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Where copyright comes fromWhere copyright comes fromPosted Jan 30, 2013 23:22 UTC (Wed) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054)In reply to: Villa: Pushing back against licensing and the permission culture by tjc Parent article: Villa: Pushing back against licensing and the permission culture
The single historical instance you cite shows that some creators will continue creating under adverse circumstances[....]In addition to that historical instance, consider those instances occurring from the invention of speech until 1662, when the English Parliament passed the Licensing Act, which put control of copying in the hands of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers (basically a printers' guild). In 1710 the government horned in on the deal with the Statute of Anne, generally recognized as the first copyright law. Every work of art¹ created before 1662 was created without the monopoly of copyright. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Venerable Bede, Julius Caesar, Strabo, Homer, Ogg the caveman—none of them restrained their creativity due to the lack of copyright. The question is, would the “negative effect on society” of losing “the 10% who don't” [continue to create] outweigh the positive effect on society of freeing use of the arts to other creators, and freeing the citizenry from the fear of draconian punishment for innocent infringement? Don't mistake me—copyright has its place, and I support it as originally conceived, but recent excesses lead me to question whether no copyright is better than the régime we have now. ¹ Western art, anyway. I remain in ignorance of Chinese and other practices.
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Where copyright comes from Posted Jan 31, 2013 21:36 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Don't mistake me—copyright has its place, and I support it as originally conceived, but recent excesses lead me to question whether no copyright is better than the régime we have now. That's not even a contest. Copyright as it exist today excludes privacy rights totally. Every mail, every phone call, every interaction between two persons which involves technical means (including things like video baby monitors) must be processed by state-controlled "copyright checker". Only then can you enforce copyright as it exist today: any such venue left unchecked will make it possible to create "copyright-volator's network" and thus obviously needs to be prosecuted. Any and all benefits from such copyright are dwarfed by the downside. How long do you think government will keep this perfect "remote silencer" used only to enforce copyright when it can be used perfectly well to silence dissident more efficiently then Great Firewall of China? Sorry, but it's not even a contest: copyright as it exist today (when non-commercial private exchange is forbidden) does more hard then good. If any copyright is better then no copyright - that's the question. The answer is probably "yes", but we should probably cut it out from out homes, at least. Leave it where it belongs: control commercial transactions (which must be controlled anyway for tax purposes) and leave private lives alone.
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