Copyright [LWN.net]

Copyright

Posted Dec 12, 2008 16:53 UTC (Fri) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630)
In reply to: Copyright by tialaramex
Parent article: Free Software Foundation files suit against Cisco for GPL violations

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.

(Log in to post comments)

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.

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.