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

> You believe that a person has the natural right to prevent any other from
> copying or making derivatives of their published works?
>
> NB An author has a natural right not to be plagiarised or otherwise
> misattributed, but this right isn't protected by copyright.

We're getting used to the idea of free copying these days, with all the 
digital scanners, video rippers, and mp3 compressors making our lives easier 
and our houses less cluttered, but the issue of copyright is not so much 
about the private individual making copies for personal use. We can, I hope, 
reform copyright in a way that protects our individual personal rights --  
that is, chuck the mess and keep the baby. Because the issue that copyright 
protects against is very valid.

Have you ever seen those big collections of "classic" films on DVD for a few 
dollars? Those are collections of movies that were distributed with the tiny 
oversight of lacking a copyright notice -- without that protection, 
regardless if the film was released just this year, scavengers can make 
cheap copies and reap a pure profit on the work while dramatically 
undercutting legitimate publishers.

And frankly, it shouldn't matter if the work was produced last year or last 
decade. While a probable majority of copyrights belong to corporations now 
by default, making the argument seem archaic, it is perfectly legitimate for 
the (flesh and blood) creator of a work to expect ownership of the 
commercial potential of the work for the rest of his life (even a bit beyond 
that, since people can die suddenly, or produce worthwhile works late in 
life).


> To both support copyright and yet decry measures necessary to secure its
> enforcement should be recognised as Doublethink
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink

I don't think it is necessary to allow interference with the operation of 
services in the name of an investigation -- without even needing to making a 
formal criminal charge -- whether the alleged crime in question is copyright 
violation or mass murder plots. Yes, I did notice the similarity to 
ant-terrorist legislation in operation here. Or illegal porn, to pick a 
hysteria closer to home.

Copyright in particular is necessary, else no author or artist has any 
commercial potential and may as well go lay bricks or do some other work 
that doesn't take a lifetime of study to develop the skills for. And there's 
no longer any difference between a chart-topper like Stephen King who long 
ago left the trailer park behind as a reward for his abilities, and the 
average day-wage vanity book hack with no hope of ever leaving his 
sub-basement apartment.


Extended Intellectual Properties are more of a problem. But once again it's 
about protecting artists, not corporations. While it's wrong that we allow 
corporations to own (not just license) IPs, the individual needs this.

For example: back in 1983, a couple of guys in New Jersey came up with an 
idea for a self-published comic-book series. Producing and marketing their 
little comic-book, when not an all-out losing prospect, was a hand-to-mouth 
affair that barely sustained itself. But their comics gained a cult 
fllowing, and started selling sufficient numbers to avail hiring the 
occasional high-profile talent for small inserts. In 1985, those two guys 
licensed their creation to Hasbro (and later Pizza Hut). Their IP ownership 
gave them the leverage to demand a major marketing campaign and a Saturday 
morning cartoon show, while taking in several million dollars on a five year 
toy license. Because they had these protected rights of ownership, they were 
able to turn their creation into a pop-culture phenomenon, retain control, 
and reap the rewards time and again over the next twenty years.

Had their Intellectual Property not been protected, those guys would never 
have been able to achieve more than a passing wage as cartoonists, and only 
so long as they worked twelve hour days cranking out the material. And with 
no guarantee that their work would still sell when all the people who in the 
real world of 1985 were only emulating that property could have been free to 
produce their own versions.

Of course, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle story is rare, but it makes a 
great case justifying IP ownership (by legitimate creators, anyway).

Passing properties along to anyone but the original creator seems an abuse 
of the original intent, and in the long run (as real human beings eventually 
die) results in perpetual corporate controlled properties like Batman and 
Superman, that otherwise would be as public domain as Jesus of Nazareth and 
Hercules by now. No offense to true believers, intended. Even in the short 
run, it can leave the likes of H.R.Giger unable to reap the proper rewards 
of the very creation Fox so fiercely guards (and there's a real problem in 
that, because so many times a creator has one great design and that's it for 
them -- Shoji Kawamori is another good example, with his giant robot design 
for Macross, though he didn't lose his ownership so completely).



> Either copyright is wholesome and you should embrace the stormtroopers 
> when
> they assist you in performing an impromptu audit of your premises and your
> customers' data that you store, or you should recognise the bug in your
> brain and make the paradigm shift: the public has a natural right to
> cultural liberty, to freely share and build upon published works.
>
> Despite the incredible human faculty for Doublethink, I don't think it's
> healthy for one's sanity.
>
> There is a 300 year old bug in the law and it has set governments and the
> corporations they represent against the public.
>
> Legislators make law. Lawyers understand, document, and explain it. Judges
> interpret it. No-one is employed or empowered to debug it. We just wait
> until the anachronism (currently a white elephant in the living room) gets
> to the size of a StayPufft Marshmallow Man and rampages across the city - 
> a
> joke, but it still tramples over thousands of poor citizens who happen to 
> be
> in the wrong place at the wrong time.
>
> Copyright is a fricking great positive feedback loop (persecute the public
> to protect the ability of publishing corporations to provide benefit to 
> the
> public) and you're midway through its crescendo. Either the bug gets fixed
> or the system crashes. The GPL was just a partial workaround that has
> reduced the pressure from the software industry for a while (excellently
> coded by Stallman et al). Creative Commons also helped out slightly (not
> quite as good, having been written by a lawyer rather than a programmer).
> Unfortunately, the pressure's still increasing, the temperature's rising,
> and the noise is getting louder.
>
> There is no fix left except abolition.

I hope you are wrong.

In theory, the Lawyers and Judges, in concert with the public (or our 
legislative representatives), are supposed to be "debugging" the Laws, but 
alas, they're too often inept or crooked, and subject to the Darwin's Pond 
of beurocracy.

If you are looking for the root cause of the problem, though, it's not 
Copyright or Intellectual Property.

Maybe it's the modern Corporation.

Or maybe it's just Capitalism (no mystery how so many artists lean left).


--bob 

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