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The Copyright Crusade a Lost Cause?
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Mar 05, 2008 03:01 PM
from the got-lost-in-his-own-museum dept.
from the got-lost-in-his-own-museum dept.
A. Smith writes "Ars Technica is exploring the relationship between property rights and copyright, arguing that copyright holders are making a mistake by stressing similarities between property rights and copyright. They compare P2P users to 18th-century squatters in North America: 'Like squatters of old, many ordinary users find copyright law bewildering and are frustrated by the arbitrary restrictions it imposes. Customers wanting to rip their DVD collections to their computers, download music they can play on any device, or incorporate copyrighted works into original creative works find that there is no straightforward, legal way to do these things.' They conclude by offering that more reasonable, understandable copyright restrictions would result in a user base friendlier to publisher interests."
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Submission: Copyright crusade a lost cause? by Anonymous Coward
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if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
just an idea i read about in the last week or so.
Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Informative)
The last time this came up on slashdot, a point was made that until some income is derived from a copyrighted work it has no value. Thus taxes paid on such works are via income tax.
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Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that also mean that if I own an unoccupied residence I don't have to pay property taxes on that?
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Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
How would you determine the tax to be paid on an open source project? Or on this post?
Mind you I'm just carrying forward a point someone else brought up, not necessarily vouching for it.
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Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Funny)
Then again that's just my $0.02
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Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
These various artificial scarcity conditions are meant to deal with the fact that a few rich people control everything you need to live. If there wasn't the illusion that you might get leverage through these artifical scarcity rules, people would see how powerless they really are, and then they'd revolt and kill the rich bastards and take what they need. That's how WWII started, with enforced systematic economic hopelessness.
As the fictions start coming down and more and more people realize that their leverage was never real leverage at all, just a fiction, the disparity will become increasingly obvious, and there will be a revolt. It's just a matter of time.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would find it hard to imagine anybody the would begrudge someone making a 'copy' of their piece or real estate, oh, I'm sorry, I take that back. Yes, unfortunately I can imagine exactly the kind of greedy ass hats that would, slim
Possible model (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, to claim a copyright over an essay you write on slashdot, may cost you $0.01, based on how much ad-based revenue can be expected from reading a web-page containing it. If you then proceed to publish this essay in a personal blog, you'd need to pay $0.10 to claim copyright. If it gets published in NY Times, you'd need to pay $100/year to keep it. (all the prices, of course, are purely arbitrary)
Guidelines can be made that would allow people who generate content, to pay for blanket copyright of similar kinds of content... while especially valuable objects would need to be individually appraised. This would work the same way that property insurance works - your insurance will cover anything in your house up to a certain value... but any objects that are over that, have to be declared individually.
Maybe if Disney had to pay a few million $ per year to maintain copyright of Mickey... and BMG had to lay out a hundred thousand for every album they'd like to keep out of the public domain, we'd have a much more balanced system.
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Re:Possible model (Score:4, Interesting)
More importantly, why would you want to tax ideas out of existence?
You can imagine owning a beach house all you want and not get taxed for it.
"BMG had to lay out a hundred thousand for every album "
That's insane and stupid.
So I have to pay a 100,000 dollar tax to make my own album?
Not to mention taxes are generated whenever BMG makes an album, but lets not have reality stand in our way shall we?
"o pay for blanket copyright of similar kinds of content."
and what the hell is similar content? use letters? has a certain theme?
How about we tax the revenue generated by the items and keep the barrier to entry as close to zero as possible. What you propose would destroy almost all beginning creators.
"Maybe if Disney had to pay a few million $ per year to maintain copyright of Mickey"
ah, I see you are letting your haters towards some companies blind you to the fact that they are exceptions, as well as lett it dampen you thinking abilities.
How about an increasing copyright fee over time?
I purpose:
all material is copyrighted upon creation for 10 years. A fee to register it the creator wants to.
After 10 years it goes into public domains. Unless 10,000 dollar renewal fee is paid.
after five more years 100,000, five more 500,000, five more a million dollars - no more exceptions.
I would even compromise and allow existing copyrights start over. That grates me, but something like that will need to happen unless they abolish copyright; which they shouldn't do.
A property is something you posses. There are many definition to the word 'property' and you seem to be getting hung up on the land definition as being the only one.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, go ahead and try to argue that possesion does not mean the ability to exclude.
Re:Possible model (Score:5, Interesting)
Just take the amount the RIAA wants as damages for one copyright infringement, since that is what they TELL us their copyright is worth, and multiply that with the amount of copies they can theoretical make of that work, and compute the tax based on that amount.
After all, when they calculate their damages on the theoretical copies sold without pirating, why shouldn't the taxes also be calculated on the theoretical amount of possible copies.
For works that are never involved in lawsuits there would be no tax, so that would take care of those frivolous lawsuits once and for all.
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Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Inconsistent Logic (Score:5, Informative)
I just DID pay a property tax on my car. I was just told by the state that my car is worth $7300 and I have to pay $25 for every $1000 of value. Even if it just sits in the garage. It's not a road use tax, it's a "value of the item" tax. Don't pay it and you can lose it.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Several U.S. states do have personnel property tax on cars. I suspect the only reason that car, bicycles, furniture and other non-durable goods are not taxed is because it is impossible to know you own them. But with a car, if you wish to register the car (to drive), you'll have to pay the property tax.
Do I want a personal property tax? No. I consider even real estate taxes extremely regressive and an
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Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? I have stapler on my desk that I don't pay property taxes on.
On this desk alone I also have a mouse, a telephone, a can of coke, a screwdriver, a keyboard, 2 monitors, a flashlight, a spindle of blank DVDs... all property, all completely exempt from 'property taxes'.
I'm curious what idiot convinced you that all real property is taxed.
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Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:4, Informative)
Real property refers to real estate, which is "the land and anything permanently affixed to it". Personal property is everything else.
Get your definitions straight.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think it is. I think its called 'theft'.
As in: "Hey, give that back, its mine."
Granted, you'd have to be awfully petty to want to bust someone over a few staples out of your stapler, or some ink out of your pen, but really that's what it would be.
Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Informative)
Real property is considered tangible and mostly immovable. The grandparent post's warehouse, factory, and store are real property.
Now before people complain that it must be "real" because they can touch it, I should point out that the word "real" in this case derives from the Spanish word for Royal. "Real Estate" doesn't mean an estate that's "fake"... it was traditionally land granted to you by the king, hence "Royal Land".
So, buildings and land are considered Real Property (and therefore fall under a slew of taxation laws). The chattel on our desks, including the desks themselves are Personal Property.
IANAL, but I'm having a problem with the claim that IP is "Real Property". What kind of claim is that? Is it legally clueless media companies (despite large legal teams) trying to enforce the idea that IP is "not fake"? Or are they trying afford the same protections for which we provide to "Royal Land"?
So MPAA/RIAA, which is it - are movies and music Personal Property, or Real Property? Answer carefully, because one answer will cause you give up several contested channels of distribution, and the other will let the State tax the hell out of your IP.
Solomon Chang
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Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:4, Informative)
hmmm, I have a computer,desk, counters, displays, pizza oven, freezers, and inventory I pay tax on every year. Around here it's called Personal Property Tax even tho it's only on business now days. I can remember about 30 years ago we had to pay a tax on cars, boats, RV's and refrigerators.Each year I get a declaration form in the mail and I have to fill it out with my estimated value. If they think I am fudging the numbers they will send someone by to do an inventory.
so yes this kind of tax exists.
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Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Property tax is the most onerous of all taxes. You don't pay income tax unless you make money, you don't pay sales tax unless you have money to spend, but if you don't have money for property tax you can lose* your home.
Please don't advocate that I have to pay property tax on my imaginary property. None of it in any way brings in revinue, and one of the two works I've registered is on a software program for a computer that has been obsolete for a quarter century.
Considering all the gibberish I've spread all over the internet since 1997 (sorry guys, still no new
-mcgrew
*If you leave your door unlocked you'll loose your home.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Well then, the assessor should find it worth almost nothing, and tax you an appropriate amount.
Well then, if it's worthless, you should simply give up your copyright on it, rather than keeping it from the public.
Re:if ip = real p, how about some taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
- Each copyright must be re-registered on a yearly basis. The fee for re-registration depends solely on the length of the copyright term. By this formula:
$0.01 * (2 ^ number_of_yearly_renewals)
Thus, it is $0.01 for the first registration, $0.02 for the second year, $0.04 for the third year
So, after 10 years, it's only $10.24
But, after 16 years, it's $655.36
And after 32 years, it's $42,949,672.96
And after 50 years, it's $11,258,999,068,426.24
This means that any small guy or girl (no matter how poor) can easily keep his or her copyright for 10 years. However, no individual or company will be able to copyright out of the public domain for 50 years!
I consider it the perfect balancing factor between "publisher's rights" (limited rights, granted to PROMOTE THE USEFUL ARTS AND SCIENCES) vs. the public interest (that'd be ME, YOU, and EVERYONE else).
Update: If you want to avoid the hassle of re-registration, you can pay in advance. $10.24 as a pre-payment means you're good for ten years without the need to re-register. You can extend by paying the difference ($645.12 after 10 years will give you another 6 without need to re-register) as many times as you can afford.
The rate $0.01, doubling every year thereafter, is to be enshrined as Amendment 0 in the Constitution and unable to be changed except by 80% vote of Congress, approval by minimum 7 out of 9 supreme court justices, the signature of the President and Vice-President, and an 80% popular majority of the voting population.
Can anybody see any reason why this isn't the perfect plan?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Too Late (Score:2)
We will now use technology to ensure that only the content producers are rewarded.
Ideas cannot be owned! (Score:2, Insightful)
Given that ideas are not property, why can't society simply accept that people should profit from the application of ideas and not from the idea itself?
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Just because someone spent time on it doesn't make that time automatically worth something.
You guys can tryy and twist the issue but... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:You guys can tryy and twist the issue but... (Score:5, Interesting)
If for some reason the book had a lock on it, then I could break that lock to read it. If the company uses a special kind of binding that's supposed to allow me to read the book, but not take the pages out of it, I could circumvent that binding all I want. I could sell the book to somebody else for whatever price I wanted to. If a page of the book started fading or was scratched, I could photocopy the page so I'd have a backup.
Just because it's in a digital format doesn't nullify my rights to my copy of the work.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, when you use a work aroun
Re:You guys can try and twist the issue but... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I buy content to consume (because that's what I'm buying, the packaging, including the disk, drive, whatever it's on is only a means to an end, nobody buys an optical disk to moon over...well, unless they're very VERY disturbed), I want to be able to consume it any damn way I please.
And NO, consumption does NOT mean "redistribution". I want to be able to make fair backups (which I won't be giving to people), or shift it off to a computer, digital video player, iPod, whatever.
Recorded media is NOT the same as a live show (as every live show is different, even if an identical set is performed). Thus there's no justification for what is, essentially, pay-per-play.
Additionally, we're not talking about public exhibition of the material either. We're talking about viewing in the privacy in the privacy of my own home, or on the street watching a screen small enough that it's only meant for me to view it anyhow.
I can, and DO, pay for the content I consume. I also comprehend the fact that the media on which this content comes is not indestructible. Thus, in addition to media shifting, I will make backups.
I refuse to be sold the same content, over and over again. And I refuse to be labeled a pirate or grouped in with pirates simply because I take care of my investment in my own entertainment.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You guys can tryy and twist the issue but... (Score:5, Informative)
If you rent a home, you have exclusive right to that home but you don't own it. If the founding fathers meant that one could own content, it would have read "granting ownership" instead of "securing for limited times the exclusive right".
I asked in another thread why, in this light, a law school had "intellectial property" in its name and Ray Beckerman (AKA "NewYorkCountyLawyer") responded (and I'm paraphrasing here) that it was just a name, not descriptive.
The efforlessness of reproduction does not nullify the ownership of content, but the US Constitution does.
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Re:You guys can tryy and twist the issue but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fast-forward to today, where nearly any media can be created with low-cost (or free) tools and also distributed freely, and the argument about needing to recoup costs to distribute no longer has any meaning.
The point here is that copyright was not meant to reward having a good idea; it was meant to reward DISTRIBUTING that idea. (Similarly, patents are meant to reward PUBLICATION of ideas for others to learn from; that is, to facilitate new ideas building on old ones by making the details of the old ones explicitly public.)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
was to benefit SOCIETY by making creative ideas MORE WIDELY AVAILABLE
Actually, the US constitution says it is there to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts. This is important because copyright and patents can never make creative ideas more widely availible. By definition they make the ideas less availible.
What they can do is increase the total number of ideas produced (although even that can debated). The price of getting those extra ideas produced is that the ideas that would have been produced anyway becomes less availible (due to inherent inefficencies of the
no P2P (Score:2)
What a shocker (Score:2)
These 'customers' only 'find' this out if they start making money by doing this illegal activity. As long as you make no money, there is really very little legal recourse that copyright holders have unless they go to the trouble of trying to demonstrate that you have c
Re:What a shocker (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell it to customers of 321 Studios [wikipedia.org].
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Re:What a shocker (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because in RIAA Amerika, DVD rips YOU!
What amazes me is the absolute whining about the "need to extend copyright beyond 50 years because people are living longer, and a writer con't be able to make (even more) money in their old age off something they created when they were young." Extended copyright discourages innovation by encouraging people to "rest on their laurels". 50 years is too much. 20 years should be more than enough.
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Re:What a shocker (Score:4, Insightful)
And why should "artists" be given preferential treatment compared to "inventors"?? Patents have a term of 20 years. period. Not after death and not extendable. Why should "artists" enjoy revenue two and half times as long?
I'll tell you why. Because the world is run by looters. Patents cover things like machines, manufacturing processes and drugs. Everybody acknowledges that without these things people get sick or quality of basic life is diminished. So the looters use their majority to vote that in a short period of time they can take any practical invention they want for free.
Just take the time to look at how much better copyright protects the creators profit compared to the tons of loopholes present that can invalidate a patent.
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FTFA -- blockbuster movies (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not that hard to imagine at all. Its hard to imagine they would spend tens of millions of dollars producing new movies if they couldn't make their money back and profit from it. But that has nothing to do with a "law that gives them exclusive rights in its commercial reproduction".
They could always find a new way of making their money back. -gasp-
Hell, "blockbuster movies" generally make their money back from theatre ticket sales, before even going to DVD. As long as you had a law in place that gave them control over public displays at theatres, in airplanes, satellite subscription services, etc they'd survive, and there would still be adequate incentive to make new movies.
And even if consumers were free to copy movies provided they did it non-commercially that wouldn't kill DVD/bluray sales anytime soon, and when the internet is fast enough that physical media is actually threatened, they can sell copies of them via itunes music store type services. A lot of people will pay a modest amount for a copy even if they can get it free legitimately, if the paid version invariably meets a high level of quality and is more convenient and is always available.
All the industry has to ask is: how do you compete with free? And the answer: better service. As long as copyright gives them the monopoly to charge for content they will always be able to compete, and profit.
If they don't want to, fine, they can get out of the business, and someone else will come along see the money on the table, and get in on this 'making movies thing'. Its not our job to ensure that something becomes increasingly lucrative as time goes on, and that's what hollywood is essentially demanding... that their profits not be allowed to fall... at all... ever.
low cost rights for amateur music video makers (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now it is impossible for the average joe to license a Bon Jovi song for his home-made video. The industry is missing out on some cash flow and great publicity by not looking at this market.
--M
Those disenfranchised by the law flaunt the law (Score:3, Insightful)
As it stands now, copyright law might as well be based not on author's lifetime but rather the lifetime of the last (mortal) survivor of the year when the work was first published. Disregarding Disney, that would appear to be the goal of Lifetime + 70 years: to ensure that your work is never exploited by anyone that directly knew of your being alive.
A lot of errors en route to a fairly obvious point (Score:4, Insightful)
Timothy Lee (the author of TFA) makes qutie a few errors. First, they claim "Critics of the practice [filesharing] analogize copyrights to property rights" -- this is flatly factually wrong. Critics of the filesharing note, correctly, that copyrights are a subset of property rights (not something merely analogous to property rights), and draw an analogy between violations of copyrights and violations of rights in tangible personal property. Mr. Lee has misidentified where the analogy is drawn.
Second, Lee counts the one argument for property rights as two different arguments, by falsely splitting it into the "scarcity argument" (which he claims doesn't apply to copyright) and the "reward" argument (which he claim does.) In fact, the scarcity argument (that property rights are beneficial because they promote a more efficient use of scarce resources) is simply an application of the reward argument (that people will be more motivated to create and preserve value when they are able to exclusively control all or some part of the value created and/or preserved by their action) to the case of management of existing resources. By falsely counting the general argument and its specific application as two independent arguments, Lee paints a picture of copyright being an area with a "weaker" argument for property rights, when in fact it has the exact same argument (at least, in terms of the basis of argument, which is what is at issue in this part of Lee's pience) for property rights.
Third, Lee miscategorizes the argument for property rights (and, therefore, for copyrights) as being about "necessity", when its not about "necessity" (which is conceptually binary -- something either is "needed" or not) but about utility (that, on balance, people are better off with property rights, even though some are denied access to that which they would otherwise have, than without property rights.) This mistake leads to him dismissing the need for copyright "for certain classes of creative work", because those forms would not completely disappear without copyright. This misses the point of the reward argument for property rights entirely, which isn't about necessity but net gain. (Note, I'm not arguing that, viewed through that lens, copyright, and particularly not especially the increasingly rigid system of copyright we have now, is justified, merely that you need to focus on the real basis of property rights argument to challenge it meaningfully.)
That being said, eventually Lee (after all the errors and unnecessary diversions) does get around to the rather simple observation that applies to all laws: that no law is effective (he narrowly applies this property rights, but it is far more generally applicable) unless the people subject to it generally accept it (either by accepting it as legitimate or at least by deciding its not worth the cost of violation), and attempting to more strictly enforce a rule that most people don't believe is right rarely produces that respect, even in the more minimal form. (It can, if the government is able to drive the combination of the cost and certainty of being caught out of compliance high enough, but that usually takes insane levels of enforcement that threaten the general perception of the legitimacy of the government, rather than just the particular law, if the prohibited act is widely accepted as something people should not be punished, or punished as harshly as is necessary to secure general compliance, for doing.)
I really wish Ars Technica would get a clue (Score:3, Insightful)
It all becomes clear with this statement: "The copyright system is currently undergoing rapid changes as technology undermines old business models and enforcement regimes."
Um, no, it isn't. The only way you can think this is if you don't understand what copyright is and does. And that's because copyright's primary purpose is to provide a legal framework between a creative artist and his/her distributor in regards to his/her art. So long as there is a legally binding agreement to do it - copyright provides the protection to the artist to allow negotiations - how the distributor distributes that art is inconsequential to the actual law.
Aside from which, last time I checked, change involved something, well, CHANGING. The law has not been rewritten, the Berne convention is still the international yardstick, and the necessity for a framework to allow a creative artist to submit work to a distributor without having to worry about being shafted before a contract is even signed is still there. The RIAA trying to abuse the law and failing does not mean that the law itself has been stricken down.
Who fact checks these things?
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No, it is a "civil", revocable right granted by law. Apparently, you do not understand that there are rights other than "inalienable" rights.