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In Good Company (Michael Geist)
Here's a posting by Michael Geist on the International Intellectual Property Alliance's list of countries which, it feels, do not live up to proper IP protection standards. "These are just fourteen examples - there are dozens more countries on the list, including many developing countries, each invariably criticized for not adopting the DMCA, not extending the term of copyright, not throwing enough people in jail, or creating too many exceptions to support education and other societal goals. In fact, the majority of the world's population finds itself on the list, with 23 of the world's 30 most populous countries targeted for criticism (the exceptions are Germany, Ethiopia, Iran, France, the UK, Congo, and Myanmar)."
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In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 14, 2007 18:54 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] I belive the intention is very clear. And the problem is not on the server side, but on the client/desktop side.
.- People having the keys for the DRM/TPM feature (it has been discussed), and upon changing the code can be having serious trouble connecting to online services, especially goverment and other public and private institutions.
.- People having the keys for the DRM/TPM feature (very blurred in GPLv3 to say the least), but not able to compile from source code, most certainly be prevented from upgrading their "PCs" from other binary forms in a workable DRM/TPM fashion for online services, even if their present systems carry a lot of holes and bugs in the software ( so much for security ! ).
.- People needing a 3th part certification authority for those DRM/TPM features, means that the freedoms of GPL are abolished from an operational point of view, no matter v3 or v4, and every user only sees what is politicly correct, what *big brother* wants. Bet most of those systems, promoted by interrested partys, will be like huge trojan facilitys even if they carry in them incontrolable "holes" and bugs making a couple of BSODs every day.( the exact reverse of security !)
* The only thecnical solution i can think of, will be to make DRM/TPM feature to run on a VM, with the possibility of by-passing it at the discretion of users. That is, it will be made to sign or not at discretion, any binary that a user wants, but here it will be needed the control of OS at BIOS level.
Conary and every distro compile from online on the user machine on request, is a parcial solution that will not take root.
Nothing will carry a full prove guarantying of the GPL freedooms *
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 14, 2007 19:02 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] I don't think this has anything to do with GPL3, or client side, or server side. This is a disucssion of a lobby group's laughable spin in an attempt to encourage the proliferation of bad copyright law.
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 14, 2007 21:45 UTC (Wed) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link] Or, to use a more neutral term, severaly unbalanced copyright law. It's important to keep in mind that copyright is a balance - it's not a god-given or inherent right, but rather a time-limited monopoly granted by the state to support *and in exchange for* the furthering of culture. All copyright legislation - proposed or new - should be examined in that light.
On a side note, I really wonder one can reconcile international pressure to pass certain laws with the fundamentals of democracy...
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 14, 2007 23:22 UTC (Wed) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] "It's important to keep in mind that copyright is a balance - it's not a god-given or inherent right, but rather a time-limited monopoly granted by the state to support *and in exchange for* the furthering of culture. All copyright legislation - proposed or new - should be examined in that light."
I have just been going back and forth for a few days with someone who maintains that it is a natural right. I have a feeling that he may have been yanking my chain, but I have been under the weather and have done my best to make allowances.
Actually, I keep thinking I get what he maintains, but it keeps seeming to shift on me, so I am not at all sure.
I find this a radical position, but he maintains it is one that is widely held and that thinking that, as a natural right, the public has the right to make copies when a person makes something public, is the radical position. Oh well.
Has anyone run into this in a widespread way?
all the best,
drew
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 15, 2007 1:41 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > Has anyone run into this in a widespread way?
Not sure if it is widespread, but I discussed similar issues with a well educated person and this person believed that:
- copyright does not expire
And yes, I was getting the feeling that this person believed that copyright is some kind of natural right, although it was never said explicitly.
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 15, 2007 3:42 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] > I have just been going back and forth for a few days with someone who maintains that [perpetual copyright] is a natural right. ...> I find this a radical position, but he maintains it is one that is widely held and that thinking that, as a natural right, the public has the right to make copies when a person makes something public, is the radical position.
He's wrong. Copyright is a recent legal instrument, and its vast extension to the point of what we have now is still more recent.
> Has anyone run into this in a widespread way?
Certainly. It's exactly what the corporations who control the media *want* people to believe, so they engage in massive "education" campaigns to teach their world view. That you are encountering this as dogma from your associates is merely a symptom of how widespread and effective the campaign has become.
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 15, 2007 4:31 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] I thought that way for a long time also.
But I think my confusion came from the association between copyright and private property.
That is the right to own property is tied into your right to benifit from your own works and such things. 'Liberty' is the word for it. That's a 'natural right'.
I beleive the definition of 'natural right' is a right that is part of the natural order of things. They talk about rights bestowed by god (or your creator, depending how you want to look at it), or something that is based on the natural mechanics of how the universe/world works. It's just 'natural'. Having that right taken away from you would be a 'unnatural' state of affairs and generally immoral thing to do to somebody else.
These are not things that a government can give you. These are things that are given to you at birth and simply because you are born.
If you look at the mechanics of digital information. The very fundemental mathatical, mechanical, electronical, ways computers and the internet works.. the natural functionality of a computer, then the 'right to copy' digital information is a natural right.
We created digital information, comptuers, the internet, and such, but how computers work are still part of the fundamental laws of nature that make everything else up in the Universe.
Digital information and how computers operate only works correctly when you are able to make copies and they are able to be made with near perfect accuracy. This is the nature of digitally encoded information.
Your information is stored on the harddrive. In order to display it on your computer monitor the information is read off the platter and gets copied into the harddrive's bits and it's cache. It's then copied over the IDE cable and into your computer bus to your memory by the ide controller. It's copied to the cpu's cache, gets copied to the registers, proccessed, copied back to memory, transfered over the bus, onto the video card memory were after some other stuff happens ends up being copied over the monitor cable and eventually displayed on your monitor.
So it gets copied a dozen times or more in the simple act of trying to make the information human readable.
Also besides the mechanics of the thing, there are important moral questions.
Now take print media, for instance. Say your publishing a book.. In order to make a dozen copies of a book.. most people can afford this on their own. But when you get to hundreds of copies or thousands of copies of a book you run into major financial issues.
The financial issues stem from this stuff is just plain very expensive to do on large scales. Expensive in time, technical skills, materials, etc etc. All that costs money.
Now say that book was digitalized. A simple plain text file. For literally pennies I can use bittorrent or other technology on the internet and give a copy to every man, women, or child on the face of the earth that has access to the internet.
Literally. I can have BILLIONS of copies for the cost of only a few books. It's so inexpensive that it might as well be free.
(and if we had good widespread (global) public wireless coverage, then it would be free)
Literally a child, a 12 year old, can disseminate information on a p2p network better then the largest corporations in the world using more traditional media.
however, we surrender 'natural rights' all the time.
The most obvious is taxes. Your money represents slices of your life that you've dedicated for the sole purpose of obtaining that money. Your trading your life, your effort, in exchange for it. Literally months and years of your limited lifespan is dedicated to obtaining money.
The government comes along and demands payment to support it's continued existance. Weeks and months of your life go to supporting the various forms of government. (in the U.S. when you add up tax rates its going to be somewere between 30-60% of your wages, depending on how wealthy you are.)
If you do not agree to these taxes they will eventually get pissed off enough that they will send armed men (which you help pay for) to come and take you away and put you in a concrete and steel cage (which you help pay for).
It's not nice, it's a violation of your natural rights, but the vast majority of people agree with it and have no problem paying their taxes. (in fact I see it as your duty to pay your fair share).
Compared to that copyright and good portions of the IP laws is perfectly valid surrender of our rights. Having people benifit financially from work and time they put into creative works is a good thing.
By surrendering some of your rights then society at large has a net gain.
Copyright is what is known as a 'nessicary evil'.
But everything in moderation. Fair use and limited copyrights ensure that society does not sacrifice so much that only a minority of the people that control the media are not going to benifit from the expense of everybody else...
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 15, 2007 19:10 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] "" These are not things that a government can give you. These are things that are given to you at birth and simply because you are born......If you look at the mechanics of digital information. The very fundemental mathatical, mechanical, electronical, ways computers and the internet works.. the natural functionality of a computer, then the 'right to copy' digital information is a natural right. ""
completely on accord
Considering the actual legal status of democracys, stating that this country is good or bad is completely unacceptable. MPAA, RIAA, BSA, have the right to defend their interests. But they dont have the right to impose restrictions beyond those rights. They could use heavy encryptition and hold responsible their users like in a NDA, but they dont have the right to bother others.
What those gentlemans are trying to push with their MS Palladium centered schemes, is equivalent to put a policeman in every people computer... no matter what !... Who does it serve ?... How can anyone agree with this, saying that DRM/TPM is for security?... And what if i dont want that kind of pseudo-security anywhay (dont use MPAA, RIAA, BSA covered works) ?...
In my country i can show the door to the police...*.- would you mind to get out, now!, get a warrant or you are violating my rights. period *... dont even have to use the word please, though polite is needed, in the sense of begging. I can command, without any kind of key, certificate or guarantee.
*How can then FSF think they can play with keys!(sorry for being rude)*... do i have to begg a key to the police to stay in my own house ??
So defending the public interests in situation like this, through a copyright licence, can only be achieved making the user master and not begger... show the police the door, allow the DRM feature to be shut down or be transparently by-passed or dont use GPL.
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 15, 2007 21:34 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] *How can then FSF think they can play with keys!(sorry for being rude)*
Does not mean disrespect for anyone from FSF either, whom i admire, for their great work recognized all over the world. It just i think that the "key issue" will backfire somehow.
Copyright is Affirmative Action for authors Posted Feb 15, 2007 8:07 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] While *copyright* is most certainly not a 'natural right', it is fair to say that people have a natural right to benefit from the fruits of their creative labour, which is (part of) what the legal instrument of copyright is intended to achieve. There are other ways to achieve it, but since copyright creates a market, it appeals more to market ideologues than the alternatives of subsidies and grants for science, technology and the arts. Note that subdidies and grants are *also* absolutely normal measures.
I'm not sure that there is a natural right to make copies either, but it seems a natural thing to do, given the means to make them, unless you've been indoctrinated (or in spite of indoctrination) by pro-copyright political correctness/propaganda.
You say copyright is 'a balance'. It is more a protectionist legal instrument intended to address a perceived imbalance, not very different from Affirmative Action or subsidies and tariffs. Given the kind of propaganda surrounding it, and the draconian detail of legislation such as the DMCA, I'd be more inclined to associate it with Prohibition than the Bill of Rights.
Copyright is Affirmative Action for authors Posted Feb 15, 2007 19:53 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] "" While *copyright* is most certainly not a 'natural right', ""
How much strange this might sound, but from a machine point of view it is a 'natural right'! Without it it cannot function, because somehow computation must allow the copy( an inclusive cache) and move of bits...
And considering here a computational machine as an extension of the " human *persona* whit legal rights ", that *persona* must have the right to copy and move bits, otherwise that function is useless...
SO in my view, copyright must be in the sense of resrictions to use, that is, the *persona* as the "natural right" to copy and move bits, but it dosent have the right to used in some particular determinated way. If copyright says that you cant copy a work when some condition arises, it means you cant use it in that condition... lawful, thought you can always copy and move it anyway...
That is the *grand* in GPL.
Copyright is Affirmative Action for authors Posted Feb 19, 2007 4:01 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] No, that's sloppy thinking.
There is no natural right to benefit from your labour. No matter how hard you labour, benefits are not guaranteed - you have to do something that will benefit you directly, or to produce a fungible, rivalrous product that can be traded to others for benefits. If you spend all day hauling mud up and down the road, you can do an awful lot of labour, but that doesn't and shouldn't guarantee you any benefit.
Sloppy thinking Posted Feb 20, 2007 3:05 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] Don't accuse me of sloppy thinking, please, while picking on a peripheral point of my argument and reducing it to something I didn't quite say.
> There is no natural right to benefit from your labour.
I agree 100% with you on that limited statement and I must point out that I didn't assert such a right.
First, the "natural right" I mentioned was the right to benefit from *the fruits* of one's *creative* labour. I said nothing about fruitless make-work.
Moreover I merely said "it is fair to say" that such a right exists -- meaning I wouldn't argue if someone claimed it were true. I didn't actually assert it myself, and don't make a habit of claming rights.
The purpose of my post was specifically to support the argument that copyright is not a natural right.
Origins of Copyright Posted Feb 15, 2007 8:19 UTC (Thu) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] I have just been going back and forth for a few days with someone who maintains that [copyright] is a natural right. Not only is copyright not a natural right, it also didn't exist in any part of the world up until a few centuries ago. I think there's a good reason why Asian cultures, in particular, are having trouble getting to grips with the concept. Did creative Asians like Sun Tzu, Lao Tse, Omar Khayyam, Al-Khwarizmi, the compilers of the Bhagavad Gita and so on, need the incentive of copyright in order to produce their works? Of course not.
Origins of Copyright Posted Feb 15, 2007 8:22 UTC (Thu) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] Sorry, "Bhagavad Gita" should have been "Mahabharata". I always have trouble telling which is which. :)
YES! Posted Feb 15, 2007 10:04 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link] It's exactly the same with the compilers of GNU!
Ehm...
Nevermind ;)
Copyright: living in the past Posted Feb 15, 2007 11:59 UTC (Thu) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] To be fair, European creators like Homer, Herodotus, Horace, Shakespare, Milton, Handel and Mozart didn't have copyright as an incentive either; it was only introduced in the late 18th century and did not extend across international borders until the early 20th. Some of the named authors did suffer from 'pirate' printers of cheap reproductions who paid the originator nothing, undercutting the publishers who paid advances and royalties.
Copyright wasn't an issue when every copy was literally a manscript: written by hand. To copy a work honoured and preserved it, and flattered its creator. Copyright protection arose in a world where a printing press was a major capital asset and works were reproduced en masse for profit by entrepreneurs on behalf of, and at the expense of, both authors and readers.
In today's world where every writer has the ability to self-publish and most readers can make their own copies without effort, copyright looks more and more like an attempt to preserve the 20th-century status quo.
Copyright: living in the past Posted Feb 16, 2007 17:40 UTC (Fri) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] Exactly, copyright arised as a trade regulation measure. GPL captures that spirit perfectly, because in GPL is not the use "per se" that gets restricted, copy, move, play, edit, but the transaction.
DRM as something connected with copyrights is an aberration!,... in a world of implicit state dictatorship in a socialist type of goverment providing and regulating, full of distractions, implicit brutality and full blown deception, where people are programmed into degradation, banality and egotism.
The *charade of the last millenium* is that people havent yet realised that *a communist is a socialist in a hurry, and a facist is a socialist dragging a feet of old age*. All advoc the supramacy of state upon individual "natural rights". And all this dictatorship is realized by the control of the very live blood of trade, in the hands of a socialistic state regulation provider, for the benefice of an elite and slavery of the public... meaning the most capable firestarter of civilization since pre-historic times,... namely money!
USA and its "natural rights" outpacing in every way the old conservative circles of Europe, was and still is viewed as the enemy of the oligarchys. Placed for transformation or termination of her's people status, since the civil war, of which the current goverment administration with such laws of DMCA, Patriot Act and open agression is doing that most nefarious job.
Quite out of topic but quite reviling: http://www.reinventingmoney.com/NAF/ffiExplanation.php
Origins of Copyright Posted Feb 15, 2007 16:29 UTC (Thu) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] A very effective argument concerning copyright, especially when debating this issue with those who are from a conservative (with small c) agenda, i.e. respecting property rights etc, concerns the copyright over the Bible and the fact that we have access to the Bible at all.
If those copying the original Bible manuscripts had thought that they needed to obtain permission to do this, then it would have become impossible to find the original authors, as ownership of copyright was not transferred as property rights within the early persecuted Church. If it had been impossible ethically to copy the Bible in such circumstances, then when the original copies finally disintegrated into dust, the words in the Bible would have been lost forever. The fact that the Bible is available at all following the circumstances in which it was transmitted through history is proof that copyright is a recent legal construct and not a natural right that can be considered as such by Christians who are unwilling to condemn the early followers of their faith for unethical copying in disregard of this postulated "natural right".
Origins of Copyright Posted Feb 17, 2007 1:33 UTC (Sat) by allesfresser (guest, #216) [Link] Not to mention that since the early Christians considered the Bible the inspired words of God (not of those who wrote it down), it would have been the height of impertinence to claim exclusive control over the dissemination of those words--especially when things like this come up within the text itself: "(v.18) What then is my reward? That when I preach the gospel I may offer the gospel free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights in the gospel."
In this text (1 Corinthians, ch. 9) the Apostle Paul is saying that it is reasonable to expect that the people that he has served (by ministering to them for their spiritual benefit) will support him in regard to physical needs (food, shelter, etc.) since he has spent his time pursuing their spiritual well-being instead of earning a living in a normal way. But he has not taken advantage of this reasonable obligation, and has supported himself by a trade (tentmaking) so that he might not be seen as a mercenary preacher, so to speak.
Another well-known text in this regard is the man who tries to buy the influence of the Apostle Peter, and is severely rebuffed (Simon [Magus], in Acts ch.8, vv. 9-24)--the key words there being: "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money."
So it seems there was a very strong early tradition that commercial hoarding or rationing of spiritual truth or influence was very much forbidden and looked on with great disdain. Such a pity that tradition seems to have fallen upon hard times since then, and especially in the last century or so...
In Good Company (Michael Geist) Posted Feb 19, 2007 3:56 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] It's more widespread than it should be, like any other aspect of human stupidity.
Tell your natural rights friend to consider *why* property is a natural right, and point him to Mises "Liberty and Property" to ponder. Property is inherently rivalrous. IP is not rivalrous at all. Therefore it is not property.
Canada in good company Posted Feb 16, 2007 0:17 UTC (Fri) by barbara (subscriber, #3014) [Link] I'm sooo glad Canada is on this list, along with 59 other countries. Wemust be doing something right. :-) Too many times we just go along with whatever the U.S. wants.
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