Re: [GD-General] Pro-IP bill passed the house: User-created conte nt providers, beware!

[Bob <ma...@mb...>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Crosbie Fitch" <cr...@cy...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 2:28 PM
Subject: Re: [GD-General] Pro-IP bill passed the house: User-created conte nt providers, beware!


>> From: Tom Hubina
>> To be clear - no copyright or ownership would mean that I could take  
>> all of the various GPL code on the net, integrate it into my 
>> products,  
> 
> Yes, and this is good. Anyone should be able to build upon published works.
> 
>> call it my own, 
> 
> This would be plagiarism, misrepresentation, misattribution, fraud, a
> violation of the respective authors' moral rights to be recognised as the
> authors of their works, etc.
> 
> Copyright does not protect attribution.
> 
>> charge for it, 
> 
> Of course.
> 
>> and have it be totally closed source.  
> 
> If you wished, but then without copyright there's no need to persuade people
> to provide the source code when they sell their software. Given binaries
> cost nothing to make or copy, there would be no market for binaries. You'd
> only get paid for selling source code - since no-one with their head screwed
> on would pay for software to be developed if the source code representing
> the work they'd paid for wasn't delivered to them. Inevitably, the binary
> would serve as a free demo for the software.
> 
>> Without copyright, someone using one of your sites could lift the  
>> images from the web site, use it, resell it, whatever without 
>> any fear  
>> and without paying the artist who created the work (not even the  
>> initial purchase).
> 
> Yes, of course. Given the images have been released to the public, the
> public are free to share and build upon public culture.
> 
> Without copyright, artists would obviously be careful to ensure they'd been
> adequately compensated for their work prior to releasing it.
> 
>> Without ownership of the images / IP / whatever the items 
>> cease to be property.
> 
> Yes. However, copyright is not about ownership but about reproduction
> privileges. Intellectual property doesn't cease without copyright, it just
> means the copyright holder no longer has the privilege of preventing the
> owners of copies from making further copies or derivatives.
> 
> Intellectual work still remains property, otherwise you can't sell it.
> 
>> As such, theft is meaningless and no longer a crime.
> 
> Not at all. Intellectual works are highly valuable and to be paid for, and
> any theft punished with appropriate restitution. Copyright is about having a
> monopoly and prosecuting infringers, not about ownership of intellectual
> works and prosecuting their theft.
> 
>> If someone steals your images / art off your computer they might be  
>> charged for the act of hacking your system, but they would be 
>> able to  
>> do whatever they wanted with the digital assets that they've stolen.  
>> If they then take those assets, and put them up on the internet for  
>> everyone to use, there would be _nothing_ anyone could do about it.  
>> The original artist would get ZERO compensation.
> 
> I quite agree. But again, copyright is not about securing IP against theft,
> but about preventing people from making copies of the IP they've purchased.
> 
>> That is just a trite example ... imagine when big corporations are  
>> suddenly given unfettered access to anything and everything they can  
>> get their hands on. The amount of damage that some individuals with  
>> file sharing or whatever can do is miniscule when compared to the  
>> amount of damage that corporations could do. Imagine the recording  
>> industry being able to take the work of smaller artists, lifted  
>> directly from their web site, package it, market it, and sell it to  
>> the masses without ever paying the original artist anything.
> 
> If you are classifying the restoration of liberty and an emancipated public
> as damage, then this is a strange way of looking at things.
> 
> As for corporations exploiting smaller artists without giving them fair
> compensation, many would say this is the situation with copyright. The
> recent US Orphan Works act is even fairly blatant in effectively allowing
> corporations to ignore the copyrights of 'smaller artists'.
> 
>> The more  
>> exploitative they are, the more profitable they will be. Of course  
>> this kind of activity is ultimately self destructive, but it can turn  
>> a quick profit with minimal investment so it would be done massively  
>> until everything has been sucked dry.
> 
> So without the monopolies that copyright provides them, you feel
> corporations would suddenly make colossal profits?
> 
> If that was the case, I suspect copyright would have been abolished already,
> instead of the corporations' lobbying for the introduction of ever more
> draconian reinforcement.
> 
>> Without a system of checks and balances and a reasonable legal  
>> response to people who abuse others you end up with absolute chaos.  
>> When there's chaos, no one makes money. If no one makes money  
>> (companies or otherwise), then they can't feed themselves by  
>> performing that activity and they have to get a job elsewhere.  
>> Everyone either turns cannibal, gets out of the game 
>> entirely, or it's relegated to hobby only style work.
> 
> I agree, but I wouldn't put it quite so dramatically.
> 
>> Innovation and creativity would all but stop and the digital age and  
>> all future progress would stall.
> 
> Because copyright became unviable and was abolished, or because there was no
> system of checks and balances?
> 
>> I'm not suggesting that things like GPL or even what you're doing with  
>> your sites are going to be the downfall of everything. They can only  
>> exist because they have the protections that copyright and other IP  
>> laws provide them, and as long as those laws exist the "Free" license  
>> folks can continue to co-exist with the closed source systems.
> 
> Given that the GPL provides a means of restoring the freedoms that copyright
> and patent removes from free software developers, without copyright and
> patent there is no need for the GPL.
> 
> It would be strange if in order to allow people the freedom to copy we
> needed a law that suspended that freedom.


Three hundred years ago be damned. How many artistic works were produced three hundred years ago? More than that, from that small body of work, how many of the authors were able to support themselves on the income form this heady, intellectual sort of work? Yeah, practically zero. The creation of copyright, was, as you have repeatedly stated, in an era of expensive publishing, and therefore has served a class of middle-man business owners for the majority of the last 300 years.

Things definitly are changing in the digital age. I personally don't focus on the proliferation of "piracy" in the last decade or two so much as the rapid decrease in publishing expenses, not in the matter of duplication but in all areas of production. I studied (computer aided) design in college back in the early 90s, and even then there was a great deal of mechanical work involved in pre-press and printing that has since evaporated -- there is practically no technical knowhow, much less physical expense, to any of those tasks today. This means that publishers are the dodo facing extinction as more and more authors come to realize they don't need them. All of a sudden, Copyright is directly serving authors in the movement to break away from the parasitic industry of publishers!

Copyright laws probably do need to be stripped of aspects that have already been added to serve the unique purposes of incorporated publishers, but it is nonetheless empowering for authors. The notion that public has "liberty" to claim anyone's creative work without recompense solely on the basis of the ability to lay hands upon it is truly unethical, and at the same time counter to the good of society (if you consider growth of creative production a good thing). Diffusing the problem of intellectual property value that authors rightfully earn, not just in their immediate labour but in the great deal of study and expense necessary to the learning of these sophisticated crafts, by pointing judgemental fingers at the middlemen tasked with reproduction, marketing and distribution, is a deceptive tactic.


>> I'm also not suggesting that Copyright, Patents, etc aren't massively  
>> flawed ... they are ... but throwing them out entirely instead of  
>> working to fix the problems is asinine.
> 
> I'm suggesting that their ineffectiveness will soon become so obvious, that
> the needless prosecutions that continue in the name of their enforcement
> should be stopped - consequently demonstrating the case for abolition.
> 
> However, if you think copyright and patent remain eminently functional and
> are the keys to your continued success, I'm not going to try and change your
> mind.
> 
> I'm talking to those who are beginning to notice that 'something is rotten
> in the state of Denmark', and are wondering if anyone's been working on
> solutions...


The fact that you seek only to sway the undecided doesn't say much for the validity of your argument. If anything such a claim belies a lack of confidence in your position. I've got a few books on the subject of propaganda (dating back to Schopenhauer) that identify fence-sitters as the most receptive to emotional appeal and hyperbole. ;)

Mind, I have no fear of Copyright being abolished. It is a fantasy scenario. Even if I agreed with you that Copyright is rotten to the core, it would be a matter best pursued in increments, and ultimately settled in compromise. Law is not painted in broad strokes.