples: 1733 "flying shuttle" by John Kay, 1764 "spinning jinny" by James Hargreanes, and 1769 "water frame" by Richard Arkwright. All three (at the time) were major developments in cotton processing mills.
Similar happened with the development of the steam engine. Though the expertise required got the key players more royalties than their cotton processing counterparts.
On the contrary... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sonny Bono (Score:3, Insightful)
Greatly limiting the "brief [few years] economic advantage" for authors and inventors would destroy the ability for someone to live off their work
You call life plus 70 years (USA and EU copyright term) "brief"?
Re:Sonny Bono (Score:2)
Re:On the contrary... (Score:5, Insightful)
If these people are so brilliant and independent, then they should crank out some new creative works if the copyrights on their old ones expire. It doesn't mean that they're forced to get a corporate job.
The reason for copyrights is to stimulate creative production, not to let a few lucky artists and their heirs or corporate sugar daddies sit on their collective asses for a century or more.
Re:On the contrary... (Score:2)
So everyone who creates creative content must do so as their fulltime job? There are never authors and poets who write in their spare time, maybe using their expeiences for inspiration? No-one who is retired or who can no longer work due to illness or injury ever turns to writing to keep their perfectly healthy mind occupied? There are no bands or singers who work a regular day job and perform weekends and evenings?
The reason for copyrights is to stimulate creative production, not to let a few lucky artists and their heirs or corporate sugar daddies sit on their collective asses for a century or more.
Indeed too long can actually discourage creative production. A period of 5-10 years would appear adequate, by that time if they havn't made money on a piece of work they probably really are flogging a truely dead horse and should try something else instead.
But in Keeping With the Article (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, this is true. But consider that the argument being posed in this article (and before the Supremes with Eldred v. Ascroft) is not for the destruction of all copyright but a foreshortening of terms. After all, I won't argue against Gershwin profiting from Rhapsody in Blue but IMO his children shouldn't.
Greatly limiting the "brief [few years] economic advantage" for authors and inventors would destroy the ability for someone to live off their work...
Depends on how you define "life off their work". If you mean "write one story and use those royalties to get filthy rich" then I'm dead set against it-- would you be happy with only one Tom Clancy, Michael Chriton or Stephen King story? But if you mean "write many stories, perhaps spaced a few years apart" then why do you care if copyright on the first book exends past when you write the second or third?
Now, I'm not really arguing about forshortening copyright that drastically-- maybe down to 28 years or so-- you could have 8 or 9 books on the market across that timespan. Surely you can't argue that extending the copyright another ~80 years on top of that will "promote the progress of
Re:But in Keeping With the Article (Score:2)
Re:But in Keeping With the Article (Score:3, Insightful)
A temporary economic advantage for authors and inventors is created because a hopefully more valuable benefit will accrue to the public, and ultimately the lease expires and all rights return to the general public.
Creative works incur over 90 percent of their economic reward within almost a few years of their release, often less. Why are we working so hard to nearly infinitely increase the duration? Intellectual property is supposed to return to the public domain.
In other words, while he probably does not believe there should be any IP laws, he does see the reasons behind it. I think the best point he made was that extension of copyright terms essentially makes the authors and artists (or the holders of the copyright) the thieves by keeping a work out of the public domain, the very place the copyright laws were supposed to guarantee they would end up. When works go out of print because the copyright owner can't or won't maintain publishing, it's theft from the public. If a piece of work has been around long enough to go out of print in the first place, it's outlived the usefulness of it's copyright.
Re:But in Keeping With the Article (Score:2)
Other inventions (software), if patented at all (which I generally reject) should be given only short protection, as the field is moving so quickly, and capitalizing on the invention is usually inexpensive.
Copyright is yet another issue, and again perhaps should vary depending on what is being copyrighted. I think that copyright is a valid idea and does create incentive. My wife has published novels, and part of the reason the publisher went to the expense of publishing them was the residual market and the international market. OTOH her grandmother wrote many novels and a couple of movies, and the family is still getting residuals 70 years later, which is absurd.
The argument about prohibition creating crime is a good one. It is my main argument against drug prohibition. However, some degree of protection is clearly necessary for movies and other entertainment, because there is a significant investment in most cases (at least for movies). Clearly the DMCA goes too far, and the attempt to hobble technology in order to protect these government granted monopolies is clearly out of line.
In the past, industry dealt with copyright violations by going after those who made wholesale profits from it. I think it was appropriate that they could do so. Technologies like napster may make that impractical. But the solution isn't draconian laws - it is, as many Slashdotters and others have pointed out, a change in business models. And if that doesn't work - well, it's just too bad! The buggy whip manufacturers would love to have strangled the automobile industry. Fortunately they didn't. Today's situation is similar!
Re:But in Keeping With the Article (Score:2)
Or perhaps you would prefer that some government bureaucracy does it - with the usual inefficiencies and stupidities that government bureaucracies are known for.
If developing a lifesaving drug makes a rich person richer, that's fine with me. It should be with you, also! And keep in mind that most drug companies are widely held companies, mostly owned by the public. In fact, if you have a pension fund in the US, the odds are that YOU are one of the person who gets richer!
Those who imagine that corporations operate only for the benefit of a few rich people are people who have a narrow and uninformed view of capitalism. I should also point out, to save a few useless flames, that people who think capitalism is perfect and the solution for every human problem have an equally narrow and uninformed view.
Re:But in Keeping With the Article (Score:2)
I don't know what this writer was thinking though: if IP failed two centuries ago, then the whole problem with Napster-level copyright violations would be a 200-year old running battle. Now if instead you claimed copyright failed one or two decades ago (when mass computing was taking form) you'd find a sympathetic ear here.
Re:But in Keeping With the Article (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a 200-year-old running battle. Ever hear of public libraries? They were originally denounced, by publishers, as a mechanism for theft. Ever hear of the statutory license? It came about almost 100 years ago in response to player-piano rolls.
The point of the original author -- I'm not sure I agree, but I'm also not sure I disagree -- is that intellectual "property" has always been a flawed concept. But due to the clunkiness of the technology, its flaws could be papered over and patched. Now, under the bright light of mass digital technologies, those flaws are being thrown into sharp relief so that anyone -- even my 16-year-old students -- can recognize them.
That's what retirements funds are about (Score:2)
Re:On the contrary... (Score:2)
The idea was ment to be to encourage people to continue to create and invent. Not to encourage them to retire because of a "one hit wonder". Let alone set up their children or grandchildren for life.
If these people are so brilliant they should be easily capable to producing a good novel, piece of music, screenplay every few years. Indeed plenty of people appear a lot more prolific in their output.
About Copyrights and Other countries (Score:5, Interesting)
If a work is created in the United States and the copyright is valid for the 75 magic years, what happens in another country where the copyright is only 10 years after the work is created?
Can it be used in that other country?
What happens if a work is created in that other country - can the US Copyright Padlock be used for the full 75 magic years (in the US) or is the originating country authoritative on the length?
Re:About Copyrights and Other countries (Score:2, Informative)
I think its similar for copyright law also.
i.e. If you live in the "Axis of Evil", infringe all you want; just don't try exporting into the US sphere of control.
International copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
All of this is nearly completely irrelevant, though, since the law of granting copyrights (as distinguished from the law of the rights of copyright holders) is now virtually identical everywhere, and copyrights automatically exist wherever you need them, due to the magic of copyright treaties. The exception is the few countries that do not have "copyright relations" with, e.g., the U.S. Taliban-held Afghanistan was such a place; it is possible Iraq is today. In any such country (if there are any), people are free to violate U.S. copyrights, and Americans are free to copy works created in those places (and not published elsewhere).
IAALBNAIPL (I am a lawyer, but not an IP lawyer), so I will defer to others' expertise, but this really is a moot point given the modern treaties.
Re:About Copyrights and Other countries (Score:2)
It's probably an academic question. Since the only way such a country could even exist would be if it were capable of seriously hurting the US either by imposing trade sanctions or military action.
Any other nation would have been told "Hanmonize or else" years ago.
LIke the Lessig arguments, a good summary (Score:5, Insightful)
As for me, I'm a teacher. I break copyright every day. I hand out copies of poems, I photocopy sections of books, I encourage students to read books out of libraries instead of buying them. (I use libraries as an example of defeating copyright because they do what p2p does in a system that is legitimate only because it has been around for a long time.) At the end of last week I saw that kids had been downloading Kazaa and Bearshare to the school computers in order to get music. Good for them.
I like that the author likens this battle to the drug wars. The government has illegalized pot. The kids have no trouble getting it. They get in trouble when they are caught, so they do it surreptitiously. This puts them in more danger than the drug itself--by far. The over-reaching copyright laws, outrageous price-fixing by the music industry, and the control of the radio airwaves have brought about an underground system that works very well, will not likely be stopped, and will, eventually, be legitimate even if it's not legal.
Chalk this up to the short-sightedness of business, the reactionary nature of current politics, and the creative drive of people. The saying goes that information wants to be free. I'm not sure if that means that information wants to be free of charge, but I'm willing to bet that if a major music label started a Napster-style server through which we could download the new Peter Gabriel album for one dollar, there would be a line at the server for quite some time. That they have not done this means that many of us have either copied a friend's disc or downloaded the songs over GNUtella. And exactly how is the copyright law benefiting Gabriel and his label?
Re:LIke the Lessig arguments, a good summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that copyright law doesn't forbid other completely reasonable things, of course.
Re:LIke the Lessig arguments, a good summary (Score:2)
In many cases especially when it comes to things such as music, movies, TV, computer software, etc the original creator does not hold the copyright anyway. Even with literature the author may have to surrender his or her copyright in order to get published. (In the case of periodicals they author may give away their copyright even if they don't get published.) With this state of affairs the idea of copyright encouraging creators to create more works is more or less null and void.
Another group who like the current state of affairs are the descendants of the creators of popular works created in the past. Maybe the children and grandchildren of todays creators might not get such a good deal royaltywise though.
As for me, I'm a teacher. I break copyright every day. I hand out copies of poems, I photocopy sections of books, I encourage students to read books out of libraries instead of buying them. (I use libraries as an example of defeating copyright because they do what p2p does in a system that is legitimate only because it has been around for a long time.)
You could hardly set up libraries from scratch now... Had the technology to trivially clone books existed a few centuries back then libraries would probably have embraced it. No need to track lendings, returns and reservations. No problems with books being unavailable because they are on loan or, worst, have been stolen. Since the master copies would be somewhere safe less risk of books being stolen or vanalised by organisations who dislike the content or the author. "Book burning" is a little hard where any copy left, anywhere on the planet, renders the whole exercise futile.
Of course had something like the Internet come into existance before mass printing the business model of a third party publisher would never existed, copyright law would have been radically different assuming it even existed at all. In this alternative possible history the likes of the RIAA and MPAA simply could not exist. Probably different business models for sound recordings (e.g. mostly from concerts rather than studio work) and motion pictures would exist.
I like that the author likens this battle to the drug wars. The government has illegalized pot. The kids have no trouble getting it. They get in trouble when they are caught, so they do it surreptitiously. This puts them in more danger than the drug itself--by far.
You also have the problem of prohibition making the drugs themselves more dangerous since supply is controlled by crooks, who don't tend to put the fair treatment of their customers as a priority. With a legal commodity there are plenty of laws addressing purity of anything intended to be ingested and accurate labling.
The problems of the modern "war on drugs" can be seen with the prohibition of alcohol in the US in the early 20th century.
The over-reaching copyright laws, outrageous price-fixing by the music industry, and the control of the radio airwaves have brought about an underground system that works very well, will not likely be stopped, and will, eventually, be legitimate even if it's not legal.
Especially since "bootleg" sound and video recordings won't kill anyone. "Bootleg" drugs can quite easily kill or cause serious injury because of unknown dosage or contamination. A bad copy of the latest CD or movie will just cause annoyance.
Congressional power (Score:5, Informative)
Many people get this confused and think, congress has the power to grant copyrights. Copyright is a limitation of congress' power, not a power unto itself. If a copyright fails to "promote the progress of science and useful art", then congress is exercising a power it was never granted.
Those words are meaningless (Score:2)
If a copyright fails to "promote the progress of science and useful art", then congress is exercising a power it was never granted.
Ashcroft's position in Eldred v. Ashcroft is that the words "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" are a mere preamble that imposes no material limitation on the powers of Congress. A District Court and a Court of Appeals have agreed with the DoJ's position. Not that I agree with that position or anything; I'm waiting to see what the Supremes do with it.
Corporations != People (Score:5, Interesting)
The real question now is, "Can IP as a concept be salvaged to protect powerless innovators, or has it been twisted and exploited to the point where we must get rid of it entirely?"
Corporation? No IP (Score:5, Interesting)
First, this will keep (say) Disney from directly owning their movies. Instead, they will have all employees sign "exclusivity" contracts: the employees still own their IP, but only the contracted company can use it (or assign further users). This may sound wierd and exploitable (or to the uninitiated like a transfer of IP) but it leads directly into phase 2.
You may not transfer your IP to anybody at any time, not even as part of an estate. When you die, so does your IP. Things with multiple authors (most patents, movies, & music, collaborative books, etc) will of course stay within copyright / patent until the last author dies (or the natural term ends) because all of the authors have IP in the work. However, once all of the authors kick the bucket, the artwork instantly hits the Public Domain no matter how long the natural term is.
This method is of course the most simple as it would have put most of the items at issue in Eldred v. Ashcroft into the PD, while still allowing Disney, RIAA et. al to lobby Congress for longer & longer terms without destroying the whole precarious structure.
Re:Corporation? No IP (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Corporation? No IP (Score:2)
Nice point you bring up. Since I was/am fantasizing about possible hacks on copyright law, I hope you don't mind indulging me in a little bit of socratic teaching.
Who is to say where one person's creativity begins and another's ends? For example, consider anime music videos [animemusicvideos.org], the result of some bored anime fan grabbing a "random" piece of music and mating it to cuts from whatever anime(s) she/he is fond of. Is this an act of artisic creation? If it is, what rights do the authors who created the original IP that this derives from have? Are their rights so much "stronger" than that of the music video creator that the final result cannot be granted copyright? If the final result is copyrightable, do the original authors have any say in what can or cannot be done with the derivative? What considerations should be included in determining the answers to the above questions (intent & profit being most common)? How do other, related forms of IP (trademarks) potentially change this?
To get back on topic, what you say (and what I can find on Google) about Author's Rights implies a strong mating of copyright and trademarks... which is fine by me (considering that I argue that all IP-- copyright, patents and trademarks-- should both evaporate when the author dies and not be tranferable).
Re:Corporation? No IP (Score:2)
What you propose is either much more complicated or much less innovative than it sounds. First, let's talk about copyrights, not IP. Trademarks, which are meant for labelling, need to last as long as the business that uses them exists. Patents are already much, much shorter than this; I don't think you want them lengthened to life + zero.
Second, a question. You conclude,
This method . . . would have put most of the items at issue in Eldred v. Ashcroft into the PD, while still allowing Disney, RIAA et. al to lobby Congress for longer & longer terms . .
I don't understand. How could the **AA lobby for longer terms when you've fixed the term at life of the author + zero?
Now, let's get into the meat of this proposal. What does it mean that a copyright be non-transferrable? Does that mean that the "moral rights" to control the way something is used can't be sold? That might be a workable idea.
However, does "non-transferrable" also mean that you can't sell the future revenue from a work for a fixed sum now? For example, I write a novel and MGM wants to buy the so-called movie rights. We want to do a deal where they give me $2M now and they get all the future revenue. Are we allowed to do that? Or must I retain a running royalty? If so, how small can the running royalty be? 10%? 5%? 1%? 0.000001%?
Setting up a system where the creator can't transfer away all the money rights might be good, might be bad, but above all, it's complicated.
If all you're suggesting is setting the term at life + zero, that's not a grand new idea. If you mean to also tack on some "moral rights" that are non-transferrable, that's more interesting.
CTEA (Score:2)
I hope Lessig wins for Eldrid. One small step for Eldrid, one giant smackdown for the Mouse.
the solution... (Score:2, Insightful)
Only single persons, not organizations can hold copyrights and patents.
Laws are designed around human beings, who die. Corporations have the potential to be immortal.
Re:the solution... (Score:2)
I won't argue that Gershwin shouldn't profit off his music, but I don't see any reason to give his grandchildren money for somthing they didn't create.
Re:the solution... (Score:2)
Umm, no. Think what you will, but I'm being very specific with my words here, and attempting to separate economic value from all other possible measurements.
All works of creativity have value, and it can be argued one way or the other whether that value goes up or down or stays constant over time: consider, if you will, the works of Shakespeare, which have just as much meaning as they did when written (and thus arguably just as much value). However, the economic value of those works has changed over time; they are now so common I can quote them ("To be or not to be"; "My kingdom for a horse"; "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day") and have practically everyone recognize what I mean. Argue how you will, but to me that indicates market saturation and the loss of all economic value.
Secondly, I use "the p-word" to help other, less analytical minds to understand my viewpoint on why IP should not be transferable. In using that particular word, I rapidly ask and answer the question, "Why are we paying someone for the use of an idea which they did not themselves create?"
Of course, I expected to be lambasted for using the other p-word (lit., the "Property" in IP); however, for the purposes of argumentation there exists no clearer common term. If that is what evoked your comment, consider all uses to be synonomous with "Originator's Rights"... that's what I really mean, after all (despite conforming to the common language, despite the fact 'tis vulgar).
The terms of debate (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The terms of debate (Score:2)
What's even more amazing is that even those who dislike the current and proposed copyright and patent laws use those misleading terms. Even the author of the article linked to in this Slashdot story writes that "property is a misnomer," but continues to use it anyway.
The FSF maintains a list of confusing words and phrases are worth avoiding [fsf.org]. The arguments they give and the alternatives they suggest often are as much propaganda as the terms they suggest avoiding, but still I think the list is quite good. I'm surprised that "trustworthy computing" isn't included, by the way.
How about somebody *alive*? (Score:5, Funny)
Nice choice of examples.
There are many musicians that have expressed this sentiment, and not via Ouija board. I'm sure that John Lennon and Jani Joplin WOULD be happy to have their music swapped on people's computers, but lets not attribute to the dead what they never ever said.
Re:How about somebody *alive*? (Score:2)
Re:How about somebody *alive*? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Education of heirs (Score:3, Interesting)
Until the government legally takes it away from you by abusing eminent domain & the 4th amendment.
--
Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:5, Interesting)
So 'the public' owned the telephone, and just leased it to Alexander Bell? The 'public' had no telephone until Bell invented it. It cannot lease him those thoughts, or that creativity. He earned it on his own.
While I have problems with the current system, collectivist nonsense like this is not the answer. When 'the public' thinks it has a right to the product of my effort, then they can try and pry it out of my mind. I'd rather keep it secret than give it to someone who demands it's his.
It's just as bad when RMS complains he has a right to my source, whether or not I want to give it away. This talk does not enhance freedom.
Re:Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:2, Informative)
Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181.
Re:Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:5, Insightful)
In a sense, yes. No one, Bell included, can come to an idea completely on their own. There has to be knowledge, inspiration, and feedback from others to make ideas viable. Like it or not, a collective (oops, I said the c-word) is from where ideas originate, and where ideas eventually will go in an infinite loop we call "building knowledge".
However, human survival relies on private ownership of tangible resources (at least in this country), whereas ideas are not tangible resources that can be locked down, or else they're not resources. The Founders realized this as well, so they struck a compromise. Since knowledge cannot be privatized for human survival, the use of knowledge can be legally restricted (at least in theory). This is for the good of the creator to be able to create, not to profit. Ideas were originally held in common, and then an innovator would come along and build on an idea in the public domain (e.g. Bell making the telegraph better). That innovator would get a legal monopoly for a short period of time to get resources to get better ideas, and those old ideas would go back to the public domain eventually for the public good.
If ideas really were private property, then there could be no innovation and no progress if powerless individuals had to pay royalties to the original holders of ideas (or more accurately, the corporations that bought/seized them) for eternity.
When 'the public' thinks it has a right to the product of my effort, then they can try and pry it out of my mind. I'd rather keep it secret than give it to someone who demands it's his.
If you keep your idea secret, which you have every right to do, then the idea is useless to everyone, including yourself. It's your intellectual and moral obligation as an innovator and a human being to share your ideas to allow general knowledge and wisdom to progress, but it's also the public's obligation to give you a limited monopoly on that idea to innovate, so long as we live in a capitalistic economy.
Re:Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:2)
This is the quintessential bargain of patent law. (1) You, the inventor, have thought of something that the rest of us haven't. (2) So, if you will teach us how to do it, we'll give you a short monopoly. (3) But after that time, the idea becomes free for all to use.
This is one of the reasons patents are harder to get than copyrights -- every patent must teach the reader how to make the idea work.
"Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson (Score:2)
There are individuals who can create, and those that do not. The vast majority do not, but still wish to benefit from the labor of others. In politics, this desire leads to socialism. On slashdot, it leads to whiny teenagers demanding the 'right' to steal music or books because the Internet has made it easy to do so.
Really? Given that nothing is created in a vacuum, and given the author's right under copyright law to veto derivative works, is it even possible to create anymore [baen.com]?
Re:Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:2, Informative)
But it's interesting that you choose Bell... if he hadn't invented the telephone, it would have been invented by Edison within a few years time. He was employed by Western Union attempting to complete this project at the time.
If neither of them had invented it, someone else would have. The fact they got there first is no reason for the rest of mankind to pay a levy or do without.
Re:Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:2, Insightful)
The legal right to make implementations of telephones was held by the public before they were invented. Patent is not about lease of thoughts, it's about the right to build implementations. Please don't confuse the two.
When 'the public' thinks it has a right to the product of my effort, then they can try and pry it out of my mind. I'd rather keep it secret than give it to someone who demands it's his.
Frankly, good ideas are not the product of one man working in solitude; they are the product of many many people sharing their ideas and developing them and improving on them. The US has this fucked up habit of trying to find a single person whom they can claim "invented" or "was totally responsible for" something. It is a habit used to justify large wealth descripencies; "well so-and-so invented such-and-such" -- Bill Gates invented the computer, you know. It's also complete bunk.
If you don't wish to participate in sharing your ideas and building off the work of other people's ideas then go hide in a hermit hole. You are replaceable. A bit of humility would do you some good.
It's just as bad when RMS complains he has a right to my source, whether or not I want to give it away. This talk does not enhance freedom.
He makes no such claims. He claims that if you wish to distribute computer programs, you should make the source code for those programs available to whom ever you distribute the program to. And this is required so that that person is no longer at your whim for upgrades, changes, and other such things. He believes that programs shouldn't be used as a mechanism to control people by not having the ability to fix what they have rightfully purchased.
His solution, GPL, is very clear in this regard. If you don't want to play in our game building on the work of others in a free and non-biased manner, you don't have to. But don't use GPLed stuff -- it's quite simple.
RMS is spot on. If you want to live by your rules, where everyone thinks of themselves as a unique irreplaceable creator and not wanting to give up source code; go for it. You just can't play in our land.
Re:Lease my own thoughts to me? (Score:2)
Bell Did Not Invent the Telephone (Score:2)
The telephone was invented by Philipp Reis, a German science teacher in the early 1860's (he began work in 1860 at the age of 26). And he was inspired by an 1854 paper by a Frenchman named Bourseul. Reis's phones (which worked but were somewhat unreliable) were demonstrated in Europe and in Scotland in 1863, while Bell was there visiting his father. There is no proof that Bell saw it, but it's one heck of a coincidence.
In the 1870s, Bell competed with another inventor, Elisha Gray who also worked on a version of an improved telephone. Both men allegedly rushed their respective designs to the patent office the same day and Bell won the footrace.
So in truth, Bell can only be credited with improving the telephone and being the first to PATENT the telephone (and maybe with being a fast runner).
Since Bell and his dynasty (not Reis, not Bourseul) were the financial beneficiaries of the patent, it is immediately obvious that the benefits of patents are accrued to the patent holder, not necessarily the inventor.
Elisha Gray had only a "caveat" (Score:2)
In the 1870s, Bell competed with another inventor, Elisha Gray who also worked on a version of an improved telephone. Both men allegedly rushed their respective designs to the patent office the same day and Bell won the footrace.
Being first to the patent office wasn't the only reason Bell got the patent. Alex Bell had a finished patent on a working invention, while Elisha Gray had at that time only a "caveat" [virginia.edu], an outline of the invention without a working model. (Caveat is apparently Latin for "vapourware".)
RIAA would abuse non-copyright too.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not concerned that metallica might make 100x more, because 1/100x is probably still reasonable compensation. But who wants to be known as the guy that copied metallica?
Of course if the laws weren't like they were metallica/brittany spears might not be quite so popular, but somebody would.
I think individuals ought to have some protection, but I don't see why this same protection is extended to 500lb. gorillas.
Let them fend for themselves, and let's see a hefty advertising (information pollution) tax. of like 90%.
Yes! We have no originality! (Score:2)
What if the 'little guy' writes a cool song.
Then some more popular songwriter will notice some sort of similarity between the "cool song" and a published musical work (inevitable given the limited vocabulary of the Western musical scale) and file a lawsuit against the "little guy". Then, because the "little guy" has no legitimate source of funding for legal representation (as public defenders in the USA handle only criminal cases), the more popular songwriter will win.
Exactly the event I described has happened. Read about Handel v. Silver [everything2.com].
Why this needs to be spread all over hell and back (Score:2)
Supremes and Mickey Mouse - This Week (Score:3, Informative)
See this [accessatlanta.com] and, of course, Slashdot it.
Umm, while we're clapping each other on the back- (Score:3, Interesting)
2. To say that "Creative works incur over 90 percent of their economic reward within almost a few years of their release, often less" is just rubbish. A clue to the statement's status as rubbish lies in continuing demand. It's more likely he has noticed only the falloff of big-business marketing - kinda ironic.
3. He seems to argue against any new criminalizations at all. I don't think non-governmental monopolies were at the forefronts of the framers' mind, but at
etc., etc.
I liked the quotation "Advancing technology... " too. And I wouldn't disagree that the current IP scheme benefits big-business, ot that it's an unconscionable twisting of the original intents.
But I think this article and thread will show that the Slashdot/technical publics thinking on this issue is just as empty of reason/convolutedly self-serving as anything else.
Try writing a song once. (Score:2)
He doesn't say _why_ IP "belongs to the public and is in essence leased to authors and inventors." As a content creator, I'd like some explanation there.
Facts: Copyright law considers "access" plus "substantial similarity" to constitute prima facie evidence of copying. Judges have considered access to FM radio to constitute prima facie evidence of "access" to a copyrighted work that has been played on the radio (Bright v. Harrisongs [vwh.net]).
Hypothetical situation: All combinations of five notes are copyrighted. Now write an original song that infringes on no copyright.
Moral: Without a rich public domain upon which to build, how is it possible to create further works?
technology doesn't affect law. Technology can affect culture, which then affects prevailing laws.
Actually, the proper sequence is technology, then culture, then trenches [kuro5hin.org], then laws. Technology affects culture. Culture may effect a revolution, which is often a war fought in trenches, and results in new laws.
Re:Umm, while we're clapping each other on the bac (Score:3, Interesting)
In case of published works there is no ownership. There is only authorship. If no monopoly (copyright) were granted, anyone would be free to copy the works.
While some, very few, works are sought after long since their initial publishing, most works really sell for one printing and that's it. Only big-name authors sell for a long time, and very few of them even become classics sought after fifty years.
In case of "continuing demand", ie. demand for more copies of the work after the initial demand (a few years, nowadays more like "the first christmas"), the author has already generated revenue from initial demand, and should be economically well off. Most works don't have continuing demand, unless You think selling a hundred copies in the first year, ten copies a year for the next three, and total of ten in the next thirty constitutes "continuing demand"..
Re:Umm, while we're clapping each other on the bac (Score:3, Interesting)
No, this is an accurate statement and can be empirically proven using various studies and even independently proven using basic math. As any basic economics or statistics course will teach you, the value of a dollar today is worth considerably more than a dollar tommorrow according to the relationship PV=FV/(1+i)^P (where PV is the present value, FV is the future value, i is the discount rate, and P is the number of periods).
Even if you expect a work to continue earning thousands of dollars a year 100 years out (highly unlikely), the future value (using a low discount rate equivalent to a low risk investment) will amount to only a few dollars. This basically tells you that if you'd like to support your grandchildren, you would be better to put a few dollars in a low term government bond today than to depend on your copyright to support them years down the road. Fifty years out, the equivalent investment might need to be a couple of hundred dollars and twenty years out a couple of thousand.
This simple analysis was performed in the amicus brief signed by all the famous economists but should be apparent to any business, stats, math, or economics undergrad. It was used to cleary demonstrate that recent copyright extensions add no further economic incentive to authors at the time of creation, even for the most valuable and timeless works. Only copyrights up to about 50 years or so have any reasonable value unless they are applied retroactively. And a work that has no value until many years down the road or until after an author's death has essentially no value today - the author would probably be better to put a few dollars in savings account if the motivation was truly economic. Regardless of their eventual decision, the court seemed to understand these facts very well.
50 years (Score:2)
In the long run patents or works 50 years old will still be useful and could probably change the lifes of most of the worlds population that are set back to even earlier technology for economic reasons.
Why aren't there a stronger movement to salvage the public domain and create a common worth sustaining.
Would it be unfair competition to the former patentholders? Nonsense, the what seems unfair is how lobbyists and patentlawyers seems to reinvent the laws and update minor sorrounding techniques to maintain the patents artificially. This is why you can't assume the public domain to drop out by itself, it has to be refined in the manners that GPL projects try to get free from patented technologies today.
We can't keep going in the second best direction forever. I hope that the best technology today will be released into the public domain in my lifetime, even though it's sad to see how much of it that's based on decisions made because someone else held the patent.
Another excellant articlefron an unlikely source (Score:4, Insightful)
--CTH
Slave Mentality (Score:3, Interesting)
Further: "Intellectual property is owned by the public and in essence leased to authors and inventors. A temporary economic advantage for authors and inventors is created because a hopefully more valuable benefit will accrue to the public, and ultimately the lease expires and all rights return to the general public..."
Further: "Economic advantage is not in and of itself a valid purpose or justification for copyright or patent laws..."
The above quotes seem to encapsulate the author's view point. I have spent the last year trying to come to some understanding of the roots of the arguments the author is speaking out against. While I'm far from any conclusions the arguments in favour of the draconian measures criminalizing the consumer have ancient roots. Morally, the 19th c. German philosopher F. Nietzsche suggested the Christian morallity that is given to underlie the founding of America and Canada and much of Western Civilization is a slave mentality. Without looking at his arguments in detail it might serve to balance his view against the ideas of John Stuart Mill whose views on property rights were so extreme that the rights of citizenship were inextricably tied to ownership of property. Mill is the architect of modern democracy. Over and above views like those of Nietzsche and Mill there is a more pervasive and difficult argument derived, for me, from Russell's 'Theory of Types'. A Class cannot be a member of itself, but neither can a member of a class represent the class. What I'm busy trying to ferret out is whether there's a cogent argument to be drawn from the Theory of Types to intellectual property rights properly belonging to the community as the author of the article pointed out. I can't see that any argument can ultimately suggest any one individual can possibly invent in any other guise than as a member of the set represented by the community. Having said this I suspect the drive to overthrow the rights of the community comes not so much from the 'captains of industry' but rather from the lawyers who serve the legal enitity that is the modern corporation. While I'm far from ready to set out a detailed argument I think that when we gave the legal rights of individuals to legal fictions like corporations we undertook an experiment repugnant to nature akin to that of Dr. Frankenstein.
Another Crock (Score:4, Interesting)
For example the author cites the idea that most commercial value of IP is realized during the first three years. Maybe for a pop tune, or a movie, but certainly that is not the case for the vast majority of patents. New drugs take several years to pass FDA certification; the average time to market for an industrial invention in most industries is 7 years. A shorter term for patent coverage is not appropriate in most cases.
Perhaps the current period of copyrights is over-long, but how does that translate to the concept that such laws don't serve a useful purpose? It's a complete non-sequetuer.
The fact is that the history of the industrial revolution, and in particular the great lengths that were taken by companies to conceal the technologies they were using prior to the development of the patent system clearly show the value of a contract between govenrment and the inventor where public disclosure is exchanged for an exclusive right to practice the invention.
The alternative is to go back to the practices of the time where technological instrumentailities were kept as secret as possible by their inventors, to the great detriment of technological progress, and indeed society as a whole.
Patent extension for drugs (Score:3, Interesting)
New drugs take several years to pass FDA certification
USA patent law already grants a term extension in such cases. The current term of a U.S. patent is filing date + 20 years + whatever time is necessary to secure a required federal safety certification for a patented product.
Perhaps the current period of copyrights is over-long, but how does that translate to the concept that such laws don't serve a useful purpose? It's a complete non-sequetuer.
What useful purpose does keeping "Happy Birthday to You" or "Rhapsody in Blue" or "Steamboat Willie" still locked up serve?
Close Down the USPTO (Score:2, Insightful)
That age has passed, however. Government, owning classes and certain involved subclasses of citizenry no longer believe that patents, trademarks and copyrights are marks of exchanges of value. Instead, PT&Cs are considered to be owned assets, and as such, they are to be preserved for as long as possible, and are not to be surrenderd to the public for any reason. For instance, the trademark on Mickey Mouse (c/o the Disney Corporation) will never expire to the public domain since the corporation continually and successfully petitions the Congress to keep extending the term. We the People don't even see revenue from a (sizable) fee to renew the trademark.
Given this trend, I am now preferring to junk the USPTO. If the public receives no value for granting a patent, trademark or copyright, then why grant them?
If the previous solution is perceived to be too draconian, alternatively I propose that the USPTO can be shrunk down into a building of a couple of hundred file clerks who simply file statements and process associated fees as they come in. The system of monopoly can be kept, but all the brouhaha over preliminary evaluation can be junked. Patents are tested in court anyway, and patents are granted almost unwittingly anyway, so why bother checking the patent app? PT&C court battles will come down to two basic checks: (1) is the PT&C itself just bullshit, and (2) if not, then who filed first? The idea of public domain will be long dead, of course, but at least the government will see income from the slimmed-down USPTO, and court battles might be less costly all around.
i disagree about patents (Score:2)
Copyrights themselves are no threats to... (Score:3, Insightful)
What's happened though is that things are taken to excess and Congress, as usual, is way below the intellectual standard needed to make decisions like this. They think in terms of publicity, and in terms of financial contributions to their election campaigns, unfortunately. And, so the RIAA and the MPAA and all the rest are running wild and free, seemingly unfettered to crush small freedoms for the sake of the Almighty dollar.
That is what is so ludicrous about the entire position of the RIAA, etc. They seem to be suffering under the incredible delusion that every "illegitimate" copy made of their stuff is a lost sale. Why they have come to this rather idiotic conclusion is anybody's guess. It's not true that deprived of any other means people would be forced to buy this music, film, etc. Nope, most of them would exercise their remaining choice in the matter and refuse to buy it and simply live without it.
Doesn't the RIAA know that people who *want* this stuff badly enough to buy it are *already* buying it? The rest of them don't want it badly enough to pay for it, and deprived of any choice except paying for it, they'll choose not to pay for it and live without it. It's only when they perceive this stuff is "free" that it becomes worth having--it's not worth buying to the great majority of these people I'll wager.
It's kind of like software piracy. Miscrosoft bitches and moans about piracy and puts Product Activation into XP. The central problem with the argument, however, is that Microsoft got to its present position by selling non-Product-Activated Operating Systems! The contradiction is glaring, for if Microsoft had been victimized by software piracy on an institutional scale, the company would never have survived long enough to write Product Activation into XP, let alone long enough to write XP in the first place. Therefore, despite no controls on piracy at all, history convincingly demonstrates that the vast majority of Microsoft's customers want Microsoft's products badly enough to pay for them and did exactly that. There's simply no way to argue the negative there.
So here's what I think all of this is about, whether it's Microsoft's Product Activation or the RIAA's sabre rattling: GREED. Pure, old fashioned, unadulterated, unblemished GREED.
I think the position will backfire on the RIAA in a big way if it is successful in shutting off avenues of free distribution for those who will accept it no other way--it will likely do an extreme amount of damage to the industry it proclaims it is trying to protect, because the principles behind these issues are economically flawed in the first place.
To me the litmus test for copyright ought to be profit. If a copyright is broken for profit the breaker should be prosecuted. If there is no profit involved it should be a moot issue. The trigger to invoke copyright law should be profit and profit alone being made on the copyrighted works. If no profit is being made it then becomes exceedingly difficult for the copyright holder to prove damages since no one actually paid anything to obtain the copyrighted material.
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think the trigger of the existing copyright laws is already profit and monetary gain. It seem to me that this is the "loophole" the RIAA and others hope to plug because they are proceeding from the patently false assumption that every copy out is a sale lost--which is absolutely untrue and therefore is an impossible proposition to prove.
I'll close with a message to Microsoft:
"OK, guys, you've had your fun and put PA into an OS. Therefore, you have eliminated any piracy of it and can therefore lower the prices as you've been saying for years. So when do we see the first $49.95 copy of Windows XP?"
Heh-Heh--my guess is that if they put chains on each CD and a microbomb in them to explode in case of copyright violation--we'd still never see the prices go down.
Lessig in the Economist, and Pixar gets bitten (Score:3, Informative)
There's a good article on Lessig and Disney [economist.com] in this week's Economist [economist.com].
I was listening to the Monsters, Inc. commentary track recently, and there's a mention of a yodel that's heard in the background through one of the doors. They actually wanted to use a different (and supposedly funnier) one, but they couldn't find the rights holder to clear it.
So Disney's copyright extension lobbying effectively damaged one of the movies they distributed.
No Case for Communal Ownership of Private Creation (Score:3, Interesting)
That seems to imply that, at the moment of authorship or invention, the created work or invention belongs to everyone, not just to the author or inventor. This is fundamentally untrue and unsound. Untrue because the creation would not exist absent the labor of the creator, where ownership consequently resides until it is transferred elsewhere. Unsound because the financial rewards for authoring and inventing would shrink significantly, if not disappear, prompting a parallel reduction in the creation of new works and inventions.
I don't agree with the RIAA's efforts to distort copyright into enabling the members of their industry to continue to maintain a virtual oligolopy on distribution, nor do I support the large-scale transfer of ownership of copywritten commercial music under the paper-thin guise of "sharing" with a global audience. But this letter (which asserts, rather than proves, its basic premise) makes no sense when it attempts to make the case for communal ownership of private creation.
Alternate Patent/Copyright System (Score:2, Interesting)
The creation of a new musical composition is worth 1 million dollars a minute.
If you chose to sell the cd for it at $20 your copyright will expire faster than if you chose to sell it at $6.
Drug patents would benefit most, if a drug company prices a perscription prohibitly it will make it into public domain sooner,
if they sell it at a reasonable profit over production costs then they can keep their patent longer.
GPL (Score:3, Informative)
The coming of the times.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Information should be free, and only the service to get the information in format or speed you want the information in should be charged for. The problem comes in what we call information and what we call the process. These two things are one in the same. One holds information and the other has instructions on how to manipulate the information. For all you coders out there, (myself included), the use of reflection makes this boundry hard to clarify, and therefore points that there should not be a boundry in between the two. I guess you could say we are headed toward a time, when people prosper on actually doing the work, instead of just inventing the work. Instead of just creating and inventing, and then holding onto that invention for 100, 25 or even 1, you will have develope the service behind the invention. The problem lies here that Big Business can easily swoop down and clober and stake any invention from anyone with the current laws we have in place.
What we are seeing now is only the beginning of a huge problem to come. We simply cannot protect information the way we have protected inventions in the past. Centralized protection just is not worth the advantages it shoots for. We need to have laws that says that anyone can use the invention, but the royalty for the invention is based on formula or set cost.
This is a hard subject to dive into, mostly because it is monsterous, but I think we must start, and start now to act before we get ourselves trapped in something that we cannot get out of in our generation.
That my feelings on the subject...not so sure yet what to do with them, but they are growing!
In regards to the music industry: (Score:3, Insightful)
My understanding is that the origins of copyright law came from individuals looking to have a legal recourse to protect and expand their options in a business environment. As it was stated, "Economic advantage is not in and of itself a valid purpose or justification for copyright or patent laws", but it doesn't exclude the notion that an economic gain can be made from IP and thus, provides a basis for encouragement and resource for further development.
Again, I have to emphasize that these laws were made to be exerciseable by the individual. If you know even a little about the process of songwriting and publishing, you know that the copyrights of these works get turned over to the corporation (non-person entity) in exchange for a split of the proceeds from a given work. Once that happens, the exerciseable rights are stripped from the person responsible for the work and handed over to a boardroom of fat cats whose only interest is to expand their bottom line.
I believe that had the rights remained with individuals, the option to return IP to a the public domain would have been exercised. I feel that its the sentiment of artists that once the financial gains have been exhausted under copyright protection of a work, they feel that there is no harm in reintroducing it "back into the wild" so to speak, so that other people might also be inspired to create.
Corporations are the copyright holders and as such they put a stranglehold on the material, making it financially unaccessible to anyone but them. If you haven't paid them for the right (or made an arrangement for them to benefit financially) to use their copyrighted material, then its hands off. Futhermore, they take it a step further and continue the exercise in inaccessibility years beyond a reasonable timeframe just so that any possibility for a few bucks to be made isn't overlooked.
With the exception of Metallica (and their situation is very different from most other artists), you don't hear the actual artists themselves coming out and raising the issue as much as you do the record companies and the RIAA because the fact of the matter is that they don't have a leg to stand on anymore. All their "IP" is under new ownership. They can only back their label's decision and even to that extent, what I've seen is far from convincing.
Copyright law may not need the reexamining as much as maybe who rights they are protecting.
So what are You going to do?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm thinking what should happen is open defiance of copyright extension. As many people as possible should post as many pictures of Steamboat Willie as they can find, on as many webservers and p2p networks as possible. Give the courts so many cases to handle that they simply can't do it. Robert Cringely proposed this same idea [pbs.org], and I like it. But I wonder how many people would actually participate? The legal system's only trump card is that few people ever go all the way to the wall to defend a principle. That's a significant fact. Who wants to risk going to a real jail in order to share some music files over Kazaa?
I sure don't. I have a family to support, and if people started getting snatched out of their houses there's no way I am going to have my house seized and be the bitch for some knuckle scraping troglodyte in a cell. Even if those prospects didn't bother me, justifying my actions to my wife would be another matter. Actually, I'm not sure which would be worse. If the enforcement starts to get harsh, my p2p files are coming right down. And I bet 99% of you reading this are the same way. When the rubber meets the road, how many of you have stood your ground when you knew you were going to get your ass kicked?
That's one thing that gives me a really fatalistic feeling about all this. I sure hope the legal brains arguing Eldred vs Ashcroft are in top form, because I really believe that the fate of this issue will rest on the shoulders of a few heroes, not on the masses who will mostly run for cover if the shit hits the fan.