Orson Scott Card on mp3 File Sharing 544
drjkt writes "Author Orson Scott Card gives his take on mp3 file swapping." Some artists are getting the idea.
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Orson Scott Card on mp3 File Sharing
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And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions. -- David Jones
About time (Score:5, Insightful)
That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'... (Score:2, Insightful)
First, it is not property.... (Score:2, Insightful)
The first thing to realize is that it is not "property". Abuse of the word "property" to describe it lends to such other language abuses as calling duplication and creation of new material "theft".
Call it "copyrighted material" if anything.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Article is +5 Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)
Having actually RTFA, I think his take on the problem is quite good. It's not like we haven't read this on Slashdot a thousand times before, but the real deal is that it's a known, mainstream author that's publishing this kind of thing.
"In other words, the people complaining about all the internet "thieves" are, by any reasonable measure, rapacious profiteers who have been parasitically sucking the blood out of copyrights on other people's work. And I say this with the best will in the world. In fact, these companies have expenses. There are salaries to pay. Some of the salaries are earned. ".
I like the way he puts it <grin>
Re:e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you pirate one of his e-books and you like it enough to buy the print version for the "feel."
Maybe you don't buy that one in print, but buy others either in paper or electronically because you like his writing.
Or maybe you decide he sucks as an author and never read anything of his again.
In any of these cases, what has he lost? Nothing. You weren't going to plop down $7 for his paperback anyhow.
The only way he loses is if you decide he is a great author, so you pirate all his books.
interesting about this whole issue (Score:5, Insightful)
When they were talking about child porn being found on Kazza, I wondered if they ever bothered to look at the Britney Spears video clips they were putting out.
I've said it before and I'll say it again.. (Score:4, Insightful)
But the fact remains that as the old hat of the record industry is, it subsidizes the failures with profits from teh successes where the internet in file swapping can be used to help a new band establish their worth to machinery of the record industry that is still actually useful to the promotion of a band or artist.
This is no good for the artists.
time to remove the fat and greed of the middle man non-artist...
Re:Research (Score:3, Insightful)
B) That doen't mean if they didn't trade music that they would buy it.
Of course, they are avoiding paying for it. They either don't think it is worth the retail price, or they can't afford it.
People who have lots of money spend it on crap all the time, hell, I even hear rich people buy Porche's to crash them, for safety test purposes.
Hmmm, I wonder if Bill Gates has illegal MP3 files?
Re:Well, that settles it then (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA is informing people quite well with their lawsuits, they're forcing it into the public eye. Mr. Card is pushing a few people towards the Anti-RIAA camp, but that's all... he's not going to generate enough noise to trump what the RIAA is doing.
Not just a good author... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The record companies swear that it's making a serious inroad on sales, and they can prove it. How? By showing that their sales are way down in the past few years."
First off, anyone whose taken any intro psych class knows that the RIAA's data is bull. Hell, even those who haven't know it. All they are showing is correlational data. Whoopdie doo, cd sales are down while "piracy" is up. Watch me publish correlational data that shows quality of music is down and sales of cds are down. They haven't proven jack.
"It couldn't possibly be because (a) most of us have already replaced all our old vinyl and cassettes, so all that windfall money is no longer flowing in, or (b) because the record companies have made some really lousy decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy."
Because Mr Card is publishing an article that will probably be viewed by many, he had to censor himself. What b) really means is that big record companies are trying to force-feed crap to the masses. How many boy-bands do we really need? How many no-talent implant laden morons do we really need singing "I'm not that innocent"?
Re:RIAA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Grateful Dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe what they "got" was that jamming in front of a great crowd was far better than making a lot of money...
You are lending your only copy... (Score:2, Insightful)
The situation is quite a bit different if you burn a copy for each of your friends in the neighborhood.
One thing bothers me... (Score:2, Insightful)
And the most obnoxious feature of the law was that some authors outlived their copyright. Their most popular works would go into public domain while they were still alive and counting on the income. It's like revoking someone's Social Security at age 72, just because they had the temerity not to die when demographics predicted they would.
Its like he expects to do some work once and then profit from it for the rest of his life. Guess what... the rest of us don't get that! Patents don't last NEARLY that long... so why should a writer get rights to his work for the rest of his life, while an inventor enjoys the rights for a limited time?
The way society and economics work, you have to keep producing and contributing to reap the benefits. lifetime profits should not be guaranteed in my opinion.
Hollywood vs. Enron (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a clue: Movie studios have, for decades, used "creative accounting" to make it so that even hit movies never manage to break even, thus depriving the creative people of their "percentage of profits."
Hollywood uses "creative accounting" to diminish revenue sharing with their creative talent in order to actually maximize their profits. Warner Bros. took a lot of flack over how they claimed "Batman" never was profitable, yet for some reason, they made a sequel. Or for example, Paramount claiming "Coming to America" never made a profit either when sued. Yet on the other hand, you have companies such as Enron and Worldcom who use "creative accounting" to inflate their profits. Wow, isn't that ironic?
I guess the moral of the story is, when you overstate profits, investors lose confidence and your company goes bankrupt; run a Hollywood movie studio, claim you never make a profit, and you stay in business forever.
I'd only point out that. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
If I do wish my descendents to have an easy life why don't I just invest my earnings to create a trust fund for them?
I have no problem with authors making a decent income for their work, but I also have no problem with them having to continue to produce works to maintain themselves and their heirs.
Just like everyone else.
50 years has always seemed both a fair and ample copyright duration to me, protecting both the rights of the author and the public.
KFG
Re:RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
But then, on the flip side of the coin, the downloaders are involved quite a bit in manufacturing and distribution, which are supposedly a large portion of the cost of a CD.
I mean, if you download an MP3 and put it on a disc, you are paying for the shipping, the CD blank material, the equipment to do the burning, the electricity, etc and so forth. You're covering all the costs except for royalties to the copyright holders, and NRE costs for the album's production, and I suppose marketing.
Oddly, the RIAA does not subtract these costs when computing these amounts of money they claim is stolen from them.
X
Re:e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
Even then he doesnt, technically, lose, he just doesnt gain, it's as if you never read his first book to find out how good he was.
Re:Wait a second... I didn't think this was true: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only distinction between what he described and internet file sharing isn't only geographical distance. Two main differences immediately spring to mind:
1) Digital file sharing can't even begin until the song or book or whatever is copied. What Card described (lending a CD to someone you know) doesn't necessarily include anyone copying the song. Just because you assume that each borrower would copy the CD doesn't mean everyone would, or that it's what Card meant.
2) The number of songs (movies, books, or whatever) I can obtain by borrowing a CD from an acquanitance is considerably less than the number of songs (books, movies, etc) that I can obtain a copy of via the internet. I guess that is why makes borrowing from acquaintances fair (as in fair use).
Re:Blow me, Card (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps you are selling your work too cheap. If he produces something that people are willing to pay for, more power to him. It is a sweet deal. What's preventing you from doing the same?
Re:Orson Scott Card (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Blow me, Card (Score:3, Insightful)
Risk and reward.
Re:First, it is not property.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that IP is a general term encompassing obviously non-property oriented fields, such as trade secrets (which aim to stem unfair competition, and are entirely unlike and unrelated to property) you're clearly misusing it.
Personally, as someone who's seriously been studying this stuff for years now, the best thing to do is not even use the term IP. If you want to discuss copyrights, or patents, or trademarks, or trade secrets, or publicity rights, or whatever, just refer to the particular thing you're talking about accurately. None of them are really related to one another -- it's a dumb idea to act as if they all are just facets of the same thing.
Can't you just smell it? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The focus of the industry needs to shift from Soundscan numbers to downloads," said Draiman. "It's the way of the future. You can smell it coming. Stop fighting it, because you can't."
Yes, yes, yes. And the focus of the industry also needs to shift from labels to artists. Artists are finally, albeit slowly, shrugging off that "plantation mentality" that had them convinced they couldn't make it without the big labels. End result is more, not less, music.
Re:e-books (Score:4, Insightful)
And its worth pointing out that, in that last case, you're the type of person that would've pirated all his books anyway. If he hadn't had official eBooks, you or someone like you would've scanned and OCR'd them. So he loses nothing by providing them and actually gains a lot.
Re:Hollywood vs. Enron (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, they post end-of-the-year profits, alright. And plenty of them. What they DO try to do, whenever possible, is bury profits on a film-by-film basis.
Like, say a studio has two sci-fi movies coming out in one year, and they're cross-marketing them in some way. So Movie A comes out first, does well enough in the box office, and nets $10 million in profits. They turn turn around, sink that $10 million into the ad budget of Movie B, and claim NO profits on Movie A. (instead, they have $10 million in unused advertising budget which can be put in the "wins" column at the end of the year - but it's not attached to Movie A any more)
This is a simplified example, but not overmuch. They pull that trick ALL THE TIME. Remember Stan Lee suing Sony over Spiderman? They did exactly that on him - sank all the movie profits into the merchandising budget (if memory serves) and counted the whole thing as one big mass from which he got absolutely nothing.
Re:Research (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is I'm not rich. I can't spend all that money on CDs. If I were to spend $15 each time I like a new song I would be quite poor by now. I DO buy CDs, just not as often as I would like to listen to the music I download. And this wasn't any different before napster, because to be honest, I didn't care about music before it. I never cared too much about listening to the radio or watching MTV, but I do care now about downloading random songs from the Internet to listen to them.
The big music companies are just being silly. They should be offering online services with very low prices so that people can download the music they want, and they would get the money the desire so much. That, together with a simple and secure system for people to pay for the service, and I will be glad to switch to it.
And they should stop claiming I am causing a loss in profit, because I simply don't have all the money they want from me.
Decameron
Re:That byline 'speaker-for-the-dumb'... (Score:2, Insightful)
good article, but.. (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing that was not mentioned here, and something that I've been wondering about, is the impact on new CD sales (both real and perceived) that's due to the huge popularity of purchasing used CDs from music stores. Clearly, a record company can only make money if the consumer purchases a new CD. But if I spend my $15-20 on a CD, then sell it to FooBar Music Shop for $6, then you come along and pick it up for $10, we've got a CD purchase that has been diverted from a brand new product to a second-hand one. I only know a handful of folks who really grab music from file sharing networks, but I know a zillion people who have spent a lot of money on a nearly-new CD for $8.
I'm pretty sure that the RIAA has been ignoring any discussion of this trend because there's nothing they can do about it, and therefore they can't drum up support against it. But I suspect this behavior of buying used CDs is responsible for much more of the "slump in CD sales" than we know.
Anyone have any numbers, info, or insights on this?
Re:Blow me, Card (Score:4, Insightful)
If you did a lot of research into lets say, software engineering, and sold the results of that research, you could sell that lots of times. You only did the research once. However, you could sell them repeatedly. My sister does consulting as a Web consultant. She worked really hard to write a content engine. She fills the engine, and then bills people at 75% of the rate a custom built site would cost. 10% of the work, 75% of the money.... You probably think that's unfair too. It's entirely possible however that she would have never made a dime off the engine.
It's how the economics of Card's job is structured. Tell you what, why don't you start a publishing company, then tell the authors they have to show up to your cubical farm for 8 hours a day and write their books there. You pay them an hourly wage, so they get paid, once and only once. Then you come back in a couple of years and tell me how it turns out (I'll bet nobody wants to work for you, or at least no author worth publishing, if they do, they'll quit immediatly after earning a reputation).
The economics of being an author is very different then the economics of working as a programmer, or as a janitor, or whatever it is you do for an hourly rate. Shocking, shocking I tell you. It's entirely possible Card could work for a year on a book, and never see a dime (okay, maybe that's only true for a new author). Being an author is very risky. Your hourly job is less risky. You show up, you do whatever it is you do, and you get paid. Next you'll be telling me it's not fair that somebody makes more money they you do, because you work just as hard as they do. You earn what you negociate to earn. You don't like your deal, re-negociate.
Kirby
Re:Grateful Dead (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
The people to listen to (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what the record companies fear the most is not the P2P swappers, but that some unknown, unsigned band will step up, and thanks to P2P swapping, outsell EVERYTHING the record companies produce, thereby rendering them worthless. In the P2P environment we have today, it is not only possible, it is inevitable.
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, having seen a little bit of information on how recording studios deal, most especially with new artists, if that artist is not PHENOMENALLY successful, they are going to be in debt for some time. One hit wonders are lucky if they manage to break even in the end.
I don't know how much of that is true or not. I would love to see someone provide a link to a reputable study or article or some piece of research that really proves or disproves these myths.
Anyone?
More Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
1) THEY RELEASED FEWER ALBUMS
2) THEY RAISED PRICES DURING A RECESSION
and perhaps less importantly, but still a factor, 3) They stopped selling CD singles.
Music has always been crappy, so I don't think that is the big reason. Supply and demand and availability of substitutes are the fundimental forces of a marketplace.
But guess what happens when you choke supply? Someone else fills it, and independant label music sales are UP, perhaps more than RIAA sales are down, which would actually be a net gain in music sales.
There's another angle to this (Score:3, Insightful)
You can set up a pretty decent home recording studio these days for a couple grand. A really nice one for maybe five or six thou. Okay, maybe not a true professional studio but damn close enough for all but a highly trained ear. That's within the range of people willing to scrimp and save for it. You can get a master CD copied with jewel cases and inserts for around a dollar each in lots of 1,000.
If you have friends with DVX1000 or VX2000 and a carload of gear you can add music videos to go with the songs. Okay, not as good as film but still nice looking on a computer monitor or big screen TV if it's shot right. Vertical integration at a price point that's affordable.
I think it's that more than file trading that's the real worry. Those that are persistent, post a really good web site, offer a few songs for download have a chance at making money...and keeping most of it. Without ever setting foot in a major label. I think music has the potential to shift to a ground up industry faster than film.
Two challenges with that: One is air play. As long as Clear Channel is in bed with the big labels on the payola merry go round you're not going to hear many unsigned bands on the air. Hence the fight against Internet radio. The other challenge is the signal to noise ratio. Weeding out the bad music and letting the really talented float above the fray.
Still, those are solvable. I bet a handful of people with the time, talent and a few grand in gear could get together today and build themselves a new star.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard this comment before, but there's an inherent problem with it: who owns the copyright of a work that's the product of a large number of artists combining their efforts? If John, Paul, George, and Ringo collaborate to write a song, you can't fairly assign copyright to just one of them, so it must be assigned to them as a group. But that group may very well be a corporation. You're stuck either denying them the right to copyright things that they worked on as a group (obviously unfair), forcing them to assign copyright to just one of the four (also obviously unfair), or let them copyright it as a corporation.
Even if you somehow prevent corporations from owning the copyright per se, you're never going to be able to prevent corporations from being able to have exclusive rights to the copyrighted material, which is just as good from their standpoint. Or are you going to suggest that artists shouldn't be allowed to sell exclusive rights to their works to corporations? If so, you'll have a hell of a time getting anything published, since almost all of the major publishers, record companies, movie studios, etc. are corporations.
Re:Research (Score:3, Insightful)
But Orson points out something interesting: many bands were obliged to sign "work-for-hire" contracts, even though both parties (the record label and the band) knew that they (the artists) were not employed as work-for-hire. Seems to me that the artists should be able to sue and get their copyrights back, as such contracts are not valid (contrary to public morals: eg: lies).
User-Friendly Copyright Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
If your dad was a plumber, would you expect that a leaky pipe he fixed 50 years ago would buy you a new house today? Why should copyright holders and their descendants be any different. If authors plan on maintaining a lifestyle after they get older, they should get a 401k like everyone else.
The framers decided that 14 years, extensible to 28 was long enough to encourage authors to keep science and the arts progressing, while still keeping the public domain well stocked with good material so that other authors could do their bit to advance science and the useful arts. The system enacted by Congress in 1978, and more recently with the Sonny Bono Copyright term extension act is so unbalanced that not only is it unconstitutional, its stagnating the intellectual development of our society.
RIAA + Success = No RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, suddenly, the $500billion electronics industry that makes CD burners and MP3 players is going to be seeing declining sales. And the $50 billion record industry sales went up a couple billion. Which industry do you think has more power?
The whole situation is pretty strange. Consider that Sony Electronics makes something like $40 billion a year. And Sony Entertainment makes around $4 billion. Sony Entertainment is a record company, and part of the RIAA. Sony Electronics makes CD burners, MP3 players, Car CD players that can play MP3's, Computers, and various other electronics used in these 'illegal' copying pratices. Do you think AOL-TW makes more money from their record company division, or their ISP division (that allows people to download using p2p)?
Maybe someone can shed some light on who's making these decisions in the RIAA and why these companies are allowing it to do what it's doing.
Re:Grateful Dead (Score:3, Insightful)
Phish also gets it. They have always let fans tape and trade their shows. In Feburary of this year that launched a website (livephish.com [livephish.com]) where you can buy and download a soundboard recording, in MP3 or in FLAC, of the entire concert for $9.95 (MP3) or $12.95 (FLAC). The recordings are posted within 2 or 3 days after the concert. The online catalog lists every concert they have done so far this year.
In July there was an article in, I think, the New York Times where the Phish web site manager said that the site had had over 1 million sales. Do the math. This is from a non-mainstream band. When was the last time you saw Phish on MTV? Think about this; Phish played 2 nights at The Shoreline in Mountian View, Ca. Both nights were sold out. The Shoreline holds, I guess, 30,000 people. Using this web site they get to re-sell the concert without splitting the proceeds with BGP (Bill Graham Presents) and TicketBastard. Do you think the music industry is missing something?
Re:The vast majority of recording artists ... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is old, and you may have seen it already, but it's pretty compelling:. html [arancidamoeba.com]
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't NEED publishers, record labels and their various executives anymore, do we? Self-publishing and self-recording is now simple and cheap to do. Digital downloading and print-on-demand have made it a snap.
So when you have the critical mass of artists realize this, and refuse to play the game any more, this whole problem is going to go away.
The CD isn't needed any longer, and print-on-demand publishers seem to do fine without requiring a large piece of the action.
The only people left crying in their Smirnoffs will be the industry crooks represented by RIAA et al.
Re:Well, that settles it then (Score:2, Insightful)
Lars Ulrich spoke about his opinion of file sharing, but you weren't so appreciative about that famous persons opinion.
Re:e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
But thats a whole nother' thread...
Anyways, I'm sure one could easily argue that sometimes people benafit from pirating. I'm sure if college kids didn't rampantly pirate MS Office and Windows, Microsoft wouldn't have the market share that it currently does, and these same kids wouldn't be "locked" into Office and other such software as adults.
Heck, in college I had a cracked version of Warcraft II that I played all the time. I loved that game so much what did I do later on? I bought StarCraft and WarCraft III.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
Things can get a bit more complicated when the architect writes to basic structure; which is then filled in by others, but even then there is no excuse for turning to the notion of corporate ownership.
A corporation cannot write anything. Only people write things, and these people are generally not the same people as the people who own the corporation.
Re:Research (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not?
Maybe if he stops buying CDs at the rate he would ordinarially and buys other things instead, but otherwise he's not even so much as affecting anyone other than himself.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com (Score:5, Insightful)
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats
The philosophy behind the Free Library is also very interesting. Check out Eric Flint's essay on the home page of the Free Library. I especially like his conclusion:
This is from a guy who makes his living writing fiction.
It's hideously effective, incidentally. I've bought about 25 Baen paperbacks in the last two years, and several hardbacks--one of them just for the CD, though I rather enjoyed the book, too, as it turned out.
Just a suggestion: do not under any circumstances buy an e-Book or other device that makes reading electronic books more convenient and nicer than paper books. If you make that first mistake, do NOT make the second mistake of looking into the Baen webscription program... <shudder>... I've spent *way* too much money on books since I did that. A half-dozen books for $15 -- it's just too much of a bargain to refuse... but there are four YEARS of such monthly bargains to buy...
Re:Well, that settles it then (Score:3, Insightful)
It may well be that it does make a difference, but it shouldn't. What if Card sided with the other side, would people still be valuing his opinion then?
Famous peoples' opinions on subjects for which they did not game their fame are just as relevant as the everyman in the street. And that is to say, not bloody much.
Re:More Obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
And corallary:
2A) They raised prices for technology when tech. prices are going down. Which makes CD's *too* *damn* *expensive*. Especially when you can get a DVD, hours of entertainment, with loads of extras, for only marginally more money. For your entertainment buck, you get a lot more on a multi-hour DVD than a one hour CD.
Re:Not just a good author... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think one greatly underestimated reason for the loss of CD sales is the advent of ClearChannel. I personally call ClearChannel the "cancer of music".
Many of us "perceive" that the overall quality of available music is down. I sincerely doubt that musicians around the world have suddently lost their creativity. But the fact that music (as in culture) is controlled vertically by a handful of monopolies is what is creating this perception. And ClearChannel is one of the main culprit: their near-monopoly over radio stations means there's a greater chance you'll keep hearing the same stuff over and over again. Same things with concerts. All major venus are literally locked down and controlled by ClearChannel which "pushes" artists to them. In theory venues are free to choose their performers, in partice they often have to yield to external pressure. All this leads to lack of diversity and global music homogenization.
And really, the essence of music is diversity.
DZM
Artists need a union (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, with enough money, they can make their own labels. As I understand it, this is how United Artists started. Back in the day, Hollywood was ruled by the studio system, in which actors were more or less owned by their studios in the same manner that recording artists are owned by labels today. United Artists, the Screen Actors Guild, and other groups helped break the studio system, and now actors are guaranteed compensation at a minimum rate under standard SAG contracts, and are also allowed to take their talent anywhere they want. There is no particular reason why recording artists cannot do this, especially when it's much less expensive to record an album than it is to produce a motion picture.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, if an artist went around *now* saying "I'm not giving exclusive rights to anyone" they wouldn't get published. However, that's only because there are other artists who *will* give exclusive rights. If no artist could give exclusive rights, then what would happen?
Let's just leave the Internet out of this for a second, since we're not even sure the old business models will work when the Internet is in the picture. Instead imagine a world without p2p and without exclusive publishing rights. Would music still be published? There would still be demand. Therefore, music would be published and sold. There would still be publishers. Artists could still sell copying rights to publishers. The only difference is, artists could move from publisher to publisher at will, or even use multiple publishers. What does this cause? Competition among publishers! Publishers competing with each other for artists, based on the merits of each publisher's service. Competition drives quality up and prices down. Artists could charge whatever they want for their own works, and the publishing costs would be very low because of competition, so they would get most of the profit.
What of the current music industry? Well, it is mostly advertising nowadays, I think. Publishing is a small part of it. So today's music publishers could just turn into advertising agencies for artists. I guess nothing would stop artists from signing stupid contracts with these advertising agencies, but you can't protect people from their own stupidity. At least under this system the music would always belong to the artist, and publishing would be cheap.
Re:E-Books-- See Baen.com (Score:3, Insightful)
I've bought books that are downloadable for free from the Gutenburg Project because I can read them in bed and are easier on my eyes. A paperback costs 6 bucks. A e-book reader costs at least 50 bucks. Which would you leave on the floor in front of the toilet?
Authors need not be paranoid about publishing online. It will let lil' kids with $1.00 / week allowances read them online without a trip to the library, and someone that has never read one of the author's books decide if they like the story, but anyone that was going to buy the book still will, and it may cause someone who read the first chapter to become addicted enough to the story to buy the dead tree version to read the rest.
Re:About time (Score:5, Insightful)
Unimpressed (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder.
This is untrue in several respects.
Firstly, there is no legal fiction that works are property, nor is there any legal fact that works are property. Creative works are not property. The copy in which a work is embodied certainly may be, but copies are distinguishable from the works they incorporate. Copies are not pieces of writing, or composing, or performances; those are works. Copies would be books, sheet music, or CDs embodying the works.
Furthermore, Card ignores 17 USC 109 (and a few related provisions) by making the erroneous claim that resale is limited to authorized persons. If he's ever set foot in a used bookstore, he'd know that his statement is simply incorrect.
And of course, he's ignorant of the history of protection afforded to sound recordings -- they were ineligible for copyrights until the early 1970's, long, long after the technology for recording performances had arisen. Edison cylinders are positively 19th century, for christ's sake!
In exchange for the private monopoly of copyright, when it expires the work is then free for anyone to perform or print or record.
Mm... this is an odd way to phrase this. I don't often see the copyright quid pro quo expressed from the author's point of view, and it seems rather lacking.
If we assumed that there was nothing more to it than this, there would be no copyrights; why would the public grant a copyright preventing them from freely making and enjoying copies so as to enjoy the public domain later, when by not granting copyrights they could enjoy the public domain now?
The missing element is progress. The reason copyrights are granted is so that we promote the _end_ of progress of knowledge generally by the _means_ of encouraging authors to create works which are of limited help towards the aim of progress during the copyright term, but are of maximal help towards that aim once the term expires.
We musn't grant these things because we feel like it or to help out authors or something. That would be really dumb for several reasons.
Until 1978, copyright only lasted 52 years in the U.S. -- and then only if you remembered to renew it.
56 years. A term of 28 years that could be renewed by the copyright holder in the last year (if he remembered -- if it was worth it to him, which it often was NOT) for another 28 years.
The term before that was 42 years (28+14), and before that was 28 years (14+14).
There were other technical lapses that could result in the inadvertent loss of copyright -- it wasn't really user-friendly.
User-friendliness is not a requirement of copyright law. To a degree it might be useful -- if copyrights are so difficult to acquire that they are not an incentive to authors, that's a problem. OTOH, if they are an incentive to authors, they needn't go so far as to fawn over authors.
Inadvertent losses of copyright are good. They ensure that works are not protected by law, yet are so worthless that their copyright holders don't care to maintain them. Such works should be in the public domain; the author doesn't seem to care, but there is still a deterring effect on the public that should be remedied. If action were required for this to occur, it would never be forthcoming; lazy copyright holders would hold onto their copyrights on the off chance that they'd be worth something later, and because it would cost money to get rid of them, but it's free to sit on them.
Similarly, if authors can't afford it, it implies that the work is a commercial f
Re:Hmm, writers and programmers... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand; an author is creating something unique to them. Be it a work of imagination or a recounting of experiences, no one else can claim that what the author produces is theirs, nor can they make an identical product from standardized tools. Language is ostensibly a tool, but to break the argument down to that level creates problems on both sides.
The idea here is that (technically), anyone can be instructed on how to write programs to perform certain functions, but an author of creative works is possessed of a less tangible talent that is not something anyone could have.