You Can't Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source 550
Reader gbulmash sends us to his essay on the fallacy of those who would abolish copyright. The argument is that without copyright granting an author the right to set licensing terms for his/her work, the GPL could not be enforced. The essay concludes that if you support the GPL or any open source license (other than public domain), your fight should be not about how to abolish copyright, but how to reform copyright.
An argument from thin air. (Score:5, Interesting)
The author in question cites an ethereal 'anti-copyright crowd' and proposes that this 'crowd' are those who would license their software under the GNU/GPL.
I don't think I really need to point out that the reality is very different.
I've said it before (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, the GPL is like a Judo move. It rests on the strength of copyright law. If you make copyright stronger, then you make the GPL stronger. It's like a Judo master using his opponent's strength against him.
Copyright (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In a world without copyright... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is silly. Copyrights are not necessary. All you need is respect for contracts. Example: a programmer writes code. Then he gives the code to his friend after asking his friend to contract that he will agree to release all his modifications to the source code (or whatever) and that the friend will require anyone he gives the code to to agree to the same contract. Viola. Open source without copyright law.
Re:The problem with copyright... (Score:3, Interesting)
Get angry at the authors/publishers for abusing copyright terms. Not the law.
Tom
In other words: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're a green-peace activist, you can't drive to rallys.
If you're a vegetarian, you can't eat yogurt.
Now to be fair, the article has points that aren't drowned in sensationalism. Like, for example, how non-copyrighted works could be taken away and used by corporations. Which, in a copyright-free environment, would be perfectly OK.
The opening "joke" is key to understanding the logic. Either you'd sleep with someone for money OR you wouldn't, price is irrelevant to whether you're a whore or not. Similarly, either you'd never use copyright for anything OR you would, context be damned. So Open Source advocates who see OS as the only way to make something work under the current system are tarred with the same impractical black-and-white brush as a woman who would sleep with someone for enough money to guarantee a college education and financial security for her children.
Utter lack of taste or tact aside, this is just one philosopher shouting that a different philosopher should change their symbols, with no grounding in utility or practicality.
Re:In a world without copyright... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GPL Usage Restrictions (Score:1, Interesting)
So you agree that the music industry is not unfairly restricting your freedom when it asserts that fair use of their recordings does not allow you to distribute digital copies to others without permission?
Re:I've said it before (Score:1, Interesting)
You better come up with a better analogy. It is true, opensource relies on copyright (but that's out of necessity) but it is not true that stronger copyright regimes == a better open source environment.
Causality problem (Score:5, Interesting)
If there was no copyright there would not be a need for the GPL because there would not be a restriction on copying, modifying and redistributing the source. The GPL is a counter-measure and as such its existence is dependent on that of the measure it counters. If you agree with a counter-measure it is a logical fallacy to say that the original measure is good because without it we couldn't fight against it...
The article goes into scenarios where Big Bad Megacorp steals your code and distributes DRM protected binaries because there's no copyright. Well, first of all the 'R' in DRM would not be there if there was no copyright. They had no legal basis of using any measure to stop you to copy the program. They can use technical measures, but if you defeat them, they're out of luck.
The Big Bad Megacorp would need a different business model to rip you off. I bet they'd find a way. It wouldn't be based on their exclusive right to copy a work, that's all. The current content provider industry business model uses copyright as the basis of their revenue. They would sink and some other industry would pop up that uses some other aspect to make money. Of course the copyright lobby is scared about *their* income going down and it's no consolation for them that some other businesses would became filthy rich if copyright was abolished, so they fight to protect and extend copyright as much as possible.
The GPL fights back at least in the software segment of the copyright business. But the GPL is only good because it undoes the restrictions that the copyright places on you (by ingeniously using the very law that protects the copyright industry's content) to provide you the freedom the industry wants to deny. Without copyright there wouldn't be GPL because there would not be a need for it.
Re:abolish copyright (Score:1, Interesting)
And Opposing Copyright isn't the same as supporting open source. Proprietary software can be open source and still not free. That would be the most reasonable actually. Imagine if msn had a hidden functionality that would send an encrypted copy of all your messages to MS for customer analysis. You wouldn't know or prove the functionaly without the code, and you would be able to decrypt the hidden connection to see what it is sending as it would be a violation of DMCA.
When you have a beer or eat a pie, several people like to know the ingredients of what they are consuming. People should have the same mentality about the software they are using.
Societies evolve. (Score:3, Interesting)
If you created an environment in which secrecy/superiority did NOT give an advantage, but sharing and collaborating did, then those would become the dominant traits and we would be sitting here discussing how these were the "natural" way to be. In societies dominated by "trial-by-combat" ideologies and might-makes-right, you see neither secrecy nor collaboration, but you do get a most diverse selection of warlords, strongmen and hangers-on.
There are societies on Earth where they haven't even invented numbers and have no concept of counting beyond none-few-lots. Nor are those societies easily capable of learning numbers. It is not merely that they have never come across them, the entire part of the brain dealing with logic has developed to process other information instead. Yes, the brain really is that flexible in the way it develops. Virtually nothing is hard-coded in at birth. How we are, what we do - these are all programmed in as you grow. Don't like the program? Then teach something different to the next generation. They're not confined to the limitations of those who lived before.
Ok, so it is clear from all of that that I believe that we could easily(!) mould society in whatever image we feel like. Ok, maybe not easily, but we could do it. It is possible. What is "human" is ultimately defined by us, we are not limited by that definition. The next question would then be "SHOULD we develop a society without selfishness, secrecy, one-upmanship, etc?"
This is not a trivial question. We have no evidence, on the level of entire modern societies, that this would be socially stable. It would be doable, but what happens next? Has society evolved the selfish traits because of the demands of growth, or are the selfish traits vestigial remnants of a long-decayed, long-surpassed requirement? Is copyright closer to the brain of society or its appendix? This is important - you wouldn't want to lobotomize humanity, but if overeager Intellectual Property has become a serious case of appendicitis, then to not remove it could be lethal.
Reformation (Score:1, Interesting)
It should not be called "copyright." It should be called "collectionright." If I create something and choose to retain my collectionrights, then only I can collect money (directly or indirectly) from the distribution of what I have created. If someone is giving it away for free, there is nothing I can do. But the moment he puts an ad banner on his web page (or what-have-you) he has violated my collectionright, and I can sue him.
Copyright as it stands now has some real problems of scope and enforcibility. There are also some very wrong-headed notions of the necessity of direct distribution monopolies in order to ensure incentives to create (redhat makes a bundle selling support for products that a client can turn around and distribute for free (centos, anyone?), musicians make much more money on live performances than they ever could hope to on CD sales, and so on). This reform solves these problems while still providing sufficient incentive to create.
Re:Without copyright, the GPL would not be needed! (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the Stallman ideal is a society where everyone voluntarily follows the tenets of the GPL without being forced to. Without copyright and with the unrestrained ability to reverse engineer released products, the effect is mostly the same.
Wrong! (Score:3, Interesting)
GPL would have no effect if there was no copyright. It would just become meaningless.
Re:abolish copyright (Score:1, Interesting)
However, it's still true that if copyright did not apply to software, then there would be no way to guarantee access to source code. Somebody could still sell you binaries and be under no obligation to provide source.
This is something that GPL licensing + copyright law can do that cannot be done without software copyrights.
Copyright (Score:4, Interesting)
Copyright simply screws everybody who didn't think of it first. It's nothing but a holdover from 19th century industrialists who wish to control everything.
Noooo, sorry, we were looking for patent. PATENTS let you screw over everyone who didn't think of it first. (For 20 years, at least - then everyone gets to use the technology you described publicly and in great detail on your patent application.)
Copyrights are necessary and important, moreso for the layman than the Evil Corporation(TM). The classical example is "You write a song and someone performed it and makes millions off of your work." Copyrights are what make that illegal, and what make the GPL and other "copyleft" schemes possible.
You might be tempted to say that without coypyright, the GPL wouldn't be necessary - everyone could use everything because there'd be no licenses of any kind to stop you. Let me knock down a straw-man for a minute and point out that the GPL and other F/OSS licenses do more than allow public-domain-style copying. The GPL, for example, requries someone who uses GPL-licensed code to release his code under the GPL, also.
Copyright laws require $big-evil-19th-century-industrialist-man to release the source code of his $program if his program uses GPL'd code. Without copyrights, he is free to take F/OSS and use them in his own $program, without giving the source code back to the community.
It's why we still burn petroleum and use lame, kludgy x86 processors while better existing technology rots on the shelf waiting for a higher price
Did somebody "copyright" (or are you still talking about "patents"?) the dark matter reactor, or the Magic Battery, or something? We use petroleum because it's a cheap (yes, it's still cheap relative to other fuels), efficient, and easily obtained fuel.
We use 8086 clones because of the insane amount of software produced for that architecture. An insane amount of software was produced for that architecture because Microsoft licensed their OS to Tandy and the like (something Apple wouldn't do), which brought cheap computing to the masses.
Better technology doesn't "wait for a higher price." If it's not worth buying, it's obviously that hot. Consumers wait for lower prices as technology improves.
Yes, I'm sure there are "better" processor architectures out there - and they're being used where the differences are actually worth the cost. Servers use all sorts of interesting procs and arrangements, where a faster server is worth dealing with the idiosyncrasies and higher costs of a more exotic chip. But, I'm sorry to say that your $359 Dell machine is not going to see a I've written machine language for x86, Z80, and 68K derivatives, and the x86 isn't all that bad - and with compilers and programming languages, how kludgey the underlying architecture is doesn't matter as long as it runs efficiently enough. Our Intel and AMD chips run fast enough, and they're cheap. The DEC Alpha was expensive, had complicated instruction set [alphalinux.org], and provided no advantages over the x86 for programmers or desktop users - so it's used on many-CPU servers and processor farms.
You managed to post to slashdot despite using an x86 machine, didn't you? I'm happy you suffered through the ordeal. The DEC Alpha "rotting on the shelf" will not help you one bit unless you start writing and posting a billion posts every second. The Itanium-series chips succeeded in the marketplace because they play nice with existing software, are cheaper, and provide the same benefits.
I'd love to see some specific examples of "better existing technology rotting on the shelf" due to patents or "19th century industrials" or whatnot.
(Score:0, Flamebait) There ya go! Send in the drones [stlyrics.com]... to fight for what they think is theirs...even when it's not. Stamp out the rabble rouser and his
Re:In a world without copyright... (Score:4, Interesting)
*didn't help Curtiss though.
**In every instance I can find IP law has always slowed developement of virtually everything until it copyright/patent expired.
***which covers copyrights AND patents, so patents are not irrelevant. They are every bit as much a part of the picture as copyright.
Re:exactly - straw man argument (Score:3, Interesting)
Allow me to be the first to discuss this underrepresented side with you then!
Part of the intent of copyright law is to allow a content producer control over how the information they create is distributed. This is done so profit isn't "lost", and to prevent plagiarism, and in the case of GPL (article topic) to keep information open (among other things). But consider if those problems that were once solved by copyright could be solved by something else that additionally doesn't have to restrict information sharing to accomplish them. Surely having all of the benefits with none of the detriments is the best case scenario!
The benefits are immediate, fair use of information extends to cover entire works (full novels, movies, news articles, journals, tv shows, etc.) and they could be sharable, commonly accessible and searchable. There could be a totally legal Google on steroids that contains the body of all known information produced by humanity. Things that hinder information distribution, DRM, DMCA,
Now the methods to accomplish this are many and varied. Freely shared information for example can be done via a buffet-like information access system. If a chunk of federal taxes pays for information, and the people (citizens, people specializing in various fields, reputation networks, etc) can still decide which information content producers should get more profits than others, then capitalism influences are still at work. In this method the information is still treated as information and not some limited "product" by limiting the actions of everybody that comes in contact with it. The content producers are paid, people can share it all the want, there can be a great online system to automate much of this. In my mind if such a system could be worked out without the people balking at the prices for the buffet then it would easily trump any system built on artificial restrictions to information.
His point is erroneous (Score:3, Interesting)
That isn't the case at all. It isn't just "celebs" like Bruce earn well, or generate wealth, from free software--a surprisingly huge number of unknown people (such as myself) do very well from free software. Why? Because free software generates a tremendous amount of wealth and opportunity unrelated to revenue streams reliant on software sales.
The mistake you (and the post you defend) make is to assume a zero-sum scenario dependent on software sales to generate wealth, when in point of fact the production of useful items (be it software or not) is a positive-sum activity that creates value greater than the sum of its parts, the vast majority of which is not directly related to the actual retail sale of the item. In situations where there is no physical scarcity (software), retail sales is entirely decoupled from these secondary, tertiary, and subsequent levels of wealth created (obviously, in the case of physical scarcity the sale is required for the item to exist, even though it is usually a vanishingly small percentage of the resulting wealth generated).
A purely open source world wouldn't have a Bill Gates (big loss), but will (and does) have dozens, perhaps hundreds, of millionaire entrepreneurs offering support, turn-key package solutions, custom installation, maintenance, support, administration, and customisation. And that's just the primary impact, secondary impacts include wealth generated by trading firms, banks, shops, and other businesses who make use of free software and hire local talent to tailor solutions to their needs, or simply install and support third-party turn-key solutions (in addition to the wealth created by the savings in licensing fees, and the savings in businesses not finding themselves beholden to orphaned software, forced to upgrade against their own best interests by vendors pulling support, etc.).
The only ones who lose in a free software/open source economy vs. a proprietary, closed-source economy are the Bill Gates of the world. Even the cadre of programmers who think they'll lose out because the business approach of Apple, Microsoft, or Oracle is all they know are unlikely to lose out at all, provided they are willing to learn new products and adjust their assumptions about how software generates wealth, and how demand for their talents and skills fit into such an economy.
Re:You don't read slashdot much, do you? (Score:1, Interesting)
Copyright is a temporary monopoly on distribution rights. [fsf.org] I'm generally pro-copyright myself although there are strong arguments on both side of the debate. Like many debates this one is easily polarized by the extremists. I'm strongly against software patents, I think trademark law needs to be revisited and I consider myself a moderate in the copyright debate. Copyright terms are too long and information is now duplicated at zero cost.
Every time you view a typical web page you make a copy of copyrighted material, it's displayed on your monitor and stored on your drive. So copying really isn't theft (otherwise you would be a criminal!) and fair use exemptions are required for modern distribution. Tell me, am I a 'clever guy' or do I just hold some tenuous link to reality that you do not?