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Comments: 378 +- Your Rights Online: You Can Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source on Monday May 07 2007, @10:23PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Monday May 07 2007, @10:23PM
from the point-counterpoint dept.
from the point-counterpoint dept.
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kfogel writes "I'm submitting 'Supporting Open Source While Opposing Copyright' as a response to Greg Bulmash's piece from yesterday. I think there were a number of flaws and mistaken assumptions in Bulmash's reasoning, and I've tried to address them in this rebuttal, which has undergone review from some colleagues in the copyright-reform community."
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You Can't Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source 550 comments
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Food fight! (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all open-source is the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not all open-source is the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit.
It's possible to think that copyright is wrong, but accept the GPL as way of enforcing sharing while copyright exists. That's not an opinion I hold, but at least some seem to.
Parent
Re:Not all open-source is the same (Score:5, Insightful)
I think GP's point is valid: supporting both GPL-style sharing & copyright abolition is inconsistent, as they're mutually exclusive - if you're a genuine copyright abolitionist, you'd support BSD instead. I don't think it would be possible to enforce the particular flavour of sharing currently enabled by the GPL with no copyright. TFA appears to propose some sort of nebulous copyright replacement legislation which would enforce GPL sharing - I might be missing something obvious, but it seems likely that it would just be copyright by a different name.
I suspect the intention would be for the copyright-that's-not-actually-copyright to tip the scales in favour of consumers, not-for-profit distribution etc, but exactly the same thing could be accomplished via copyright reform, so I'm curious as to how this approach could be copyright abolitionism at anything more than a technical level.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
bottom line people. copyright is not bad. america's copyright LAWS are bad.
Re:Not all open-source is the same (Score:5, Insightful)
Many folks feel that, while copyright is altogether a bad thing, as long as it does exist we should make the best of it by forcing commercial entities -- who grouse about stronger copyright legislation being needed to protect business/"innovation" on the one hand, while shoveling BSD/MIT/Artistic/whatever-licensed code into their products as fast as they can on the other -- onto a level playing field.
Put another way, while you may want to get rid of copyright altogether when you can, if you are writing code now, you might choose the GPL because you don't want your code to put money into the pockets of the very people who will likely be fighting against you for copyright reform/abolition. Once copyright is gone, everybody has to "fight fair", insofar as anyone can be as "dirty" as they want with respect to using others' code without their sanction.
I'm not one who has strong opinions for or against the GPL or BSD -- I see the logic on both sides: so you can choose to live as if there were essentially no copyright, the BSD way, and help your "enemy", or turn the law against the people who use it as a cudgel with the GPL -- but most GPL advocates I have talked to seem to be more of the mind that "I'm not going to let my Open Source code contribute to the bottom line of the very people who have forced us into this proprietary hell in the first place", rather than "I want to 'protect my innovation' by taking advantage of copyright law." More simply, it seems to be a defensive choice more than an offensive one.
Either way, there are people both for and against copyright who choose both licenses regularly. I don't think, ultimately, what you feel about a world where there is no copyright has much to do with what license you choose for software right now. Most projects seem to choose their license with the practical considerations of the system we have in mind, rather than what they might like to see in the future.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense, it would be impossible to avoid GPL style sharing without copyright. Without copyright I can literally disassemble your code and use the output in my program. I no longer need you to grant me permission. Everyone's code would be open because anyone with the skills to utilize the code can extract the literal code from the executable.
'if you're a genuine copyright abolitio
Re:Not all open-source is the same (Score:4, Interesting)
...unless use is restricted to signed binaries on locked hardware. All of a sudden there's none of the GPL v3 protection, because there's no copyright, so I can happily take your community built code, improve it, make a billion dollars and/or become famous but not give you squat in return.
Law of unintended consequences, people - if there's no copyright, industries that depend upon it for a living are going to need to find another way to make money, and it's probably not going to be one that you'll like.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Copyright is intrinsically devoid of worth -- it should be abolished. Terminated. Rendered utterly void.
What? I can't have that? Fine, I guess I can salvage something from the current system. But I don't like it, and I'm still going to try to undercut the whole scam tomorrow, even if I can realize some minor benefit from it today.
Re:Not all open-source is the same (Score:5, Interesting)
Two things irritate me about this topic:
people who assume that copyright is an inherent right, when it is so obviously not;
people who think that without our current copyright structure, there could only be chaos.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
You can support BSD without supporting copyright, as it doesn't take advantage of many copyright protections.
Sure it does, you can't claim that you wrote it. You can repackage it and sell it, but somewhere in there, you have to acknowledge that you're using someone else's code.
You can't support GPL without supporting copyright, as it would be unenforceable without copyright.
The GPL would not be necessary if copyright didn't exist. The GPL relies on copyright only to propagate itself. Why would you need a viral license if everything was in the public domain?
Particularly relevant bit from TFA:
The basic argument of copyright abolitionists is that people should be free to share when sharing does not result in any diminution of supply. The GPL simply uses copyright law in a jiujitsu-like manner to enforce this principle, in a legal environment where sharing is prohibited by default and must be explicitly permitted to be legal.
Re:Not all open-source is the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe because we wouldn't be guarranteed access to the source code.
Parent
Re:Not all open-source is the same (Score:4, Informative)
If you oppose copyright, but can't do anything about the existence of copyright, you can at least put stuff into the public domain without allowing someone to wrap it up in copyright and resell it. That's basically all the GPL does, and I don't see any conflict there at all.
Maybe if copyright was written differently, or not at all, we wouldn't have _need_ of the GPL, but that's a different story.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The article is completely confused, and simply, completely, wrong.
It's trying to refute an article that was, in fact, correct.
Nope. The GPL doesn't just allow copying of binaries, it forces you to release your SOURCE
HA HA OH WOW (Score:3, Insightful)
THE POINT was that the GPL would need to be changed if copyright laws were changed. The spirit of the GPL (Cohesion and Continuity, per the article) would be enforced by other clauses that would be created in light of whatever law takes the place of copyright, again per the article, "... be enforced using laws so drastica
Abolishing copyright abolishes GPL (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Abolishing copyright abolishes GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
True. But for the GPL to work the alternative set of rules would have to be one of two things:
1) the GPL, enacted as legislation applying to all computer code (or as opt-in)
2) a set of laws regarding creative works that allows the creator to control what consumers of the work do with the work
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the second things is usually referred to as "copyright." It's true that copyright c
Re: (Score:2)
Not at all. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
That's not possible (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd end up essentially saying "You are obliged to both freely distribute this code and keep it secret" which seems a bit of a challenge. Frankly I think your idea is broken.
It is only copyright law that allows us to publish the code and defines the terms of use at a level that suites the copyright holder. This allows us to have various licenses.
Without c
Re:Abolishing copyright abolishes GPL (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Haven't you heard of migration plans and "temporary workarounds" (and even politics[1]
Go look at the real world sometime and learn how it works.
I think for a start copyright terms should be a lot shorter (just a few years), and fair use needs some fixing by wise and good people.
[1] Lots of companies support BOTH the two main US parties at the same time, who are allegedly against each other.
Re: (Score:2)
;-)
Re:Abolishing copyright abolishes GPL (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point the copyright abolitionists are trying to make is that it is not necessarily good that an author be able control the distribution and use of their work. I know that seems unbelievable, almost immoral, to many people, and yet it is how creativity was for most of human history. Open source pretty much works that way now (it's the infamous "right to fork", even against the author's wishes).
The abolitionists are perfectly aware of what copyright law *is* today, they're just trying to change that. I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand: there's a law, some people don't like it, they try to change it. That doesn't mean they don't understand the law, it means they *do* understand it but want something different.
Parent
Understanding copyright my ass (Score:4, Interesting)
Bullshit. I'm a professional writer - part of my job requires me to have a working understanding of the law and what it does. My academic training is primarily that of a historian - and that gives me some insight as to how societies develop. And, frankly, I read your article very carefully (both of them, in fact), and you failed to understand copyright law on the reading comprehension level. I'm not surprised that you haven't thought through it. And, frankly, denying that it's there when somebody has simply summarized the letter of the law is one hell of an ostrich impression. You're the one who should be discussing whether it "should be there." Arguing that it isn't there when it's protected under the US Constitution from the get-go, has a history of case law, is recognized by international treaty, and has several other pieces of legislation that have passed in every western country in the world, is just embarrassingly stupid.
I've been reading Slashdot now for a couple of years, and I've seen lots of misconceptions from the copyright abolitionists - so you're not alone. These aren't arguments against the law, or against the theory of the law - and most of these are failures on the reading comprehension level. Here are a few of the more interesting ones, and they're all bullshit:
1. That having something under copyright keeps it away from society.
This one I find rather funny - there are abolitionists out there who really think that authors sit around creating work under copyright, and then cackle as they put them in a box and never let anybody see them. If you're a pro writer, it's publish or perish.
Sometimes, they expand this to mean that something can go out of print and then is harder to get your hands on, but what they keep missing is that this has to do with book sales, not with whether the book is under copyright or public domain. In most, if not all cases, royalties to an author make up very little of the total cost of printing the book. Contacting the author or his/her estate tends to be easy - the recluse author that nobody can contact is pretty much an urban legend at this point. The fact is that when a work enters the public domain, whether it gets printed is dictated by whether it will be profitable to print it, and that is dictated by how well it has stood the test of time. So, life of the author + 50 years in the here and now has very little impact on availability of a work.
(And, don't get me started on fair use, which is guaranteed under copyright law.)
2. That you can copyright an idea.
The sad thing is that while the first one at least is a take on a speculative issue (and, I will concede, possibly not a failure on the reading comprehension level), this one is disproven just by reading the SUMMARY of the law. You cannot copyright an idea (it's PATENT law that allows you to lay claim to an idea). For that matter, in the entire three hundred year history of copyright law, you have never been able to copyright an idea. So anybody who thinks this has obviously never read the law, or failed to understand it on the reading comprehension level.
3. That copyright is more artificial than any other right.
This one requires people to have little or no concept of history. Or current events. The people who claim that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are natural rights seem to be missing the fact that at least half of the world's population lives in places without those rights. They're also missing the fact that the US Constitution was a remarkable document because it DID enshrine those rights in the highest law of the land, making them inalienable in the United States - and that hadn't happened anywhere in the Western world before the American Revolution.
To make things even more ridiculous, the concept of a work of literature as a property protected under law pre-dates the US Constitution by arou
Parent
fix the article title, then (Score:3, Informative)
Then why not make the title of this article: "Supporting Open Source While Opposing Copyright", instead of repeating the same title from the previous article?
People who just scan titles, esp on RSS, are going to think this is a dupe.
Re:fix the article title, then (Score:5, Funny)
I almost did. But then I remembered that Slashdot has editors to prevents such horrible things as dupes and that this must have been a legitimate follow-up to the previous article.
Parent
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do we really need to hear this again (Score:5, Insightful)
I tire of the "here are 10-15 different arguments on my side, if any of them sticks then I win" style of debate.
Different brands of freedom? (Score:3, Insightful)
So basically it seems like this guy doesn't want to do away with copyright, he just wants to change it so that any non-GPL-style license is prohibited.
The previous article suggested libertarian style freedom (free as in free to shoot your neighbor if he steps on your land), while this guy suggests communist style freedom (free as in "show your papers to get in line for free bread comrade").
Re:Different brands of freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
"So basically it seems like this guy doesn't want to do away with copyright, he just wants to change it so that any non-GPL-style license is prohibited."
You can see the appeal here. All the free music and movies you want, but nobody gets to mess with your FOSS project in a way you don't want. Since most of us are coders, and not musicians or moviemakers (or, we're more likely to have friends who are the former, not the latter), it's an attractive idea to many Slashdotters.
Parent
the real issues (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a little pointless arguing what copyleft would be like in a world without copyright, because we're never going to live in a world without copyright.
Let's focus on what we might really be able to achieve:
Re: (Score:2)
Or, how about Copyright laws revert to something reasonable, like 15 years. The copyright length was originally 14 or 28 years, per United States copyright law [wikipedia.org]. If 28 years was enough time in the late 1700s, when printing was a slow process, and dissemination of information was slow, why on EARTH would we need authors l
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You only have to look at the difference between US and European land laws (in particular, squatting laws) to see the way the US has a much greater tendency to disregard the public good. As copyright is all about the public good, and the US dominates international copyright treaties, it is pretty clear why copyright is so fucked up.
So much so, that any copyright law is guaranteed to change into this total travesty that we have t
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Miss the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Bulmash misses the point that without copyright, I can find the appropriate place in your machine code to insert my functions and then distribute the modified versions to my friends. That's 90% of the GPL right there... And the right redistribute everything is probably more valuable than being able to see your sloppy undocumented source code anyway.
Kfogel misses the point that without copyright the computer industry would have grown an entirely different direction from way back in the '70s. Without specific protection for the software component, companies would have tied software to the hardware. Think: dedicated Pac Man machines in the arcades. You can copy the Microsoft Office ROMS all you want, but it uses the registers and I/O devices only present on the patented Microsoft Office machine. No *general purpose* computers... Copyright is what made the general purpose computer sociologically possible. That world, by the way, would suck.
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
As a professional photographer, if I take a good photograph, I don't want someone putting my picture up on their website and saying someone else took the photo. This is NOT me abusing my copyright.
If, however, a newspaper ran my photo on the front page, but I refused to allow anyone to cut out the photo and hang it on their refrigerator, and went from house to house inspecting refrigerators... THAT would be abusing my copyright. Sound vaguely similar to the MAFIAAs?
I hope you see the difference. Copyright is actually a good thing when not abused.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
kfogel argues the distinction between "the right to be credited for a work, and the right to control distribution of that work." So under his paradigm, in a world without copyright folks would still be breaking the law for posting your picture uncredited or miscredited, but they'd be allowed to post the picture on their site with your name under it. I'm not sure if this would still bug you, properly credited, but that's the gist of TFA.
Parent
If you are against copyright,you SHOULD oppose GPL (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Reviewed... By People Who Already Agree (Score:4, Funny)
While easier to get reviewed by people who already broadly support your viewpoint, review tends to gain its power when those idealogically opposed to you review it and still can't find flaws in it.
Seems to be a misunderstanding (Score:5, Insightful)
People are motivated to create such works for any number of reasons. Some want the money that comes from charging for copies or viewing a performance, others just want credit. In any case, copyright is what lets the author determine who can access his or her works and under what terms. If we, as a society, don't give authors this control, there is a reasonable likelihood that a number of people who would otherwise create such a work will not because they don't want to see the fruits of their labor taken advantage of by others in ways they don't approve.
This brings us to open source software (OSS) and copyright. Some people license their work under a BSD license, some people put their work into the public domain, some license their work under the GPL and there are a number of other possible licenses. That there are a number of different OSS licenses and developers freely choose which license to release their project under means that the developers are making a conscious choice as to what kinds of restrictions they want on what they have created. This brings us to the GPL and similar licenses.
The GPL isn't just about attribution. People who just want attribution publish under a BSD license or something similar. The GPL is about creating a body of free software that stays free. As a number of court cases have demonstrated, there are all too many people out there who are more than willing to abscond with GPLed source for their proprietary products. Copyright law is what gives the GPL teeth to prevent this.
You can have free software without copyrights but it's going to be "free as in beer" software. Unfortunately, just like with beer, when the beer runs out, it doesn't matter if it's free. You still can't have any. If people aren't willing to develop without some level of control of the work after it's released, there won't be much free software. Copyright and the GPL means that at least some software will be "free as in speech" and, chances are, developers who continue to contribute to what they see is a greater good.
I guess I should rephrase what I said and say that you can have free software without copyrights but just not for very long. Lots of developers won't put up with having their work taken advantage of and will simply no longer create. Thus, the argument comes back to where I started, protection of an author's work is what incentivizes an author to create. Even if that incentive is just recognition by the developer community and knowledge that what they have created will stay free.
Cheers,
Dave
* I will give them a point for at least being philosophically consistent. Once you grant anyone the right to restrict the use of a creative work then it becomes difficult to draw a line as to when a restriction is benign or even beneficial (e.g., the GPL) and when it's not (please remit $0.25 (aka, two bits) to me for enjoying the above discourse).
Re:Seems to be a misunderstanding (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Why is this concept so hard to grasp? (Score:2)
"All these problems can be seen at once in a paragraph near the opening of his article:
"The problem with a large part of the anti-copyright crowd is that they don't understand or won't admit what copyright entails as a concept. That is the right of the creator of a work to exert some control over how it's used, who can copy and distribute it, and a right to have their authorship acknowledged.
"Notice the rhetorical sleight-of-hand there: he presents copy control
Stealing time... (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, I support the GPL. I think that the concept of community supported software is great. I also like how someone can make modifications to code and be obligated to give back to the community.
Having said that, I think people who preach that we should abolish copyright are basically lazy and cheap. Oh sure they will serve us some leftist bullshit to legitimize their position, and they will throw some "Well it's not stealing because even after giving a copy of some software to a friend, the original owner still has the use of said software - NO HARM, NO FOUL!"
Of course this is Slashdot and I will get some hostile replies, but face it people who preach that we should abolish copyright are proclaiming that GPL doesn't work. They are frustrated that they don't have the time or money to make a commercial quality software, so they just want to be able to legally steal it. Basically these people rather spend their time trying to accomplish something that will never happen, rather than putting effort in a legitimate movement like GPL.
It all boils down to this. If you believe software should be free, then nothing is preventing you from using GPL license software. Hell, if you really believe software should be free, then create a GPL program. If you can't code and you can't find the software that you need, then I guess you'll have to spend money. Sponsor someone to write your GPL program, or just break down and purchase a legitimate licensed copy.
But if you just plain pirate all your software, then your just a leech and offer nothing to support your cause.
What we should be concentrating on is abolishing software patents...
sure.. (Score:4, Insightful)
>Imagine if we had laws that did away with most prohibitions against sharing, but that enforced crediting and permitted authors to enforce GPL-like provisions requiring sharing.
Considering that copyright law has no prohibition against sharing (after all, releasing your work as creative commons is as simple as cut-pasting a line of text) and thanks to GPL and similar licenses, copyright can have provisions to enforce sharing - I think I can imagine a world such as this - we live in it. What the author is arguing is that every work should be released with a mandatory GPL-like or maybe Creative Commons-type license.
>Thus, to say that the GPL depends on copyright is like saying that reading depends on scribes.
No.. the GPL is a license tested in court and found wholly within the realm of current copyright law.
>The basic argument of copyright abolitionists is that people should be free to share when sharing does not result in any diminution of supply.
I understand that argument even though I don't agree with it, but there's another point here. Is "free to share" the same as "forced to share"? After all, people are free to share MIT licensed code, but are forced to share GPL licensed code (provided that they made changes to it and distributed the binary
Arnold says "Stop whining!" (Score:5, Funny)
Copyrights are a good idea when applied in moderation.
Open source is a means to an end, not an end unto it self.
Neither are particularly interesting to read about on Slashdot because both issues are plagued with juvenile whining by 35 year old virgins who still live with their parents.
Copyright is necessary (Score:3, Insightful)