New Copyright Alliance Formed In D.C. 213
jombeewoof alerted us to a story that went past unnoticed last weekend. A new industry-backed 'Copyright Alliance' was formed in the city of Washington, DC. Tasked with the nebulous goal of 'promoting the value of copyright as an agent for creativity, jobs, and growth', the ultimate goal of the organization is to strengthen copyright laws overall. "Backed by organizations like the MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner, the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, ASCAP, the NBA, and others, the Copyright Alliance has already secured initial support from several members of Congress ... The group is headed by Patrick Ross, a former senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank. Ross has written about IP issues for years, and in a 2005 opinion piece claimed that he was 'looking for anyone who wants to join me in seeking that elusive middle ground.' His new gig may be a strange place to fight for that 'middle ground' in any meaningful sense, as the Alliance is dedicated to 'strengthening copyright law' using 'bilateral, regional, and multilateral agreements to protect creators' and advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of strong copyright.'"
Too much control (Score:5, Insightful)
This smells like a "Bad Thing"(TM) (Score:2, Insightful)
Obvious quote (Score:5, Insightful)
The more laws they create, the less those laws will control. When law becomes esotheric and illogical, people stop heeding it. Partly because they don't even know that it's illegal, since it's anything but common sense that it should be. Partly because they don't care, since it does not match their personal morals. And finally partly because they think it does not matter what they do, they'll break some law anyway.
The middle ground... (Score:3, Insightful)
What exactly will they "teach" (Score:5, Insightful)
advancing educational programs 'that teach the value of strong copyright.'
What exactly are they going to teach. Most laws do not remotely cover what is needed with today's technology. For instance, if you start teaching about copyright "infingement" someone will ask if it is an infringement if you rip a CD or copy a movie for personal use. The current problem is that NO ONE KNOWS 100%. These issues have not been hammered out in a court of law and the current statues have no opinion either way.
The first thing that really needs to be done (besides possibly shortening copyright) is to define what exactly can and cannot be done with an existing work. Until then, whatever anyone attempts to teach about copyright is 100% opinion and speculation.
As a side note: The really pathetic thing about copyright is that it was initiated to promote the science and arts, but has since been hijacked by what I believe to be the lowest benefit to our society - the Entertainment Industry.
Content not worth protecting (Score:3, Insightful)
The software and record companies have invested millions into developing copy-prevention, lock-out chips, etc and it gets defeated by some person with 20 lines of code. That is why they want congress to write laws against it. How do you think the CEO of CBS felt when he gets music mp3s emailed to him from some guy who beat a copy-protected CD with a black marker the day it came out.
I have always believed that DMCA was never designed to fight music and software pirates, but to stop the Open Source software developers. I would not be surprised if congress tried to "license" developers in the coming years. Something else that bothers me is if the try to merge the DMCA and the Patriot Act.
NOT free market -- free reign for cos. (Score:5, Insightful)
This just goes to show that many of the free market idealogues out there aren't really about free markets; instead they are all about unrestricted corporate activity. The two are not the same, and shouldn't be conflated. It's been shown time and again that maintenance of a free market requires government intervention (see Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the US); even the Austrian school will admit that their economic model requires adjustment (and by implication, government action) to correct for monopolies.
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
age old conflict (Score:2, Insightful)
This is just an age-old battle between the classes. The masses benefit most from the free flow of information, and an elite few benefit from being able to prevent that free flow.
Money vs many, once again.
Free market (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have thought an organisation that was strongly free-market would be against stronger copyright laws.
I expect they are really "pro-big-business" rather that "free-market".
I have no problem with strong copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
Death of Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
The inability to share knowledge will collapse a democracy. A democracy can only survive with free access to information, and a population willing to be educated. Soon, we will have neither. How can we trust our neighbor to help run this country when they know nothing?
In fact, we as a soceity cannot survive without free exchange of information. Culture, the shared information of a group, includes not only "book learning" but stories, music, patterns, and ideas. All of those are being taken from us and gifted to monied interests.
Once, poems like Beowulf would be told, retold, and changed according to the zeitgeist. The characters would be familiar, the plot would be familiar, but the small changes over time would stand out to listeners, and the bards and shapers would emphasize or change different parts to better reflect their audience and the state of current culture. That is what held us together.
Now, we no longer have the power to control our own culture, it will be permenant and immutable for all eternity. Star Wars is a new Beowulf, but we as a culture cannot own it and make it ours. It is now eternal and unchanging, as will be our culture. Another word for eternal and unchanging is dead.
Add to the dead culture and uneducated citizenry a new type of tax- the culture and learning tax, paid to everyone who holds IP. Do you think that given the total control of information flow that IP-holders wouldn't leverage every dollar from their holdings? They'll go so far to protect their "property" that they will certainly cut off all fair uses, such as critical review. Expect even bad movie reviews to go the way of the dinosaur. "Sorry Mr. Ebert, you gave us one too many bad reviews, your license to view all Universal movies has been revoked."
The only silver lining is that the same technology to lock down all ideas has given us a massive, nearly infinite virtual library. The internet, large hard drive arrays, and instant communications have given us the means to acquire and archive massive amounts of data. Do you remember your grade-school librarian? She was a scary old woman probably, and would scare the pants off of little kids. Librarians have always needed to be scary, as they have a hard job keeping information from the hands that would hide it. In the future, we are our own librarians. It's time to get scary.
Re:Too much control (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should the people have to give up the right to share things they found funny/interesting with other people in the digital age?
Please take another look at our Constitution and Bill of Rights. The "right to make money off a creative work" is not listed as an inherent right. The right to express yourself however you choose is. Copyright in its original form was intended to be an agreement between the public and the creator for the public to temporarily give up those rights to freedom of expression in order to allow the creator a brief period of time of no competition to market his creative work, if it is indeed marketable.
Hate (Score:2, Insightful)
But I really do hate these people, and the people like them, that try to hold society back.
Too much copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
The government grants the copyright monopoly not because it wants these firms to make money; they grant it because they hope that ARTISTS (see what I did there?) will make more of their art when they can make a buck off of what they do, for the purpose of making a rich culture. So, the purpose of copyright is not financial but cultural gain. This comes with the implied benefit that the ARTIST can make money. When the copyright is held by anyone but the artist, there is no more cultural gain to be had.
The default setting for stuff that goes out of your head and into other people's sight/ears/whatever is that it is no longer yours. I tell you my Great Idea, now you can use it. I sing you my song, you can play it as well. That's the default mode. It's very easy to copyright something (just stick on your name, the year and the alt0169 symbol) but it's so hard to get it back into the public domain where it belongs (after a reasonable period of time,) it's ridiculous.
Also, extending copyright past the death of the artist involved. Make more art, Jimi! Make more art, Django! Make more art, Pablo! Make more art, Joan [blogspot.com]!
Not strongly free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:NOT free market -- free reign for cos. (Score:5, Insightful)
I assumed they were using the words in their most Orwellian sense. You know, in "1984" the Ministry of Peace was in charge of War, the Ministry of Plenty was in charge or rationing, and as for the Ministry of Love... well you get the idea.
If you think of it like that, the Progress & Freedom Foundation makes perfect sense.
secured initial support? (Score:4, Insightful)
A Good Article on Copyright (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't read Bounty Hunters [greglondon.com] by Greg London, you really should give it a go.
He describes the struggle of society to reward creators in analogy to paying bounty hunters to track criminals. It's a good analogy, and the analysis in section three is good. He spends time talking about making copyright have the proper length so that artists create, but not so long that society pays too much. I must admit that before reading it, I was skeptical that copyright could ever work or had anything to offer. He convinced me that it can be a good system, but there must be fairness in the term of protection.
The last flesh-and-blood discussion about copyright I had was very illuminating. I publish in science, and generally see copyright as getting in the way; I believe ideas that I come up with make me more valuable, rather than having external value (they could be useful for others to learn, then they've increased the value of their labor). But I spoke with a friend who writes fiction. Naturally, she had a different bend. She wanted to be compensated for her work and she didn't want any other writer writing substandard work with her characters, diluting her vision. There were just different issues between knowledge-based creative product and entertainment-based creative product. I would write more about how I disagreed with her, and thought her fears were unfounded, but it seems unfair to do that without a chance to respond
Monopoly rights on thoughts are some of the most important things facing our society now. We've developed a system where the physical reproduction of these things (text, music, images) is dirt cheap, nearly free, and it is forcing us to reconsider exactly what copyright and patents mean. The "Intellectual Property" crowd has a lot of money, and I think they are dangerous. We need to forge a new compromise between creators and society that maximizes creative output. That will require negotiating the "price" of that work in terms of monopoly protections.
Re:Too much control (Score:2, Insightful)
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Author and Inventors..."
What part of this quote says the rights can be transferred away from the author or inventor (to a 3rd party distributor such as a record company for example)? What part of this deals with the simple concept of fair use of media?
Please look back at your n00bish point 1 and reconsider it.
Article X: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people"
The people get the benefit of the doubt. Govt's role stays limited. That is and always was the intent. Now forming laws that effectively allow for the indefinite stay of copyright as it relates to a person's lifetime circumvents the original intent and deserves to go the way of the Dodo. Dodo.
Re:What exactly will they "teach" (Score:5, Insightful)
Who the fuck are you to say something like that? This fucking battle is not over. Our rights trump their ability to make money.
WE ARE NOT TO STAND BY WHILE THEY TAKE OUR RIGHTS AWAY! Just because lawmakers are easily influenced by money and are ever so helpful in ensuring that their pockets remain full does not mean that we should roll over, play dead, and take it in the ass while the copyright holders extend their life expectancies, revenue streams, and shit-eating grins.
I guess you could be a shining example of exactly what they want to accomplish. Congratulations.
Re:Too much control (Score:3, Insightful)
But unfortunately IP is no longer being operated as a democracy in the US, and the people controlling the majority of entertainment IP want everyone to think exactly as you're thinking.
Copyright Tank (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyright is derived from the Constitution's instructions for Congress to "promote progress in science and the useful arts". But they now impede progress more than they promote it. A "free market" is unencumbered by government-created monopolies like copyright. Copyright is a misnamed privilege to restrict free expression.
Does anyone think that Ross is busy protecting freedom, progress and markets? Or is he busy grabbing as much money as he can for people with licenses to print it?
Re:Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
You should relly question how getting the copyright on "Winnie the Pooh" extended
by 50 years benefits creativity.
The original author is long dead, his family sold the rights to Disney for a pittance
in the '60s. So all that is being protected is Disneys right to make money.
Fucking hypocritical Disney (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare the lists at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_doma
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_anima
for more clues.
* mod me funny if you don't want me to gain karma for saying the same thing twice. I just think this is an important point which should be brought up in every single discussion where Disney wants copyright enhanced.
** I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to profit from their use of other people's work. I'm saying that their original creations should fall into public domain, same as all those other things did. But no. Their attitude is "I got mine, now no one else gets any." Fucking hypocritical bastards.
Re:Death of Democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Censorship needs to be politically focused, which copyright is not. Censorship needs to be concept-based, which copyright is not. You can freely create/read paraphrased or summarised versions of the concepts in copyrighted works. Same concepts, different wording. Face it, copyright is utterly useless for political censorship. Patents (which are more contentious) are designed to cover concepts, but thankfully don't really apply to information.
But hey, don't let me stop you. Just keep telling yourself that you are saving democracy when you download the latest music/movies/software via bittorrent.
Re:Too much control (Score:5, Insightful)
"Free Market"? Strange Definition (Score:3, Insightful)
All the micro-econ courses I took, every single one from micro-101 to price theory, stated pretty strenuously that fiat monopolies and the free market are antithetical. I'm not saying copyright is necessarily bad - maybe the free market is not efficient when it comes to creative works - but the intersection of the free market and copyright is the empty set.
Re:NOT free market -- free reign for cos. (Score:3, Insightful)
Copyright is a good thing: it's what gives the GPL its "must remain free" condition and allows the BSD license it to be more than public domain by retaining the names of the original contributors. If people put their hard work into making something, why shouldn't they at least get credit (and perhaps allow you to make a living based on the reputation of your work)? Anyone that is pro-FOSS and anti-copyright is a hypocrite, whether they know it or not.
But when copyright becomes so strong that you need a team of lawyers to hunt down 99 year old great grand mothers, and when a whole technology is created to treat you as a criminal and restrict your rights to use work that you purchased 20 years ago, and when private police forces can order ISPs to violate privacy or remotely shut down computers that *might* be infringing or leave you open to rootkit vulnerabilities or companies resell you the same thing over and over again because you aren't allowed to format shift or works of knowledge and cultural history are allowed to die because the copyright holder is out of reach or wants it to die if he can't make any money off it, you know something is out of wack.
What many of these "strong copyright" companies don't realize is that people are lazy and people generally want to see themselves "as good people". This is true, even in jails where you'll find people say "I might be a thief but at least I'm not a murderer" or "I'm a murderer but at least I'm not a rapist", etc.
Make it easy for people to get your content and make it easy for people to feel good about themselves about doing "the right thing" and people will. They'll pay you any reasonable amount and if you treat them well, the majority will even promote you or even help out in some way and be loyal customers.
BTW, it's not about unrestricted corporate activity either. If one corporation, violated copyright, there'd be hell to pay too (witness the BSA police). I'm not sure what to call it, but such one-sided lobbying by the power elite (on the left, right, or center) is precisely the thing any good democrasy must guard against.
Re:Shoplifting (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell me, what defines a free market? Go ahead, think long and hard on this. Feel free to Google it, if you never took economics or have forgotten it by now. Ah, hell, I'll quote the first sentence in the Wikipedia entry:
Notice the phrase "not being regulated by the government"?
Copyrights are a government-induced restriction of supply, and hence do not belong in a truly free market -- period. You ad hominem and irrelevant arguments do not change this.
The truth of the matter is that IP has infinite supply when unregulated -- therefore within a free market, its price normally approaches zero.
Oh, you mean that some people wrote self-serving laws? Surprise, surprise.
Exactly; supply of that work is infinite, why should anyone pay me? Regardless, your entire argument is irrelevant -- the validity and purpose of copyright has absolutely zero to do with whether copyright fits into free market economics.
Note that I am a proponent of limited copyrights. However, this doesn't mean that I can bend the facts to support my view, nor does it mean that I can ignore realities (such as copyrights being in contradiction with a free market).
Re:NOT free market -- free reign for cos. (Score:3, Insightful)
No, "free market" ideology is only "about" defining property rights in things that are inherently rivalrous. Physical property, and certain forms of intangibles, are rivalrous; ideas (and information in general) are not.
Property rights are properly minimal, not maximal. You have property rights because, for certain types of objects, someone must decide how they will be used, because they can't be used to serve unlimited different ends simultaneously. The role of property owner is inherent in the nature of the object. When there is no need for such a decision-maker (e.g. with abstract ideas, information) there is no need for property rights.
The easiest way to demonstrate the difference is to explore the results of eliminating property rights. When it comes to physical property you find that you can't -- someone still has to decide how it will be used. Whoever ends up getting their way is the effective property owner. With ideas things are different; there is no conflict, because everyone can use the idea in their own way without affecting anyone else's use.