Russian President: Time To Reform Copyright 293
An anonymous reader writes "While most of the rest of the world keeps ratcheting up copyright laws by increasing enforcement and terms, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev appears to be going in the other direction. He's now proposing that Russia build Creative Commons-style open and free licenses directly into Russian copyright law. This comes just a few days after he also chided other G8 leaders for their antiquated views on copyright."
Copyright is main US industry, while not others (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation. (Score:5, Informative)
From that:
"The increased difficulty in protecting data comes as the value of intellectual property is skyrocketing for companies. In 2009, 81% of the value of S&P 500 companies was "intangible assets" such as patented technology, proprietary data and market plans, according to an estimate by Ocean Tomo Intellectual Capital Equity. In 1985, only 68% of the S&P 500 market value was from intangibles, according to Ocean Tomo."
So, you're not far off the mark: The USA says it's wealthy because it is counting "intangibles" as wealth, or more accurately: things that do not suffer from scarcity. If your main assets do not suffer from scarcity, you have a problem because supply, once known, is infinite: and if supply is infinite then the real cost of it is zero.
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Great (Score:2)
Not that I'm unhappy with the decision, but now when people in the US propose it, they can say "*gasp*! That's communism! Just look, Russia is doing it!" And of course, any attempt to point out that it's been a capitalist country will be in vain.
Re:Citation. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hogwash. There's no scarcity of creativity or artistry whatever. Hell, there are dozens of local bands here in my city of 100,000 who have CDs of original content, most of which is far superior to the dreck that comes from the RIAA. Have a listen to some of my friends' music [archive.org]. Those are live shows, they have studio CDs as well.
There's no shortage whatever. The "shortage" has always been because of the fact that recording and filming were incredibly expensive. Today recording is dirt cheap, and the price of making a movie is coming down fast -- Star Wreck only cost a few thousand bucks and is better than 90% of the multimillion dollar dreck that comes from Hollywood (it's also hilarious, every Star Trek and Babylon Five fan should see that movie).
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The first iPhone when launched in Japan was largely ignored as an underspecified poor copy of phones they already had ....
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If you think the Japanese phone market is still stuck in the stone age, I hope you never visit Canada. Your cellular data monthly cap (if any) is probably 100 times bigger than our cable-provided internet, at 10 times the speed, for probably half the price.
I pay 25.00$CAD/month for 2Mbps cable with a 35GB upload+download monthly cap.
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You also forget Singapore and South Korea.
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If you say "manufacturing economies" and "IP economies," then your argument becomes a tautology anyway.
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Right, and that's a tautology: manufacturing economies aren't IP economies because you've defined them to be manufacturing economies!
The OP's argument was that getting a hold of the IP makes it much easier for those manufacturing economies to transform themselves into IP economies.
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Just go to about any Asian country and you'll be quick to find store shelves packed with products NOT designed or invented in the US or Europe, and the products from the US and Europe will be things that aren't really all that great - like garlic peelers, microfiber towels, and plastic containers you can use to cook pasta in the microwave...
You seem to be forgetting a few other inventions from the US and Europe like: automobiles, airplane, helicopters, computers, telephones, fiber optics, microwaves, the transistor, and nuclear power.
Your post (and general thought process) is playing into the GP's point. Many countries in Asia are fantastic at adapting existing technology into cost-effective products, but not so great at developing pioneering modern technology. Japan and Korea are leading the Asian pack, but they still have a long way to g
Re:Citation. (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem to be forgetting a few other inventions from the US and Europe like: automobiles, airplane, helicopters, computers, telephones, fiber optics, microwaves, the transistor, and nuclear power.
Bringing this back on topic... the US invented (or discovered) powered flight, and subsequently tried to patent it which essentially shut down any further innovations in the field. Europe however basically ignored the patent and as a result within a few years had far better planes due to the number of companies pursuing active development.
Things got so bad that by the time WWI started, the US had to buy planes from Europe since they were so much better than the US ones.
It is clear patent law does nothing to protect the inventor and has a massive negative impact on creativity and progress. It's time for a massive patent overhaul.
Re:Citation. (Score:4, Interesting)
This echoes a similar move of USA after the revolution, where it ignored UK patents. This allowed a much quicker industrialization of the nation then would have happened if license fees was payed on every machine deployed.
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You're suggesting the possibility of an IP bubble? if you do you might be right. Furthermore there is another side to this issue. It's easy to trade atoms (i.e.: meat) for other atoms (i.e. water) but if you trade ideas for food well... you must be either very talented or very convincing. The second alternative scales better and many industries are indoctrinating us since we are born about video clip music, movies, smart phone apps, etc being so much important for our happiness and well being. However even
Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, with that said: there is a future problem for content industries. Technology and content are becoming commoditized. Rendering technologies, places like Pixar, are becoming more and more realistic. And those technologies will eventually have Free implementations. Also, Free content, right now predominately in operating systems, is beginning to spread to other areas: props, character models, textures, sounds, music, and scripts: anything imaginable to make a story whether interactive or not. Eventually, using nothing more than creative commons material and lots of computer rendering power any individual or small group of individuals will be able to match the creative quality of today's Hollywood. There will be a collapse eventually for movies, fictional books, and music. It can only be held off.
Until then, I also will continue to buy all my games, and books - I don't really buy any new music nowadays: for that I'm satisfied. And the reason I will: because in the now I want to enjoy quality entertainment - if not for the current work then as you say for the next. But above all that: I do see the end for for-profit content approaching unless giving away your effort is made illegal for everyone.
Golgafrinchans (Score:4, Informative)
Your comment made me think of HHGTG.
TFA says the writer doesn't understand why CC should be baked into copyright, well, I'm no lawyer and I don't speak Russian, but perhaps he's doing what I've suggested all along -- that no noncommercial copying be deemed "infringing". You're no more going to stop P2P file sharers than you're going to stop potheads from smoking, or stop people from drinking back in the 1920s.
Noncommercial "infringement" doesn't harm anyone, and studies show that "piracy" actually increases sales. Music pirates spend more money of music than non-pirates. A book publisher commissioned a study a couple of years ago to find out how much piracy hurt sales, and was flabbergasted to find that there was a second sales "spike" when the pirate version hit the web.
The RIAA is at war with their competetion, the indies. The indies rely on P2P and the web, while the RIAA has radio. If there were no such thing as radio, the RIAA would embrace file sharing. Hell, back in the 1950s there was a "payola" scandal where RIAA labels would PAY to have their songs on the radio.
As Cory Doctorow (who gives his ebooks away for free on boingboing) says, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity.
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Re:Copyright is main US industry, while not others (Score:5, Interesting)
Fifteen to twenty year terms would be a more than adequate incentive for the creation of new works, as well as providing a huge catalogue of new public domain works every year which would, in turn, stimulate further creative re-use. Essentially infinite terms coupled with DRM that is illegal to remove have very little impact on infringement, but they practically obliterate the possibility of legitimate resale or re-use that would actually help the industry as a whole.
I think even 15 to 20 years is too long. To me it makes more sense to have a very short initial term, say 5 years (which can change depending on industry circumstances, e.g. motion pictures might get longer terms than music because of heavier initial investments). Then rights holders may extend the term by another year at a small cost (say $100). To extend a second year, the cost doubles. Then again, and again. As long as the ownership of the rights remains profitable, it's worth extending, but the exponential increase in price means that the ownership of those rights will become untenable pretty quickly ($102400 within 15 years of original date). You can even put a cap on the maximum term duration, again, possibly different for different industries.
The idea being, that if your idea hasn't paid off by the end of the initial term, it was probably crap anyway. At least everyone else thought it was! Your work can be considered the equivalent a defective material product; something for which nobody should be forced to pay, but can freely use the parts of to repair something that does, i.e. remixing. If your idea has paid off, you can hang on to it for as long as it stays profitable, but there's a check/balance that ensures others will eventually get access to your work. Also, as the costs of keeping the rights increases, the government, and indirectly the taxpayer, benefit from the profits of the work too
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I think 15-20 years is entirely reasonable. Think of all the movies that tank at the box office, but become "cult classics" years later. I think the people who put the work and sweat into making them should be able to profit off of that success. Ditto all the songwriters whose songs become popular after some other band has reworked it, such as the endless covers of Not Fade Away in the 60's.
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What you need to do is divorce the right to control a work from the right to profit from it.
It should be permitted for anyone to copy or make any derivative work from day one. It should not be possible for the rights holder to disallow further creative work or making physical copies. HOWEVER the creators of the copies or derivative work must in turn compensate the creator at a similar price to the one that the creator set. (There need to be rules and standards).
For example Disney creates a new Mickey movie
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Or you could tax copyrights based on a small percentage of a self-assessed value, where anyone could pay the self-assessed amount to put the work into the public domain. I suggested that almost a decade ago, based on someone's slashdot sig that said something like "if it is intellectual property, why isn't it taxed?"
More on that suggestion:
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/biplog/archive/000431.html [berkeley.edu]
But in general, if about 20 years was long enough for copyright in the age of the Pony Ex
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I like your idea of rights ownership being something you have to pay for to maintain. That would actually provide more of an incentive, it seems, to *actively* work at keeping your IP valuable, rather than just sitting back doing nothing while the terms get extended for work produced a life-time ago.
I would also add some form of property tax. I have to pay taxes on things I own that are considered valuable (my land, house, automobiles, boats etc.). If rights owners (and their apologists) want to insist t
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There's actually quite an extensive economic literature on what the optimal economic term of copyright might be. See for example Pollock, R., 2009. Forever Minus a Day? Calculating Optimal Copyright Term. Review of Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 6(1), pp.35-60.
The short answer is that the rational term is much lower than the present one - of the order of twenty years or less. The majority of works make no money that long after release, so the average economic value of the longer term is tiny, especi
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...or how about you get 5 years by default. When you can show the Patent office an actual, working, implementation you get an extra 15 years. Of course, that doesn't mandate you actually go ahead and sell/use your invention, but it does mean you at least had to spend the time trying to make it. For everyone who's genuinely trying to invent something and make it, well, they've got 5 years to perfect it, and then another 15 to make money off it - all stuff they were going to do anyway. For all the leeches, we
Re:Copyright is main US industry, while not others (Score:5, Insightful)
Parts of the Creative industry do not have copyright or Patents at all ... The fashion industry , they are almost totally US/Europe based outsource most of their production the the far east, and seem to be doing very well ...
It is a myth that the creative industries would not survive without Copyright and Patents, they do already, the only downside for the fashion industry it they have to keep innovating, constantly, "That's so last year.." was invented by the fashion industry for a reason ..
Note fashion houses/designers copy each other, the public, students etc.. and the high street stores copy the fashion designs with cheaper materials, and pay the fashion house little or nothing, but the designers still make plenty of money ...
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but the designers still make plenty of money ...
This is generally nonsense. Most high end fashion companies make very little money. Their labor costs are very, very high, and their sales volumes are very, very small because their price points are so high. In fact, these businesses would generally not even be viable if there weren't lots of well-to-do young women in New York and Paris willingly to work for free or nearly-free to "break in" to this industry. Same thing with the magazine world. Subsidized
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This is starting to change, the designer Marlies Dekkers has sued Sapph for patent infringement on a design for bra's in my country and won. This is setting a precedent for others to patent and sue.
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That's not a very fair comparison. Fashion has a luxury component in it that demands authenticity, so while it may be that LV bags are copied all the time, one cannot expect the impact of counterfeit in that area to be as high as that of digital content, which is the crux of the issue when we talk of IP in the USA.
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I'd argue the opposite actually: an economy based on actually producing wealth will always have an advantage over an economy that is purely based on services.
Now, I would argue that an economy that uses "cerebral creative work" to augment its wealth creation activities will be better than both. But if all you do is cerebral activity, you are enslaved to people who actually provide the food, machines, etc
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It doesn't do "little to help the creative industry as a whole" but in fact harms creativity (unless you have shiploads of money, which artists seldom do). Like science and technology, art is built on what has come before. So you have outrages like ZZ Top being sued for "Ahow how how" which was in a Howlin' Wolf song decades before La Grange was recorded, Eddie Money was sued for the phrase "Whatever will be will be, the future is ours, you see" by the guy who wrote "Que Sara Sara", George Harrison being su
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Re:Copyright is main US industry, while not others (Score:5, Informative)
I am Russian, and let me assure you that these talks are just that - talks to BS electorate for president elections this fall.
D.A. Medvedev is like Russian's Obama - he talks a lot but nothing is ever gets done -)
Copyright is major US export (Score:2)
I am Russian, and let me assure you that these talks are just that - talks to BS electorate for president elections this fall. D.A. Medvedev is like Russian's Obama - he talks a lot but nothing is ever gets done -)
At least he's talking in a better direction than his Western counterparts, thus bringing an alternative viewpoint into the public eye. Then again, as you mentioned, the talk doesn't always translate into action after the election (example: Obama).
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then again, as you mentioned, the talk doesn't always translate into action after the election (example: politicans).
FTFY.
Re:Copyright is major US export (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm Canadian, but I pay attention to US politics from time to time.
I don't think it's quite fair to state that Obama didn't take action. He did. However, the first *big* change he advocated during the election, Health Care Reform, was quite effectively blocked. He's spent years on that, and years fighting to prevent a reversal for the meager changes he could push through.
It isn't like Obama can wave a magic wand, and make change. It isn't like any president can. He did what he could, he brought forward the idea of change. He spearheaded change. Many attempted to block that change, including many Democrats.
I'm all for pointing out flaws, but at least point at the right flaws.
An alternative example, was during first few weeks of a Conservative government up here. They canceled the national day care program. Many people were upset by this, which is fine, but people claimed Harper was a 'bad leader' for doing so.
Ur, bad leader? He *campaigned" on abolishment of that program, and was democratically elected. If he *hadn't* canceled that program, he'd have been a bad leader! He'd have *lied*.
So, I guess what I'm saying is -- is sounds to me like health care reform was an attempt at massive change -- that failed through no fault of Obama's. So, what are you blaming him for, exactly?
Re:Copyright is main US industry, while not others (Score:5, Informative)
It's also understandable why US tried to fight for copyrights so much - that's basically the only thing they produce now.
Although I share your worry that the US will become an IP-based economy, there's still a long way to go before that happens.
Manufacturing and trade still dwarf other the information and entertainment sectors:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/IBQTable?_bm=y&-filter=&-sortkey2=&-defOrder=N&-sortkey1=&-ds_name=EC0700A1&-sortkey0=-RCPTOT&-NAICS2007=00 [census.gov]|21|22|23|31-33|42|44-45|48-49|51|52|53|54|55|56|61|62|71|72|81&-ib_type=NAICS2007&NAICS2007sector=*2&-geo_id=01000US&-dataitem=RCPTOT|GEO_ID$|NAICS2007|NAICS2007$|OPTAX$|FOOTID|ESTAB|PAYANN|EMP|NESTAB|NRCPTOT&-_lang=en
(Sorry link got FUBAR, paste it manually if you want to see it.)
The US also remains the world's largest manufacturer:
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/10/us-still-worlds-largest-manufacturer.html [blogspot.com]
(Sorry to have to link to a blog, but the reference in the post is a dead link.)
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Re:Copyright is main US industry, while not others (Score:5, Insightful)
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No it's not. The entertainment industry is tiny compared to manufacturing, banking, etc.
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Copyright and Patients are all about the differences in the cost of production and duplication. Many products are very expensive to produce. Software, electronics, music, books, movies, and TV Shows are all examples but are easy to duplicate. Copyrights and patent law allow the cost of production to be spread all the users of the item produced. It may cost millions of dollars to make a wireless networking chip. The company then makes the money back by charging everyone that buys it just a few dollars.
The s
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I'm starting to like Russia.
What do you mean "you 're starting to like". Perhaps "you 're starting to actually take time to think for yourself whether you like Russia or not"?
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I'm starting to like Russia. It's also understandable why US tried to fight for copyrights so much - that's basically the only thing they produce now. Rest of the world produces actual products.
Copyright law goes hand-in-hand with patent law. Patents govern who can make those actual products. China's flagrant disrespect for patent rights is almost as bad as their disrespect for copyright, and it means that if other countries manufacture in China, they have to assume their designs will be stolen and pirated sooner or later.
Like it or not, there should be SOME incentive for innovators and creators to continue to innovate and create, without having to rush to be first to market in order to make any m
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The US still has a large manufacturing base. Is it as strong as it used to be? No. But it's very very close to China in size (depending on whose numbers you use, the US base is either a tiny bit smaller or bigger.) China and the US each account for almost 20% of global manufacturing output. Of course, China will pass the US in manufacturing (if they haven't already), but it's not like we produce nothing.
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Why are you just starting to like Russia? They have hundreds of years of history of ensuring that individuals can never advance themselves, earn money, or own anything substantial.
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It's also understandable why US tried to fight for copyrights so much - that's basically the only thing they produce now. Rest of the world produces actual products.
That's fiction. US manufacturing output is still far ahead of every other country. [1] [msn.com] [2] [american.com]
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I love Russia, and I think this gesture is more important than the language suggests.
Russia is the first country to give the finger to US acta shakedown, which makes it easier for others to follow.
Its not "most of the rest of the world" that wants harsher ip crap, its the US and some spineless countries that do as they're told.
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It's also understandable why US tried to fight for copyrights so much - that's basically the only thing they produce now.
The scenario Charles Stross posits for the USA and copyright in Accelerando is becoming more and more believable. (government-sanctioned and supported copyright mafia)
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I find peoples comments on copyrights and IP really annoying. Yes we live in the world where a lot of things are very expensive to produce but cheap to duplicate. That is why we have copyright law. To protect the investment in production of this material. I am not going even pretend that there isn't problems with copyright law. We without a doubt need to reform it and make rules about things like fair use, reduce the terms back down to be for the Disney law took place and so on. copyright laws also need to
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And now we know, without a doubt, that the US won the cold war. They've even adopted our politics!
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Worth noting that "democratic" means that it's lead by leaders supported by majority - the more democratic the country, the larger genuine popular support for its leaders the country has. Russia in several aspects including support for president is more democratic then USA - it has more parties and choices, yet their current president is supported by a significantly larger amount of population then any of the US presidents elected in this millenium.
At the same time however it's far more corrupt, which is th
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IP can be copied very easily. If, say, China ignores IP, you lose a good chunk of revenue. Compare Windows revenue in China vs. the US: The two PC markets are roughly the same size, but MS makes far more money in one market. If your entire country is based on IP, all a rival has to do is get rid of IP protection and they can use any innovation you've come up with while we're busy fighting patent lawsuits over one-click.
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You could try only enforcing IP laws locally, but then you have trade wars and no export market for your IP. You could try sticking with cheap labor / minerals / agriculture, but then they run out and your economy goes nowhere.
Bear in
Leader (Score:2)
(See subject)
Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
A 'Soviet Russia' joke that's not disparaging of Russia: "In Russia, you reform copyright law. In America, copyright law reforms you..."
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Informative)
"In Russia, you reform copyright law. In the United States of America, copyright law reforms you..."
FTFY
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No you didn't. I was going by the original syntax: "In America, there's plenty of light beer, and you can always find a party. In Russia, Party always finds you..."
And if you want to start something, watch the original commercial first: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbP1DVeJCT0 [youtube.com]
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I was going by the original syntax
You missed the point.
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Read your own sig, Winston doesn't see anything that needs fixing.
He doesn't because he's dead. That doesn't make his mistake acceptable though.
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North America is a continent. South America is a continent. America refers to a country. It cannot be confused with a continent [...] If you want to refer to both of the continents, then it is the Americas
Very eloquently wrong.[1] [wikipedia.org]
in which case you're even more of an ass that no one should bother listening to.
Fuck you too.
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Communist alert! Communist alert! Smith, wiretap ThunderBird89's phone and internet connection immediately! Jones, make sure that he gets fired! Johnson, send out his name to the newspapers! Williams, make sure that the rest of his industry knows that he shouldn't be hired! Michaels, start investigating all his friends! And you, put the kettle on!
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
I can't speak for ThunderBird but i feel slightly insulted when i get modded insightful/informative every time i try to be funny.
well...I guess its better then being modded funny when vice versa.
Re:modded insightful every time I try to be funny (Score:2)
That's because the best humor is viciously insightful.
Well, he's right (Score:5, Insightful)
IP rights seem to have gone to point where only lawyers benefit. As anyone who's ever been billed by one knows, it's friggin expensive. Probably a lot of the world's productive capacity is used on this kind of paperwork, and with questionable results (will Metallica really stop making music if they didn't have copyright? Are drug patents approved for the drugs people actually need? Etc, big can of worms...). Time for a cleanup. Not sure how, as any transition phase would be internationally fragmented and highly contentious, but we'd all benefit from a less complex system.
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will Metallica really stop making music if they didn't have copyright?
I can dream, can't I?
The cleanup is the Internet (Score:2)
The cleanup is the Internet combined with the plethora of free licenses to choose from, and an large number of people willing to do work and give it away for free. Nobody is putting a gun to anyone's head, but the people paying the patent and copyright lawyers...their products have to compete with the free stuff, which is getting increasingly more sophisticated.
In the past, someone could make free chairs and stick them by the side of the road, but it didn't cut into Wal-Mart's chair sales that much. With th
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Actually, looking at some of the fine software that's available for free, I tend to agree. The minimum standard for copyrighted software is raised by having free stuff that works pretty well.
Now, that works for software but what about other technologies? Eg. I don't really have a problem with extremely poor people getting copycat AIDS drugs. It's not obvious they would have paid for it, and it doesn't reduce the supply of the critical piece of information (the recipe). And what are pharmas developing, anywa
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
Well, here's a story where things are actually reversed in Russia. So reversed that Russia isn't even Soviet anymore
Pres. Medvedev is a great troll! (Score:5, Informative)
Pres. Medvedev is a great troll! Unfortunately, he doesn't decide anything in Russia - Putin does.
For example, quite recently "Deep Purple" was forced to pay $15000 for performance of music by "Deep Purple" (http://russian-law.livejournal.com/44954.html)!
You see, there's a mandatory 'performance fee' in Russia which goes toward central agency which then distributes gathered money to artists (minus 15% commission). Also they receive 1% of sale price for all computing equipment. And about 0.1 cent from each square meter of hotel space. And also there's no practical way to opt-out out of this system for artists.
So Medvedev can talk all he wants, it won't change a thing.
Re:Pres. Medvedev is a great troll! (Score:4, Informative)
Where's the topic?
Besides the concert organizer skipped the payment (and paid). Deep Purple didn't pay anything.
Right societies around the world demand compensation from concert promoters for the music performed. The artist is paid first for the performance (promoter pays) and for the music they play (promoter pays, 10% taken by rights society). The payment for the rights society (of which artists are members) is for their services of tracking the usage of artists' music worldwide - the societies' mission is to protect the artist, so in this case they demanded the promoter to pay so that Deep Purple is rightfully compensated.
That's what the article you linked says too.
The situation in Russia may be a bit underdeveloped (and one should follow if the society forwards the money to Deep Purple) but it's not that different from the rest of the world.
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"Pres. Medvedev is a great troll! Unfortunately, he doesn't decide anything in Russia - Putin does."
Uhuh. That was the initial view of him when he became PM from a position of relative obscurity. Unfortunately times change, I guess you don't watch the news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12810566 [bbc.co.uk]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-31/medvedev-tests-limits-of-power-with-plan-to-oust-putin-allies.html [bloomberg.com]
http://www.euractiv.com/en/global-europe/medvedev-putin-tensions-grow-2012-elections-get-closer-analy [euractiv.com]
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And we know now where Putin's right arm is...
We'll see (Score:2)
Medvedev's days may be numbered.
Putin doesn't like the reformist bent that Medvedev has taken and will probably run for President in 2012.
Pink glasses off! (Score:4, Interesting)
Reaction here is straight opposite to opinions on russian tech-related sites.
CC-like licence is just to not use the original CC. Original CC will become outlaw. If you want to use CC or GPL licensed product - make sure it is registered in a new "CC-like" government registry. What do you mean "I don't know if Linus and all his thousand of developers signed all the documents to apply to this brand new CC-like license?" Not licensed - not legit. Go back home poor opensource boy.
Ethical Morals (Score:2)
The copyright laws [url=http://www.law.northwestern.edu/colloquium/ip/documents/gordon.pdf]are morally inconsistent[/url]. We should all strive to not support them.
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Sorry, BBS codes aren't valid here. Slashdot uses Real HTML. :)
Taking it with a grain of salt (Score:2)
So before they didn't allow authors to use free licenses?
And as much as I'd hope that Russia is relaxing copyright for the greater benefit, I'm pretty sure this is the same as it's always been for nations that are below the top. Mainly, those on top try
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So before they didn't allow authors to use free licenses?
Ironically, you're hit at exactly the right question.
Yes, under the Russian law as it stands, there is some doubt among lawyers whether CC licenses have legal standing. It's not about whether the authors are allowed to say that such-and-such is licensed under CC, it's about whether the license is valid; in particular, whether the author can actually sign away his rights like that. The problem is with interpretation of licenses, or rather contracts, in Russian law. For considerable time, you couldn't have a
Progress? (Score:2)
That's the first positive news I've heard from Putin Medvedev---ever.
Against Intellectual Property (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a great book http://mises.org/books/against.pdf [mises.org] against intellectual property laws.
I am a believer in natural law theory. This basically means there are laws that govern how humans interact with each other just like those that we describe with physics. The goal of human law should be to work with those laws.
There is a natural intellectual monopoly that goes with any discovery. When a new product is first created it isn't obvious if it will be successful. It is only after it is successful do others want to copy it. This gives the creator a natural monopoly in which they can be the only seller. Also what is interesting is that unlike our legal monopoly the natural one adjusts based on how advanced the discovery is. Something that is obvious like the one click buy button can be instantly copied. But a new piece of hardware that is a generation more advanced might take competitors years to reverse engineer and gear up for fabrication
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I assume you are trying to say they are hypocritical because they Copyrighted a book against IP. Just because you argue for a different set of laws doesn't mean you can ignore the ones that exist. Copyright exists the moment you create it. See http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html [copyright.gov]
If you go to mises.org all of their books are free to download. They registered the copyright for the sole purpose of preventing someone else from copyrighting the works and trying to prevent the free dissemination. Th
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There is a natural intellectual monopoly that goes with any discovery...a new piece of hardware that is a generation more advanced might take competitors years to reverse engineer and gear up for fabrication
Or a competitor can offer a higher salary to key employees of the company that makes the initial discovery, thereby reducing or eliminating the "natural intellectual monopoly". At this point, there are two choices:
1) Allow it to happen, which would invalidate the "natural law" monopoly you spoke of.
2) Forbid it from happening, which would lead to the copyright/patent/trade secret mess we have now.
There is nothing wrong with protecting the intellectual product of a person/company. There are many, many thin
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If you have the time please read the book. These are some of the things discussed. One of the major roles for governments in libertarian thought is to enforce contracts. There are some solutions that don't lead back to an IP rights situation. An employer and employee can have a legal contract that can help prevent this. But if the employee leaves it is the employee that is breech of contract not the company that paid for the information. If the first company finds out about the offer in time it could get a
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Imagine I spend the better part of 10 years and $50M to create a viable material to act as a lensing system for X-Rays, thus making it possible to create highly portable X-Ray machines and increasing x-ray resolution, by attempting thousands of different combinations of substrate elements, doping elements, etc.
You're saying that because a competitor can just buy such a m
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If you just found a use for existing material you are right.
Lets say I somehow designed an iPad with all of the hardware associated with in the 1980's. I built all of the infrastructure to create all of the chips and displays ect. I could release that on the market and it would take 5 or 10 years for copies to be available. But today those chips and displays are readily available. Apple just designed a nicer interface and package than anyone else. Once they did it is was easily copied. And yet they still ha
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Well it's funny that you should mention the iPad - given that Apple will come down incredibly hard on anybody who were to manufacture an competing product that...
A. included Apple's connector design, so that the competing product can be used with one of hundreds (and growing) peripherals.
B. included an operating system compatible with iOS, so that the competing product can make use of iOS application.
C. looks too much like an iPad (see recent story re: Samsung).
In other words, the copy is not actually a cop
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Why should people in any country have to subsidize a broken business model based on "artificial scarcity" in the 21st century? There are plenty of other ways research can be funded -- foundation, governments, private individuals, a basic income.
Re:Against Intellectual Monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
There's no need to subscribe to natural law theory to support the liberalization or eliminating of intellectual property laws. Against Intellectual Monopoly [ucla.edu] by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine takes a pragmatic approach to evaluating intellectual property. They argue through empirical study that eliminating intellectual property laws would actually improve innovation and creation.
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Very true. I was just letting you know where I was coming from.
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That is already a crime and would be punishable under normal law. A court could put a restraint order to prevent the public release of those plans with a penalty of prison time. But one those plans were made public other people could use them freely.
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We can always have a debate. Besides if you couldn't tell by the world we live in you are winning easily.
You are a bit confused about the difference between recordings, the ideas behind the songs (music/lyrics), and the creator. The recordings did enjoy a natural monopoly. Recordings were first very capital intensive and it took a while to get to this point where the cost of reproduction is next to nil. The ideas behind the song IMHO do not deserve any protection at all. When you argue there is no natural m
he's just signaling Disney (Score:2)
that he didn't get his payoff. This will blow over.
It makes sense (Score:3)
Copyright rules designed to create/protect monopolies and cartels in intellectual property business areas and more in general give them a huge first mover advantage only make sense for countries which already have large and well-established "creative" (not just media but also product design) multinational corporations.
If a country's companies have already been out staking claims in the "ideas territory" and charging for access to it for a long time, it makes all sense for that country to try and protect those claims and revenue sources.
(It's not by chance that countries such as the UK and the US that have the biggest and oldest media industries are the ones pushing hardest for international rules that create artificial scarcity and establish/protect monopolies in the ideas space).
If however you are a country without big creative companies and/or whose companies are late entrants, the kind of copyright protections pushed by first-mover nations serves only to hinder your own company's progression and increase their costs in that space, something that the companies that went there first did not have to face.
Pretty much all BRICs are in the position of being tol-payers rather than tol-owners in the ideas space, thus it makes all sense for them to be against copyright as pushed by the likes of the US and the UK.
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That's okay, the Cold War was cancelled out by Global Warming.