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CopyrightCopyrightPosted Dec 11, 2008 23:51 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)In reply to: Copyright by dskoll Parent article: Free Software Foundation files suit against Cisco for GPL violations
It might (though it probably wouldn't) destroy some of the /industries/ you mentioned, but it's telling that part way through your list you switched from industries to creative products, and then to creators. Truth is, nobody outside of the music industry itself cares about the music industry, and the same for the movie business. People made music before the "labels" and they'll make music after the labels are gone.
Let's take a look at those creators again. Think it through, how does the elimination of a law granting a monopoly on /copying/ prevent people from taking photographs?
Hmm, it doesn't OK, so let's pretend that rather than conjuring up the bogeyman of /all/ photographers being "destroyed" you instead meant to say "the tiny minority of people who make their living entirely through the creation of photographs will no longer be able to do so". Well, suddenly that doesn't sound like a catastrophe any more, but we ought to address it, because you seem a bit unhappy...
Once again, though, the answer is "it doesn't". You can still pay a photographer, and a photographer can still choose or not to do what you tell them in exchange for money ("employment"). The role of the photographer, and their career path is changed, but not eliminated. There is no risk that things will go unphotographed from lack of copyright law, quite the reverse in fact. In the absence of copyright you can take photographs of things for which you'd previously have needed expensive or impossible rights clearances. Creativity is actually expanded.
All that copyright does is create an artificial monopoly. The monopoly isn't for the good of consumers (who can choose to pay for things, or not, in either system) nor for creators (who may get paid for creating, or not, in either system) but for another group, of which you seem to be a member, publishers, who get paid only if there is a monopoly, and who serve no inherent purpose.
That last bit is interesting, when copyright was /invented/ publishers were a relatively new idea, and they appeared to serve a very important purpose. The publisher had capital investment and he used it to make many copies of a work, which was a risk. If the copies sold, he made a profit, and this profit enabled to the publisher to continue to invest in making many copies of other works.
As you may have noticed, making copies of works became effectively zero cost some time between then and now. So did the marginal cost of advertising, shipping, and other factors. Publishers have gone from essential to at best a convenience and at worst a nuisance.
What copyright does in the post-scarcity era of digital information is distort the market. It creates the situation where your "small software company" writes software not because it needs software, and not even because someone else wants the software, but because it hopes, blindly, that lots of people will be willing to pay a small amount for individual copies of the software. And if you're wrong? The company goes to the wall. Copyright has made you a gambler. Without copyright, your company would exist to fill customer contracts, creating the software people want, rather than the software you hope someone might need.
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Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 0:30 UTC (Fri) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]
You can create works for hire with or without copyright. But works for hire are rarely "creative".
Without copyright, original creative works are stifled. There's no incentive, whether monetary or social, in creating original music or art or software that can be taken and distributed under somebody else's name.
Copyright terms should be sensible - perhaps ten years - and software patents should not exist, but copyright itself is too valuable to surrender.
Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 2:51 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
This is why, I gather, some european legal systems have the concept of an author's moral right to be identified as such, distinct from copyright and non-transferable. I thought there were some moves to enshrine this in EU law, but don't know the status of that.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will chime in.
Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 14:46 UTC (Fri) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] The Berne Convention (home to the worldwide scope for protection of my copyrights in your country) identifies the moral right to be known as author. See Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works at Wikipedia.
Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 11:06 UTC (Fri) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
> Without copyright, original creative works are stifled. There's no
incentive, whether monetary or social, in creating original music or art or software that can be taken and distributed under somebody else's name.
So I must be mistaken, that having thousands of people yelling your name,
This must also be the reason why there is no music, art or literature,
Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 16:33 UTC (Fri) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]
You appear to have just awoken from three hundred years of sleep so kindly permit us to update you on some of the developments over the last few centuries. Printing presses are much more common and much faster and there are new and amazing technologies such as color copiers, DVD burners, and computers.
Bands can make a few hundred dollars per concert when their promotion consists solely of free downloads by their existing fans. Bands can make a few hundred dollars per head at a concert when they are aggressively promoted through copyrighted materials. The choice belongs to the bands, not the anti-copyright parasites, which is as it should be.
Similarly software authors can choose how to license their creations, whether GPL or BSD or something nasty they made up after reading the first chapter of a law book. The choice belongs to the software authors, not the anti-copyright parasites, which is as it should be.
Without copyright their would be no shareware and no GPL, and far fewer people would become FLOSS authors for the honor of seeing their creations make fortunes for Bill Gates and nothing for them.
Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 16:53 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] Think it through, how does the elimination of a law granting a monopoly on /copying/ prevent people from taking photographs? Of course it does not. But what incentive is there to become a professional photographer? You spend thousands on education, tens of thousands on equipment, and you take an amazing photo... which anyone is then free to reproduce and even sell without compensating you. People made music before the "labels" and they'll make music after the labels are gone. I don't care about labels. But without copyright, there would be almost no way to make money as a musician. You'd sell one CD, and that would be the end of it. Anyone else could copy and sell it without repercussions. All that copyright does is create an artificial monopoly. Yes, of course! Because the framers of copyright law wisely realized that a limited, time-limited monopoly was a huge incentive to encourage the creation of new works. Copyright law can provide a benefit to society. The fact that current copyright law sometimes does not is no reason to advocate throwing the whole thing out. What copyright does in the post-scarcity era of digital information is distort the market. It creates the situation where your "small software company" writes software not because it needs software, and not even because someone else wants the software, but because it hopes, blindly, that lots of people will be willing to pay a small amount for individual copies of the software. And if you're wrong? The company goes to the wall. Copyright has made you a gambler. Without copyright, your company would exist to fill customer contracts, creating the software people want, rather than the software you hope someone might need. Have you ever actually run a software company? I've been running one for nine years. Initially, every single one of our products was GPLd, and we survived on support contracts and development contracts. This did not scale. Creating a proprietary product has enabled us to increase our revenues and staff size by a factor of 10. It has enabled me to employ some really great developers who spend part of their time developing free software. And it has enabled us to produce a really nice product that (frankly) could never have happened under a Free Software development model. Before I started the proprietary product, I even *asked* on the mailing list for its GPL'd core if anyone would sponsor the new product (which I then would GPL.) No-one was willing to spend the money. The fact is that copyright law permitted us to reduce the cost of production to the point where development of the product was feasible. Without copyright law, we'd be out of business and several talented FOSS developers would be out of work.
Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 18:23 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
What's the incentive? And here's you supposedly running a company. Come on dskoll, if you're not lying about your business experience then you already know lesson #1 it's not about the money. No matter how much they pay, boring firms don't attract superstar programmers, it's not about the money. Wasn't before copyright, won't be afterwards. No, the incentive isn't money, the monetary compensation just keeps body and soul together.
The way it actually works for the vast majority of actual professional photographers is that they get compensated (or least the deal is made) up front, and the amazing photo comes afterwards. The most notable exception are the paparazzi, but (a) are you really putting paps in the list of good things about copyright? most of them hate the job, and they're the ones doing it (b) even with copyright the paps get ripped off all the time by newspapers and magazines. They might actually be better off without it (c) there are a lot of failed paps. It's back to the gambling I mentioned already.
And then there's musicians. Once again, it's not about the money. Very few people "make it big" and those who do will usually still end up penniless because copyright doesn't protect them, it protects the guy with the lawyers whose contract they had to sign to "make it big". The KLF wrote a book about how to have a hit single. You're thinking "free money" right? Wrong. The book explicitly warns you that having a hit single will lose you money. I know a dozen or more people who've been in a "real band" and they all had day jobs, because it doesn't pay. If you're /really/ good and you make it into a real job, where you get up and write songs, and practice and then go play songs live for an audience, then you can make a good living. But then you're not affected by copyright - bands that do this make most of their income from live performance. Typical professional musicians though aren't in a band. They get paid as work-for-hire, and so once again, copyright doesn't apply. Similarly, most composers aren't writing music in the hope that hundreds of people will buy the score and pay $50 each, they're writing it under contract "Intro to radio quiz show, upbeat and quirky".
You seem very confident that the monopoly has helped in some meaningful way. Actual studies are much less certain. Looking at the US for example, the US used to be a "pirate nation", it didn't observe copyright so that its citizens could get rich printing books written by Englishmen without paying royalties. Proponents of copyright said, as you are saying, that it would power an explosive increase in creativity because of the new incentive. They got their way but we don't really see the promised new creativity in the historical record. Quickly this argument was waved aside, in favour of the argument that the term of copyright needed to be increased in order to ensure the incentive was retained. And that's the same argument still being made today with copyright already essentially perpetual. "Longer terms, we must have longer terms" say the publishers. The creators are of course long dead.
Copyright Posted Dec 12, 2008 19:06 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link] What's the incentive? And here's you supposedly running a company. Come on dskoll, if you're not lying about your business experience then you already know lesson #1 it's not about the money. I run Roaring Penguin Software. Absolutely, starting Roaring Penguin was not initially about the money. Now that I have employees and have to meet payroll, it's quite a bit about the money. No, the incentive isn't money, the monetary compensation just keeps body and soul together. Without copyright protection, I would have no money to pay my employees. It's that simple. The way it actually works for the vast majority of actual professional photographers is that they get compensated (or least the deal is made) up front, and the amazing photo comes afterwards. Please ask a professional photographer for comments on your idea to abolish copyright. Then get back to us. And then there's musicians. Once again, it's not about the money. Please ask a professional musician for comments on your idea to abolish copyright. Then get back to us. (It's true that very, very few musicians make it big. But quite a number make a decent living selling their own CDs and music, and a vast number wouldn't get into the business if it weren't for the possibility of making it.) Please note: I'm not saying that copyright law as it stands now is perfect. All I'm saying is that throwing it out rather than trying to reform it is a bad idea.
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