What is Digg?38 Comments
- Eeqmcsq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Well written article. I think this line summed up the issue with copyright:
"We are constantly reminded that copyright law, as the Supreme Court once declared, is an “engine of free expression.” But more often these days, it’s instead an engine of corporate censorship." - AntiMe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Or expanded, your choice.
- SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8It could be expanded to include all intellectual property, but that would serve mostly to confuse things. Trademarks are not patents which are not Copyrights. They in fact serve very different stated purposes. Since I sort of like confusion though, I guess I'll go ahead and expand the discussion :)
The purpose of intellectual property:
Trademarks: Avoid consumer fraud/confusion.
Patents: Foster innovation, and make innovations public knowledge.
Copyright: Balance the rights of the creator with the rights of the public in order to maximize the public good.
These are the stated purposes. The current reality is that:
Trademarks are aggressively used to shut down everything from sites where dissatisfied customers make their voices heard to sites that are not competitors to the trademark holders in any way.
Patents are used to maintain what is in effect a global oligopoly in most technological fields held by huge international corporations. Software patents, perhaps the worst of the bunch, are slowly strangling innovation in the entire IT sector.
Copyrights have been perverted to the point where they often favor not the public, nor the creator. In stead they favor the huge corporations that own them. These corporations have even been able to lobby through laws, such as the DMCA, that makes it illegal for the consumer to exercise their fair use rights.
The above is of course an oversimplification. These are complex issues. However: If you ask me, the thing to do is:
Trademarks: Clearly define it as only relevant if consumer fraud or confusion is likely.
Copyrights: Fair use provisions must be strengthened dramatically. Also, copyrights should not be valid for anywhere near the amount of time they are now. 20 years or so might be reasonable. Copyright should no longer be granted for such things as page breaks and text layout in a reprinting of a public domain work.
Patents: These need to be dramatically reformed. Patents should not be allowed for business processes, software, or combinations of existing technologies and techniques. The non-obviousness critieria needs to be redifined as "would a person skilled in the art be able to come up with this solution given the problem?". If the answer is yes, no patent for you. In addition, they should not be for 20 years. That may have made sense when the system came about, with the speed of development now, 3-5 years might make sense.
In the long run, I'm quite convinced that we will be best of with patents abolished altogether. - TKDWILSON, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Copyright is still useful. For like 7-14 years after you create a work, you should not have someone else making money off of it. That should be what copyright is.
Eric Wilson - AntiMe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8If an industry can crumble, it should.
- jonesin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Exactly. If their efforts to lock down the IP system only serve to invalidate it. There's nothing unethical with piracy when the content companies themselves are pirating our culture.
- andergriff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4When an author or creator of a copyrighted work dies, his creation should go into the public domain. We don't owe his children and grandchildren a dime. Nor his lawyers or business associates. Let them work like the rest of us. The widow and children can live on daddy's generous estate which they received at his death. But the works belong to us...not to some grasping fat cats sitting around a corporate boardroom counting beans. These people are no better than the thieves of the ancién régime. And these copyright laws MUST be reformed or the public will do it anyway via the internet.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The discussion brought by this could easily be expended to include all intellectual property
- DiodeGravy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4The world fashion/clothing industry operates quite successfully without 'copyright' protecting their creations.
Therefore, the assertion that: "If the copyright system fails, huge industries could crumble" -- is incorrect.
Government copyright law is a burden on productivity, not its salvation. - bradbaxter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4In a utopia, perhaps people would work without compensation -- but in the real world, that isn't the case. Copyrights protect work from being stolen and re-sold. We wouldn't have the abounding creative expression in this country without protection -- except from a few greasy haired hippies. I know, I know... to a lot of you slackies (slacker+hippie) here, that doesn't sound too bad. But to those of us who work for a living, it isn't exactly utopia.
- chess007, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"If the copyright system fails, huge industries could crumble. If it gets too strong, it stifles creativity"
Not true. Its safe to say copyright has failed for the music industry. How hard is it to get a song for free? (cassette player recording from the radio & many other ways)
Yet, record companies continue to make millions. - clander, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3As a former graduate student who studied copyright history, I have to weigh in on this. We are definitely reaching a breaking point. The spirit of the initial law has been so perverted. This issue is bigger than .mp3s and pirated versions of Quake or Final Cut Pro. This issue has trickled down to food, our own genes, and just about everything else in the world. Big Business has got a strangle hold on copyright and those who make copyright law. When you work at a big corporation or a University (check California Board of Regents patents), your work, your copyrights, and your IP is THEIR IP. And since Corporations have the same rights as a person in the United States (yet lack the ability to die of natural causes), we are going to face a crisis of non-innovation and crippling restriction.
The ridiculous length of copyrights will keep getting longer, and the public domain will only see new additions when people forget.
It is absolutely imperative that individuals are given an incentive to invent, they should be granted copyright and patent protection on their inventions. But to create one invention (say a cartoon mouse) and live off of it for your entire life, then your children's, grandchildren's and corporation is ridiculous.
The answer is to shorten copyright terms, and to NOT allow any copyrights or patents on food or genetics.
- Yez70, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Copyright law does need to be changed, but not abolished. Reducing it to 5-10 years maximum would be far wiser in the digital age, with a minimum of 1 year, depending on what the material is and how much of it is original work.
Intellectual Property laws need to change drastically - they shoud only apply to PHYSICAL PRODUCTS, not ideas or business models. They should also have a maximum of 5-10 years. Improving a product SIGNIFICANTLY would justify an extension, but just changing the color would not.
Creativity and Innovation need to be rewarded and inspired. They should not be an excuse to stop innovating or to stop creating for the rest of your life or for every dollar you can milk out of a product or work.
Do more, Be more. - tao52nyc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Actually, I just read an article yesterday claiming that some designers are trying to get into the IP protection racket, as well. Could give the term "patent leather" a whole new meaning.
- SmokedL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I forgot an important point. You must not ever be granted a copyright on news. Pulling news videos from youtube for instance make an utter mockery of the concept of balancing the rights of a creator and the rights of the public. The right of the public is infinitely more important in this case.
FOX/CNN/NBC did not "create" the words that an interviewee spoke, or the facts that they report on. They should not under any circumstances be allowed a monopoly on distribution of such information. It's antithetical to the very concepts of freedom and democracy.
Copyright should be for creative works, not for forwarding information. - HonoredMule, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"We are constantly reminded that copyright law, as the Supreme Court once declared, is an “engine of free expression.” But more often these days, it’s instead an engine of corporate censorship."
- tao52nyc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Then we will continue to download, rip, mix, share, repeat. Their whining and lawsuits will not matter. "You can't stop the signal."
- hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Because they're topical analgesics?
- tmcdigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1umm, you mean they can finally close the tower records in my town and open up a compusa, microcenter, or other computer store closer to me?
Cause if your not selling content, your definately selling blank media, and other supporting hardware! All it really means is the schmo that had the $7/hr job in tower records will now how the $7/hr job in a compusa that is closer to me... now thats' real progress.
Last major copyrighted title bought: 2002 (an audio cd) Since then, prices have been "jacked" back up in my area, and adding crappy drm to music/movies, bah!
Its the consumer that wags the dog in this case... add drm and lockdown restrictions at your OWN PERIL. Blue-Ray and HD-DVD has the potential for some boston tea-party sized boycotting provided that DRM is a pain to deal with.. - andergriff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is an excellent piece and should be distributed to everyone you know with the intelligence to understand what is at stake. Basically, the elite power centers who control big media have used copyright laws to build up their empires. With their money, they have turned around and bought enough congressional support to keep extending copyright laws to the detriment of potential upstart competition. They deserve to be brought down. Disney be damned. Mickey Mouse belongs to all of us!
- bradbaxter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I agree that lawyers and greed have gotten out of hand on the issue; and I believe that copyright needs to be reformed to a certain degree.
However, I believe the current term on copyright is appropriate... and that if a company (say Disney in response to your "mouse" illustration) continues to maintain and market their creation, that they have a right to continue protecting it. After all, they are the ones investing capital (also known as risking capital) in seeing to it that it enjoyed by the public at large. - andergriff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A true artist will produce great art no matter what. Van Gogh never received a cent in his life for any painting he ever did. Some artitsts are more entrepreneurial than others, are better at making money. But money is not what drives the great geniuses. Dickens made more money with his public recitals than he did with his printed works. I could give you any number of examples like this. But the one thing about this copyright system that really bothers me is that it is designed to benefit very large companies with the works of just a few dozen very popular artists. This is fundamentally unfair to other artists and reveals the warped effect that copyright is having on our society. As a result of the internet, more artists are having success than ever before. And that's a good thing.
- bigdaddyk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I think we've been desensitized to the seriousness of the issue by our flashy .isos and .mp3s.
- infopro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Inappropriate analogy -- fashion & literary/artistic creative products have far too many differences to support such a simplistic comparison. The inherent ephemeral nature of fashion is only one example.
- montagg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dugg, but the author makes some broad statements about copyright that aren't exactly accurate. The only example I'll go into is this one: "[Copyright] protects more content and outlaws more acts than ever before." This is an innaccurate statement. Copyright laws themselves outlaw very few acts. Licenses written by lawyers who represent creators (or publishing houses, or record labels, etc.) are what outlaw things. And these can be drawn up to be whatever the author wants.
So, in essence, the world of copyright is not a centralized totalitarian giant like most people see it as much as it is a chaotic, medieval environment where anyone can write their own copyright laws. The laws, then, are designed to benefit the copyright holder alone and no one else. Personally, my only prediction is that this will change soon. I don't claim to know how, and I would take others predictions with several grains of salt, but the current copyright atmosphere is not long for a digital world. - HonoredMule, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"And fair use is somewhat confusing. There is widespread misunderstanding about it. In public forums I have heard claims such as “you can take 20 percent” of a work before the use becomes unfair, or, “there is a forty-word rule” for long quotes of text. Neither rule exists. Fair use is intentionally vague. It is meant for judges to apply, case by case."
Actually in Canada, such forms of explicit rules do exist, primarily relating to educational use. For example a professor may distribute to his students up to 20% or 1 chapter (whichever is larger) of material copied from a textbook or similar copyrighted work. I may be off on the details, but at any time I can check with any of the university libraries for explicit instructions. - HonoredMule, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1At any rate, this is an excellently written and well reasoned article, well worth the read.
- infopro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just FYI, tao, my reply wasn't aimed at you, but at the DiodeG, the original poster. :)
- WiseWeasel, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Copyright in its traditional sense has become completely irrelevant in the digital age, as the cost and difficulty of copying has become insignificant. With digital media distribution, it no longer makes any sense to actually control the reproductions of copyrighted content, but only their access, and the terms of that access. Here is my solution to the copyright problem:
If you license access to content at a given resolution, you should be able to access that content from then on at that resolution or below, on any device you want to use, in the format of your choosing (from a practical list of standard formats). You should be able to select a single "friend" with whom you may share a piece of content, and switch from friend to friend as you grant temporary access to different people. The friend will only be able to play the content, not redistribute, and only while they're listed as the 'friend licensee' for that content. You should be able to make as many copies as you want in any format you want for your personal use. You should be able to legally play the content for up to 10 people per license at a time. As content becomes available in higher resolutions, you should be able to "upgrade" your license to the new resolution for a reasonable fee (relative to the selling price for unlicensed customers - maybe no more than 50-70% of selling price).
For this to happen, I don't see much of an alternative to a governmental or non-profit body that will track licenses for registered users, and control access to libraries of content available for download. It'll be a while until the technology is in place to make something like this possible, but it's undoubtedly the direction we're headed. - mache, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Almost everything that can be created relies on a previous/existing creation. It's a cycle ("It takes a library, after all, to write a book", as stated by the author). But I guess if it comes down to short term profit, I can see how one might be in favor of the current 'copyright' system.
copyright=bogus - clander, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I completely understand the point about Disney, I only use them for their rather vicious tactics in preserving copyright extensions. Their case is certainly tough since the mouse is both a trademark and a copyrighted work. In some cases, I think the other problem is the death of the public domain, and that impact on artists. Considering the state of the world in terms of art and expression (grad student stuff coming soon), and the focus on the postmodern use of the pastiche. Artists have found ways to create new art out of older ones, Dangermouse being the prime example. The Grey Album is most definitely a labor, and yet none of it will count as his copyright. By locking everything up into an every extending copyright cycle we are losing a lot of creativity.
With respect to patents, it's even worse (ask Dishnetwork, Blackberry, etc), and that is the area that will see the most crippling lack of innovation unless something is done soon.
However, the problem is when this Disney principle is applied to everything. The most egregious example being music publishing, to watch young songwriters have their creations owned by a corporation and then sold off by that corporations, put you in the situation where you have to watch someone with no talent (but some capital) making profits off of your creation.
There desperately need to be a reevaluation, a shortening of most copyright terms, a definition of "fair use" that is agreeable to the consumer and the producer.
The other issue to consider is the transition of libraries into the digital age, it will be a shame if one of Lewis Carroll's great grandchildren (or some corporation, adobe?) will make me pay $15 for my children to read Alice in Wonderland, while my local library is turned into a Walmart or Starbucks - tao52nyc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I didn't make that up, and I don't care if the analogy is "inappropriate" or not. Someone ELSE is trying to do it...they will probably fail, but it's an extreme example of where all this is taking us.
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Our rich masters want perpetual copyrights and a permanent lock on all IP. They will get this. Your grumbling does not matter. They've already gotten extensions on copyrights and patents already, and they'll get more extensions every time the movie Cinderella is threatened with public domain.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Copyrights have become a joke anymore once they preserved the creator of content and allowed fair use but now they have been abused.
It doesn't have to go but needs to be changed so the end user has more rights and creativity is not stifled.
Also software patents should not even exist as software is perfectly served by copyright and a copyright on a piece of software should only last 7 to 10 years 15 at the very most.
The only thing software patents serve are companies like microsoft and special interests like the mpeg group and they really do hurt innovation in products like media players , alternative desktop operating systems and mediaplayer apps such as videolan client and mplayer which I find work better then lets say windows mediaplayer. - darrin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1nevermind...dig down
- Kaglan, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1I agree with the content of your content of your comment, but not the tone. People need to eat. If they cannot eat by producing art, they will not produce art (I'm speaking here of individual artists). What may need to happen is a return to the patronage model that produced much of our classical music -- wealthy individuals, wealthy churches, or wealthy organizations would support an artist while her or she produced works for the patrons and the public. This would handle the class of professional artist.
Then, as it has always been, there would be other artists, whose art would be no less valid, who would make their money in whole or in part by other means. With the Internet (YouTube?), hey, they might even be just as widely known. - hackwrench, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Ah, but I don't know about the world you are living in, but the world I'm living in is becoming more and more of a utopia!
- argoff, on 10/12/2007, -11/+7Copyrights half to die. It's not if they should, or even if we want them to. They must die in order for society to enter into the information age. Just as the industrial revolution forced the commoditisation of the labor market and the ugly death of the plantation system, the information age is forcing the commoditisation of information and the ugly death of copyrights. Thankfully, killing copyrights won't be so violent.
And those arguments like "it's a property", "it's an incentive", "it's the wealth of America". Well we herd all those before too. Just because someone calls something a property, doesn't mean that it is. Just because something is an incentive to one small business niche, doesn't mean it's pro free market.
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