Creative effort - or at at least any that is truly worthy of the name - takes tears, and sweat, and blood. We can marvel at the output of an artist, or a writer, or a composer, or a film maker and yet fail to focus on the years of toil that often preceded that work. And I am not here speaking of some isolated genius. I still remember the days when I was so dissatisfied with my lack of writing skills that I decided to devour the subject with a non-stop investment of thousands of hours of work specifically aimed at improving those skills - and the seemingly fruitless results of what seemed to be mediocre output at the time - only to wind up, in time, with some degree competence in that area, competence that has served me well professionally and otherwise as I now exercise that skill set in various ways. That sort of creativity is something we all can do, each in his own way, and it is therefore common to us all and not limited to the work of the occasional genius. We all can create, some better than others, and we can all rejoice in that process because it is one of the fundamentally rewarding things we can do in life. It is in our nature to build things, and to improve upon them, and to innovate. This can be in writing, or drawing, or painting, or sculpting, or coding, or composing, or performing, or doing any other act requiring creativity. This is not some trivial take-it-or-leave-it part of life. It is often what defines us at our core.
Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work. If I write something, I control what is done with it. No random person can just come along and appropriate it to that person's use or profit. I can say no to that or I can say yes, as I determine. If I say yes, I can require that person to compensate me for using my work or I can decide that I don't want compensation because I want others to freely benefit from my work. The point is that it is my decision. I have sole control over what is done with that which I create. Why? Because the law protects that right. And it does so, for the most part, through copyright.
When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. Under that sort of legal system, I can attempt to sell my work, or license it, or perform it publicly, but anybody else can do the same. Why? Because it is no longer "my" work, at least not legally. It is not protected in any way from the efforts of others to exploit it commercially or to give it away as they like. It is anyone's right to do with it what he will. Now, of course, I may rejoice in this. I may desire to create something wonderful and see to it that it is freely distributed to the maximum degree possible because I feel it is important that people benefit from my creative output without any obligation to me. Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any right to compensation for it. Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution. The point is that this is my decision. If copyright does not exist, though, I have no such rights and I have no such control. In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process. In such a system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use it for good or for bad but I have no say in it. I may be the creator but that is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter by and take it for whatever use the like.
When a society makes a decision to defend the right of a creative person to control his work, and to profit from it or give it away as he likes, it has to make all sorts of policy decisions. Should such control last indefinitely? Of course not. Why? Because the benefits that we all get from being able to control our creative work only last so long. After a time, and certainly after we die, we have presumably exhausted whatever benefit we get from such control. Then too, others also create and, in time, all sorts of people borrow from one another and build upon the efforts of others regardless of the degree of creativity that they add to the process. Given enough time, we get what is known as a "common heritage" - something that far transcends the creative work of any one person. And so we have what is known as a public domain - a rich collection of creative output that is freely available to all. Those who value copyright and its social benefits in protecting creative output also value the public domain because it is a natural concomitant to the protected core of works that fall under copyright in any given generation. Indeed, a key aspect of copyright is precisely to encourage people to create - to invest the very blood and sweat that it often takes to do something great - in order that society generally will be enhanced and improved as creative works are done, are made available to the world as the creator may decide, and eventually pass into the public domain. So a fundamental tenet of copyright is that it cannot be absolute. It needs to be strictly bounded to achieve its legitimate goals without being extended to a point where it defeats those goals and gives special privileges to persons for no good reason.
Today, copyright has been seriously abused in the U.S. and elsewhere and needs to be fixed. In particular, terms of copyright need to be brought back to sensible levels. The public domain as it exists needs to be preserved and a better system needs to be in place by which orphaned works can freely enter the public domain. Many other fixes are needed as well. What is most definitely not needed is a SOPA-style enforcement scheme that opens up legal channels to copyright holders that would permit all sorts of abusive actions against innocent parties in the name of copyright enforcement. This sort of thing merely perpetuates the abuse and does not fix anything. Those who have been paying attention strongly sense this, and it has been pretty amazing to watch people unite to oppose the back-room sleaziness that led to such legislative efforts in the first place.
To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright. Just as we recoil at legal abuse in a SOPA-style scheme, we equally recoil at self-righteous claims that people can freely take what others create with no consideration whatever given to those who create it. That sort of radical assertion will get us nowhere when it comes to shaping serious legal policy in the SOPA debate. It needs to be roundly rejected.
Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do?
> In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process.
This is a common approach, but it completely fails as a moral argument. You are saying it is right because it is good for creators. That is an argument of self-interest, and problem is it immediately justifies its opposite. A non-owner can simply say: disobeying the law serves my self-interest, therefore that is right for me.
But it is also short-sighted. You are not only a 'creator', you are a user too. One might well be the greatest writer of books, for example, and so benefit from increased copyright/IP rights. But one will probably not also be the greatest music composer, and the greatest film-maker, and software developer, and so on. We are net consumers, in a sense. To give producers more is to take more from ourselves.
Ultimately, we grant IP rights not because they are for producers, but because they are pragmatically supposed to be useful overall -- that is the only justification. There is no other, no sensible rational purely moral argument, for copyright/IP. That ought always to be remembered.
Let me first state that I'm in basically total agreement with OP and mostly agree with parent, but one point sticks in my craw:
>> The point is that this is my decision.
>Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do?
"Granting the hen the right to distribute (or not) the bread takes that right away from everyone else. How is this justified?" asked the cow.
Um, because the hen made the fucking bread, and the cow didn't. I think that our copyright system is bad, and I personally take similar stance to OP vis-a-vis Big Media, but you'll notice that OPs arguments are pragmatic. "You don't provide a good product" "You hurt me with the fees I pay" "The UX of pirating is better." He's attacking the lazy industry for litigating rather than innovating, attacking the middlemen who are McDucking in swimming pools of cash, and attacking their specious arguments about how you're "hurting the artist" (Funny coming from them: record companies aren't generally known for their generous behavior towards artists). Nowhere does he say "no one should have control over their own works."
I've talked about this before on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3366032), but I think a big problem with these discussions is people seem to assume, as an axiom, that allowing authors to control downstream copying is natural. It isn't - this principle was invented around the time the printing press made mass production of creative works possible, for reasons which were very good at the time, but which may not be justified, overall, anymore.
Any argument about copyright cannot end up in "Well, I think the authors should have control of their own works." This is circular, and it boils down to assuming copyright as an axiom without justification. It also can't end up in an analogy to a case in the physical world - there are too many differences between physical goods and IP. For instance, in your example of the hen with bread, if this were a case of copyright, everyone _including the hen_ could end up eating bread, after the hen put in the work. Is this fair to the hen? Maybe not. On the other hand, though, there have to be ways to balance things just enough to reward the hen for her efforts without starving all the other animals. The conclusion we gained from the physical-world analogy in which _only one animal_ could eat the bread simply does not apply, as one of its fundamental assumptions has been violated.
In short, there are perfectly good arguments you can use (and which have been used, when copyright was invented) to argue why copyright is good and essential _for society as a whole_, and there are of course arguments against it as well, but too often these are not articulated _at all_. People argue from the end result "Artists should have control over their work!", which is essentially the _definition_ of copyright, and use it to argue for copyright. And all too often, the position of the rest of society - which, since they outnumber the artists, ought to be given more weight - is ignored.
> a big problem with these discussions is people seem to assume, as an axiom, that allowing authors to control downstream copying is natural. It isn't
But neither is physical ownership of things or land. We could well go back to letting the 'free market' sort it out, or conversely split everything evenly and legalize any maneuvers to do so. I'm not arguing that physical and digital goods are the same, but rather that both are arbitrary.
For a tiny example, German law downplays the usual importance of physical ownership if theft is about food for direct consumption. This decision is just as arbitrary as heightening the value of authorship.
All laws have to be analyzed as an arbitrary society-as-a-whole thing to make any sense. And that's why I think it's harmful that this discussion is always reduced to tiny examples with two people and a car, or in this case a hen and other animals, and a single transaction at one point in time only.
Not disagreeing with the core of your posting at all, but I think you got lost in the hen analogy too.
> And all too often, the position of the rest of society - which, since they outnumber the artists, ought to be given more weight - is ignored.
Not sure about the phrasing of that argument. If female nurses demanded more wages than male ones, should this opinion be given 95% of the weight?
> Not disagreeing with the core of your posting at all, but I think you got lost in the hen analogy too.
Oh, indeed, we should apply the same rubric to physical property. But I've already analyzed a number of other cases in the post I linked, and didn't feel like bothering to analyze whether physical property is a good thing or not.
> Not sure about the phrasing of that argument. If female nurses demanded more wages than male ones, should this opinion be given 95% of the weight?
It's not about what people _demand_. Of _course_ they'll always demand something better for themselves. Here we need to weigh their demands not against the other male nurses, but rather against society as a whole, _including people other than nurses_. Does giving female nurses more pay harm the quality or cost of care for patients more than it improves it for said nurses, after weighting by population? Does it promulgate certain values that we have decided are undesirable in society as a whole (eg, gender inequality)? Does it, in the end, actually harm said nurses (perhaps their civil rights are eroded by the popular opinion shifting away from gender equality). These are the sort of questions you need to ask. It's not just, oh, within this arbitrary subpopulation, the subsubpopulation that has the greatest proportional share gets what they want.
> Not sure about the phrasing of that argument. If female nurses demanded more wages than male ones, should this opinion be given 95% of the weight?
Never mind, yes: It should be decided in exactly this democratic way. In both cases though, we should hope that the majority is well-informed enough to make a decision. (Oh BTW, democratic decisions are not an axiomatic 'right thing' either, you can have nice discussions about this in China :) )
> because the hen made the fucking bread, and the cow didn't
Yes, we could say that work justifies payment (very simply and roughly). But that is not in dispute. It is that it does not justify payment by a particular means -- one that restricts the freedom (to copy etc.) of others. And -- you will forgive me if I am mistaken -- I am afraid inclusion of the word 'fucking' does not quite cover that.
Does payment depend, necessarily, on restriction of copying? No, it does not. It is possible to be paid in other ways -- that do not impose on other freedoms. Then in the most general sense, that sounds like what we ought to be doing (i.e. that is moral).
Again, in so far as it turns out most practical to pay by copyright, that is how far it is justified. Not in some other ethical way.
I like your point, you are basically saying artist should sell things under CreativeCommons-like licenses (meaning you aren't restricting the rights of your consumers). Correct?
So treat Expressive works just like any other product, that can be bought, resold, copied, modifyed/hacked. Is that the logical conclusion of your position?
How do we (should we?) protect innovation? The patent system? the copyright system? Some other form of protection?
> Does payment depend, necessarily, on restriction of copying? No, it does not.
The only other way I can think of is patronage; I produce a work for a patron according to their wishes, and hand it over for a fee, at which point I relinquish any further control.
Isn't this largely what the recording industry and movie studio model is? They front the money to an artist to pay to produce a work and the artist relinquishes further control. In this case the patron is buying the work in order to resell it.
You can sell rights to be the first viewer/reader/consumer. With a world where all digital content is almost free, first-time exclusivity can increase highly its value.
I agree that 'first consumer pays everything' is an option. Hardback books work like this a little -- if you want to read it earlier, you need to pay more.
I don't know that this continues to work for digital goods. Are there examples you're thinking of?
A comparison with physical goods is pretty much irrelevant. If you take away copyright, you take away a limitation on others, but don't prevent the creator of the work from enjoying the work itself.
There is a reason copyright law and property law are universally separate: One creates an artificial restriction on the public to prevent them from doing something which would not take away the freedom to act of the creator of the work, the other places restrictions on the public to prevent them from taking away the freedoms of the owner of something, who would be deprived of the use of what is stolen.
Pretty much every legal system on earth recognizes that these are fundamentally different, and pretty much every one of them recognize that copyright protection is a tool putatively intended for the benefit of society - not created to protect against injustice.
If my only options for what to do with my digital works are to keep them to myself, or release them unhindered into the public domain, then in some cases I would not release at all.
I do not want music I have composed to be used in risqué films; I do not want software that I released under the GPL to be assimilated into proprietary products; etc. If by releasing my work to the public I relinquish all control, then I can do nothing to enforce my wishes.
Is it better for the public that I do not release anything that I am not willing to let be used in any fashion whatsoever? Or is it better that I do release, but assert copyright restrictions on how the public may use my works (which they wouldn't have at all if I kept them to myself)?
No, the cow should- the cow is like the pirate- the cow should, I mean the hen should- let me back up for a minute: the mill is like the DNS system, and the oven is like RIAA, so the hen should be able to give bread to the co- shoot, now I'm all confused.
The second an artist is trying to mass produce they are businessmen not artists anymore.
The artist didn't make the ability to produce in large numbers and distribute at zero cost, that is what technology did.
A technology that served the labels and musicians for one hundred years.
Now it is turning on them and they start to complain. Bo freaking ho.
People make music without making a single dime on it. Great music in fact fantastic music. The big artists are big because the record labels and IP laws make them big. Not because they through some fair game was the best of the crop.
Their "physical distribution" by means of a complex technological infrastructure involving microphones, amplifiers, speakers, lighting, electricity etc. etc., which, as you point out, "the artist didn't make," but which the artist wishes to leverage in order to make a greater profit.
The argument of "well you didn't invent TCP/IP so you can't expect to make money distributing digital copies of your music" is the slipperiest of slippery slopes, as none of us personally created all the technologies we use to make a living. I use a laptop, text editor, and web browser, none of which I created: have I forfeit my right to make a living as a web developer?
It seems that the simplest, most generic expression of your argument (correct me if I'm wrong) is "No one can reasonably expect to make money on anything which can be reproduced digitally, and this is more or less fair." I disagree.
if you work a day for me and then I decide not to pay you, you aren't any poorer than you were before so no harm right?
In the absence of a contract (if I just decided to work for a day for you without your prior agreement to pay for the day of work), yes. Doing work does not automatically create an obligation of others to pay you for having done it.
There are two things that can create such an obligation:
* altering something you already had (such as an object or your body)
If I work a day for you, it is a day that I am not able to work for someone else (possibly myself in my own business). So, yes, I have lost a workday. If I am not compensated for that workday, then I am that much poorer.
"If I take an microphone from you, you don't have an microphone."
..and so I have to buy a new one if we both want to have one at the same time.
"If I copy a song from you, you still have the song yourself."
Awesome, we can just buy one then and split the cost! But why stop there? Let's also give a copy to Tom, Dick and Harry so that each pays 20%! Now, what if we could somehow share the song and the cost with a hundred million people across the world..
I do, do you? Microphone sharing (a) means only one person at a time can access it and (b) it is way more inconvenient. Microphone creators are not threatened by sharing, digital creators are.
If someone steals 20 microphones from the mic creator he has 20 microphones less. If someone downloads 20 songs from a song creator the creator of that song still has the song.
And say, with your wife and children ? Would you share it with them or make them pay too ? And when you listen to the music, streaming, with friends at a party you throw, do they all have to pay ?
And in most cases you pay for a unique concert, sure it's the same songs as the last show but musicians rarely play the music exactly the same way. The best concert include a lot more than just playing the songs. It's worth paying for. The best concert artist put on an act and improvise on stage. It's not easy and it takes talent and work.
This is of course an opinion (one I generally share).
Generally the more niche something is the less fans it will have but the more those fans will love it.
A lot of pop music and modern moves + video games are designed specifically to appeal a bit to a large number of people. It's almost impossible to create something that appeals a lot to everyone.
So the other option is to find a small niche following and concentrate on extracting the most amount of money from them. I imagine that without some form of copyright most of the music produced would either be stuff produced by musicians for other musicians or for the upper classes who would fund it's continued development.
Part of me hopes that your vision becomes reality and all financially backed art falls apart.. just so you, ThomPete, can live in a world that shitty and know that this is what you wanted. Enjoy your cat videos.
Yeah, a totally shitty world with those crappy pre-copyright amateurs like Shakespeare and without the great art of Justin Bieber. The horror, the horror.
I assume Shakespeare made his money from ticket sales to his shows.
There were no cameras in those days if there was somebody would simply record the show and distribute it, I would imagine Shakespeare would want some of that action himself.
Just because someone wants something doesn't mean they have a right to it.
I'd like to charge everyone who sees me when I walk down the street - I'd make a bundle - but I'd think society would be pretty stupid if they indulged me.
You really can't see the difference between that and somebody making money from your work (possibly more than you do) without providing you with any compensation?
Leaving aside the rather obvious question of what makes you think your taste in music is superior to anyone else, how much MORE of that great, great, great music would get created if the artists didn't have to wash dishes for 10 hours a day to make rent and eat?
Every hour you have to spend working a day job is an hour you can't spend creating.
I am telling you that even with the music you like whatever that is there is plenty of great music that you never have heard of and never will. That's how it is in all genres of music.
Let's assume we are discussing modern music not Bach or something.
There are of course good musicians who distribute their music monetarily free but how much of it is explicitly copyright free (i.e libre not gratis)?
I know a number of aspiring musicians who if a large media company took their music and redistributed it under a different name with different people lip syncing to their vocals then boy would they be pissed.
I'm not sure why the down votes? Look, I'm as business-oriented as anyone here, but this is the truth.
Art can be profitable for the artist, but whether it is or isn't, it's still happening. People will create sculptures to admire and music to dance to. The distribution stream was invented far, far later. Let's not conflate the creation of the art and the business of selling it.
I assume that once you pitch designs to one of your clients, it's fine with you if they photograph it, copy it, and never pay you a dime?
People love design, and do great design without making a single dime on it. The rich designers are rich because professional networking, big companies and IP laws make them big. Not because they were the best of the crop.
Boo Freaking Hoo. Real designers do it for love. Only phonies want to get paid.
Part of the reason you are paid so much as a designer who works "for hire" either employed or as a freelancer is that your client wants something unique.
Let's assume that there is no copyright.
You get a contract from a client to design them a logo , website and smartphone app to promote their business.
However your client knows that if a competitor wishes to copy their entire website including logo and app etc they can do so with impunity so all that they will get from whatever sum they invest in your work is a slight first mover advantage and probably the better the work you do the more likely someone else is to copy it.
How much do you think they are willing to pay you for your work now?
Ever walked into a department store like Macy's? It's all ripoff from designers. There is no copyright on clothe design yet that hasn't killed the designer clothing market.
Counterfeit goods to my knowledge fall under trademark laws.
I think this is why people have such high regard for labels in fashion.
Fashion is also a very visible way to display wealth whilst software is not, "aaah but was your copy of Office 2010 compiled by Steve Ballmer himself".. just doesn't happen.
If we got rid of software copyright what would actually happen would be that all commercial software would be moved into a SaaS model and companies would keep their servers and code under lock and key so that nobody could get physical access to it. This would probably give you less freedom rather than more.
Perhaps some movies would also be screened only at cinemas so that nobody ended up with a DVD that they could copy.
Its worth pointing out that fashion is a unique industry when it comes to copying; everyone copies everyone else.
There was a great article on this on the net, written by someone in the industry who fleshed it out with anecdotes which included a high level designer going into a budget store and looking at the design and products there, to copy.
If all my software is only available via a cloud service then it would restrict my freedom compared to having a local copy to the extent that I have no control over any changes to the software.
If they release an update that I don't like for example then it will not be possible for me to retain the older version.
If they decide to discontinue the software or go bust etc then I will lose access to it, this would not happen if I had my own copy.
If I have all my data saved on their servers then I am at their whim as I don't have the files myself so that makes it harder to move to another piece of software should they change their ToS in a way I do not agree with.
If I have confidential data stored with them and their servers are broken into then this causes issues that could be avoided by holding it on my own computer firewalled away from the internet.
And crucially I will not be able to access it without a working internet connection.
This may be the way of the future whether I like it or not but I wouldn't hail it completely as a good thing in terms of freedom or digital rights etc.
I actually find it somewhat ironic that a lot of the best FOSS work (Linux , Apache , Python etc) that was intended to create a software freedom utopia is actually being used primarily to build walled gardens where you have no control over the software.
All your software don't have to be available via the cloud. The data could be or vice versa. There will still be plenty of free alternatives just as there are today.
You very well know there are plenty of ways around this and it is being practiced today.
Spotify is one example.
You are creating pseudo problems that would not really exist.
If you have software without the cloud then you return to the same copyright problem repeated ad nauseum in this thread.
Ok, perhaps you could have applications in the cloud with locally stored data but I can't see this as being popular for 2 reasons.
1) Vendors would like the lock-in power that storing your data gives.
2) If I have a lot of data it may not be practical to upload it every time I use the cloud software on a slow uplink.
There are not really "plenty of free alternatives" to many types of software, at least alternatives that are as good as commercial offerings. Examples would include image editors and games.
Using Spotify as an example, all of the music is streamed from the internet so if they remove a track from their library then I lose my ability to stream it.
Also to sign up for Spotify now you need a facebook account, I don't have one or want one. Luckily I got my account before this was a requirement but if they decide to apply this policy retroactively then I'm shit out of luck.
Assuming there is another service that fits my needs, doesn't have the same problem, has a price I like and will let me move all my data over from the old service..
I just don't understand why you think losing all control over your software would be preferable to copyright?
Of course people create cover versions of songs or re-use a good riff, there is always an element of copying ideas but I think this is different to completely ripping something off 100% since you must still create the rest of the body of work around the original idea.
Of course you could argue how much imitation should be allowed before it is considered a copyright or patent violation.
I think the legal system deals with that.
If you believe that you are losing money due to somebody else stealing your intellectual property then you can sue.
I would not equate copying necessarily with stealing but each copy that is made of your software/music whatever will dilute it's value to an extent unless there is some compensation. Commercial software hopes you will compensate by paying money, OSS hopes you will compensate by providing code or some other service.
So it's not really any different, besides of course that transcribing someone's licks and incorporating it into your own style isn't going to get exposed.
What do you mean "isn't going to get exposed" , people complain all the time that certain songs re-use riffs from older songs.
Your argument seems to boil down to what the minimum unit of valid IP is. This is a complex issue and is often fought in courts.
Taking a riff from someone elses song and rebuilding a new song around it requires a lot more creativity time and money than simply copying and redistributing the song.
Copyright isn't so much for protecting an "idea" as such (that's what patents are for).
It is to stop somebody reproducing a complete piece of work without prior agreement.
Let's say I build a new type of software and publish it, then somebody else thinks that is a good idea and builds their own version that is similar to mine (without re-using my source code). I would view that as flattery and competition. However I have a strong first mover advantage and whilst they may have learned from some of my mistakes they still have to actually do the work of creating their software which puts us economically on a relatively even footing.
Suppose instead they simply redistribute my software with their logo on it for half the price then they have a strong economical advantage because they didn't have to invest the initial development costs that I did.
So to clarify: if you do work with the intent of selling it to one buyer it should be protected, but if you do work with the intent of selling it to two or more buyers it should not?
No. Rather, the point is that you are paid for your work rather than a copy of the result of your work. This is just like a software developer working for a salary rather than somebody eking out an existence in an app store.
But who will pay me for my work if it is not some bespoke contract thing?
Will you ask for donations?
What happens if you announce you will work on something and take a bunch of donations in the first couple of months (enough to live off).
What happens if the donations then dry up and you run out of money so you can't continue to work on the program full time but it is not finished? Do you have to go into debt to repay the people who donated or do they have to take a gamble that your program will get finished and be good enough?
Or do you only start work when you have sufficient donations to finish development? What happens if you misjudge this?
I don't know how it translates to non-programming stuff, but the vast majority of developers do work for in-house stuff (I've seen this cited somewhere, but can't remember exactly where). Only a minority try to actually sell programs (admittedly including some big companies like Adobe and Microsoft, but that's a different story). Moreover, as somebody using exclusively open-source tools--and being more productive than before--I can testify that the world would not be too bad without anybody selling proprietary programs.
My point isn't that this model can carry over unchanged to a different field; rather, all I maintain is that it is possible for a creative endeavor to be pushed largely by creators working for a salary rather than a royalty. I do not know enough about fields outside of programming to figure out exactly how it would work, but I see no reason it could not exist.
Paying someone a salary inhouse will work for stuff like "Bespoke BigCorp Customer Database" but I don't think it would work so well for general use applications intended to be sold to the population and I don't think we want those type of apps to die.
Open source dev tools are great because they are built by developers who understand what developers want and crucially they were built because they were needed i.e there was nothing commercial that did the job in the way they wanted.
How many developers know enough about developing image , video or audio editing software to do it well on their own? Most OSS solutions in this area are basically poor clones of commercial software. Also where will the money come from to fund them doing this full time?
I know as one example Ardour is developed full time and is quite a cool piece of OSS for sound editing but it's developed by one guy who can barely pay his bills from the donations, he probably makes what he would at burger king.
You would think that computer programmers would be able to design some awesome OSS games right? After all about 50% of my CS class joined the course because they wanted to make games and it's probably one of the most popular topics on any programming forum.
Well I can't really think of a single OSS game that has ever really impressed me and certainly none have become popular in the same way Half life or Skyrim has (by OSS game I mean a game that was developed under an OSS model, not something where the code was released by the developer 10 years later or something that is essentially an open source mod for a commercially developed game).
And I have yet to be provided with any reasonable business model that would still enable the creation of something like the Great Pyramids of Giza, or the Great Wall of China. I just don't think this idea of abolishing slavery has legs.
Well I'm no historian but I think it's possible that in the time of the ancient Egyptians the idea to abolish slavery would not be feasible whilst retaining their society. If they didn't have slaves to do the heavy lifting then it's likely that another civilization which did use slavery would simply wipe them out due to better efficiency.
Slavery was abolished partly because there was enough technology to make it less necessary.
If we could automate human creativity then I suppose copyright would no longer be necessary.
There was a time, not that long ago, when there was no such thing as recorded music or films. People just performed the music live. Then one day, the phonograph was invented, and thomas edison paid musicians to perform in front of a phonograph recording machine. The musicians were happy, because they got paid for a performance. Thomas Edison was happy, because he got to make a gajillian zillion dollars off of that artists performance using his "automated creativity machine". Since then the major advance has been that record companies have worked out how to not bother paying the musicians for that original recorded performance.
Not really a helpful answer, doesn't address any of my points.
I think "adapt or die" has the risk of killing a lot of good business models that have so far provided us with some great content/software etc.
I have yet to be provided with a good business model for content in a post copyright world that can be made to work for every type of content that we currently enjoy.
Come on ! That's exactly what happens everyday. When you pitch some creative work, you know you're throwing it to the winds and hope the pitched guy will see more benefit in hiring you than in copying it. You cannot protect art in general.
I've worked for very decent folks (google in Dublin to name one) and very undecent ones. When you are not a mainstream artist, when you are part of the profesional artists crowd (people who live from it but don't make millions) which is the overwhelming majority of artists, you don't give a damn about all this bullshit on piracy. But you do pay attention on the fact that anything that further strenghtens big corporations will in turn make your situation more fragile.
"But it is also short-sighted. You are not only a 'creator', you are a user too"
The question is: To what extent?
If we measure how much income a person have from intellectual property and how much money they spend on intellectual property (if they not steal) then you will see the following:
Most people are only consumers.
A fraction of people create things as a hobby, so their consumption is not much smaller than their production.
A tiny fraction of people produce intellectual property for a living: their consumption is tiny compared to their production.
If you are in the first camp then in short term no-copyright may be good for you. But if you are in the 3rd camp, it is bad for you, because in that case you are 99% producer and 1% consumer of these kind of goods.
That's why I think that the no-copyright movement is unfortunatelly partly an anti-intellectual, populist, 'anti-civilisational', (ok, maybe anti elitist too) movement: the less creative people's fight to take away rights from more creative people. (And creativity is only partly talent, it is also really hard work, so this movement is against hard intellectual work.)
That's why I think that the no-copyright movement is unfortunatelly partly an anti-intellectual, populist, 'anti-civilisational', (ok, maybe anti elitist too) movement
When combined with a pro-capitalism platform, you might be right. If writers need copyright to be able to eat and pay rent, then you are right.
But anti-copyright, combined with an anti-property ("anarchist") platform isn't necessarily anti-civilisation, or anti-intellectual. Other structures, like syndicates, architecture, designed artifacts, and other forms of culture, can provide "civilisation".
In such a society, writers (and everyone else) would be born with the right to a fair share of the living space and food around them. They would be expected to contribute a fair share. As they got better at writing, people might start to agree that their time was better spent writing than in the fields, and would petition their work syndicate to post them as a writer.
(Of course, this is anarchism, so they could just go write the books anyway, they would just lose social standing if people felt they weren't contributing their fair share.)
You might say that creators wouldn't create if there wasn't a carrot of Wealth dangling out in front of them somewhere.
We can debate that point. I'm interested to hear your thoughts. But in my experience the great creators of culture who I know well do it despite the monetary consequences, not because of them. They write themselves into poverty... orchestrate music into the middle class... paint on a teacher's salary.
And yeah, some of them become insanely wealthy. But I don't think the majority of them do it for the wealth. If they do, that would be very stupid, no matter what system you're in.
Give everyone the basic necessities in fair trade for contributing to the syndicates that make their food, housing, and health possible, and I think you'd see an explosion in creativity, not the opposite.
You are spot on.. my friend. I don't agree with the hidden notion that creative people create to become famous or make boat loads of money. I consider myself a creative person too.. software is my art though. Yes.. I would prefer not to have to work a day job and I'm trying to move into freelancing to do just that unless the day job is the dream team I would love to work with. Yes.. I have had desires of making it big.. but over time I've realized that basically.. I just need enough money to live comfortably and work on my ideas. That is what would really make me happy.. not being the next Zuckerberg.. especially not Zuckerberg.. but I digress.. or do I?
> But if you are in the 3rd camp, it is bad for you, because in that case you are 99% producer and 1% consumer of these kind of goods.
I don't think that is ever true of anybody. A writer needs to read 10, 100, 1000 books before he can produce a book of similar quality. The same applies to musicians who learn from other people's music, painters who learn from other people's paintings, and scientists who build upon other people's work. Nobody creates IP out of a vacuum. If anything, creative people are even more indebted to other people's IP than simple consumers are.
> > The point is that this is my decision.
> Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do?
Because, the creative work would not exist if not for the creator. If you take away the creator's right (and I am not arguing that it should be infinite and indefinite), you take away the incentive to produce and expose creative work. In effect, everyone loses.
Yes, of course individuals or small groups will still create art in their free time.
You can't deny however that any massive undertakings would be effectively killed. No one will invest millions of dollars to produce a video game, or hundreds of millions to produce a movie if it can be freely copied.
It's great that you can make a game or movie on a small budget, but isn't it better to live in a world where we can have both? Does the cost of copyright really outweigh the benefits of living in a society where creative people can devote all of their time producing content?
1. Games and movies still makes lots of money
2. Streaming technologies will render the need for physically storing games, movies or anything more and more obsolete.
3. Just wait til the movie houses start using 3d models in stead.
You see the problem is that you have to think about this in a much larger perpective to realize that things will even themselves out.
With regards to cost of copyright. Then yes when it makes people criminals to the extent it do today and fines them with amounts it do then it is way way way to high.
I'm not sure game streaming would be any better, it may require less copyright but then what happens when the company decides it is no longer economically feasible to stream the game that you like to play?
I'm not sure how 3d models would make a difference in movies? Many movies are already basically 3d renders.
That's not true at all, I have a large collection of games dating from around 1990 to present on my shelves. Assuming I can find the disks (most of them are in the wrong boxes) I can re-install any of them and play right now (ok I might have to install dosbox for some of them not to mention find a floppy drive).
That's only true currently for games that are only playable via a single central online service (e.g WoW etc) and that's sort of dictated by the game format itself.
What I mean is a world where all games are video streamed to you even if they are single player only.
Your point as I understand it is that you would find it preferable for content creators not to distribute at all rather than distribute with copyright?
Art – the kind you find in the museum – is entirely enabled by the concept of the "patron". Throughout most of history, patrons have been aristocrats and other wealthy peoples. Without wealthy people to support artists to make art, there will be no art.
At the moment we have many people making something equivalent to "folk art" and getting paid to do so. Folk art does not necessarily need support from a patron since it is typically fairly easy to make (i.e. it can be done in one's spare time). People will continue making folk art after they can no longer be ensured payment for their work, though to a lesser extent.
And (currently-existing) lumberjacks have always cut down trees, and (because of an identity now largely grounded therein) probably always will.
Still, I'd rather not have to depend on charity-lumberjacking, you know? If someone wants to chop down trees for free, that's between him and his god (or dryad, as the case may be). If that's the only way trees ever get cut down? God help us all.
Above statement refers, for purposes of argument, to sustainable tree harvesting, so as to avoid irrelevant side tangents.
Yes, I know that you can identify differences between abolition of copyright and a ban on all monetary compensation for lumberjacks.
What you cannot do, however, is find a difference that distinguishes them in a way that defends your argument that we shouldn't worry about a world where X is only produced by charity, since some people do X for free.
If you don't care that art would only be produced for free, neither should you care if lumberjacking only happened by charity. If you're not ready to go that far, you might not want to lean so heavily on the argument that "(some) artists create for free".
Again who is talking about doing something for free?
Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced songs.
>Don't blame me for you lack of imagination that would have allowed you to see a world where artist could create without making money on digitally mass produced songs.
I'm sure, that, just as with making music, there are revenue models for lumberjacking that don't involve charging for lumberjacking services. For example, they could broadcast live video of themselves chopping down trees and charge for that. Or maybe trees should only be cut down by their owners so they're not technically earning money from chopping down a tree.
Or, you know, we could just bypass the whole charade and let people charge for the lumberjacking/artistic creations that they were responsible for (if they so wish) rather than stick to some ideological belief that it's somehow wrong to do so while hoping they come up with some convoluted way to accomplish the same thing with more restricted means.
It's great that there are ways to produce good X without invoking exclusivity rights in X; but for those (many) cases where X wouldn't otherwise be produced, I would like for that model to be an option.
That doesn't mean the current copyright regime is optimal; far from it. It just means that the mentality of "IP sucks and everyone will produce valuable stuff for free" is looney.
Just in case you're not noticing it (and I can understand why you wouldn't), your involvement on this topic pretty much consists of:
- offering an argument,
- being shown how it is flawed, and then
- ignoring the explanation you were just given, to fall back on a variant of "copying is free".
I think a lot of us readers would prefer it if you engage the arguments given to you.
I can't see the rating that posts other than mine have. In any case, in this discussion, many of your comments (though not in this specific exchange with me) are grayed out (meaning non-positive rating).
What you haven't addressed is your inability to consistently apply your claims about non-IP-reliant methods of art production. Here's what happened:
You post (the one right before my first reply), showing indifference to the prospect of it being impossible to make a monetary profit from production of intellctual works.
Paraphrasing your comment, you say,: Real artists don't work for profit, so it's actually a good thing if production of movies, books, etc cannot earn a monetary profit due to people not respecting IP claims.
Then, I come back, and ask if you are so indifferent to the unprofitability of production of something else people want being rendered unprofitable due to widespread refusal to recognize rights therein, using the example of lumberjacking.
Due to your apparent inability to follow chains of logic beyond a certain depth, you felt it was sufficient to cite one superficial difference betweeen lumberjacking and creation of intellectual works, and considered it "case closed" and duh why can't this idiot see that they're different.
What you don't understand (almost certainly due to an unwillingness to) is that this difference, while true, does not invalidate the analogy I was drawing, because they are not different in the relevant aspects. What aspects?
1) In both cases, there would be a bad incentive effect on the valuable activity: the lumberjacking and intellectual works that need a profit incentive to produce, won't be.
2) In both cases, you can find some circuitous, inefficient way to reproduce the profitability that would otherwise come from simply recognizing rights therein.
In response to both of these similarities, and due to your inability to consistently apply the principles you advocate, you simply fall back on, "art can be copied, cutting a tree down can't". And that's true. But it means precisely nothing in terms of the above similarities.
Quite frankly, it's frustrating when you keep falling back on your standard line that they're different (in a narrow way), completely obvlivious to how it contradicts what you just said ("who cares if socially-beneficial activity X can't turn a profit [except by circuitous routes]?"). I expect better from people I debate with, especially on HN.
>Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do?
Where does this argument end? Why can't I drive your car whenever I want? Is your "ownership" of your car really more valid than my ownership of something that I invested significant time and effort (maybe even money) to create, and if so, why?
Apply this same argument to someone who spends hundreds of hours working so that they can buy a car. This is all done out of self interest. Most people would not conclude that it's okay for someone that a car thief, who steals the car because it serves his self interest. That this is somehow rational and moral because one person's self interest is equivalent to another person's self interest.
Of course people who are anti-copyright will be quick to point out that a bunch of bits on a disk that can be infinitely duplicated is different from a physical car. And that's true. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the blood, sweat, and tears that the creator invests in the act of creation.
I could post more far fetched analogies. It's in a woman's interest to have self control over her body. It's in a rapists best interest to take control of her body. Does the argument that each individuals self-interest is reciprocal apply in this case? Is that the "sensible rational purely moral" conclusion? Of course not. There are a myriad of other factors that need to be taken into consideration.
Your car analogy conflates scarce and non-scarce goods. A better car analogy would be that someone invents a way to create cars for $200 with 3D printers, and so everyone stops buying cars that cost 100x that much. "You wouldn't download a car" and all that. Of course, someone has to create the CAD designs or whatever, but that's a much smaller industry than all the manufacturing that existed before (so, of course, all the people who work in auto factories are upset that they've been made irrelevant).
I explicitly acknowledge the difference between scarce and non-scare goods in the above post if you could bother to read the second paragraph. The part you're leaving out in your 'improved' anology is that it might cost 10 years and ten million dollars to develop this $200 car.
Basically the great-grand-parent is saying that there's no rational or moral justification for someone profiting from innovation, because it's in someone else's self interest to take that innovation, and these two parties self interests cancel each other out to the exclusion of all other factors. I find that to be an extremely naive and simplistic argument.
Exactly right about failing as a moral argument. Copyright also fails on moral grounds by violating property rights. If I am not permitted to store certain sequences of bits on a hard drive, or paint a certain arrangement of colors, or hum a certain tune, then my right to use my property is effectively limited.
you're right to fire a gun within city limits is (most likely) effectively limited by gun control laws. your right to use your gun (property) is also limited by laws against murder. I could keep going.
> Granting the creator such rights takes them away from everyone else. Why is that justified? Why should one person, the creator, be able to tell other people what they can and cannot do?
Then the alternative is that all creators keep their output to themselves and people with this entitled attitude never get to make use of their work. Or maybe they don't make something at all. Or maybe they don't even try to learn to make something and get a "real" job because anything they would create is no longer able to buy them lunch. There are people who want to give works away free and for them that's great but what gives any of us the rights to something someone else has made? It's one thing to come across a piece of work legitimately and then be able to do as you please with it.
The music industry is an easy target and even I have a hard time defending them. What about software though? A lot of us here make our living partly due to the protections of copyright. It's one thing to circumvent Apple or Microsoft and pirate some software but what about the indie developer? That guy can't make up the costs with live performances like other types of creators. You either pay for a copy or you don't. If one copy gets bought and 500 get pirated then that guy just got royally screwed. Not all software lends itself to free downloads with paid support. Not all software can be SaaS. So what then? Even open source developers have day jobs. You can't live on PayPal donations and Flattrs.
This whole anti-copyright argument sounds wonderful but the world isn't ready yet. Maybe in another 20 years. The answer isn't to get rid of copyright, the answer is to scale it back to a point where it's more sane.
> Then the alternative is that all creators keep their output to themselves
That is provably not the case: People still published written works, performed plays and music for thousands of years before copyright laws were introduced.
Even today, there are vast numbers of novels, movie clips, songs etc. being made available freely.
The alternative is that SOME creators keep their output to themselves. The vast majority of creators are not being paid to create their content.
Now, if you want to make a claim that the works created by the ones that would keep their output to themselves are more important to society, then that's a claim that is not as easily refutable, and it'd even be possible you're right, depending on how one measures importance of a work.
Why is it that the folks defending copyright always pull out the "But then creators will take their balls and go home!" card? That's such a repugnant, faithless argument. Numerous examples exist of people creating in spite of the system--and even making a living doing the same!
So, the entire issue for indie developers (of whose ranks I count myself a member) can be solved by not making a product until you confirm that it is wanted (i.e., pay me while I develop it, then do whatever). Alternately, you leave the creation of games (which have little to no lasting value) to be works of art, and let the artists and hobbyists make them for whatever living they can eke out. Entertainment as an industry, much less a secure one, is a silly idea.
You can't live on PayPal donations
Tell that to the guys from Wolfire, or Notch. I'm sure they'll want to know--they've been doing it for years, and would be upset to find out that they can't make a living that way.
This whole anti-copyright argument sounds wonderful but the world isn't ready yet. Maybe in another 20 years. The answer isn't to get rid of copyright, the answer is to scale it back to a point where it's more sane.
There is no magical time where the switch will be flipped and the world will embrace and move post copyright. Better we solve this--now--then wait until our infrastructure and freedoms are attacked. Before drastic measures such as breaking core parts of the interne--oh, huh, welp.
There is no sane part to copyright. None. It's madness. It is saying that we must artificially introduce scarcity onto things that can be duplicated freely--that's mad!
They won't be taking their balls and going home out of pique, they'll be doing it because they have to go to work.
Every hour an artist has to spend at a day job is an hour they can't spend creating. It's an hour they can't spend practicing. It's an hour they can't spend raising awareness of their work.
This is true but as a sort of counterpoint I think that sometimes once an artist gets well established they lose some of their connection to the normal world.
For example a lot of rock music comes from anger and frustration of having to work a shitty job, behave in a prescribed way and having little money.
As soon as you have released a few albums and have free reign to fill your nose with coke , cover yourself in tattoos and can afford to live wherever you like you may lose some of initial meaning behind the art and start to become pretentious and contrived.
Your premise doesn't seem terribly strong for a few reasons.
1) Artists have memories. When I was much younger, I worked as a telemarketer. It was probably the worst job I ever held in my life. It was soul-crushing. Even though I am now a reasonably successful software engineer, I still remember how difficult it was to go to work knowing that unless I was lucky, I was going to be rejected all day long. Even though I've been with my partner for more than a decade, I remember how chaotic, foolish, and frustrating the dating scene was. Anyone with a few years under their belt knows that a bad memory can jump out at you and make you feel exactly the way you did when it happened.
2) An artists music evolves over time. Look at the Beatles. "With the Beatles" is an astonishingly different album from "Abbey Road." Just because you start out as one thing doesn't mean you have to be that thing for the rest of your career.
3) Look at artists like Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and even Billy Joel to some extent. No matter what your opinion of their music is, it's hard to argue that they are not iconic representations of the "everyman" in music. Most of their output was produced while they were some of the highest paid performers in the world. Even a guy like Jay-Z hasn't been poor or street for a very long time, but if he puts out another record, you can be damned sure that there will be millions of people who buy it because he knows how to write songs that relate to the kind of person he used to be.
Don't put too much stock in the idea that you have to be street level to write good music.
I think you have a point but it's totally irrelevant. You're basically sayng that good artists should stay poor and work a day job so they can keep in touch with their roots and make good music. Well, maybe they should, maybe not but there's no connection to copyright here at all.
> "Why is it that the folks defending copyright always pull out the "But then creators will take their balls and go home!" card? That's such a repugnant, faithless argument. Numerous examples exist of people creating in spite of the system--and even making a living doing the same!"
Your logic is faulty - just because some people will continue to create in spite of the system does not mean all can continue to. Yes, indie game developers can continue to make games, but what about larger undertakings? You can't spend millions of dollars and employ large teams to devote themselves fully to creating a game like, say, Diablo 3, without some way to support those deveopers, artists, etc. A world with only indie games is less rich than a world with both indie and commercial games.
> "Tell that to the guys from Wolfire, or Notch. I'm sure they'll want to know--they've been doing it for years, and would be upset to find out that they can't make a living that way."
I'm not following this argument. Both Wolfire and Mojang (Notch's company) sell games. They also provide free demos but their primary income comes from selling copyrighted works, not donations.
If the market evolves to not sustain AAA games, thems the breaks.
I'm not following this argument. Both Wolfire and Mojang (Notch's company) sell games. They also provide free demos but their primary income comes from selling copyrighted works, not donations.
So, to a point, they are effectively living off "donations" until they ship 1.0, right? Preorders are effectively donations to continue development.
afaik, pre-orders give you access to the "beta" version which is still very playable and will also give you access to the finished version when it is done.
All you get for free is an older version where you cannot do multiplayer or save your game. Basically a demo.
Not all creators take their balls and go home. But enough will for it to be notable. Yes, there are those who will either deal with piracy and those who will give away their work freely. Those people will never go away but in a world without copyright we may not have had a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates to play such a crucial role in the development of products we all use and love. I'm sure someone else may have created them but who's to say their version would be as good? I love FOSS software but I have to say I'm not going to pretend that all Open Source alternatives to copyrighted software are just as good. There's a lot to be said for the polish that comes from being funded. It's about business and it's no secret. The big evil companies make these polished products that are more enjoyable to use because they make money And are able to make money because they enforce the copyright on their work as much as they can. I also like local indie bands. I know a lot of them have a lot of their music too. It's true that they make most of their money touring and they give away a lot of their music for exposure free. But guess what? As great as their music is their records lack the polish that a major label album has and it quite frankly hurts them.
Your solution for indie developers sounds extremely far fetched and idealistic. "I'm developing software that does X, Y, and Z. If you like how that sounds then pay me before it's finished and then if I ever do finish it you'd better hope it lives up to what I said it would do. It's okay if it turns out to be garbage because you get to do whatever you want with it once I give it to you"? That doesn't scale. You're paying for what the software does for you, not for the actual software itself. It's a form of paying for a service. Some of the cost is for development but the core of what you pay is for the value you derive from it. Ideally there's a free trial and you see if you like it. Then you decide whether the cost lines up with what you're willing to pay based on the value you derive from it. In the end you're free to go elsewhere if it doesn't line up. It's a great system for all parties. I don't play any games but I do enjoy music and movies. The idea that entertainment as an industry being silly isn't relevant. We're talking about opinions here so I don't want to totally discount yours but I think it makes perfect sense for entertainment to be an industry. That's the nature of capitalism. Anything can become an industry if you set it up right. You can say the same of any industry but if that became the norm than business as we know it would cease to exist and everything would be a hobby. That sounds like entitlement. Like saying "I should be able to see movies, plays, concerts, etc. free because that's just a hobby and they should go get real jobs".
Living off donations can work I'll admit but it doesn't scale. Creators should be able to set the price for their work just as consumers should not be forced to pay for anything. But if you're not paying the creator what he asks then you aren't entitled to set his price or take it free. The market does that.
I know there will never be a right time for this just like anything but realistically we're not even close to being set up for such a switch. While I disagree with you right now and I think your position is a little extreme I have to say that the work of people like you will get us to a point where that switch may become a real possibility. I'd argue instead for everyone to agree on some middle ground but whichever way things go I will abide.
There is a sanity to copyright. There are competing interests between creators and consumers. That's part of what makes the market. Frankly, I'm surprised that people are defending only one side of this since we are all both creators and consumers. We can't give consumers all the rights and leave creators with no control of their works but we also can't give creators so much control that they seriously impede on the rights of consumers.
A lot of the rhetoric surrounding this seems to be focused on copyright but what I see is an anti-business position. We can't let ourselves go to extremes in the name of freedom or in the name of business as either would be an unjust crusade. Instead of chopping off our heads to cure a headache lets try to deal with specific issues. Abolishing copyright hurts us as much as letting copyright extend beyond its current state. The biggest issue I see is the distribution issue. We need to come to some agreement on what is legal when it comes to "sharing" among other things.
I'm not in favor of SOPA or it's relatives. I think copyright has become a monster. But I still support the idea, not the implementation. For a community that benefits from copyright so much I don't understand why so many are taking such an extreme position. I'd rather see us be more moderate. It's more same to call for shorter copyright terms and such than to get rid of it. When people argue about middle men screwing over artists and consumers we should be finding a way to either get rid of middle men or curb their power without totally obliterating copyright. Copyright can serve to keep works free just as much as it can restrict freedoms and most people forget that. Artists should get together and unionize for a higher cut of profits.
I wonder what would happen if record labels were fair to their artists. Would all the people bragging that they're pirates because it's morally wrong for labels to pay such a pittance still use that argument or has it just been a petty excuse all along? I get the feeling that a lot (but not all) of these "freedom fighting pirates" are doing things for their own self interest and not for any moral reasons at all.
So I disagree still. I'm not one to stubbornly hold an opinion to be right. So I'm interested to learn more but i think this position isn't just one position but part of a package deal that comes with an entire worldview that I don't understand.
"There are competing interests between creators and consumers."
This part I don't quite get--what do consider the rights in conflict? Obviously there is the difference in what creators want to be paid and what consumers want to save, but is there something beyond this you intend...?
"When people argue about middle men screwing over artists and consumers we should be finding a way to either get rid of middle men or curb their power without totally obliterating copyright."
The problem I see is that copyright is primarily used these days to benefit the middlemen, right? Indeed, copyright (by its very nature) is aimed solely at benefiting whoever is in charge of distribution--it's about the right to copy.
As such, as technology attacks and removes middlemen, so too does it render obsolete the notion of copyright. If you empower consumers to handle their own distribution, the motivations for having copyright at all wither away and the legal machinery becomes vestigial.
"A lot of the rhetoric surrounding this seems to be focused on copyright but what I see is an anti-business position."
I am not qualified to speak on behalf of anyone claiming similar views. For my own part, though, it isn't about being anti-business--as Chesterson said: the problem isn't that there are too many capitalists; it's that there are too few.
I believe that copyright creates a barrier to entry in information economies that is vastly outweighed by the progress that comes from being able to openly improve and distribute works. Moreover, I believe that it allows business models that would not be practical in a free market.
I don't think we need to do away with business--I just believe that if you create IP you need to accept (as a given!) that you won't be able to control its dissemination, and model your business accordingly.
If you can provide support for it in the wild, better then the other guy, it's a viable business (see Red Hat, Ardor Labs, etc.)
If you can provide faster access and better UX for it, it's a viable business (see Steam, Netflix, etc.)
If you can't do any of that, but can offer a sense of engagement with the community while polishing the software and get paid by donations/preorders, it's a viable business (see Minecraft, Overgrowth, etc.)
Otherwise, you are literally building an entire business on scarcity the government provides and enforces. This doesn't strike me as sound.
While I disagree with you right now and I think your position is a little extreme I have to say that the work of people like you will get us to a point where that switch may become a real possibility.
I apologize that I'm so hardline on this, but I feel it the only rational position to take--tenable, perhaps not, but certainly the most rational.
"So I'm interested to learn more but i think this position isn't just one position but part of a package deal that comes with an entire worldview that I don't understand."
Thank you for keeping an open mind. :)
I've been wrestling with this for a few years now in one way or another.
My biggest suggestion is to start thinking about what is truly being sold, what value that truly has, and whether or not this system makes sense. Try to identify what makes that work, and who supports it, and how much excess exists along the way from the creator to the consumer.
The only reason I don't dig deeper here is because it's late and I'm sure everyone has moved on now but I just have to say I don't like Red Hat being used as a model for how to be profitable while giving away a product. It doesn't scale. Most software doesn't lend itself well to that. You're not paying for software, you're paying for the output.
The problem is not copyright itself. The problem is that the creators are not the copyright owners any more.
This is a very subtle distinction. We should do all we can to help creators, not publishers. Publishers have their place in the distribution chain, but they should not be allowed to act as if they were the creators.
If the publisher's business model is failing, so be it. Publishers and gatekeepers are not worth saving. Creators are. Support creators. Buy CDs directly from the artists. Buy them through the shortest distribution chain possible (even if that might be Amazon or Apple).
Create laws that make copyright an unalienable right, thus forcing publishers back to the publishing business that is rightly theirs.
> The problem is that the creators are not the copyright owners any more.
I'm not sure.
A singer and songwriter aren't the only people involved in a music product. Likewise a song isn't the only thing involved in a music track. It involves production, for example, investment, the confluence of a variety of artistic, technical, management and manufacturing skills. Why shouldn't a music company have some claim over the copyright of the finished product?
Unalienable rights can not be created or destroyed; the law only attempts to offer legal protection for them.
Furthermore, if an artist wants to sell IP ownership of his work then there's no reason he shouldn't be free to do so.
Your main point, however, is a good one. Disruptive distribution channels should be able to fix this by allowing artists to make good money without selling out to big media companies.
> When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work.
I could not disagree more. If someone creates a work of art, they only own the physical manifestation of that creation. They can guard that physical manifestation, thereby preventing its release into the public domain until such a time as it may profit them. What they do not own is other people's property, so to force other people to not do with their property what they please simply because someone else had a thought first is unethical. It's an understandable, knee-jerk, brute-force means of providing a business model to artists, but it is still unethical.
So, I'm a musician. What "physical manifestation" are you talking about? Compressed air? Because as soon as I make a record I have to "guard that physical manifestation" ... how? with SOPA? preventing CD'd from being sold?
And in short you deny artists of ownership of anything else than the physical representation (unethical!) But in the next sentence you make the creation "other people's property". If I think of something you did not, this robs me of rights and automatically gives entitlement to you?
Well put. Ditto, say, a game developer. "Find another way" is great and all for games, if you want a bunch of Facebook monstrosities welded into an always-online authentication framework (or equivalent systems). "But you can sell a version with physical stuff that people want" is similarly silly - I'm not a model-maker or a map-maker, I write software and I'm not going to write software if the only way to make a living off of it is to sell tchotchkes. (And, without meaningful copyright, it's easy to duplicate whatever that thing is and sell it as if it were 'official' anyway.)
I'm trying very hard to avoid an ad-hominem, but I wonder how many people who espouse this "everything should be free" mindset actually create stuff and hurt themselves with this argument. Even software developers who strictly write software for other people benefit from copyright in a work-for-hire arrangement.
"if you want a bunch of Facebook monstrosities welded into an always-online authentication framework"
Is Steam such a system? If so, give me more of that, Steam is awesome, and proof that people will buy stuff if the original is better than the pirated copy.
Steam is awesome, sure. I buy all my PC games on Steam, and if it's not on Steam I won't even consider it. But I was thinking more along the lines of "freemium" or subscription-based software, neither of which I want anything to do with.
With Steam, you're still paying a one-time fee to purchase a license to use the software.
> What "physical manifestation" are you talking about?
However your creation manifests itself. A live performance or the physical media of a recording, for example.
> Because as soon as I make a record I have to "guard that physical manifestation" ... how?
The same way you guard your other possessions: with a lock and a door.
> you make the creation "other people's property"
The physical manifestation. The matter, as it were.
> If I think of something you did not this robs me of rights and automatically gives entitlement to you?
If you come up with an idea, it is yours to guard. If you communicate this idea, then you cannot ethically use force to prevent others from acting upon it. I do not believe I am robbing you of any right, because I do not believe that information can be property - only the physical manifestation of information (the media) can be property.
What do you think about, for example, Creative Commons attribution licenses? Is it just for creators of informational works to allow the public to redistribute them only if they receive attribution for their work? Or is making any demands whatsoever with respect to redistribution not a right that the creator should have?
People have made music for thousands of years. We've only been able to record it for 135. I don't think music would go away if you suddenly had the ability to record it but not to prevent others from copying the recording. As far as I can tell, you can't stop teenagers from forming rock bands. Music will survive.
The fundamental point is that I don't think that you have a right to make a living as an artist. If you can find a way to get people to pay you for it, that's great. Just don't take away people's rights in the process.
It's the same in software. I'd love to be able to get paid for every little thing I ever wrote, but that's not reality. I only get paid for things that can be packaged into some kind of product, something with a business model where people feel like paying me.
Would you replace copyright with "terms of use" or something in a contract with the performer?
I see the value of copyright (or other intellectual property protection, such as the "terms of use" I mentioned above) in this case, for two reasons.
First, the value for the creative doesn't scale. Suppose a conductor commissioned some music to be written for six summer evening performances. How should the music writer value the work to be written? The negotiations would probably consider how much revenue the performances will generate, and result in a (presumably) fair compensation for the writer.
But suppose the conductor, after the piece has been written, uses the it for eight performances? Or switches to a much larger venue that generates much more revenue? If you don't allow for a way for the writer to be fairly compensated you run the risk of not being able to attract good writers to the field. We could argue that geniuses and top talent would still be there, but it would be difficult for merely talented to make a living (or for the unknown to start out).
The second reason I see is to protect the reputation of the writer. John Williams is a brilliant composer who has written some of the best and most-recognizable movie themes. He wrote, for instance, the theme for the movie "Jaws."
Suppose someone took his music and used it as a soundtrack for a movie that he found very distasteful (a porno, or a movie advocating the rise of the Aryan Nation, for example). He would then be associated with these other ideas, even against his will. You could argue that his ability to use music to conjure emotions could be used to rally people for causes with which he vehemently disagrees. Copyright can help protect against that (but can't completely stop it, of course).
If it were really necessary (though I am unconvinced that it is) a royalty system could likely be emulated in a society with no copyright with contract and corporate law.
Write a song for Metallica? Sell it to them in exchange for some amount of cash up front, and partial ownership in the company that is selling that particular album/single/whatever.
Clumsy perhaps, but if big money is involved the overhead should be minimal.
The problem with selling to Metallica is that you are selling something that you don't "own." Said another way, the value changes when you can offer exclusivity. It'll be worth less to the company producing the music if someone else can (legally) take the music also.
Now I wouldn't cry if the era of multi-million-dollar entertainers is over, but I think that it would be a mistake to throw all copyright out. Rework it maybe, but keep the idea that mental creations are assets just like physical creations are. The concept of copyright arose because there appeared to be a need to protect those rights when that protection was absent, so I would be very hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes time to reexamine our IP laws.
For me, the SOPA/PIPA issue is about due process. Taking a site offline can be damaging in ways that may be hard to quantify, so the standard of proof should be pretty high IMO.
Spoken like somebody who doesn't have an answer. It's okay to admit that. But given that you generally seem more interested in calling people "insane" and telling people to go fuck themselves[1] than having an honest conversation, I am unsurprised at your behavior.
Work-for-hire is a concept that, sure, can work in some cases. It does not solve the problem of the development of significant, large-scale creative works--and making it economically viable to do so. As I've said elsewhere in this comment tree, I find it extremely unlikely that one will fund a Half-Life or a Skyrim through Kickstarter. Can you honestly and with good faith say that you consider it more reasonably feasible for projects to raise multiple millions of dollars on a Kickstarter-esque platform than for private investiture to take the risk of profitability on such a project?
You tell us to "use our imagination" to defend your argument for you. I reject this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and while I don't expect that you have extraordinary evidence, more than handwaving would be nice. How are large-scale creative works made economically feasible to produce in this utopic world without copyright? To the best of my knowledge, even open-source game projects have never managed this. You can bring up a Wesnoth or something, but the coherence of the game experience is poor at best and for the most part these games simply fail to credibly measure up to the focused, designed experiences of the aforementioned commercial titles. The argument of "settle for Wesnoths" doesn't ring true to me.
Were I to assume bad faith, as you so regularly seem to do (really, you're among the more abusive regular posters here, I'm kind of surprised you get away with it), I would charge that you lack respect for creatives and seem content for them to subsist off the inconsistently extant angels of consumers' better natures. But instead I would rather assume good faith and expect you to have some sort of insight into this world that you imply would be superior. So, put up or shut up.
While I realize that it can't happen any time soon due to the current businesses that rely on copyright protection, there have been alternatives proposed that work without it, like The Digital Art Auction ( http://tdaa.digitalproductions.co.uk/history/essay.htm ) and Street Performer Protocol ( http://www.schneier.com/paper-street-performer.html , blacked out due to SOPA as of writing). Vastly simplified, they describe a system in which an artist describes a work they would create, and the money they would like to raise to release such a work. People bid on how much they would pay to see the work released. This bid is either collected into an escrow account up front or otherwise "pledged" in some binding way (perhaps a credit card auth). Once the threshold of pledges is reached, the money is released to the artist and the art is released to the public.
These threshold pledge systems all have the weakness that the work must be paid for up front, after which (since one assumes a lack of copyright) the work is public domain. In some ways this may not actually be a weakness, though; it transforms users into investors, making them say, "I would like something that does / has X and Y, and I would be willing to pay $Z to get it." Of course, this system does not entail any per-copy price... however, nowadays the cost to create a copy of something is approaching zero anyway. Does it really make sense to continue to charge a per-copy fee? Charging a subscription fee, however, would still be possible in many circumstances, if a service was actually being offered.
I strongly approve, and I think they are probably part of the way things will be done in the future. Kickstarter is already making great forays into this field.
It's serendipitous that you bring this up, as I am currently working on a startup that uses this very method!
Interesting. Something I've considered doing, though I'd first look at how to avoid the problems with these systems that the sibling post mentioned (how to get the initial investment, how to enable artists without a reputation to earn pledges, how to guarantee output once the threshold is reached, how to pledge in a binding but revokeable way, etc.) How are you working around these issues?
I've read both of the links you provide at various times, and I remain skeptical. It seems like an awesome way to put a hard ceiling on what creative works actually get made, because the likelihood of anyone actually funding a project of magnitude is extremely small. I look at it from a game development point of view, and I have to ask--who's going to pony up the cash for the next Half-Life (not the next Valve game, but the next product on that level) up-front when dealing with nobodies? And there's no reason for somebody to sink their own money into such a project because of the lack of payoff.
Today, I can self-bootstrap by making smaller games and building up cash reserves, if I want. Or I can put away some money in my day job, like I am now, to actually build what I want to build and what I think will be well-received and make more value back for me than the money and time I'll need to sink into it to create it. Why would I risk my own money, and that much time, in a system where I'll get nothing back for it? (Subscription services are not a solution; not every game is World of Warcraft, and I'd argue that none should be.)
"I'm going to need $100,000 (or, for something where you'd actually have to hire multiple people, $X,000,000) to make a video game."
"Yeah, right. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
While I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, every rebuttal to this I've ever seen requires a lot of handwaving and an assumption of active and knowledgeable participation on the part of end consumers. To be honest, I don't expect investor-level behavior out of consumers; I expect a lot of yelling about how something is X when they "already paid for" something very slightly but to them critically different than X, but not much in the way of useful, constructive development-centric criticism. It's not their bag.
who's going to pony up the cash for the next Half-Life (not the next Valve game, but the next product on that level) up-front when dealing with nobodies?
While I acknowledge that it doesn't seem to make economic sense, I have a great deal of respect for how people seem to be actually behaving. True nobodies can raise six figures on Kickstarter right now. I can only imagine what would happen if a somebody tried.
If Valve put HL3 on Kickstarter, might they raise the necessary funds? I kinda think they might.
And how do you create that "somebody" in a world hostile to self-bootstrapping? The only option I see is to spend a significant (and economically fairly stupid because of the opportunity costs you give up in doing so) amount of time incrementally building larger and larger projects, hoping that you're still enough of the flavor-of-the-month that people will continue to fund you. (For an example of why I'm skeptical of this sort of things, I'd suggest watching Mojang's Scrolls title upon release. Edstradamus predicts notable failure.)
Valve, with the original Half-Life didn't come completely out of nowhere, but it was pretty close. I am confident enough to say that it wouldn't have happened if they had to use a Kickstarter clone. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I can't think of a case where a creative work running, say, $5,000,000 (which is a moderate movie budget, if you have examples from that medium) was pre-funded by a crowd of consumers (i.e., excluding patronage, which I think most would agree is not a desirable model to return to) as opposed to profit-seeking investors.
iD Software bootstrapped themselves with a low budget, shareware, no effective DRM, and an audience that largely wasn't big on buying things (teenage boys, as far as I can tell).
The recent success of numerous "indy" games, smartphone app games, and in particular Zynga indicate to me that success in the market with a low budget (read: not making 'AAA games') is still not only feasible, but common.
I didn't mean to imply that indie titles weren't viable. They certainly are, for some games. And tons are really, really fun games. It is totally viable to, in the existing economy and with the existing copyright model, self-bootstrap such a company. I apologize for the lack of clarity.
But the issue is how to do so without the ability to extract money from an "easily copied" work--that is, how to make it economically viable without copyright protections on the published end result. I find it unlikely that in this idealized no-copyright world, it is economically viable to devote a lot of time to building something that requires significant multidisciplinary effort (also read as "cash outlay for things you can't do yourself") with a relatively small investment up-front.
I find it likely that the Kickstarter/creatives-as-contractors model would end up not being worth my time, nor that of probably most people on HN; spending my time stumping for donations that barely cover production costs (else people ask why you aren't doing it for barely enough to cover production costs, why you're keeping "so much" in order to do those "eating" and "paying for gas" and "sleeping under a roof" things). Somebody else is more likely to pay me well enough to live--subsisting off the angels of consumers' better natures does not strike me as a winning proposition.
With copyright protections, it becomes economically plausible (not a guaranteed success, but plausible) for me to spend my time making something, even sinking my own money into it, because of the conviction that enough people will like it that I'll make back my nut and turn a profit as well. Y'know--capitalism.
And I find it extremely unlikely that those 'AAA titles'--which, as it happens, are often really really spectacularly good--would exist at all. Which would be a grievous, grievous shame. Skyrim is a beautiful game. Loads of fun, but more than that--just beautifully crafted.
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Alternatives such as Zynga are, to me, unpalatable, and are the "Facebook monstrosities" to which I referred elsewhere in this thread. Freemium games offer a terrible user experience and subscription games almost as bad. They may make a lot of money, but while I've talked a lot about economic viability in this thread, I do still have a vested interest in making great stuff. Making money and building great stuff are more at odds in the freemium and subscription models than in the more standard, "buy a license, play it" model.
To be fair, I am not suggesting that schemes with no copyright would benefit or even have a neutral effect on individual companies or even industries. I think they could continue to exist, though quite possibly in a diminished state.
It is my thought however that the harm done to society by these industries becoming diminished would be vastly outweighed by the positive aspects. We'll likely have to agree to disagree there.
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"Alternatives such as Zynga are, to me, unpalatable"
Although I'm not the OP, let me comment on these auction models: From an economic point of view, they suffer under high transaction costs.
Transaction costs include legal stuff, distribution, and advertising. The later is probably the largest block. There's only a very small minority who likes to engage in the creation of works. The majority just wants to be entertained. For this, they need signals of quality, and the perceivable amount of advertising is such a signal.
We both agree the idea that 65 years after your death your estate will still own the copyright to that post is insane. However, you defend the basic concept that copyright protects artists which enables them to produce more content. Yet, Shakespeare had no copyright protection so he produced more not less content. He still profited from his work, just not as much.
But, let's look at it from another direction. Simplify the tax code enough and H&R block goes out of business. That does not mean society is worse off. Copyright enriches artists at the cost of society but the real question is society bettor off. There is a deluge of new content, but the overwhelming majority truly interesting works are not for profit. I honestly think we would be bettor off if Avatar had never been created an instead we what artists do when they are not pandering to the largest audience possible.
PS: I don't listen to music. I don't watch TV. I do occasionally see a movie, but it's been a while. I used to do a fair amount of reading but I literally only follow a single author who I would just as soon donate to to keep them writing as buy their books. I do play WoW, but that's a subscription game which would survive just fine without copyright.
Your comment seems to hinge on this idea that "the overwhelming majority of truly interesting works are not for profit", which seemed dubious, but interesting. Then you end with a disclaimer noting that you are an extreme outlier in your opinion and consumption of interesting works. Your comment could have been edited down to "I don't like for-profit works so if everyone liked the same things as I do, we wouldn't need copyright." It's an intriguing thought, and I'm fascinated by your rejection of our society's usual entertainments - is it a principled stand? do you really just dislike that stuff and like other things more? how and when did this start? - but it's not very germane to solving the wider society's issues with copyright because a lot of the rest of us are pretty into some of the books, music, and movies that are made for profit.
>Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work.
I'm not sure about this. Copyright is aimed at enabling and encouraging creative works. It achieves this by giving the creator control. Here, the word giving is important; we only give the creator control because we think that will result in more high quality creative works (in theory).
>When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it.
Instead, they are saying that they no longer want to give away control to the creator, because copyright is not achieving the desired results.
>To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright.
Agreed. However, I think it's easier to discuss the goals, benefits, and extent of copyright law from the vantage point I've expressed above.
Quite. CDs filled an important need at the time they came on the market - quality music reproduction that did not degrade with repeated use like vinyl or tape does. Sure, digital delivery would have been nice, but back then modems ran at about 1200bps and mp3 encoding was a gleam in the eye of someone at the Fraunhofer Institute.
Two wrongs don't make a right; saying the service isn't good enough is a cheap excuse. Pirates should articulate what they do pay for, not what (they say) they would pay for. Talk is cheap, distribution and marketing do have costs associated with them.
Edit: my point is to defend the basic idea of copyright and content distribution as an economic good, rather to support any particular distribution model or SOPA itself. Coming from a film background, it costs a great deal of money to bring a high-quality film to the screen, and to reliably recoup that investment, distributors usually spend 50% of the film's budget on marketing. Films are sort of like startups insofar as each one is a little self-contained business, and the same is true of alnums, TV shows etc., but discussion of the economics from the content production side is often sorely lacking in debates about piracy.
1. Why is copyright so important if everyone can create well? Why scarcify something that without the protection would be worthless? If creation is humanity, why limit the act of creation to the first person to get there? We don't prevent people from climbing mountains just because someone else got there first. We don't stop runners from finishing races because someone else got first place. We don't stop fashion, because brands copy each other's styles all the time (trademark issues are related, but really different here... no one complains when Gap puts out a line similar to say Tommy Hilfiger, as long as they claim it is Gap). In fact a large number of creative works are merely derivative of other works, even "brilliant new" ones -- any limit on the creation process in this regard can be seen as artificially scarcifying something.
2. Why respond to an article about why the current copyright situation is broken and needs change with a long rant that defends the need for copyright, and uses language seemingly arguing against some strawman position of "abolish copyright" that is not present in the original article.
Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work.
I'm certain this is just wrong, at least from a USA perspective. The first copyright in England was to control, that is, copyright is censorship.
In the USA historically copyright was a way to induce people to enlarge the public domain.
Giving "creative" people control has never really entered into it, in the USA. I'm given to understand this is different in continental Europoean cultures, but SOPA and PIPA are American, and based out of an English-speaking culture.
If you propose to add some kind of "moral right of control" to a "creative" work, you first need to define "creative work" so that I can tell a creative work from an un-creative work without referring to some authority, a list or an oracle or a government agent. Then we can discuss what moral rights might pertain, and how long they should last, etc etc. I personally think that the prevalence of independent invention invalidates any such "moral right of control", but you clearly believe otherwise.
"I have sole control over what is done with that which I create."
Actually, the US Constitution only allows for limited control, not unlimited control. The Constitution requires Fair Use exceptions to your control of your created works.
Actually, it is the freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment that gives fair use rights, as interpreted by the courts. It could even be argued by a future court that the First Amendment invalidates copyright altogether; it wouldn't be the first time a court had changed direction like that.
That is a less extreme change than that from Plessy vs Ferguson to Brown vs the Board of Education, for example. And a good case can be made for freedom of speech trumping copyright; the Constitutional argument for copyright is a practical one for "encouraging" the advance of arts and sciences; eternal copyright has already undercut that argument.
A week or two ago, someone referenced this article by David McGowan, a Law Professor at the University of Minnesota titled "Why The First Amendment Cannot Dictate Copyright Policy": http://lawreview.law.pitt.edu/issues/65/65.2/McGowan.pdf
I meant to respond sooner. I think you are correct that Fair Use originally developed through case law, (owing to the First Amendment). It was later codified. The First Amendment is part of the Constitution, and take precedence over the Articles, thus Fair Use is necessary to reconcile copyright with the First Amendment (Which is part of the Constitution).
... I was so dissatisfied with my lack of writing skills ... only to wind up, in time, with some degree competence in that area ...
And a total mastery of the art of understatement, clearly. Thank you for your contributions to this community, I am humbled by your continued willingness to invest time to improve it and your success at doing so.
> If I write something, I control what is done with it.
You're a good writer, both in the technical and moral sense; and I respect your experience, ability, and goals. However, there is no creation ex nihilo. I can't remember who said this, so I use it without attribution: would the world of music be richer today if, in 1900, one could copyright a bassline?
< When people propose that copyright be abolished...
This isn't what the linked piece is about. The author's arguments are mainstays like:
1) IP laws mostly protect big corporations, not creators, since these corporations effectively leverage their control of distribution against creators.
2) The measures these corporations take to protect their IP succeed only at annoying legitimate customers. Piracy has never been curbed by anti-piracy practices.
3) Et al.
Abolishing an exploitative industry that preys on copyright holders and abolishing copyright itself are two very different things.
"To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction" - Bhagavad Gita
There's a level of indirection that we should think about very clearly. We aren't talking about control over the first or any other copy of a work of art, but rather control over people who want to use them. Control over people with their own free will can never be better than a necessary evil, so we as a society should agree on the bare minimum that would satisfy those goals we share.
This is a fine and very important point that has gotten too little coverage. It seems all the arguments here come down to a philosophical argument about how much control over others (the consumers) should we, as a society, agree to exert?
You might want to separate the right to copy and the obligation to give attribution. I know of no one who would support the abolition of mandatory attribution. But abolishing the restrictions on copying itself doesn't seem so unreasonable once I say "but you would still have to name the original author!".
To me, a reasonable system would be to authorize everything, provided you give proper attribution. You can copy, but name the author. You can parody or plagiarize, but you have to say so. That way, we keep a right to recognition, at nearly zero cost to society. I think this is both morally acceptable, and economically feasible.
Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any right to compensation for it.
As you can do in a society without copyright--that is your personal decision. Copyright is not required for you to do what you will with your stuff.
Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution. The point is that this is my decision.
It isn't, though, as we've shown empirically by this point. You cannot stop--physically, legally, or morally--others from doing with your work as they will, provided it exists in a digital form. That genie, as they say, is long since out of the bottle.
If copyright does not exist, though, I have no such rights and I have no such control.
You already have next to no control! Your "rights" are anything but!
In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process.
Why do you need a say? If it's information, it can be duplicated on their dime, and that is their decision. Why need you be involved?
Moreover, why does it matter if it is claimed as their own? It will eventually be found out and publicized if it really matters--or maybe you and your work aren't important enough to merit society's collective memory.
In such a system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use it for good or for bad but I have no say in it.
Yep, that's about the size of it.
I may be the creator but that is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter by and take it for whatever use the like.
And isn't that a wonderful thing? That people can build on and reuse the work of those that came before them? That they can do so without fear of reprisal and instead devote that energy to innovation?
Why are you afraid of such a communal future?
Why are you afraid of the removing artificial scarcity?
I don't understand your argument or what you are saying is wrong.
Rights are a legal limitation on the actions of others, not a physical limitation. They exist to limit people from doing what they otherwise "can" do to you in the physical world.
You have physical property rights so people cannot enter your home when you are at work and take your television. That is enforced through the law not the Fort Knox security that you might have.
If you have travelled to countries without rule of law you will understand what it means in practice when this right is not strong. Fences, security guards, and metal cages inside your house in every middle class home.
I think the point is that copyright is no longer physically enforceable. This makes copyright equally silly as giving some people right to experience 365 days and nights of continuous daylight. You could theoretically build a system that houses them on plane that follows the daylight for whole year but this would be so costly that this right would be physically unenforceable. Providing authors with legal copyright protection would be even more costly and only slightly less pointless.
The rights we're talking about here are not able to be compared to physical property rights because there is no mutual exclusion of access.
If somebody steals my physical property, I can't use it, therefore they've harmed me and limited my actions. For knowledge, IP, etc. they cannot limit my access or permission, so I do not need to be put up guards.
My core argument, I guess, is this: There is no reason to have copyright because it is effectively unenforcable and because it has no real-world grounding. Moreover, it props up an economic model that fails in exposure to modern distribution methods.
The non-rival argument is popular, but not very robust. There is an economic harm by an unauthorized third party increasing the supply and diluting the value to the creator.
Another rough equivalent to criminally using without depleting physical goods is someone who breaks into your house to sleep in your bed while you are on vacation. Even if they are clean, and the bed remains the same afterwards for all reasonable inspection, they have trespassed on your property and guilty of a crime.
So, again, we start to dig into some very deep taboos here, right?
Is it really that bad if somebody who needs a bed uses mine without permission while it lies unused, provided it isn't harmed and is returned to its initial condition?
We're big about virtualization and the cloud and shared hosting, right?
Why not consider something similar for worldly goods? It seems awfully inefficient, with 7 billion people, for everyone to have a unique, untouchable copy of everything.
Is it really that bad if somebody who needs a bed uses mine without permission while it lies unused, provided it isn't harmed and is returned to its initial condition?
Exactly. It's YOUR choice to allow someone to let themselves in when you aren't home and take a nap. BTW, can you post your address and schedule? Just in case anyone reading this thread needs a place to crash for a few hours.
Giving me the right to not have strangers wander into my house while I'm gone does nothing to prevent you from letting strangers wander into your house. By making it ok for people to wander into my house without my permission, you obliterate my property rights.
Ha, well, it's a losing argument if you have to unpack our basic economic, political, and legal system. The solution is not proportional to the problem.
I think parking is a similar problem at a similar societal cost. People need to park. If you provide no way to park legally, they will park illegally to get on with their business. And indeed, fines for piracy, like fines for parking infractions, and a better distribution model from the market, like enough parking lots, have been a winning solution.
My opinion is that you cannot own or have any control over an integer. I don't care how much effort you put into "discovering" this number: go right ahead and sell that number on a CD if you so desire, but I beleive the buyer has just as much authority over that number as you do (none).
Copyright, at its heart, is aimed at giving the person who creates something control over the creative work. If I write something, I control what is done with it. No random person can just come along and appropriate it to that person's use or profit. I can say no to that or I can say yes, as I determine. If I say yes, I can require that person to compensate me for using my work or I can decide that I don't want compensation because I want others to freely benefit from my work. The point is that it is my decision. I have sole control over what is done with that which I create. Why? Because the law protects that right. And it does so, for the most part, through copyright.
When people propose that copyright be abolished, they are saying, if effect, that anybody who produces a creative work immediately forfeits any right to control it and that any random person can come along and freely enjoy the benefits of that work and also freely reproduce and distribute that work. Under that sort of legal system, I can attempt to sell my work, or license it, or perform it publicly, but anybody else can do the same. Why? Because it is no longer "my" work, at least not legally. It is not protected in any way from the efforts of others to exploit it commercially or to give it away as they like. It is anyone's right to do with it what he will. Now, of course, I may rejoice in this. I may desire to create something wonderful and see to it that it is freely distributed to the maximum degree possible because I feel it is important that people benefit from my creative output without any obligation to me. Under a society in which copyright is protected, I can freely choose to do that if I like. I can place my work in the public domain and relinquish any right to compensation for it. Or I can let others use it freely but only on if they meet some condition that I impose on it, such as giving me attribution. The point is that this is my decision. If copyright does not exist, though, I have no such rights and I have no such control. In that case, anybody can use it, replicate it, seek to profit from it, claim it as his own, or whatever, all without my having any say whatever in that process. In such a system, anything created by anybody is simply common property. People can use it for good or for bad but I have no say in it. I may be the creator but that is beside the point. People like the author of this piece can simply saunter by and take it for whatever use the like.
When a society makes a decision to defend the right of a creative person to control his work, and to profit from it or give it away as he likes, it has to make all sorts of policy decisions. Should such control last indefinitely? Of course not. Why? Because the benefits that we all get from being able to control our creative work only last so long. After a time, and certainly after we die, we have presumably exhausted whatever benefit we get from such control. Then too, others also create and, in time, all sorts of people borrow from one another and build upon the efforts of others regardless of the degree of creativity that they add to the process. Given enough time, we get what is known as a "common heritage" - something that far transcends the creative work of any one person. And so we have what is known as a public domain - a rich collection of creative output that is freely available to all. Those who value copyright and its social benefits in protecting creative output also value the public domain because it is a natural concomitant to the protected core of works that fall under copyright in any given generation. Indeed, a key aspect of copyright is precisely to encourage people to create - to invest the very blood and sweat that it often takes to do something great - in order that society generally will be enhanced and improved as creative works are done, are made available to the world as the creator may decide, and eventually pass into the public domain. So a fundamental tenet of copyright is that it cannot be absolute. It needs to be strictly bounded to achieve its legitimate goals without being extended to a point where it defeats those goals and gives special privileges to persons for no good reason.
Today, copyright has been seriously abused in the U.S. and elsewhere and needs to be fixed. In particular, terms of copyright need to be brought back to sensible levels. The public domain as it exists needs to be preserved and a better system needs to be in place by which orphaned works can freely enter the public domain. Many other fixes are needed as well. What is most definitely not needed is a SOPA-style enforcement scheme that opens up legal channels to copyright holders that would permit all sorts of abusive actions against innocent parties in the name of copyright enforcement. This sort of thing merely perpetuates the abuse and does not fix anything. Those who have been paying attention strongly sense this, and it has been pretty amazing to watch people unite to oppose the back-room sleaziness that led to such legislative efforts in the first place.
To defeat SOPA, though, one must affirm copyright. Just as we recoil at legal abuse in a SOPA-style scheme, we equally recoil at self-righteous claims that people can freely take what others create with no consideration whatever given to those who create it. That sort of radical assertion will get us nowhere when it comes to shaping serious legal policy in the SOPA debate. It needs to be roundly rejected.