Copyright Issues in the Mainstream 307
dmayle writes "Recently, the Supreme Court of the U.S. ruled on a momentous topic, the Grokster case (as covered on Slashdot). It turns out, however, it's not just geeks who are taking notice, and we're not the only ones who think things are getting ridiculous. The Economist has a great story on the subject, noting among other things, that if the cost of publishing had come down with the internet, perhaps the amount of protection needed to encourage publishing is less as well." From the article: "Both the entertainment and technology industries have legitimate arguments. Media firms should be able to protect their copyrights. And without any copyright protection of digital content, they may be correct that new high quality content is likely to dry up (along with much of their business). Yet tech and electronics firms are also correct that holding back new technology, merely because it interferes with media firms' established business models, stifles innovation and is an unjustified restraint of commerce."
Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:5, Insightful)
The more support that independent artists get, the better, including OSS.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:2)
Not to mention that costs could be considerably lower if companies started joint ventures to develop open source engines for their games.
How many times are companies going to start from scratch creating FPS and RTS engines when they could just make the same engines evolve?
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:2)
While I agree for the most part, it should also be mentioned that as hardware technology and software techniques evolve, an existing game engine is likely to become increasingly stale and limited (not to mention bloated and buggy as support for new technologies is hacked in as an afterthought). Examples that come to mind include many console games such as the Dynasty Warriors series and most sports games.
Of course there are also exceptions, like the Unreal/UT engine that's been continually improved by Epic over the same amount of time that iD made at least 3 different engines (Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3).
As a result, I guess I'm neutral on this issue as the quality of both new engines and updates to existing ones seem to rely on the vision and capability of the group of people designing and maintaining a particular engine.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, special effects (especially CGI) are cheaper to buy than acting talent. Movie success is becoming increasingly dependent on star power, allowing the cast to command incredible salaries.
I think this has little bearing on the copyright debate though. Today, many people want to see Tom Cruise, and are willing to pay for it. A studio is thus justified in paying him US$20M to act in their movie. This is an investment they make -- they hope his name will attract move people to see the movie, thus increasing their profits. Now, the time frame for the studio to profit from this is actually quite short -- let's be conservative and say that it is no more than 30 years. After that, most people will only watch the movie for historical reasons, since there will be many newer releases with more current stars (e.g. Sean Connery).
What is my point? That, assuming 30 years is enough to make a profit (or not) from a movie, the motivation of the studio to make it (independently of how astronomical is the cost of productions) only depends on the returns during that period. Therefore, there is no need to give the studio a 95-year monopoly on reproduction of the movie. A copyright term of 14 years, renewable once [if the movie turned out to be good enough to make it worth their while] would be sufficient and will not reduce their innovation.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:2)
I can't wait till some actor in Hollywood lets a studio lease their likeness and put a CGI version in a live action movie or three. Some of the CGI characters are getting better and better (think Spiderman, LOTR, etc.).
Get famous, lease your likeness, retire & profit...
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:3, Interesting)
That is obviously true, but what about the mass psychology behind it? Why do people flock to/glom on to entertainment that feature big names? It's certainly usually not for the quality of the performances.
All those "celebrity magazines" in the checkout lines of supermarkets must exist for a reason, the question is whether they actually get bought (I've never seen anyone buying one) or if they're really just loss leader advertising for the star-making factory.
I was going to go see War of the Worlds this weekend with my son (having seen the other versions and listened to the radio play) but now I think I'll wait until it comes out on video. I'll save forty bucks and encourage him to download the broadcast [greatnorthernaudio.com] and rent the older movies rather than supporting Mapother's looney, media-pandering behaviour.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:3, Funny)
pipingguy...you're just...you're just being glib. You haven't studied mass psychology, I have. Just take a vitamin and exercise.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:2)
In a movie? Maybe a month ago. Today, most people are looking for Cruise in the tabloids to see what crazy-ass thing he'll do next. The Michael Jackson trial is over, sumer reruns are on TV, and the hoi polloi are bored.
Cost is in marketing (Score:2)
But producing lots of movies on a small budget is very risky and laborious for large media companies. They'd rather spend 80% of their annual budget on one or two blockbusters. Sure it's a much bigger gamble, but at least the marketing costs (and revenues on merchandise) can be estimated with some accuracy.
The crackdown on copyright infringers, the lame titles and scenarios, the ever boring superstar casts... are all due to the ultra large studios and their unimaginative cowardly management. And since noone there seems to know a way out, they've been consolidating for years instead of diversifying.
OK. I'm ranting so I'll stop.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:2, Insightful)
That's somehow our fault and we should be punished for it? It is *not* the public's burden to have to support crazed, millionare actors; over-budget films with bad acting, no plot, and too many special effects; fad, cookie-cutter bands, that exhaust their appeal in two months, and expensive videos that may run for one week...
If the media companies want to waste their money on that, fine, but don't expect us to wait out 90+ years (when everyone who saw the movie when it was made) is dead.
Perhaps if movie companies had to make sure that they recouped all their lost money in less than 10 years they would stop paying artists the exorbidant salaries they do, would stop rushing out unfinished and questionable material, and would stop wasting their money on talentless people just because their boob job is top-notch.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:3, Insightful)
But here's the fucked up part, a movie is considered a failure if it doesn't recoup its cost in the first few weeks. Add DVD sales and a movie is going to make 90% of the money they can hope to wring out of it in 2 years max. And I would suspect thats a long estimate.
So why the hell do they need 90 years to sit on these thing!!!
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:2)
Re:Cost of crap or cost of delayed crap. (Score:2)
That's not the point at all, but thanks for the troll anyway... The point is that if something is crap there is no way for the media companies to make their losses back in any time frame. Thus, it's a loss... They are only keeping it locked up for 90+ years to keep the public from making a possible profit. Wah, we didn't win, neither can you...
Now the GOOD STUFF you may not want to wait, but that's not the basis for your argument.
It shouldn't be dependent on the success or failure. It should be a reasonable and fixed time limit.
Re:Cost of publishing or cost of creation (Score:2)
Talking about music. While an idie artist can put thier music out for free and make money off of touring and contract work, record labels on the other hand only own the recording. For them, giving away free music is giving away thier product.
It's not just movies and dollars, it's lives here (Score:2, Interesting)
I am a lifelong computer programmer and open source author. I have contributed to the Linux kernel. I have also worked at Microsoft for a few months. You can see some of the software I am now writing at
http://complearn.org [complearn.org] which allows you to do advanced data-mining for free.
I am writing this now to address what I consider to be a very serious matter. It is relevant to the moral basis upon which Intellectual Property is founded. As a scientist and programmer, I am a very technical person and tend to get very involved in my own health decisions. It happens that I was born prematurely in 1974, and received a blood transfusion from my mother who was infected with Hepatitis C (HCV). For those that are not aware, this causes a lifelong degenerative liver disease. Both of my parents have already died young due to its effects, and I am HCV+ as well and have been slowly suffering liver degeneration my entire life as a result.
This concerns IP because some years ago I did some research online about my possible treatment options. In the year 2000 the possibilities were "old, normal" interferon or pegylated interferon, taken in both cases in combination with ribavirin. These are chemotherapeutic type drugs, with very harsh side effects, and you must take them for a year in order to have a decent chance of curing yourself of HCV+. The problem is, with my genotype, 1b, the chances of success using the old medicine were only about 30%. The new medicine had about a 60% chance. But the FDA did not approve the new medicine until years after Europe did, for reasons which are not entirely clear, given the solid research findings in its favor. So I flew to Europe, got the new pegylated medicines for about twenty-five thousand dollars of my own carefully saved money, and flew back to USA.
I spent about 3 months treating myself with this medicine that was not yet approved in USA and then checked my viral counts to find great news: I had lowered my viral count to undetectable levels, suggesting that if I just continued with the yearlong course of treatment, I would probably be permanently cured. What great news!
Imagine my dismay, then, when I received a note from the customs office saying they had blocked shipment of the second half of my pegylated interferon + ribavirin. The reason, apparently, was that there was a patent or IP law problem restricting the European branch of the pharmaceutical industry from selling these drugs to Americans, even if I bought them in Europe with my own money for personal use. I figured it would not be a big deal -- I would just explain to the customs officers that this was a life-threatening illness, and they would help me find some way to appeal the block before it was too late.
The big problem is that if you skip your medicine for more than a week or two before the full year, you may as well stop entirely because the virus will almost certainly come back in full force.
So, having explained this to the customs official over the phone, I was shocked to find that it seemed there were no provisions in place to handle the case where an IP restriction is in direct conflict with human life. My life. I am still HCV positive now.
Its now several years later. My parents have since died and my liver has gotten worse. I would enjoy being around to continue to contribute for free (because I love programming) and would enjoy talking more with all of you about many things. But this will not be possible unless we reframe the IP debate in terms of human-centric goals. It should not be the case that a creative scientist and programmer with a lifelong history of giving away his technological creations for free would be denied the resources he needs to satisfy one of the simplest and most basic human needs -- to have his illness treated in the most effective way possible -- because of a mere Intellectual Property dispute. It should not be
Re:It's not just movies and dollars, it's lives he (Score:2)
Unfortunately, your story may not even be noticed by the moderators and could get lost in the noise.
Consider submitting to Slashdot. Maybe, even Kuro5hin.
Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I find that high quality content and ideas are harder to "rip" and replicate. Maybe not the best example, but Slashdot's code and ideas are out in the open, yet there aren't many competing sites for the same audience. The problem, to some extent extent, thus perhaps lies with the quality of content.
Re:Well... (Score:2)
interestingly enough, the reason television is beset with reality shows is because less of the desirable demographic is watching television. thus ad rates are lower, so cheaper programming is necessary to support the business model.
Slashdot is free (at least I've never paid for it); there is no reason to seek out an alternative. A movie costs X, so if someone can get me that same movie (same quality, same content) for free, that is an attractive alternative.
The old adage is true. You get what you pay for.
I freelance in the film industry. I can tell you that, for example, the LOTR franchise is bought to you by the good folks at New Line due in part to movies like the austin powers series, or the Blade series, or the Rush Hour series. Many would argue that these films suck, but New Line generated the cash for LOTR by using the formula (high concept/low to moderate budget) and by having good credit with banking institutions. That is the Hollywood film business model. That's how LOTR gets funded, because LOTR obliterates that model and would never get done otherwise. Interestingly enough, everyone laughed at New Line and predicted their end when they announced that they were giving a hack horror director 300 million to direct 3 fantasy movies at once.
Higher quality ideas are not harder to rip or replicate. They can burn to DVD just fine. And that definitely has an effect on the amount of material released which reduces total revenue. Less revenue means less to spend on quality projects.
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Status Quo (Score:3, Informative)
I'm afraid that we will eventually have to push for a constitutional ammendment to fix this copyright issue -- there is simply too much inertia for the law to catch up with reality. Who knows how long this will take? If you thought the "war on drugs" was fun, just wait until we do about 40 years of the "war on pirates"
See "SarBox And The World of Tommorrow" before it hits the theatres! [whattofix.com]
Re:Status Quo (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm, I don't know; they've been around for at least 30 years, but I always thought Status Quo's longevity was down to their catchy three chord tune structure and energetic live performance. While I'm in no way a fan, I'm not sure we need to push for laws against them.
Re:Status Quo (Score:2)
Re:Status Quo (Score:3, Interesting)
The Economist (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Economist (Score:3, Insightful)
Insightful article (Score:5, Interesting)
This is perfectly in line with what i've heard from copyright experts and people who _used_ to work for copyright protection groups/organizations.
Re:Insightful article (Score:2)
- Software should not be a patent. It should be Copyrighted. (same for business processes, and the biggie: chemical manuf. process; which may actually happen in our post-peak-oil era in the next few decades.
- The Constitution also says "to promote the useful arts and sciences"; I would like to see IP law include some kind of test, to PROVE that the grant of a copyright or patent will actually promote new IP to be created (to discourage the kinds of patents and copyrights that instead, block or chill innovation). The idea should also be "useful". (this means that 99% of pop music would be functionally UnCopyrightable.
Re:Insightful article (Score:2)
meaning that you still wouldn't be able to make derivitive works that contained said mouse even if the copyright on steamboat willy were to expire.
Re:Insightful article (Score:2)
Re:Insightful article (Score:2)
Thus, when the copyright on Steamboat Willy expires, people will be able to create derivative works based upon it, using the Mickey Mouse character. It is possible that this will result in the loss of some of Disney's trademark rights, but that's necessary. The same situation is often seen in the patent field, where trademarks might be lost upon the end of the patent term.
New Era? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exchanging goods for money is an old and well trusted system. It has worked well for centuries because those doing the selling were generally the only ones who could comfortably produce the product.
However, we are now entering The Information Age. Many businesses no longer sell goods, or services, but rather sets of instructions, plans and ideas. As these are not tangible objects, they are easily reproduced.
Previously it was possible to bind these ideas to tangible objects, thus making them harder to reproduce. Recipes were printed in books. Music was pressed into vinyl. Because of this, businesses could stick to the age old business model, but now that the consumer can also easily reproduce products, cracks are forming in this model.
All well and good, but what's the solution? How can businesses make money on the ideas/information/programs they produced initially? At the moment there seems to be a knee-jerk legal response, but this doesn't seem to me to be a viable solution in the long term (but I am not an economist). One alternative could be to scrap the "sell multiple, low-cost copies" model and go with a "Sell one, high cost copy which will cover expenses and profit". For example, 20th Century Fox makes a new movie costing $100,000,000. They release it to the public for free (and Free) and keep track of how many copies are in circulation. Depending on how popular it is, they are then paid $5,00,000,000, or what ever, by a central organisation. The consumers have to pay this organisation a set amount each year to cover their costs, but are then free to do whatever they want with the movie/music/software.
Will people be happy being forced to fork out a few grand a year for products? They fork it out already voluntarily.
Do people get a say in what's produced? How do we insure the producer is producing a quality product? Through market research and strict auditing of the producers.
A crazy, poorly formed idea, but one which does eliminate the problem sellers we are now facing.
Re:New Era? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:New Era? (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's not all. The consumer of {movies,music,software} will perceive it as free. As a consequence they'll consume more of it than they would if they had to pay for it. This will lead to escalating costs for everyone. [invisibleheart.com]
I think it will create many times more problems than the single problem it might solve.Re:New Era? (Score:2)
Anytime you add a central authority into a system with diverse individual authorities, you exponentiate its inefficiency. You also open the door for corruption, and give people the incentive to try and circumvent the process, both of which add yet more ineffeciency.
just a bad idea.
Re:New Era? (Score:2)
Perhaps I'm missing something. If so, please expound. But to me it looks like this will cause many more problems than it solves.
$.02
Re:New Era? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you even hearing yourself? A central organization (sorry, I'm not a Brit, so I spell it with a "z") with the authority to handle purse strings, and with the authority to collect that money from someplace (taxes? from whom? do all people consume all entertainment in equal measure?) is called The Government. The crazy notion that there is some fixed-size pie out of which all entertainment funds would be paid to creators misses the entire point of creating something new in the first place. Without the prospect of being the person that brings some huge, wildly popular new creation to the audience, all you're talking about is just creating an army of mediocre pie-slice-takers.
Will people be happy being forced to fork out a few grand a year for products? They fork it out already voluntarily
But they fork it out according to their tastes and willingness to spend. "People" do not all spend the same on their entertainment. Not even counting the people who cheat and pay nothing, there are people who will actually go to the theatre and see the same movie more than once, or that actually buy DVDs for their kids... but then there are people who never go to the cinema, and have no kids. The difference in media consumption could vary by thousands upon thousands of dollars.
Do people get a say in what's produced?
They do already. If something is truly terrible, people won't pay for it. If someone has a reputation for continually producing terrible work, no one will risk investment to pay them to produce more. Or, if they do, that's their business.
How do we insure the producer is producing a quality product?
Why do we care? And, "quality" by what standard? That's the whole point. Some parts of population have a completely different sense of what "quality" is. For example, I just don't get Bollywood films. They aren't compelling to me in any way. Likewise, there are people who consider Merchant Ivory films so glacial as to be anesthetic. So, why introduce some ridiculous bureaucracy to weigh in on it? The audiences, critics, reviewers, bloggers, and word-of-mouth friends are vastly more efficient at moderating the quality and helping you decide when to spend money on entertainment.
strict auditing of the producers
Auditing by... the governemt? Auditing by some elitist guild? How about just stick with auditing by the audience? Why make everything more complex, add a compulsary component (essentially, if you don't pay your entertainment taxes, you go to jail?) and an entire additional layer of non-creative people who do not have a personal vested interest in seeing a particular film, for example, make it to the audiences...
but one which does eliminate the problem sellers we are now facing
Problem sellers? The problem is the non-buyers. If the people that claim they respect the artists actually did respect them by doing business with them in the way the artists have asked, we'd have no problem at all. Artists that go through big studios/companies have one approach, artists who use oddball indy-methods have another approach... no, the only problem here is that some people simply don't want to pay for entertainment, and know that, for now, they have a fairly good chance of not getting caught with their ripped copy of some DVD.
Regardless, I'd rather have the dull roar of back-and-forth lawsuits over pirating than have the government collect money from me, on pain of jail time, and then decide by committee which artists should get paid out of that year's creative pie fund. No thank you. I think watching the Cultural Revolution in China handle it that way was enough of a lesson for everyone, don't you?
Re:New Era? (Score:2)
90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporation (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly! In this day and age, most media that is published is *long* forgotten after only a few months. The only reason the conglomorates want this 90+ year protection is so that they can gaurantee that every single person alive when the piece of material was produced will be dead before it can be used somewhere else.
That isn't protecting distribution to make back profit, that's protecting big business to control every facet of their holdings while fucking the public out of what should have been rightfully theirs.
It's really sad that the lawmakers and interpreters are either ignoring this important fact (or color blind -- green).
Eight years is too much, nevermind 28 or 90+!
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2, Insightful)
1. In an example of 'artists' who make a living on their creative assets, the old copyright standard allowed them to make on a temporary monopoly until that artist could create another piece of work to then copyright and derive income from.
Now, however, we have more people making a living off of infringment lawsuits than the money made from the copyrighted work in question. That's just sad on so many levels.
2. In the case of technology: 5 computers per license isn't that great when there are a growing number of people with a desktop computer, laptop and consistently upgrade. Do I have to spend another several thousand dollars to re(place | new) all my DRM'ed content after I get another 2 computers a few years down the road?
I think a lot of lawmakers are trying to enforce one standard that should work for all mediums of content, and there just seems to be too much difference between digital content and physical to blanket over everything conviently.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
There are plenty of artists here... I did say it to their face now and I have said it many times before.
I dare you to tell the holiday cheerleaders that they can't sing Jingle Bells, go to see holiday plays and concerts, or enjoy any of the other various rights they enjoy because copyright law did not extend into infinity.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
Obviously I was not clear or you don't understand the underlying issue... What I'm talking about are the rights that were taken away when copyright laws were extended to 90+ years.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:3, Insightful)
If they release it into the world, the whole thing changes. It starts influencing things, people build around it, teach it to their kids. It becomes our thing, rather than their thing. So it is only fitting that they lose the right to control it after a suitable time.
If all ideas belonged forever to their originator, it would be a pathetic world. Can you imagine science where you'd have to license every idea you built on in order to publish your own work? Music where every instrument, every note, every muscial style was copyrighted to death, and completely unavailable? Literature where all plots are copyrighted? Can you imagine computer science where, in order to write code, you have to first buy a license to use a programming language?
That's what you're advocating. That's apparently what you want, so you can horde the tiny part of the world that you originated, which is based entirely on the works of everyone who went before.
Just be glad they didn't feel the same way.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
We are speaking about classical works where the author is long dead. Works from 1920'ies, where people cannot create derivatives without fear of being sued. This is stifling innovation.
How about Mickey Mouse ? It should belong to the public now; Walt Disney and his inheritors has already reaped the benefits, but now this popular culture icon is not still available to the public. Walt Disney won't create any more, since he is dead, and other young talented artists, some of whom might have the passion to create new Mickey Mouse drawings - they are prohibited from doing so.
Should our history of culture belong to a few families ? Why shouldn't Disney's creations be treated the same as Shakespeare's ? The public should have the same rights.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
Yes I do. Do you believe that all of your assets should be given away once you die, leaving nothing for your family?
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
His family gets the money earned from the works.
If the due time (14+14 years, as originally was) has not expired, the family continues to get that income.
I am saying that using 'artistic control', and 'creative control', 'artists moral right to define how derivative works should be created' as arguments for copyright is simply illogical if the author is not anymore.
I am saying that using 'artists need to eat, too, if we want to benefit from their creativity' is valid for the 14+14 year copyright, but that argument is void when even the author's children are dead of old age.
I am saying that using 'artists need incentive to create future works' is valid for the 14+14 year copyright, but that argument is completely baseless when speaking about copyright where the artist is already dead.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
Music is not created in a vacuum. Musicians build on a vast heritage, from the inventors of musical instruments and the musical theory behind them, to the inventors of the electronics they use, to all of the music created before them that they've listened to throughout their lives, even perhaps to a snippet of code that maybe I wrote at some point in my life that is part of their mixing software, who knows. Certainly there is an important sense in which they are creative, and they deserve to be compensated for it, but in the big picture perhaps they are adding 1%, if that, on top of all the elements that ultimately make up what you hear.
One can make analogous arguments for authors, artist, photographers, etc. An author only needs a pencil and paper, you say? Deny the author language, education, and all the books he or she has read throughout his or her life and see what happens.
While "rightfully theirs" is perhaps a bit strong, it is all to easy to overlook the heritage and infrastucture that enables them to do what they do, not just technically, but as an integral and usually unacknowledged part of their creation.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
I'm an artist and I agree with that statement.
Let's get this straight... you have no rights to somebody else's work
Yes you do. There's no right to compel them to create it, and no right to compel them to release it. However, there is a natural right to use it, copy it, etc. once access has been provided in some fashion.
Copyright is a temporary check on that inherent right, but it is artifical, granted by the public, and basically part of a quid pro quo intended to serve the public interest.
You don't understand copyright, as evidenced by another of your statements:
OK, so if you die and leave a car to your family, then the public gets to use it after x amount of time, right?
The thing you're missing is again, that authors don't inherently get copyrights. Copyrights are granted by government, in service to the public. And what they grant is only temporary.
So if you rent a house for a year, and die during the rental period, your heirs can enjoy the house just like you did. But only until the end of the year.
A copyright is a temporary monopoly. When it runs out, it runs out. Ultimately it is there to benefit the public, and ultimately the public gets to decide how long it will last, whether it will exist at all, and so forth.
You seem to ascribe too much importance to the author.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:2)
i believe what disney is doing is simply trying to get added insurance by making sure copyrights never expire.
Re:90+ years? We're all dead, except the corporati (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, if the copyright runs out, Disney will lose some of its trademark rights.
This is because a trademark has to indicate that a product must ultimately derive from only a single source. Also, the trademark must be something other than what the good or service it identifies is. That is to say, you could not trademark the word 'Apple' for the fruit of the same name. And note that trademarks are a different sort of animal than copyrights; they deal with different rights and subject matter.
When the relevent copyright expires, Mickey Mouse enters the public domain, and anyone can create works using him. This means that the character is generic, and that there is no longer only one source. Thus the trademark cannot survive, at least with regards to books, films, etc.
It could subsist elsewhere -- there's Peter Pan peanut butter, and Peter Pan bus services, but you can't trademark the character as to creative works.
This is more evident in the patent field (see e.g. the Shredded Wheat case) but is true no matter what. Disney is well aware of this.
Fight! Fight! Fight! (Score:2, Funny)
congress .. ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
This could happen if the public became suddenly sensitive to this issue, but since the same media companies are also controlling majority of information channels (i.e. TV, news media sites), such awareness will not appear any time soon.
So buckle up and get ready to be taken for a ride by the "content gods": they'll tell you what to watch and how much to pay for it.
Re:congress .. ha! (Score:2)
Wrong Venue (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, Congress is a cesspool of corruption; and yes, Congress gets more time in bed with the entertainment industry in a year than any of us will have with our wives in our entire lifetime. But Congress is the place to fix this, not only because it's the appropriate place but also because Congress is more attune to what people want and more able to make policy decisions. After all, the Supreme Court refers to Congress and the Executive as "the popular branches" for a reason.
Do some research, determine what changes need to be made, and push them through Congress. If it's a good enough idea, then enough people will subscribe to it to convince their legislators to fix the problem. But don't bitch at the Supreme Court for telling you not to break the law. And if you want to make a point about it by breaking the law as a form of civil disobedience, remember (unlike so many current-day protesters) that the hallmark of civil disobedience is being arrested and charged with a crime.
Re:Wrong Venue (Score:2)
Sadly, it's not a criminal offense! These are civil court rulings and the "damages" are inflated beyond belief because the media conglomorates have the money, lawyers, and lawmakers on their side.
Civil disobedience cannot win in the traditional sense here (i.e. being arrested and charged) as we just don't have the money, power, or government on our side. Civil disobedience in the contemporary sense has already begun to win... We have made the media conglomorates clamor to get their wares out on the Internet in a downloadable format, their DVDs out on the shelves within a few months of release in the theatre for a reasonable price, and we have gotten the attention of the masses to continue to do what they have been doing to push for more.
Sadly, I doubt the masses understand that what they did is a good thing. They are always happy with the bare minimum. Ooooh, iTunes! I'm good. No! We need to continue to push them to stop slowly eroding our fair-use rights while giving us the glitz and glamour of this and that Media Store on the web...
Re:Wrong Venue (Score:2)
As to iTunes Music Store and fair use, I really think that it's pretty darn good. I bought a song from there at long last to try it all out, and I can use that song on 5 computers, any number of iPods, and any number of burned CDs that I want. "Fair use" is not a license to do whatever you want with someone else's copyrighted material - it's a license to do what it says - make fair use of material that you've licensed from the copyright holder. I think Apple has accomplished that.
Re:Wrong Venue (Score:2)
You will *not* be able to stand up against the finanacial backing of the conglomorates. You *will* lose to them because they have nothing but time on their side. You *cannot* outlast the longevitiy of an "individual" that cannot die in the traditional sense.
Their money is limitless and so is their lifespan.
Re:Wrong Venue (Score:2)
Re:Wrong Venue (Score:2)
It only became fair use BECAUSE of the Sony v Universal decision. Prior to that it was NOT fair use.
"If Sony's advertisements had said "With Betamax, you can record movies and send copies to thousands of people for free!""
You're arguing quantity. The standard is NOT quantity. The standard is now intent. Have you been listening at all?
Re:Wrong Venue (Score:2)
time-shifting. They argued (successfully) that recording for
time-shifting was covered under fair use. They did not promote taking
recordings and distributing them.
Grokster on the other hand was promoting sharing with others (unlicensed
redistribution), which is not covered under fair use.
What copyright holders don't realize (Score:2)
Actually, what's closer to the truth is that they do realize it and they are going to do everything in their power to milk the old structure and institutions for every dollar they can.
The aspect that really grates for me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, I quite like the idea of sharing mp3s and downloading TV shows, but I realise that the arguments against doing that do have at least some merit. What does annoy me is that it's impossible to get access to a lot of media.
The market for classic video games is small-to non-existant. Occasionally these are relicenced, but mostly people are not making money from these games. The TV Pilot "Global Frequency" would not have been seen by anyone except people downloaded it. This caused complaints from WB. Not for any good reason. They weren't losing any money from it because there was no way to buy a copy, but The WB want to hoard their IP.
Society does better from these when people are breaching copyright. It's better that a show is watched than a show is buried in a vault, but copyright hasn't caught up with this possibility.
It is the duration that hurts (Score:2, Insightful)
Long copyrights protect artists from having to compete with old public domain works. Copyright lasts so long that only very old work is in the public domain. Old stuff gets "retired" by the copyright holders, neither for sale nor in the public domain.
That is against the public interest. If artists can produce work that is better or more up to date than good, old work, then a short term of copyright provides a business model and funding. If an artist's work cannot compete with the good, old stuff, because lacks enduring merit and also lacks shiny newness it does the general public great harm to force it onto them by retiring the good, old stuff.
This Whole Struggle... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly like the music/movie industry's stance on electronic distribution. For the longest time, they've been opposed to the technology because they felt that it would be detrimental to them (ie. having to fuck the fat balding guy). Then they agreed to let it happen here and there as long as they didn't really have to participate in things that were beyond their control (ie. agreeing to go to the parties, but not really get involved. Retaining control.). The only step the MPAA and RIAA need to take now, is to find out that if they allow some of their music to be released using non DRMed MP3 and other format files on normal P2P networks (eDonkey, Gnutella, etc...) that their sales might go up when people want the rest of the album (ie. finding the one or two cute guys with big scholongs that your wife actually enjoys spending a little time with, but still eschewing the fat balding guys). It'll happen sooner or later or my name isn't secretly Trolling4Dollars!
Re:This Whole Struggle... (Score:2)
backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Justice Breyer, back before he was on the Supreme Court, wrote an interesting article [wikipedia.org] on this, arguing that publishing costs were high enough that we might not need copyright. This was before technology drove publishing costs way down.
There seem to be a lot of people who think "copyright was fine when it was a pain for me to copy stuff, but now that it's easy to copy stuff, we should get rid of copyright". They seem to think that the purpose of copyright law was to tell people they couldn't do what they weren't going to do anyway.
Re:backwards (Score:2, Insightful)
There seem to be a lot of people who think "copyright was fine when it was a pain for me to copy stuff, but now that it's easy to copy stuff, we should get rid of copyright". They seem to think that the purpose of copyright law was to tell people they couldn't do what they weren't going to do anyway.
This assumes that the sole purpose of copyright is to protect the author or their content; if so, it's a valid point. But falling distribution costs also mean that it's cheaper to acheive the same level of creation we had previously. Cheaper production means faster return on your initial 'investment', thus a shorter copyright period is required to secure that return [in the general case].
It's really an issue of whether you believe that technology will increase the ease with which material is 'pirated', or will decrease the cost of production. In reality both will occur, but it's unfair to assert that technology is so beneficial to the 'pirates', yet does nothing for the creators.
Even if you could argue that the level piracy is outstripping the dropping price of creation, there's still the question of whether it serves society as a whole to fund more and more creation. As our resources increase, our standard of living goes up, population increases, people have more free time to pursue the arts as a hobby, etc., you could argue that there is less and less need for paid production of creative material. This doesn't apply as much to the big-dollar Hollywood movies, but those will continue to earn money through box-office sales for a long time anyway.
Re:backwards (Score:3, Interesting)
However, try to consider it from another perspective: The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to publish creative work. The means to provide that incentive is protecting that work from being copied for a limited time. From this perspective, the argument falls apart.
When publishing costs are high, creators need a strong economic incentive to overcome the costs risks to publish their work. The protections also need to be strong as the negative impact of each copy is greater. When publishing costs are low, the incentive necessary to convince a creator to publish is less. There is less risk involved in publishing, and less protections are necessary to ensure the creator profits from publishing.
It all comes down to these two incompatible perspectives on the purpose of copyright. Are creative works to be considered individual property, or are creative works to be considered a public good?
Unfortunately, even this distinction becomes muddled when you consider potential economic impact. Public good can be interpreted from an entirely economic perspective. This may, depending on the medium, argue for treating creative work as property. I would personally argue that the public good for creative work should consider only creative work itself, where future creators are free to build upon the work of previous generations. I also happen to believe it is incorrect to assume that guaranteeing greater and longer-term profit to our corporate masters through copyright is actually an economic improvement. Concentration of wealth is not in the public interest.
The trouble with copyright, and a possible solutio (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Artists create in a vacuum. The act of creation is a mystical experience above ordinary humans.
2) Without long copyrights, there would be no incentives for creators to create, leaving us with a dull and lifeless society.
One is at the heart of a lot of publishing group propaganda. Of course, all of us create art. Most of it isn't very good, but we all create, from doodles, to humming, to solid prose and moving music. We are often spurred to create by other art. Art influences art. This doesn't mean just immitations, but also reactions, remixes, rebuttals.
Two is in the head of a lot of artists. At some level, I can't blame them. No one wants their hard work exploited. But I will point out that art was created before copyright legislation. The need to create and share went before the profit. Also, copyright and extensions to copyright have ever been pushed by the publishers, from the Statute of Anne onward. The idea is very mercantilist -- provide a monopoly to encourage production. It isn't terribly modern.
There are modern ways to approach the problem of compensating artists. I think the current roadblock is the publishing industry. They say they serve to both reward good creators and silence bad ones, so as to not choke up the public mide with poor ideas. People are perfectly capable of culling what they like from what they don't, and can use social networking to filter out content they don't want. The internet has made this a solvable problem. As for compensating artists, there are ideas like the Street Busker Protocol, where instead of a publisher, an escrow keeps things honest.
The link I used to have has died, so here's a brief run-down:
For the purpose of this, our artists is a writer, and she has just written a novel. She encrypts the novel and sends it to an escrow. She works out that she wants $200,000 dollars to release the key to the novel so that it can be read. The escrow will take a small cut and will solicit buyers for a set period of time, say 60 days. The writer sets about promoting her new work. She can release teaser chapters, related short stories, go on late night TV, whatever. Meanwhile, the public can offer up contributions online to get the key. The escrow holds all of the money. If, at the end of 60 days, the novel hasn't attracted 200k in contributions, the contributions are returned, and the writer must start again. If the goal is met, the writer is paid as soon as she releases the key.
Re:The trouble with copyright, and a possible solu (Score:4, Insightful)
Artists have been creating art, sculpture and music several hundred years before copyright even existed, let alone before long (90-year) copyrights existed. There will still be art and music when copyrights cease to exist. You may have noticed that video did not in fact kill the radio star.
This metality strikes me as a sort of temporal cultural-centrism: "without the system we have now, there would not be the things we have now."
There are non-monopoly systems of distribution which provide material benefit to creators of art. Direct or indirect patronage systems, for example. My point is not to endorse these here, but rather to remind everyone that there are "other ways to run the railroad," i.e. - copyrights are not the only (or even best way) to provide art and music.
Re:The trouble with copyright, and a possible solu (Score:2, Interesting)
The simple fact is that few will pay and many will share, and the author/artist will likely not see a return on it.
Thus they'll stop, because they have to eat. And you can eat words, but they won't provide nourishment.
Re:The trouble with copyright, and a possible solu (Score:3, Interesting)
Certainly a few people at the top of each of their professions have made millions or billions of dollars (i.e. Bill Gates) from strong copyright, but I would argue that the rank and file artist who is trying to be creative and pay the mortgage on their house is generally losing their shirt based on the current system.
Authors have it quite rough, but there are now several alternatives to placing the written word whereever they want to. Earning money from writing is a bit tougher, but it can be done.
Musicians are generally the worst off with the current system. Record lables tend to take just about everything that is made off of a record, and most musicians would be lucky to get a few cents from every CD sold. Quite litterally, if they instead bought their own computer with a CD-R burner and made their own CDs, most new musicians would be money ahead after the first dozen CD sales. I've seen regional bands that do exactly that sort of self-publishing because they don't trust the major labels. Those bands are also much more approachable on a fan level.
As a computer programmer, I certainly hope most of my software doesn't survive the life + 75 current copyright regime. Heck, software I wrote 10 years ago I'm not getting a single penny off of anyway, and neither is the company that I wrote it for. I fail to see the financial incentive for either myself or any company that will employ me to even preserve that copyright rule, and if it went to 14 years it would still be worth while for me to write computer software. It would also mean I could hack an Atari 2600 emulator together and have some fun with some old games that the publishers addresses aren't even known.
Yeah, right... (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm sure Congress is going to get right on that. No doubt they'll reverse their current trend of supporting big business because of this article.
Copyright terms and vicious cycles (Score:2)
For a given term length, a creator can anticipate how much revenue he is likely to earn before his copyright expires. This dictates the amount of investment he can afford to put into his work. If the term is long enough to allow him large profits, he gains wealth and influence to have the term extended. Longer terms lead to larger investments in future works, greater profits, more influence, and still longer terms. The effect is bigger and bigger budgets for works.
Conversely, if the length of the term is too low, investment in works will be low, and fewer works will be created, especially those that would require large budgets. Copyright terms stay low, or even decrease due to lack of lobbying powers.
Copyright law should aim to hit the "sweet-spot" where things stay stable. Of course, this is impossible: minor variations in the economics of production will push the pendulum to one extreme or another. Decreasing publication costs, for example, would increase profits and start the vicious cycle.
Of course, all of this assumes a very money-driven view of whether and how works are created, i.e. that works are created primarily to make money. If investment in a work is not tied to its potential monetary returns (that stem directly from a copyright monopoly), we'd still see works being created. I think Open Source is a good example of this phenomenon. Some people do it for the love; large companies do it to demonstrate expertise and cultivate service contracts.
In short, wherever the economic model allows decent profits in the absence of a government-enforced monopoly, copyright and similar monopolies should be heavily restricted. This seems to be the case for software and other intangibles. However, when the only method to recoup investments is through monopoly (and this claim should be heavily contested), copyright and patents, etc. are a bit more reasonable. Perhaps pharmaceuticals would fall into this category (at least today).
Copyright protection (Score:4, Interesting)
Copyrights don't need to be actively "protected". Protection means preventing destruction, so this is clearly a propaganda word.
Reasonable people... (Score:2)
It's nice to hear a reasonable, sane, viewpoint on copyrights. So much of the discussion we've heard on this subject takes place in the shrill whine of the zealot or the menacing growl of the mercenary. To me, it seems obvious that the author of a product deserves some compensation, even if only to cover his expenses and the cost of living while producing his work. Those who suggest that 'copying' takes nothing from the author assert they have a right to do what they will with the material. Doesn't the author also have this right, including charging for access and providing the material in a protected format if he wishes? Just as there would be no need for school zones if a few people were not stupid enough to go speeding through the streets surrounding schools, there would be no need for copyright laws if a few people were not dishonorable enough to copy other people's work without permission. The "pirates" forced the creation of DRM, not the other way around.
That said, as the article so aptly states, the copyright system has been broken both by new technologies and the rampant coporate greed that has perverted so many things in our society. One solution may lie in the process wherein the author assigns the copyrights to his work to a third party. Perhaps the time covered by the copyright could be reduced. For instance, the original author may be covered for 14 years, with the possibility for one extension, while any second party assignee would receive a copyright good for 7 years with no extensions. Maybe commercial use could modify the copyright - such as making a limited number of copies available by law to anyone who purchases the product. A rational evaluation and discussion would certainly create many good ideas along these lines.
billy - who says...you can copy this if ya wanna
And I expect this to happen... (Score:3, Insightful)
And I expect this to happen oh, about NEVER!
People here live and breath to do certain things. Would the phonograph have driven Mozart out of the composing business? Did the player piano end live performances?
Do you really think Hollywood is suddenly going to decide, "Oh my, the masses have discovered broadband Internet connections. Time to turn out the lights, sell this valuable real estate, and get a new profession."
Ain't going to happen. They'll adapt and they'll continue to prosper. All this you'll lose all the good programming if you don't give us everything we want is nothing more than scare tactics. Truth is, most of them really can't do anything else, and wouldn't want to if they could.
Business Model (Score:4, Insightful)
Over the past century the media publishers have continued to increase their profit for the same goods. Extension of the copyright life has served to increase this almost indefinitely. As long as there was not a vast web of computers connected via the internet this model works fine, however this medium of communcation does exist, and makes publication orders of magnitude cheaper than previous means.
The problem is the over-inflated profit margins of the 'legacy' publishing companies can not be supported in a free market where consumers are used to getting boundless resources for just a monthly access fee. Advances in technology allow musicians to record their own music just as well as the record labels (and actually many of the offerings from indie/free music are better than the vast majority of traditional record label offerings), allows writers to reach millions of potential readers, and software developers to distribute their own work without the overhead of packaging and promotion in traditional retail operations.
Extending copyrights, restricting file sharing to such an extent that it impinges on fair use, and holding the developers of software that supports it liable for damages is not the solution - it is only a short sighted bandaid to help companies maintain their profits at the detriment of invention and society in general. The real solution is for the traditional publishers to rethink their business model and accept the fact that profit margins will have to fall back to realistic levels, or they will lose customers.
Case in point: I no longer purchase traditional music CDs because of the inflated pricing and forced packaging. Instead I download indy/free music - which doesn't infringe on anyone's rights and is within the realm of what I believe is a reasonable price to pay (small or free - when compared to the major record label's prices).
Technology is ushering in a time when it is reasonable for individuals to make their own music, movies, and publish their own books. The middle-man in the sense of the large media distribution conglomerate is not needed, and most people are finding is not wanted. The more the conglomerates try to stem the tide of change through draconian means, the more people will search for alternatives that do not run afoul of the law and does not put more money into the inflated jaws of the media publishers. Publishing companies will either change their business model to play in this space, or perish due to the ill will they provoke in their (previous) customer base through insisting on pursuing an outdated business model.
The most interesting thing about all of this is how companies don't couch their lobbying for extensions to copyright and their efforts to 'stem the tide' as interrum measures. For all intents and purposes they are not attempting to change. This would be like radio companies lobbying congress to prevent televisions from being used to show programming in the 1930s - and all of us in 2005 sitting around a radio listening to the 'Slashdot' show. Time marches on, and breakthroughs in technology eventually become available to the public. Business has to be more flexible to deal with those inevitable changes when they come; this takes long term planning - which business is not good at (in an almost childish way; a child 'wants it now', and adult prioritizes, plans, and sets aside resources for the day when changes are needed to make the transition smooth). Instead the customer must deal with change - but the twist is the customers now have the tools to change and remove the middle man from the equation - which they will if businesses don't change their ways.
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
I support Freedom of Information:
1. If I produce an information pattern, it is my right whether to disclose it or not.
2. If I do disclose it, I should have NO right to stop its further dissemination.
So I'd still consider breaking in and taking the copy without permission wrong, but I find any further copyright over information absurd.
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:2)
You have a free-rider problem: if anybody can copy your stuff, then you can't make a living off of it. Let's say you spend $1M publishing 10 books and two of them are successful while eight lose money. I can come along, sell copies of the two successful ones and undercut your prices because I don't have to pay for either (1) the cost of creation or (2) the loss on the other eight books.
In that scenario, are you going to publish any books at all? You take all the risk, but gain very little of the reward.
Copyright has to exist if people are going to profit from their own work. The questions are really (1) how long? and (2) what exactly is protected?
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a false analogy -- here's a better one: say you make a horseshoe in your workshop. I then buy it from you. Is it now wrong for me to make my own horseshoes? These horseshoes I will make will not be taken from you -- they will be entirely my creation.
Now, society benefits from a supply of horseshoes, and you might not invent the horseshoe if, once you sold me one, I would never buy another from you. Therefore, society took an unusual step: by legal fiat, we will voluntarily give you a monopoly on your invention for a limited time, even though you can't force us to do it. Since it us doing it, we'll optimize the "limited time" to maximize the benefit to us -- long enough for you to make enough of a profit to justify spending time on creating new things, short enough so that we too can make a profit by making horseshoes. In fact, we realize that if we gave you a permanent monopoly you'll simply grow fat making horseshoes. On the other hand, but limiting the time of your current monopoly we hope you might decide to go back to the shop and invent something new (the crowbar?), so you can get a new monopoly.
Copyright law is based on the same principle, except now it's about ideas rather than physical invensions. Again, we need to strike a balance between allowing the authors to get a return on their investment of time and work, and between our desire to profit from their ideas by selling them as their are (reproduction) or reworking them in new ways (making derivative works).
And if the first horseshoe costs $100 million?.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely true! Yet I suspect that most of the ongoing illegal distribution of media on the internet would still violate any of proposed changes to rebalance copyright suggested in the Economist article. What percentage of P2P music and video is older than 14 years? Would those that illegally distribute first-run movies or games be willing to wait 14 years or any number of years to allow content creators to make enough money to pay for the cost of the first copy?
Street Performer Protocol (Score:3, Interesting)
For some products (medications, movies, games, music), the cost of the first copy is extremely large relative what any individual would be willing to pay.
Then don't publish the work until you have enough preorders [google.com]. To promote your product, publish freebies. Then amortize the cost of the first copy of the work across all preorders. Besides, you can make money on value-added, hard-to-copy attributes such as good paper in a good binding. Cory Doctorow has taken this approach with his works.
Would those that illegally distribute first-run movies or games be willing to wait 14 years or any number of years to allow content creators to make enough money to pay for the cost of the first copy?
If a work's copyright lasts 14 years, after which the work is available for others to create and publish derivatives [creativecommons.org], you'll see at least a few warez kiddies rejoining the light side [creativecommons.org], taking classic films and classic music and releasing their own reinterpretations on the net.
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright at 14 years would allow for ample opportunities for all artists and authors to get paid for their work, as most of commercial use of the work happens within those 14 years anyway. AND, it allows for other, new authors to create new creative derivative works without huge legal problems; it solves abandonware; it solves orphanware (allowing to reproduce an obscure song cannot get the author's permission because he is dead, but resolving the legal issues of ownership would cost countless thousands).
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:2)
Re:They've got to feed their families, too. (Score:2)
Why do people keep comparing "copyright infringement" with "thievery"?
um, no (Score:2, Informative)
Copyright was not meant to protect consumers. It was meant to protect the rights of the guy who wrote the material. It is to protect the right of the supplier.
Re:um, no (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright was also meant to protect the consumer, that is, from other less-inspired legislation that would turn it into some perpetual monopoly ala the crap that goes on in the country we broke away from. As copyright has been mutilated, it has protected the consumer even less. And don't let me get started on how badly it has fucked the historian....
Re:um, no (Score:5, Insightful)
No one has any natural right to any possession. Fundamentally, my property is defined by what I can either take and hide, or take and defend by any force I have available.
Government, via "social contract", creates and protects property rights and acts as the sanctioned force used to enforce those rights. The question then becomes, "what defines property, what defines fairness, and what limits and enpowers those rights?"
And that's why there's any argument at all. All the players in the intellectual property game have different and sometimes opposed ideas of roles, rights, and responsibilities. Fairness begins to boil down to "fair to who?", with the answer becoming "whoever can influence government to protect their interest best".
Explicitly, copyright was used to create and protect possession of the intellectual expression of a creator's ideas to allow those creators to profit for a short time by creating artificial scarcity and temporary monopoly. (Ideas and their expressed artifacts, uncaged, tend to flow around and multiply without regard to their creators' wishes to make a buck by them.) This was explicitly intended as incentive to publish, to share with culture the product of a creator's mind. The consumer's "right" to that creator's creation were deliberately circumscribed during the copyright time period. After that, the creation escapes into public domain.
Now, however, the rights of creators (or more specifically, the rights of those media corporate entities who co-opt the creators and wield their rights by proxy) have placed their profit rights well beyond the reasonable scope of incentive and, as you say, into the realm of perpetual monopoly, at the expense of the society which was intended as the primary beneficiary.
Sad, truly sad.
Social contract. (Score:2)
Seriously, the Berne convention only calls for a 50 year copyright minimum. I say, let's be slackers and return to the minimum.
Re:um, no (Score:3, Informative)
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Let me repeat that since people seem unable to grasp it so often:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...
Promoting the arts is the goal, protecting the rights is the mechanism!
Re:But.. (Score:3, Informative)
Imagine for a minute that some company creates a drug that can cure cancer, AIDS, and a number of other diseases that we can't cure today. The company could choose not to patent this cure in the hopes that no one would be able to discover how it works. If no one could ever figure it out, they could continue to charge whatever they wanted for it, and people would have no choice but to pay or to likely die from their illness.
However, the company can patent it and protect their rights to it for a certain amount of time. If it were 14 years, they would have the sole right to create or allow other people to create the drug. After those 14 years, anyone could freely create the drug. So initially, prices would be high, but after 14 years they would probably hit rock bottom when other companies can undercut the price and get in on the action.
Now which would you rather have, knowledge controled and exploited by the few for as long as it takes someone else to learn that knowledge, or a set amount of time for whoever made the discovery to profit from it before it becomes available for free to everyone.
A patent system allows a winning situation for everyone. Without one, many people wouldn't want to spend time researching a discovery if everyone else will be able to steal it and profit from their hard work. Essentially, the patent system allows for capitalism to work well, provided the patent system isn't screwed up horribly.
Re:But.. (Score:2, Insightful)
copyrights != patents