You Can Oppose Copyright and Support Open Source 378
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."
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.
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...
Re:the real issues (Score:2, Interesting)
The speed of getting information out has nothing to do with how valuable it is.
The crux of these sorts of arguments seems to be that after your suggested 15 years JK Rowling should just be told that anyone can publish as many copies of Harry Potter book 1 as they like so long as they put her name under it (no payment necessary, meaning no incentive to pay her) because it "benefits culture" as a whole.
This is roughly equivalent to saying "you have the exclusive right to whatever you buy for 15 years, but from then on anyone can use it." It's great for that DVD player that's going to break down every few years, or the car that you can squeeze a decade out of, but in 15 years when the public decides that your wife's diamond engagement ring is better off as part of a laser or a drill bit, or in 15 years when your house gets opened up "for the benefit of society."
Thanks to dynasty trusts, you can tie your property up as far as the rule of perpetuities will allow, and sometimes later still, some trusts tying property up for hundreds of years but you would never argue that in 15 years you should lose your legal monopoly on your real or personal property. Instead, you'd argue for at a minimum, life plus the right to pass it on to someone else (who can the do as they like)
I'm going to stop the argument here and get a drink, but the next step in this argument is either
(a) intellectual property isn't real or personal property - to which the counter is "are you saying that because I created my own property, I have less rights to my property than someone who buys it?"
(b) violating intellectual property isn't at all like theft - to which the counter is "it's depriving someone of something (the right to exclusively choose the method and means of distribution of property without their permission. How is that different than depriving you of the right to exclusively choose who enters your home?" - to which the counter is "I paid to maintain my home, while someone who creates IP just does it" - to which the argument is "someone who creates IP consumes resources in generating it. That book they wrote happened because they paid to maintain their writing environment.
Of course, there's more argument chains to go down, but I'm a little tired now.
Re:Not all open-source is the same (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 abolitionist, you'd support BSD instead'
Why? BSD code means that you can take my code and use it to make a billion dollars and/or become famous but not give me squat in return. The GPL is a way of making sure that everyone else plays nice as well. After all, people are greedy bastards and their natural inclination is to not share in kind. Since this is unacceptable the GPL makes them share in kind. Without copyright law technology makes them share in kind.
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.
Re:the real issues (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 today.
Re:Not at all. (Score:2, Interesting)
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