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Copyright war

Makeing several different arguments.

The extension of copyrights is a pain but for the most part brings the US in line with most of the other signitories to the Berne convention.

The closed source argument doesn't fly. As soon as technolgy could not be simply reversed engineered people have used that to protect their stuff (guild secrets and the like go back over 2000 years).

Patent law may not be the problem it is made out to be. The big companies are not going to like it either and in any case it runs out after 20 years. It may be simplest to put up with 20 years of stupid patents simply so we never have to worry about them again.

Fair use is still fairly free compared to say fair dealing.

Current US case law (Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp) prevents you from stopping people from makeing coppies of coppies of PD work. UK law is difficult because that area has never been tested in court.

If you want free content the best way is probably to create it.
 
I am not arguing for free content only that our culture not be owned by big business. I feel that people should be able to build on the past without paying dues to large, faceless corporations who care nothing for our culture, only for their own bottom line.

So when should Mickey Mouse become public property. Why can't anyone do to Disney what they did to the Brothers Grimm.
 
Strider1974 said:
I agree totally with what was being said.

I am curious to hear some opinions from this forum
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Modern copyright laws serve a utilitarian purpose -- they encourage creativity. It is intended to prevent the theft of intellectual property, forcing competitiors to create something else and attempt to create something better.

The copyright durations probably won't be growing again any time soon.
 
Strider1974 said:
I am not arguing for free content only that our culture not be owned by big business. I feel that people should be able to build on the past without paying dues to large, faceless corporations who care nothing for our culture, only for their own bottom line.
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A lot of people (like me) like to see "large, faceless corporations" make money, because we make money in the process.

Strider1974 said:
So when should Mickey Mouse become public property. Why can't anyone do to Disney what they did to the Brothers Grimm.
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I don't know. What did Disney "do" to the Brothers Grimm?
 
so i listened. there are many things he says i simply don't agree with. he is flirting with some valid criticisms of how patent law can stifle future innovation, but he is off when it comes to copyright. to be clear, i am in the music industry. i create music, and my music is for sale on numerous places (itunes or in regular cd form). i would not want my work stolen instead of purchased, and i would like to get income based on my own creative works. i don't have any funny feelings about copyrights and my control over my own material. i can see the benefit of copyright having an expiration date, which it does. however, as has been discussed ad nauseum on pro audio site, p2p music stealing and the like is not a good thing. theft of intellectual piracy, like software or music, is shutting down lots of folks who were trying to be in those businesses. literally this morning i heard about yet another company that closed down (made pro audio plug ins). the rumor is the the sheer amount of piracy of their products was the cause. it's a bummer. so for me the cost of piracy is not an abstract. i see bands, labels, and software companies closing down. while i generally prefer as few laws and rules as is possible, it's a misnomer to present piracy of intellectual property as victimless, or to portray content owners/creators as only big nameless faceless corporations. it's also pretty small companies and bands who no longer can survive because the piracy cuts into the income too much. the original lecturer didn't present any of that reality, and only chose examples that were extreme and served to feed his opinion. lots of copyright owners aren't microsoft and disney.
 
I design and build custom furniture. Shouldn't I get a royalty every time somebody sits in one of "my" chairs? For, say, my lifetime plus 50 years? And no, I won't wax or maintain it in any way.

You know, theres only 88 notes in the music world. That makes a finite number of tunes. Some copyright suits have been over as few as 3 notes. One day soon, there won't be any more possible combinations to copyright anyhow. NOBODY will be able to dreate music. And as for graphics, there's only one megapixel of combinations- should Disney own such a chunk of a limited resource in perpetuity?
 
Strider1974 said:
I just listened to the speech at this link
http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/free.html

I agree totally with what was being said.

I am curious to hear some opinions from this forum
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For the sake of those of us on slow dial-up who can not simply click on every link, and for the sake of people who may attempt to read this thread at some future time when the link no longer works, could you summarize briefly what the speech at the link says and what the key points you agree with or would like comment on are?

If you agree totally with the points, then it should not be difficult to put them into your own words. I think that is a good idea for skeptics to practice quite apart from the link problems. It puts the emphasis on the ideas being discussed rather than a particular wording of them.

I am interested in questions of copyright and look forward to possibly commenting on the speech when I have a better idea of what the speech says.
 
pounce said:
so i listened. there are many things he says i simply don't agree with. he is flirting with some valid criticisms of how patent law can stifle future innovation, but he is off when it comes to copyright. to be clear, i am in the music industry. i create music, and my music is for sale on numerous places (itunes or in regular cd form). i would not want my work stolen instead of purchased, and i would like to get income based on my own creative works. i don't have any funny feelings about copyrights and my control over my own material. i can see the benefit of copyright having an expiration date, which it does. however, as has been discussed ad nauseum on pro audio site, p2p music stealing and the like is not a good thing.
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He wasn't supporting that.
 
casebro said:
I design and build custom furniture. Shouldn't I get a royalty every time somebody sits in one of "my" chairs? For, say, my lifetime plus 50 years? And no, I won't wax or maintain it in any way.

You know, theres only 88 notes in the music world. That makes a finite number of tunes. Some copyright suits have been over as few as 3 notes. One day soon, there won't be any more possible combinations to copyright anyhow. NOBODY will be able to dreate music. And as for graphics, there's only one megapixel of combinations- should Disney own such a chunk of a limited resource in perpetuity?
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Copyrights do not protect physical property - they protect intellectual property. If that chair were an architectural work or a sculpture, then you could prevent people from copying your work. However, you can't copyright "the chair" because it is a useful article. An object is considered a useful article if it has a purpose beyond portraying an appearance or conveying information. If an artistic expression is part of the useful article and the artistic expression can be conceptually seperated from the utility, then you can copyright the artistic expression - but not the useful article.
 
Originally posted by Strider1974:
I am not arguing for free content only that our culture not be owned by big business.
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If you do not want aspects of culture to be owned by big business, then you are arguing for free content. If you can do what you want with the aspects of culture produced by big business -- even freely copying it -- it cannot be said that they 'own' it.

Originally posted by morningstar2651:
Modern copyright laws serve a utilitarian purpose -- they encourage creativity.
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I don't think that is necessarily true. They encourage only one form of 'creativity'; making something original that has as little resemblance with what came brefore. By definition they discourage all forms of creativity in which someone builds on other people's creative works. So rather than encouraging creativity, they encourage only one concept of creativity.

It is intended to prevent the theft of intellectual property
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"Intellectual property" is not a legal term, and infringement on it is not 'theft' in the legal sense of the word.

However, you can't copyright "the chair" because it is a useful article. An object is considered a useful article if it has a purpose beyond portraying an appearance or conveying information.
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I don't think "useful article" is a valid legal term either. I also don't think it is a very useful term either. Take for example a thing like the 'progress bar' in computer programs, something that is rumoured to fall under software patents by some company. It has no purpose beyond converying information: information about how far a software process has progressed. But it certainly is not a work of art or anything else which needs its authorship be protected by law. The first person who came up with it does not suffer if someone else uses a progress bar in their program too, which may not be true if someone copies the entire text of a book and publishes it under his/her own name.

Originally posted by pounce:
i see bands, labels, and software companies closing down.
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But you don't provide any evidence that this is caused by "p2p music stealing (and) theft of intellectual piracy". "The rumor is that the sheer amount of piracy (...) was the cause" is not evidence that it was.
 
And in fact, there almost certainly have been designs for chairs that have been copyrighted/patented. If you build a chair, you most certainly do have the right to be paid every time someone uses it. If you sell the chair, then you are selling your right to be paid every time someone uses it. If you sell a CD, you are selling your right to be paid every time someone uses it. But you are not selling your right to be paid every time someone copies it. That's the whole concept behind intellectual property: a physical object, and the right to copy it, are treated as separate entities, and one can sell one without selling the other.
 
Earthborn said:
"Intellectual property" is not a legal term.
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Quite the contrary, not only is it a legal term, it's an entire subspeciality of law.

That's like saying "biology" is not a scientific term, or "apologetics" is not a religious term.
 
Earthborn said:
I don't think "useful article" is a valid legal term either. I also don't think it is a very useful term either. Take for example a thing like the 'progress bar' in computer programs, something that is rumoured to fall under software patents by some company. It has no purpose beyond converying information: information about how far a software process has progressed. But it certainly is not a work of art or anything else which needs its authorship be protected by law. The first person who came up with it does not suffer if someone else uses a progress bar in their program too, which may not be true if someone copies the entire text of a book and publishes it under his/her own name.
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A “useful article” is an article having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information. An article that is normally a part of a useful article is considered a “useful article”. (US Code - Title 17 - Chapter 1 - § 101. Definitions)
 
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