The Tyranny of Copyright? 410
Pinky3 writes "The Sunday New York Times Magazine has a long article entitled The Tyranny of Copyright? Views of both supporters of CopyLeft (Lessig and Zittrain) and Copyright (Ginsberg and Goldstein) are laid out. The article constrasts the cultural commons to the 'permission culture" and covers the unintended consequences of various US laws passed long ago." Dear NYT editors: "Copy Left" really shouldn't have a space in it. Thanks.
Please state the registration requirement in blurb (Score:2, Informative)
CopyLEFT says... (Score:4, Funny)
CopyRIGHT says: duh...We have strategerie ha ha ha
CopyLEFT says: You might think you know where the lockbox is, and maybe you do. Or maybe that's a dummy, or a decoy lockbox. Only me and Tipper and the Secretary of Defense will know for sure.
corrections (Score:4, Funny)
Re:corrections (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as Slashdot has kepts its errors rather internal, rather than damaging most of humanity, I'd say they can comment just fine.
Re:corrections (Score:2)
Most of humanity doesn't speak english...
Re:corrections (Score:2)
Re:Damage to English? (Score:2)
What's more, the imbecile who printed the error, then publicly defended it as being correct with misguided explanations as to why. An editor directly changed the English language for the worse.
Re:corrections (Score:2)
Were not NYT writers and editors the imbeciles responsible for irreparably damaging the English language by convincing millions of people that a comma was not needed before the and in a series?
No, that was the British, who invented the language and who tend to use a lot less punctuation than Americans do.
Re:corrections (Score:2)
copy left (Score:5, Funny)
This should be a new definition of irony... (Score:5, Funny)
"Dear NYT editors: 'Copy Left' really shouldn't have a space in it. Thanks."
"the Copy Left" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that it's accurate to lump everyone who's opposed to the current copyright schemes together as "leftists," which seems to be the implication. Indeed, one would think that a return to a 14 + 14 "founder's copyright" would be not so much radical as reactionary.
Re:"the Copy Left" (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, there's a right-anarchist argument that, unlike private property, copyright is nothing but a government-created monopoly. (Of course, there's also a left-anarchist argument that private property is a government-created monopoly too, but I'm not so sure -- territory is a pretty fundamental idea for a lot of species that don't have governments or copyright.)
I don't think the argument extends, though, to one of the other disparate bits of law that's lumped into the nonsense rubric of "intellectual property" -- trademark. A trademark, like a person's signature, isn't property so much as it is a kind of statement about the trademarked goods: "This luncheon meat was made by the Hormel company," "This document was signed by John Hancock." Falsely applying someone else's trademark to the goods you sell is like forging their signature on an IOU: it's not a property violation against the person whose sigil you forge, but rather a fraud against your customer, or whomever you're passing the IOU to.
(Yes, "right-anarchist" is another word for the American use of "libertarian", and "left-anarchist" for the European "libertarian socialist" or the American "anarchist".)
Re:"the Copy Left" (Score:5, Informative)
scripsit Frater 219:
Actually, the idea that private property is a government-created monopoly is not just an anarchist idea. Without taking a stand on whether it is a good thing or not, it is pretty clearly something that doesn't exist without state enforcement. It's important to distinguish ``property'' in the sense of ``my stuff'' from ``property'' in the sense of something that remains mine whether or not it's in my actual possession or use, and which I can have legal recourse to regain if I lose. The latter is what is provided by the state, not the former. (Many versions of socialist thought, BTW, make this distinction, too. Your house, your computer, your trousers are yours, it's just things like factories and farmland you don't farm yourself that you can't own.)
These ideas are also based on the idea that property is primarily land. In order to have claim to land that you're not actually using (for example, holding for speculation or renting to tenants), you have to have a state to enforce it -- or you have to have a private army in an anarchic situation. This is what Hobbes was referring to in his famous ``nasty, brutish, and short'' quote: without a state you would never get anything done, because you would have to waste all your effort employing violence to keep hold of your goods and land.
What you're calling ``left anarchists'' would hold that the state enforcement required to keep hold of property that is being rented by others (or simply in disuse) is oppressive. The idea is that if you're not actually using it, you don't really need it, and you're only using the state to squeeze wealth out of the people who really do need it.
Re:A serious question (Score:5, Interesting)
The taxes that you're talking about aren't related to ownership, they're translated to sales or profit/loss.
For instance, most people pay property taxes on a house or land they own.
Some states have car taxes. Others have luxury taxes.
If people really thought there was such a thing as "Intellectual Property", then it would have occured to somebody to tax it.
In fact, I can make a pitch that this tax would benefit society at large. Think of it:
1) IP that is generating revenue would have to be fairly valued
2) For IP that is not really worth anything (some old movie that isn't even available), the owner would have to either pay taxes on it, or release it to the public domain.
3) IP owners wouldn't be content to "sit" on something.
Like I said, I'm not advocating taxes, but if we're going to call a copyright, "Intellectual Property", I'm saying we should go all the way and really treat it like property. Taxes and all.
Re:"the Copy Left" (Score:2)
I would argue that a significant chunk of those in favour of the CopyLeft scheme have a tendency to be more Libertarian, than Left.
Of course, I am cynical enough to believe that either party would make bad copyright laws if you paid them enough. It just so happens that the Democrats are already in the MPAA/RIAA's poc
Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully this indicates that the media is starting to understand that there can be another way. Free software and truly open standards will never become widely adopted while the mainstream view is "how can anything with little or no copyright restrictions be any good?"
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why would you give away your work for free?"
She was completely dumbfounded. The problem is that the older generations still have the protestant work ethic. In our generation the protestant work ethic has died. People are willing to actually do some amount of work for the greater good of society. After we meet our needs by doing "real" work, we are willing to do things that are both productive and fun for the good of others. This has not happened often in history because usually leisure activities are not productive. The rise of geekdom has created the furst truly productive leisure activity, writing software. And since it doesn't cost anything to make, we give it away for free with little or no copyright. This new way of thinking completely dumbfounds anyone who is used to it the other way.
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:5, Insightful)
Ben Franklin refused a patent on the Franklin Stove, saying it was his civic responsibility to share.
Salk, when asked if he intended to patent the polio vaccine, said that would be "like patenting the sun."
Greed may drive innovation in some cases, but only when there are strong limitations on the duration of the patent/copyright. When you let the rules be set by the greedy like Disney and Microsoft, we get nothing but permanent proprietary lock-ins.
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:4, Interesting)
The costs of computer hardware and software are already absorbed, as they are neccessary for other portions of geek life, so it is essentially cost free.
And, this is what many current megacorps are scared of, because Open Source isn't the FIRST productive leisure activity.
I write for leisure. Many musicians play music for leisure. Lots of people write poetry in their leisure time. Some people do stand-up comedy for free.
The dark secret is, people enjoy entertaining people, and they even find that entertainment fun in its own right, even if the audience is lost. (In fact, jokes that go over the heads of the audience are often the best ones).
In the current society, much of entertainment is free to make. My word-processor and a site to host a story? Some instruments and a garage for a band? A napkin to jot poetry and internet distribution? The overhead is gone, and now all hell will break loose (but in a good way).
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:2)
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:3, Informative)
yes, foreword.
thanks.
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the production of intellectual property -- the idea of freely sharing ideas -- has been around for a long time. For example, 'Fine Woodworking' magazine, about as far away from software as you can get, has a space where readers write in a blurb about the clever ways that they've used to solve problems. There is some marginal compensation for the 'best' one in each issue, but people share their ideas -- their IP -- with others because there's a sense of community.
Productive leisure activity has been around for as long as knitting, sewing, painting and whittling.
In reality, part of the reason that many people give away the product of their work is because there is no reasonable way for them to make money off of it: Not only is there no inexpensive mechanism to charge, but there isn't even a good way to figure out how much to charge.
There are also non-monetary forms of payback. Law Reviews, for example, generally don't pay anything to the writers of their articles. But, the writers get prestiege in a specific community. People who contribute to free (as in speech) software also receive similar benefits.
Occasionally pragmatic business reasons for doing so exist, especially in the world of communications standards. For example, the IETF relies on 'loose consensus and running code' in the promulgation of internet standards. If you're a corporation trying to push a standard, you can help yourself by publishing a free version.
There are probably people producing software just out of the goodness of their hearts, with no desire for any other benefit to themselves. But, I don't think you can characterize the entire free software movement as being like that.
Even James Boyle, one of the 'Copy Left' people in the book, has said that he likes earning royalties from the publication of his works. (I happened to take a class from him in the fall.)
Re:Good to see this in the mainstream press (Score:2)
Even if they are doing this for self serving reasons (which I doubt, I think these problems are really starting to be more than "flukes" so they are worth reporting on in the
Public Apathy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Public Apathy (Score:2)
Compound that with the "new digital age" thinking that seems to be prevalent in congress, and we've got a problem. They all seem to think that America's best way to stay competitive is to create a lot of legal support for "Intellectual Property".
But, since it's the Disneys of the world that are in their ears, t
They are the best laws that money can buy. (Score:2)
And even when they are paid for, some companies are still usurping them to chill commentary or block competition. If you have any doubt of that, just look at actions of Lexmark, Mattel and Dibold.
Good choice of words (Score:5, Interesting)
Simon
I hereby,,, (Score:2, Funny)
If any Geekgirl wishes to gain access to my DNA, please send a picture and an essay on the effects of GPL and the software industry and what effects this will have on humanity in whole.
B with blue eyes can skip the essay.
Thank you.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVXXIVVIIIIVVIIIXIIIIIVIIVIII
Tyranny? (Score:2, Insightful)
In a vacuum? (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright protection encourages creation.
Lessig maintains that overbroad restrictions on preparing derivative works discourages creation.
Nobody else has any right to works I've created.
What did you draw on when creating works? Or did you claim that you created works in a vacuum?
Re:In a vacuum? (Score:2)
That is very different from advocating the abolishment of IP rights, which Lessig does NOT advocate.
Other authors own your expression (Score:4, Interesting)
Is this suppose to be a rhetorical argument that a creator doesn't own what he creates?
I intended it as an argument that an author shouldn't own what other authors create.
the innovation is not identical to the source, I have added my own novel element.
True, you can get away with copying ideas. But what about classes of works where the "idea" and the "expression" aren't so easy to distinguish, such as musical works? Under U.S. law, if you add your novel element to a substantial portion of an existing copyrighted expression without permission of the other work's author, which is not obtainable in the vast majority of cases, the other work's author owns your novel element, even if your novel element predominates over the other author's.
The novel element is my property, for a limited time at least, and rightly so.
In terms of an author's own lifetime, how is until your children are long dead a "limited time", other than through the twisted interpretation offered by the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft? Inventors, on the other hand, seem happy with 20 years; I don't recall any news report of them trying for some sort of Cher Patent Term Extension Act [kuro5hin.org].
To say that society owns what a creator's brain creates is to say that society owns the creator's brain. It doesn't.
But to say that one author owns what another author creates is to say that one author owns the other author's brain. He does.
I agree with the position on derivative works and copyright term that Spider Robinson puts forth in the short story "Melancholy Elephants" [baen.com]. Have you read it?
Re:Tyranny? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tyranny? (Score:2)
The purpose of society is not to force smart people to work. If the man is a genius, he can write another. Society should give some motivation, but not by giving no rewards.
Now, I do agree that the parent was dumb, I just think your argument sucks as well.
28 years is still a reward; analogy to patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Society should give some motivation, but not by giving no rewards.
The original U.S. copyright act gave plenty of rewards: twenty-eight whole years. The current U.S. patent act gives plenty of rewards: twenty whole years. If you feel that such a term of monopoly does not adequately reward the investment of time and effort into a work or invention, then please explain why I haven't seen Lilly, GSK, Pfizer, and the like publicly lobbying for some sort of Cher Patent Term Extension Act [kuro5hin.org].
Re:Tyranny? (Score:2)
Re:Tyranny? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, coming back to reality, let's assume that you're the average writer who gets published, who doesn't earn much if anythi
Re:Tyranny? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Tyranny? (Score:2)
I don't know.
If copyright were - as is the case now - 70 years, is anyone else hurt? I don't think so.
Re:Tyranny? (Score:2)
Re:Tyranny? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Tyranny? (Score:2)
Proof? Before you answer that remember that correlation doesn't equal causation, and that 90% of everything is crap.
Nobody else has any right to works I've created.
That's called begging the question.
For those who don't want to subscribe (Score:3, Informative)
The Tyranny of Copyright?
By ROBERT S. BOYNTON
Published: January 25, 2004
ast fall, a group of civic-minded students at Swarthmore College received a sobering lesson in the future of political protest. They had come into possession of some 15,000 e-mail messages and memos -- presumably leaked or stolen -- from Diebold Election Systems, the largest maker of electronic voting machines in the country. The memos featured Diebold employees' candid discussion of flaws in the company's software and warnings that the computer network was poorly protected from hackers. In light of the chaotic 2000 presidential election, the Swarthmore students decided that this information shouldn't be kept from the public. Like aspiring Daniel Ellsbergs with their would-be Pentagon Papers, they posted the files on the Internet, declaring the act a form of electronic whistle-blowing.
Advertisement
Unfortunately for the students, their actions ran afoul of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (D.M.C.A.), one of several recent laws that regulate intellectual property and are quietly reshaping the culture. Designed to protect copyrighted material on the Web, the act makes it possible for an Internet service provider to be liable for the material posted by its users -- an extraordinary burden that providers of phone service, by contrast, do not share. Under the law, if an aggrieved party (Diebold, say) threatens to sue an Internet service provider over the content of a subscriber's Web site, the provider can avoid liability simply by removing the offending material. Since the mere threat of a lawsuit is usually enough to scare most providers into submission, the law effectively gives private parties veto power over much of the information published online -- as the Swarthmore students would soon learn.
Not long after the students posted the memos, Diebold sent letters to Swarthmore charging the students with copyright infringement and demanding that the material be removed from the students' Web page, which was hosted on the college's server. Swarthmore complied. The question of whether the students were within their rights to post the memos was essentially moot: thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, their speech could be silenced without the benefit of actual lawsuits, public hearings, judges or other niceties of due process.
After persistent challenges by the students -- and a considerable amount of negative publicity for Diebold -- in November the company agreed not to sue. To the delight of the students' supporters, the memos are now back on their Web site. But to proponents of free speech on the Internet, the story remains a chilling one.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media scholar at New York University, calls anecdotes like this ''copyright horror stories,'' and there have been a growing number of them over the past few years. Once a dry and seemingly mechanical area of the American legal system, intellectual property law can now be found at the center of major disputes in the arts, sciences and -- as in the Diebold case -- politics. Recent cases have involved everything from attempts to force the Girl Scouts to pay royalties for singing songs around campfires to the infringement suit brought by the estate of Margaret Mitchell against the publishers of Alice Randall's book ''The Wind Done Gone'' (which tells the story of Mitchell's ''Gone With the Wind'' from a slave's perspective) to corporations like Celera Genomics filing for patents for human genes. The most publicized development came in September, when the Recording Industry Association of America began suing music downloaders for copyright infringement, reaching out-of-court settlements for thousands of dollars with defendants as young as 12. And in November, a group of independent film producers went to court to fight a ban, imposed this year by the Motion Picture Association of America, on sending DVD's to those who vote for annual film awards.
Not long ago, the Interne
Re:For those who don't want to subscribe (Score:3, Insightful)
Some good, some bad (Score:4, Interesting)
" The money would come from a tax on various content-related devices, like DVD burners, blank CD's or digital recorders"
I can't believe the copyleft is saying things like that. That is not a reasonable compromise for me to get my fair-use rights back.
Fair Use (Score:4, Interesting)
Before jumping on the repeal property rights bandwagon, we should note that the Swathmore students could have easily gotten around the copyright issue by paraphrasing and writing their own original work drawn from the emails.
The article paints this issue as horrible corporate America positioned against wonderful students. However, I see a lot of issues going on beyond publication. For example, there is the issue of open communications within a corporation. If there is no legal protection for open internal discussions about a product, then companies will have no choice but to limit open dialog within the company.
Shouldn't Diebold be commended for having an open internal communication system that allows its workers to actively criticize and tear apart their company's product? If any document stolen from a company could be published to paint the company in bad light, then we would see companies cracking down on the open internal communications needed to improve products.
Having been involved in several projects, I've written and have read extremely critical emails about different aspects of a program. The purpose of these communications is generally to improve the quality of a program. Strongly worded emails generally have a better chance of making it into a product. Often the strongly worded emails are bunk. If all of the test documentation of the Alpha and design systems got published then we could make any company look horrible.
I rue the day when each and every word written in internal communications has to be polished into marketing material.
Re:Fair Use (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not a new idea. The Church of Scientology has been using the copyright laws of the United States to silence its critics for the last three decades. The Diebold case is simply the latest example of how copyright laws in their present incarnation can be abused.
Re:Fair Use (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a really good question. Were those e-mails creative? I sure as hell don't consider my e-mails creative works (well, a couple times I've e-mailed poems or story excerpts). If they do not have creative value, they don't get copyright, so the students were fine with what they did.
Now, taking my e-mails and posting them is a privacy violation, but that's another matter.
As for what I j
Re:Fair Use (Score:3, Informative)
Fair use; DMCA != DMCA (Score:4, Informative)
Actually they were in violation of copyright
News reporting. Non-profit. Factual. Does not substitute for the work itself. Any competent lawyer could make a good fair use defense.
and I question why the DMCA was involved at all.
In this case, the DMCA merely codifies a cease-and-desist process in 17 USC 512. It has nothing to do with the DMCA that interferes with interoperability (17 USC 1201; judges have tended to ignore 1201(f)) except for having been enacted in the same bill.
Infringe, or others will call it a hoax (Score:4, Interesting)
we should note that the Swathmore students could have easily gotten around the copyright issue by paraphrasing and writing their own original work drawn from the emails.
Without directly quoting the unpublished original sources, how could the students make their argument look like something other than a hoax? I sense an opportunity to use the "news reporting" fair use argument.
You can include quotes (Score:2)
A well written article with quotes and a summary of the articles would have been considered an original work, and probably would have been more damning of Diebold.
The ability of Diebold to suppress the work by threatening the ISP is freightening, as the ISP is not likely to make any judgments based on merits of the case.
Re:Fair Use (Score:2)
Dear NYT Editors: That Should Be "GNU/Copy Left" (Score:3, Interesting)
How did copyright policies come to be diametrically opposed to their stated purpose? And how can we bring them back into alignment with that purpose? To understand, we should start by looking at the root of United States copyright law: the U.S. Constitution.
Copyright in the U.S. Constitution
When the U.S. Constitution was drafted, the idea that authors were entitled to a copyright monopoly was proposed -- and rejected. The founders of our country adopted a different premise, that copyright is not a natural right of authors, but an artificial concession made to them for the sake of progress. The Constitution gives permission for a copyright system with this paragraph (Article I, Section 8):
[Congress shall have the power] to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that promoting progress means benefit for the users of copyrighted works. For example, in Fox Film v. Doyal, the court said,
The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the [copyright] monopoly lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.
This fundamental decision explains why copyright is not required by the Constitution, only permitted as an option -- and why it is supposed to last for "limited times." If copyright were a natural right, something that authors have because they deserve it, nothing could justify terminating this right after a certain period of time, any more than everyone's house should become public property after a certain lapse of time from its construction.
The "copyright bargain"
The copyright system works by providing privileges and thus benefits to publishers and authors; but it does not do this for their sake. Rather, it does this to modify their behavior: to provide an incentive for authors to write more and publish more. In effect, the government spends the public's natural rights, on the public's behalf, as part of a deal to bring the public more published works. Legal scholars call this concept the "copyright bargain." It is like a government purchase of a highway or an airplane using taxpayer's money, except that the government spends our freedom instead of our money.
But is the bargain as it exists actually a good deal for the public? Many alternative bargains are possible; which one is best? Every issue of copyright policy is part of this question. If we misunderstand the nature of the question, we will tend to decide the issues badly.
The Constitution authorizes granting copyright powers to authors. In practice, authors typically cede them to publishers; it is usually the publishers, not the authors, who exercise these powers and get most of the benefits, though authors may get a small portion. Thus it is usually the publishers that lobby to increase copyright powers. To better reflect the reality of copyright rather than the myth, this article refers to publishers rather than authors as the holders of copyright powers. It also refers to the users of copyrighted works as "readers," even though using them does not always mean reading, because "the users" is remote and abstract.
The first error: "striking a balance"
The copyright bargain places the public first: benefit for the reading public is an end in itself; benefits (if any) for publishers are just a means toward that end. Readers' interests and publishers' interests are qualitatively unequal in priority. The first step in misinterpreting the purpose of copyright is the elevation of the publishers to the same level of importance as the readers.
It is often said that U.S. copyright law is meant to "strike a balance" between the interests of publishers and readers. Those who cite this interpretation present it as a restatement of the basic position stated in the Constitution; in other words, it is supposed to be equivalent to the copyright bargain.
But the two interpretations are far from equivalent; they are different conceptually, and different in their implications. The balance concept assumes that the readers' and publishers' interests differ in importance only quantitatively, in "how much weight" we should give them, and in what actions they apply to. The term "stakeholders" is often used to frame the issue in this way; it assumes that all kinds of interest in a policy decision are equally important. This view rejects the qualitative distinction between the readers' and publishers' interests which is at the root of the government's participation in the copyright bargain.
The consequences of this alteration are far-reaching, because the great protection for the public in the copyright bargain -- the idea that copyright privileges can be justified only in the name of the readers, never in the name of the publishers -- is discarded by the "balance" interpretation. Since the interest of the publishers is regarded as an end in itself, it can justify copyright privileges; in other words, the "balance" concept says that privileges can be justified in the name of someone other than the public.
As a practical matter, the consequence of the "balance" concept is to reverse the burden of justification for changes in copyright law. The copyright bargain places the burden on the publishers to convince the readers to cede certain freedoms. The concept of balance reverses this burden, practically speaking, because there is generally no doubt that publishers will benefit from additional privilege. So unless harm to the readers can be proved, sufficient to "outweigh" this benefit, we are led to conclude that the publishers are entitled to almost any privilege they request.
Since the idea of "striking a balance" between publishers and readers denies the readers the primacy they are entitled to, we must reject it.
Balancing against what?
When the government buys something for the public, it acts on behalf of the public; its responsibility is to obtain the best possible deal -- best for the public, not for the other party in the agreement.
For example, when signing contracts with construction companies to build highways, the government aims to spend as little as possible of the public's money. Government agencies use competitive bidding to push the price down.
As a practical matter, the price cannot be zero, because contractors will not bid that low. Although not entitled to special consideration, they have the usual rights of citizens in a free society, including the right to refuse disadvantageous contracts; even the lowest bid will be high enough for some contractor to make money. So there is indeed a balance, of a kind. But it is not a deliberate balancing of two interests each with claim to special consideration. It is a balance between a public goal and market forces. The government tries to obtain for the taxpaying motorists the best deal they can get in the context of a free society and a free market.
In the copyright bargain, the government spends our freedom instead of our money. Freedom is more precious than money, so government's responsibility to spend our freedom wisely and frugally is even greater than its responsibility to spend our money thus. Governments must never put the publishers' interests on a par with the public's freedom.
Not "balance" but "trade-off"
The idea of balancing the readers' interests against the publishers' is the wrong way to judge copyright policy, but there are indeed two interests to be weighed: two interests of the readers. Readers have an interest in their own freedom in using published works; depending on circumstances, they may also have an interest in encouraging publication through some kind of incentive system.
The word "balance," in discussions of copyright, has come to stand as shorthand for the idea of "striking a balance" between the readers and the publishers. Therefore, to use the word "balance" in regard to the readers' two interests would be confusing -- we need another term.
In general, when one party has two goals that partly conflict, and cannot completely achieve both of them, we call this a "trade-off." Therefore, rather than speaking of "striking the right balance" between parties, we should speak of "finding the right trade-off between spending our freedom and keeping it."
The second error: maximizing one output
The second mistake in copyright policy consists of adopting the goal of maximizing -- not just increasing -- the number of published works. The erroneous concept of "striking a balance" elevated the publishers to parity with the readers; this second error places them far above the readers.
When we purchase something, we do not generally buy the whole quantity in stock or the most expensive model. Instead we conserve funds for other purchases, by buying only what we need of any particular good, and choosing a model of sufficient rather than highest quality. The principle of diminishing returns suggests that spending all our money on one particular good is likely to be inefficient allocation of resources; we generally choose to keep some money for another use.
Diminishing returns applies to copyright just as to any other purchase. The first freedoms we should trade away are those we miss the least, while giving the largest encouragement to publication. As we trade additional freedoms that cut closer to home, we find that each trade is a bigger sacrifice than the last, while bringing a smaller increment in literary activity. Well before the increment becomes zero, we may well say it is not worth its incremental price; we would then settle on a bargain whose overall result is to increase the amount of publication, but not to the utmost possible extent.
Accepting the goal of maximizing publication rejects all these wiser, more advantageous bargains in advance -- it dictates that the public must cede nearly all of its freedom to use published works, for just a little more publication.
The rhetoric of maximization
In practice, the goal of maximizing publication regardless of the cost to freedom is supported by widespread rhetoric which asserts that public copying is illegitimate, unfair, and intrinsically wrong. For instance, the publishers call people who copy "pirates," a smear term designed to equate sharing information with your neighbor with attacking a ship. (This smear term was formerly used by authors to describe publishers who found lawful ways to publish unauthorized editions; its modern use by the publishers is almost the reverse.) This rhetoric directly rejects the Constitutional basis for copyright, but presents itself as representing the unquestioned tradition of the American legal system.
The "pirate" rhetoric is typically accepted because it blankets the media so that few people realize that it is radical. It is effective because if copying by the public is fundamentally illegitimate, we can never object to the publishers' demand that we surrender our freedom to do so. In other words, when the public is challenged to show why publishers should not receive some additional power, the most important reason of all -- "We want to copy" -- is disqualified in advance.
This leaves no way to argue against increasing copyright power except using side issues. Hence opposition to stronger copyright powers today almost exclusively cites side issues, and never dares cite the freedom to distribute copies as a legitimate public value.
As a practical matter, the goal of maximization enables publishers to argue that "A certain practice is reducing our sales -- or we think it might -- so we presume it diminishes publication by some unknown amount, and therefore it should be prohibited." We are led to the outrageous conclusion that the public good is measured by publishers' sales: What's good for General Media is good for the U.S.A.
The third error: maximizing publishers' power
Once the publishers have obtained assent to the policy goal of maximizing publication output at any cost, their next step is to infer that this requires giving them the maximum possible powers -- making copyright cover every imaginable use of a work, or applying some other legal tool such as "shrink wrap" licenses to equivalent effect. This goal, which entails the abolition of "fair use" and the "right of first sale," is being pressed at every available level of government, from states of the U.S. to international bodies.
This step is erroneous because strict copyright rules obstruct the creation of useful new works. For instance, Shakespeare borrowed the plots of some of his plays from other plays published a few decades before, so if today's copyright law had been in effect, his plays would have been illegal.
Even if we wanted the highest possible rate of publication, regardless of cost to the public, maximizing publishers' power is the wrong way to get it. As a means of promoting progress, it is self-defeating.
The results of the three errors
The current trend in copyright legislation is to hand publishers broader powers for longer periods of time. The conceptual basis of copyright, as it emerges distorted from the series of errors, rarely offers a basis for saying no. Legislators give lip service to the idea that copyright serves the public, while in fact giving publishers whatever they ask for.
For example, here is what Senator Hatch said when introducing S. 483, a 1995 bill to increase the term of copyright by 20 years:
I believe we are now at such a point with respect to the question of whether the current term of copyright adequately protects the interests of authors and the related question of whether the term of protection continues to provide a sufficient incentive for the creation of new works of authorship.
This bill extended the copyright on already-published works written since the 1920s. This change was a giveaway to publishers with no possible benefit to the public, since there is no way to retroactively increase now the number of books published back then. Yet it cost the public a freedom that is meaningful today -- the freedom to redistribute books from that era.
The bill also extended the copyrights of works yet to be written. For works made for hire, copyright would last 95 years instead of the present 75 years. Theoretically this would increase the incentive to write new works; but any publisher that claims to need this extra incentive should substantiate the claim with projected balance sheets for the year 2075.
Needless to say, Congress did not question the publishers' arguments: a law extending copyright was enacted in 1998. It was called the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, named after one of its sponsors who died earlier that year. His widow, who served the rest of his term, made this statement:
Actually, Sonny wanted copyright to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me to strengthen our copyright laws in all ways available to us. As you know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal to last forever less one day. Perhaps the committee may look at that next Congress.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that seeks to overturn the law on the grounds that the retroactive extension fails to serve the Constitution's goal of promoting progress.
Another law, passed in 1996, made it a felony to make sufficiently many copies of any published work, even if you give them away to friends just to be nice. Previously this was not a crime in the U.S. at all.
An even worse law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), was designed to bring back copy protection (which computer users detest) by making it a crime to break copy protection, or even publish information about how to break it. This law ought to be called the "Domination by Media Corporations Act" because it effectively offers publishers the chance to write their own copyright law. It says they can impose any restrictions whatsoever on the use of a work, and these restrictions take the force of law provided the work contains some sort of encryption or license manager to enforce them.
One of the arguments offered for this bill was that it would implement a recent treaty to increase copyright powers. The treaty was promulgated by the World Intellectual Property Organization, an organization dominated by copyright-holding and patent-holding interests, with the aid of pressure from the Clinton administration; since the treaty only increases copyright power, whether it serves the public interest in any country is doubtful. In any case, the bill went far beyond what the treaty required.
Libraries were a key source of opposition to this bill, especially to the aspects that block the forms of copying that are considered "fair use." How did the publishers respond? Former representative Pat Schroeder, now a lobbyist for the Association of American Publishers, said that the publishers "could not live with what [the libraries are] asking for." Since the libraries were asking only to preserve part of the status quo, one might respond by wondering how the publishers had survived until the present day.
Congressman Barney Frank, in a meeting with me and others who opposed this bill, showed how far the U.S. Constitution's view of copyright has been disregarded. He said that new powers, backed by criminal penalties, were needed urgently because the "movie industry is worried," as well as the "music industry" and other "industries." I asked him, "But is this in the public interest?" His response was telling: "Why are you talking about the public interest? These creative people don't have to give up their rights for the public interest!" The "industry" has been identified with the "creative people" it hires, copyright has been treated as its entitlement, and the Constitution has been turned upside down.
The DMCA was enacted in 1998. As enacted, it says that fair use remains nominally legitimate, but allows publishers to prohibit all software or hardware that you could practice it with. Effectively, fair use is prohibited.
Based on this law, the movie industry has imposed censorship on free software for reading and playing DVDs, and even on the information about how to read them. In April 2001, Professor Edward Felten of Princeton University was intimidated by lawsuit threats from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) into withdrawing a scientific paper stating what he had learned about a proposed encryption system for restricting access to recorded music.
We are also beginning to see e-books that take away many of readers' traditional freedoms -- for instance, the freedom to lend a book to your friend, to sell it to a used book store, to borrow it from a library, to buy it without giving your name to a corporate data bank, even the freedom to read it twice. Encrypted e-books generally restrict all these activities -- you can read them only with special secret software designed to restrict you.
I will never buy one of these encrypted, restricted e-books, and I hope you will reject them too. If an e-book doesn't give you the same freedoms as a traditional paper book, don't accept it!
Anyone independently releasing software that can read restricted e-books risks prosecution. A Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov, was arrested in 2001 while visiting the U.S. to speak at a conference, because he had written such a program in Russia, where it was lawful to do so. Now Russia is preparing a law to prohibit it too, and the European Union recently adopted one.
Mass-market e-books have been a commercial failure so far, but not because readers chose to defend their freedom; they were unattractive for other reasons, such as that computer display screens are not easy surfaces to read from. We can't rely on this happy accident to protect us in the long term; the next attempt to promote e-books will use "electronic paper" -- book-like objects into which an encrypted, restricted e-book can be downloaded. If this paper-like surface proves more appealing than today's display screens, we will have to defend our freedom in order to keep it. Meanwhile, e-books are making inroads in niches: NYU and other dental schools require students to buy their textbooks in the form of restricted e-books.
The media companies are not satisfied yet. In 2001, Disney-funded Senator Hollings proposed a bill called the "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA)[1], which would require all computers (and other digital recording and playback devices) to have government-mandated copy restriction systems. That is their ultimate goal, but the first item on their agenda is to prohibit any equipment that can tune digital HDTV unless it is designed to be impossible for the public to "tamper with" (i.e., modify for their own purposes). Since free software is software that users can modify, we face here for the first time a proposed law that explicitly prohibits free software for a certain job. Prohibition of other jobs will surely follow. If the FCC adopts this rule, existing free software such as GNU Radio would be censored.
To block these bills and rules requires political action.[2]
Finding the right bargain
What is the proper way to decide copyright policy? If copyright is a bargain made on behalf of the public, it should serve the public interest above all. The government's duty when selling the public's freedom is to sell only what it must, and sell it as dearly as possible. At the very least, we should pare back the extent of copyright as much as possible while maintaining a comparable level of publication.
Since we cannot find this minimum price in freedom through competitive bidding, as we do for construction projects, how can we find it?
One possible method is to reduce copyright privileges in stages, and observe the results. By seeing if and when measurable diminutions in publication occur, we will learn how much copyright power is really necessary to achieve the public's purposes. We must judge this by actual observation, not by what publishers say will happen, because they have every incentive to make exaggerated predictions of doom if their powers are reduced in any way.
Copyright policy includes several independent dimensions, which can be adjusted separately. After we find the necessary minimum for one policy dimension, it may still be possible to reduce other dimensions of copyright while maintaining the desired publication level.
One important dimension of copyright is its duration, which is now typically on the order of a century. Reducing the monopoly on copying to ten years, starting from the date when a work is published, would be a good first step. Another aspect of copyright, which covers the making of derivative works, could continue for a longer period.
Why count from the date of publication? Because copyright on unpublished works does not directly limit readers' freedom; whether we are free to copy a work is moot when we do not have copies. So giving authors a longer time to get a work published does no harm. Authors (who generally do own the copyright prior to publication) will rarely choose to delay publication just to push back the end of the copyright term.
Why ten years? Because that is a safe proposal; we can be confident on practical grounds that this reduction would have little impact on the overall viability of publishing today. In most media and genres, successful works are very profitable in just a few years, and even successful works are usually out of print well before ten. Even for reference works, whose useful life may be many decades, ten-year copyright should suffice: updated editions are issued regularly, and many readers will buy the copyrighted current edition rather than copy a ten-year-old public domain version.
Ten years may still be longer than necessary; once things settle down, we could try a further reduction to tune the system. At a panel on copyright at a literary convention, where I proposed the ten-year term, a noted fantasy author sitting beside me objected vehemently, saying that anything beyond five years was intolerable.
But we don't have to apply the same time span to all kinds of works. Maintaining the utmost uniformity of copyright policy is not crucial to the public interest, and copyright law already has many exceptions for specific uses and media. It would be foolish to pay for every highway project at the rates necessary for the most difficult projects in the most expensive regions of the country; it is equally foolish to "pay" for all kinds of art with the greatest price in freedom that we find necessary for any one kind.
So perhaps novels, dictionaries, computer programs, songs, symphonies, and movies should have different durations of copyright, so that we can reduce the duration for each kind of work to what is necessary for many such works to be published. Perhaps movies over one hour long could have a twenty-year copyright, because of the expense of producing them. In my own field, computer programming, three years should suffice, because product cycles are even shorter than that.
Another dimension of copyright policy is the extent of fair use: some ways of reproducing all or part of a published work that are legally permitted even though it is copyrighted. The natural first step in reducing this dimension of copyright power is to permit occasional private small-quantity noncommercial copying and distribution among individuals. This would eliminate the intrusion of the copyright police into people's private lives, but would probably have little effect on the sales of published works. (It may be necessary to take other legal steps to ensure that shrink-wrap licenses cannot be used to substitute for copyright in restricting such copying.) The experience of Napster shows that we should also permit noncommercial verbatim redistribution to the general public -- when so many of the public want to copy and share, and find it so useful, only draconian measures will stop them, and the public deserves to get what it wants.
For novels, and in general for works that are used for entertainment, noncommercial verbatim redistribution may be sufficient freedom for the readers. Computer programs, being used for functional purposes (to get jobs done), call for additional freedoms beyond that, including the freedom to publish an improved version. See "Free Software Definition," in this book, for an explanation of the freedoms that software users should have. But it may be an acceptable compromise for these freedoms to be universally available only after a delay of two or three years from the program's publication.
Changes like these could bring copyright into line with the public's wish to use digital technology to copy. Publishers will no doubt find these proposals "unbalanced"; they may threaten to take their marbles and go home, but they won't really do it, because the game will remain profitable and it will be the only game in town.
As we consider reductions in copyright power, we must make sure media companies do not simply replace it with end-user license agreements. It would be necessary to prohibit the use of contracts to apply restrictions on copying that go beyond those of copyright. Such limitations on what mass-market nonnegotiated contracts can require are a standard part of the U.S. legal system.
A personal note
I am a software designer, not a legal scholar. I've become concerned with copyright issues because there's no avoiding them in the world of computer networks [3]. As a user of computers and networks for thirty years, I value the freedoms that we have lost, and the ones we may lose next. As an author, I can reject the romantic mystique of the author as semidivine creator, often cited by publishers to justify increased copyright powers for authors, which authors will then sign away to publishers.
Most of this article consists of facts and reasoning that you can check, and proposals on which you can form your own opinions. But I ask you to accept one thing on my word alone: that authors like me don't deserve special power over you. If you wish to reward me further for the software or books I have written, I would gratefully accept a check -- but please don't surrender your freedom in my name.
Footnotes
[1] Since renamed to the unpronounceable CBDTPA, for which a good mnemonic is, "Consume, But Don't Try Programming Anything," but it really stands for the "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act."
[2] If you would like to help, I recommend the Web sites digitalspeech.org and www.eff.org.
[3] The Internet being the largest of the world's computer networks.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.
Confusion (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Confusion (Score:3, Informative)
Benkler's apples to oranges (Score:3, Interesting)
This comparison fails to be useful in any real sense when considered for even an instant. The infrastructure, engineering and complexity of the telecommunication industry probably would scale its market value, when compared to music, much more than roughly 20 / 1 factor Benkler notes here. In fact, the only force surpressing greater telecom revenue is that consumers absolutely abhor seemingly arbitrary and maddeningly discreet fees associated with their monthly tele/cell phone bills!
To think that the billing lessons from the telecom industry offer a positive model for entertainment is not only ludacris, it's insulting to consumers who increasingly feel pestered by a fee system which forces them to nickel and dime every conversation down to minutes used -- and the excitement of VOIP proves that we are ALL hungry for an way to trash our telecom fee tally sheets.
Those who forget history are doomed to...something (Score:5, Interesting)
I appreciate the ideas the article is trying to raise in the public consciousness and I am grateful the NYT is helping to put these issues on the political map. Apparently Boynton agrees with RMS that it's important to "spread understanding of the value of freedom [gnu.org]" although Boynton wasn't writing with regard to free software. I hope that in the next articles we can get more into specifics about how these ideas were formed because I think people have an easier time grasping useful abstractions when they are grounded in real-world events.
Giving credit where credit is due is intellectually honest. This article and Mark Webbink's recently praised article [slashdot.org] both chime in on copyleft or ideas built on copyleft without giving any credit to the person or the organization that brought it to our attention--Richard Stallman and the FSF.
Webbink goes so far as to reinvent copyleft without calling it such, thus confirming how valuable the concept is and what the open source movement is missing out on by rejecting software freedom in favor of practical concerns centered on their chief audience--businesses [gnu.org]. The NYT article tells us "Copy Left[sic]" (spelled with a space probably to pigeon-hole the concept on the left side of the left-right false political dichotomy) is a borrowed term:
But that would come closer to describing free software [gnu.org]. Copyleft [gnu.org] is a way to secure the freedoms of free software for a program and its derivative works.
All rights, no responsibilities.. (Score:2)
But, that should not drag every other piece of work along with it. To keep a copyright active, they should keep the default copyright mechanism they have today, for a short period of time, like 7-15 years. Then, require them to register the work for copyright extensions of 5-10 years. As it is now, they were gifted these huge
Re:All rights, no responsibilities.. (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, it would be fine by me to have a couple of exemptions for well-known characters - with fees paid to the Treasury rather than influential congressmen. Although I'd really prefer that Mickey not have eternal protection, it would probably be better than letting everything else be dragged down with it.
But it wouldn't work out - They would just take advantage of the cheaper path, which is to give a smaller amount to electe
The NYT doesn't like InterCap names (Score:2, Informative)
So, call it Copyleft and you're fine.
a telling sentence.... (Score:2)
''Sooner or later,'' predicts Miriam Nisbet, the legislative counsel for the American Library Association, ''you'll get to the point where you say, 'Well, I guess that 25 cents isn't too much to pay for this sentence,' and then there's no hope and no going back.''
Yep... now raise your hands... how many of you have gone down that path, purchasing iTunes and DVDs? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Um, this is already partially implemented in Canada [slashdot.org]. We pay a levy on recordable media, and as a result downloading is legal. Supposedly, the levy is supposed to go to the artists and recording industry. The only thing missing is the "central office", otherwise it is very much like Fisher's concept. And I hardly think Canada [thecanadapage.org] qualifies as a second world country.
Copyleft *is* Copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Where is everybody? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure why, but I am beginning to understand the community feeling of hate towards 'michael' simply by his attempting to slant comments in his way of favour.
Slashdot is not a news source, it is a news aggregator, but appending the aggregation of stories with comments by the editors with effect to bias the stor
Re:Where is everybody? (Score:4, Funny)
But then you assume
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Insightful)
You would have to agree to an NDA before you bought a copy.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:2, Interesting)
I doubt that. The NYT gets paid mostly by advertisers and secondarily by people who want to read today's news and commentary. I don't think lack of a copyright would change that. Wouldn't give a you a nickle for yesterday's NYT.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:5, Insightful)
Another human attribute which occurs from time to time is that they don't care about recognition, they just want to spread their ideas for the betterment or enjoyment of all mankind.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally no drug company who spent millions on research is going to want to come out and say "you could pay us thousands for our patented drug but eating oranges would work just as well."
I agree with you. We need more research done with an eye toward bettering mankind over forcing mankind to fork over the bucks.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, as they say in their press releases they spend 100s of millions on their research budgets for drugs that don't pay off, but what their press releases don't say is that they spend MORE that their research budgets on marketing and lobbying. They also don't mention that the sum of the yearly compensation packages of the top ten executives of any pharmaceutical company is usually *at least* 10% of the company's total research budget.
There needs to be a middle ground between no profits and obscene profits that provides the maximum benefit for the society at large.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Insightful)
source [wnyc.org]
In an illiterate so
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Funny)
=Smidge=
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a relative thing, sure, and I'm not trying to argue that copyright isn't a little too much in favour of the copyright holders, but if there was no protection, there would be no reason for at least 90% of the information being published to be published.
As much as we want to have a free society, you still expect to be paid for the hours you work, right? Well, you have to fol
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Interesting)
By preventing others from using and building on the ideas freely.
You care to point out some examples? I hardly can imagine how other people copyrights prevent me from getting ideas. Or building ideas. Or building ideas on the base of their copyrighted work. Or in distributing my ideas.
No one can prevent me in saying: ".... as Kent Recal has pointed out on
Derivative works (Score:5, Informative)
Dr. Lessig doesn't want to abolish copyright. He merely wants to find some way around the draconian restrictions on derivative works. Such restrictions lead to injustices such as Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976) [columbia.edu], which held that subconscious copying of a copyrighted work is actionable infringement.
Or do you claim that authors create works in a vacuum?
Re:Derivative works (Score:2)
Fine and dandy. But if you weaken copyrights too much the creators will protect their works using other means, including DRM. It's their choice, after all.
Re:By default (Score:2)
And that Digitally Restricted Medium won't be legally protected. So they wouldn't be able to go after people for saying "Oh, by the way, if you flip this bit, you can copy just fine."
Re:Derivative works (Score:4, Informative)
I guess that's not entirely untrue. The NBC tune is only three notes long, and it would certainly be theft if ABC were to used them. But in that case it's the entire piece. It's also the context there: I can't imagine you'd be sued if you weren't thematically invoking NBC in your song.
In Bright Tunes, the judge felt that three notes used as only part of a song, and not deliberately invoking the other piece, were sufficient for Harrison to be riding on the back of Ronnie Mack's success.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:5, Informative)
Misplaced agression.
The problem isn't the existence of copyright, it is the abuse of the idea.
If there were no copyright, there would be no GPL either (the GPL depends on copyright for its ability to force sharing).
Copyrights that run for 7 generations, chilled political debates, supression of even discussions about encryption algorithms, and forcing the removal of entire websites without sending so much as a sniff past a judge are things that would probably leave Jefferson et.al. spinning in their graves.
From the article:
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:3, Funny)
If there were no copyrights, you can bet the NYT would not be putting content on the Internat unless it was protected with DRM.
If there were no copyrights, there wouldn't be any DR to M.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:5, Informative)
You don't have to register with the NYT.
With the following procedure, you can read any NYT article:
I suspect this works because the NYT sees google as the referrer.
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:2)
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:2)
Yes, but those tend to get weeded outed pretty fast once they're in the open. :)
Prepare to create a new account for the NYT any day now
Re:no copyrights... no NYT registration (Score:4, Informative)
There is no dark evil purpose in this. The reason is circulation. Newspapers include online views in their circulation numbers so that they can charge more per ad. However, advertisers got keen to this and realized that online statistics were almost always inflated (does it count refreshes? does it count each graphic as a separate hit? does it count the same ip viewing different articles as seperate hits? the list goes on.) As a result, the NY Times has instituted this so that they can better gauge the number of readers of their online paper.
There is no secret Orwellian doctrine at the NY Times. You can take off your tin foil hats now.
Re:Its a conspiracy (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Its a conspiracy (Score:2)
Re:Its a conspiracy (Score:2)
"Copy left" (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not a big fan of copyleft as an ideology, but intentionally mispelling it as "copy left" is a spin if I've ever seen one.
I was going to post the same thing, but the parent got it right first.
bitch bitch bitch (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're so opposed to registering at websites, why the fuck do you have a slashdot account?
Advert on the page (Score:2, Funny)
And yes, I did read the article .. mostly ..
Re:What ?!! (Score:5, Informative)
Ging-gang-google gave me this article [umkc.edu] from the website of the school of Law at UKMC.
Apparently what happened was that the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP) sent letters out in 1996 to camps - including Girl Scout ones - demanding they pay fees for singing any of their copyrighted songs (such as Edelweiss and Puff the Magic Dragon), saying, "They buy paper, twine and glue for their crafts - they can pay for the music, too. If offenders keep singing without paying, we will sue them if necessary."
Later they claimed that they hadn't meant to target Girl Scouts, just other camps - "the sort that bring in bands for square dances, have music by the pool ... and are like sending your kid to a resort."
Re:YOU can change the copyright laws (Score:4, Insightful)
What would be good is this:
a) Copyright ends at death of author (not copyright holder), that's it. "But what about the kids?" They already got the advantage - genes with creative talent, and possibly a famous pedigree. We want to make sure that they use them.
b) Every copyright is doubled. There is an author's copyright and a market copyright. The author of a work starts with both. The market copyright can be freely sold, transferred, etc. The author's copyright CANNOT be transferred from the author BY ANY MEANS. Thus, authors can still sell copyright rights if they want to, but cannot be forced to give up rights on their own work - they always have author's copyright.
c) Legislate the creation of legal deprotection agencies. These agencies will remove copy protection measures from works once they have confirmed that they are not being used for illegal purposes. (This is not illegal under the DMCA! The DMCA makes it impossible by banning the distribution of the tools and information that would be needed to do so, but doesn't make it illegal.)
d) Ban advertising and nationalise retail. Again super harsh. But, sadly, it is now the *ONLY* way to prevent the commercial market becoming inevitably dominated by the existing big distributors.