How about writing your congressman? Pennsylvania congressman Mike Doyle has taken an interest in this. Check out this article: http://doyle.house.gov/newsrel/071029.htm. Perhaps if we all write our congressmen we can get a bill passed!

Knowledge is Open Source…

Life should be more like star trek, they do things for the betterment of mankind… not for personal gain. Now mind you… I am a very big fan of the capitolist system, and don’t care if people try to make money… or that there are rich people.. but when you develop something you should allow others to take what you developed and make it better. Singers should sing because they enjoy doing it, not to make millions of dollars… Look at the late Chris LeDux thats how he did it… he sang, he released a few CDs but he mainly enjoyed doing the rodeo circut and singing was something he did because he enjoyed it.

F Copyrights o/ Kopimi

Brit wrote:

believe that’s a myth – a myth which is is being helped by people in “free culture” movement.

Not really a myth. Here is an excerpt from the wikipedia article on history of copyright:

Copyright was invented after the advent of the printing press and subsequent widening of public literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers’ monopolies at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Britain the King of England and Scotland was concerned by the unregulated copying of books and used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act of 1662 which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company, essentially continuing the licensing of material for the benefit of printers that had long been in effect. The Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first real copyright act, and gave the author in the new state of Britain rights for a fixed period, after which the copyright expired. Internationally, the Berne Convention on 9 September 1886 set out the scope of copyright protection, and is still in force to this day. Copyright has grown from a legal concept regulating copying rights in the publishing of books and maps to one with a significant effect on nearly every modern industry, covering such items as sound recordings, films, photographs, software, and architectural works.

Brit wrote:

If publishers really were stealing all the authors money then explain why authors support copyright. Explain how J.K Rowling, Stephen King, or all those musicians (Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, etc) have earned so much money.

Btw, I never said that publishers are stealing from the copyright creators. I said they are a vestigial organ, yes. But they do keep their VIP authors, stars and singers quite happy. Stephen King and JK Rowling get paid very well because they sell shitload of books. Michael Jackson got paid well, because anything he touched was literally turning into money. Because of their talent, fame and status these people can negotiate whatever contracts they want. They can retain their copyrights, they can get high royalties and etc.

New content creators who are trying to break into the business – not so much. First, they have to be discovered and make one of the publishers/distributors notice them. Their first contract will usually be very unfavorable since the publishers will want to protect their investment. If they succeed and make their publisher a lot of money, they may have a bargaining card to re-negotiate better condition. That first step is very difficult though – the competition is fierce and if you get a lucky break it usually comes at a price. Still, if you are good you can make money.

Today we have a second channel though – some people become famous without the middle man. They can build a fan base without signing away their soul. I believe this is a new trend, and that it will become a norm rather than exception. Distributors will become irrelevant because no one will need them. Not because they are evil – they are usually not ( They just want to make money like everyone else). Not because they steal (they don’t, they just want to make money… etc…). No – because they will cease to be relevant in a world where all communication is instantaneous, bandwidth is nearly unlimited and physical media is something you see in a museum. There will be no place for them in that brave new world. :)

Brit wrote:

I make more money from sales of my software than my publisher does. Again, I think this is a myth.

Yep, that’s how its supposed to be. Again, Software industry is much healthier in that aspect. Musicians get shafted the most. But again, if you are good, you can get ahead. I’m not demonizing publishers and distributors. I’m just saying they will fade into oblivion eventually.

Brit wrote:

think that the elimination of copyright is like burning down a whole village because you don’t like what one guy in the village is doing. For those of us also in the village, it seems extreme.

Ack. No – I didn’t say eliminate copyright. I said reform it. Change it to accommodate stuff like remix culture. Take a long hard look at how we distribute digital media. Consider how much impact piracy has on sales. Everyone assumes that that every pirated copy is a lost sale. That’s obviously not true. I would dare to say that piracy has little effect on sales in general. It probably has some, but not much. But that’s something that should be explored. I don’t have the data to back my claims up.

All I’m really proposing is to extend the Fair Use provisions to cover remixes and mash ups though. Rest can be argued for and against.

Brit wrote:

So, you’re saying that things are naturally turning around in favor of the creators, and you want to do away with copyright before the creators really get to benefit from the turnaround?

Nope, I’m saying that while the distributors and publishers matter less and less, they are getting more ferocious lobbying for stricter copyright. They are not doing this to protect the interests of their clients, but to protect themselves in case their clients get a crazy idea they don’t need them anymore.

Brit wrote:

Have you played any good open-source games lately? How would you compare the quality and variety of open-source games to the quality and variety of closed-source games? I don’t think there’s any contest. Closed-source still rules the game-world, despite the fact that open-source is free. If people can afford to live off their work, then more work gets done.

Of course not. Video are entertainment products these days. They require cooperation between artists, voice actors, writers and coders. Open Source movement is mostly embraced by hackers. The creative types have the “creative commons” licenses but they are not as prominent. And without these folks on board, creating modern open source games is difficult. Open source engines on the other hand are a different story.

Open source is good at starting things – building frameworks, engines, low level systems. Creating polished up UI and tailoring it for best user experience is something that done well by closed source companies.

But yeah, let’s not burn copyright – let’s revise it. It seems strange to copyright software, but if it works let’s leave it as it is. For now. This rant was mainly about movies and music. I think we are getting side tracked with software now.

Brit wrote:

The most popular and successful open-source projects are being funded by large software companies. Firefox received enormous amounts of money from Google. Linux is getting enormous money from Microsoft’s competitors. What about software that isn’t in a position to be used as a weapon against other corporations? What about software that isn’t used as middleware by corporations in an effort to sell something bigger?

Wait… How is that an argument against Open Source software in general? The fact that corporations want to invest in it is a good thing in my book. And again, open source software movement was created in response to copyright laws being restrictive and favoring corporations over individuals. It is about giving the code back to the masses. An if it can benefit both the lowly hacker and the high power CEO the better.

Brit wrote:

Do you think Blizzard should have to give away Starcraft 2, and charge for support?

No, that wouldn’t work. They could however make World of Warcraft open source – after all the main draw of the game is the community and the ability to play on their servers. And btw – there are semi-legal “free private” WoW servers out there. Blizzard is still making a killing on subscription though, because most people prefer to play on the official servers.

Brit wrote:

Telling people to make money on support is a little like telling a waiter that he will no longer get paid by the restaurant, and that he can no longer keep his tips, but he DOES get to keep the leftover food that customers leave on their plates. Yeah, it’s not nothing.

Wait… Waiting on tables is a service. This allegory does not work. We are talking about selling software as product vs selling software as service. Waiting tables is already a service.

Let me try to find a better example:

Proprietary food manufacturer will sell you food as a product. They will put it in a black box. You just bring it home, add water and heat it up. The sticker on the box says that unsealing the box means that you agree to an explicit license that says that you will not try to reverse-engineer their recipe or try to alter the formula in any way.

An open source restaurant will post detailed recipes on their website so that you can prepare a meal at home if you wish. But if you want to have it cooked by their expert chef and be waited at, you will have to pay for the meal (because it costs them time, effort and resources to prepare) and tip the waiter. That’s selling food as a service. This is why restaurants are usually reffed to as “the service industry”.

Of course both models work reasonably well. There is place for both out there just like there will always be place for both proprietary and open source software. I never said we should abolish proprietary software.

All I’m saying is that I feel filthy selling software. To me it feels like I’m ripping people off. I much rather offer a service rather than sell a product. But that’s me.

Brit wrote:

Software is far more complex than just a series of mathematical formulas. Saying that is a little like saying “War and Peace” is just a string of letters, or human beings are just a bunch of molecules – it’s technically true, but oversimplistic.

Agreed. I oversimplified.

Brit wrote:

I think I pointed out a couple things already – copyright shouldn’t be used to block snippets of media. I actually think media companies need to be more laid-back about what they block, but I think it’s entirely reasonable for them to block wholesale copying of their work.

I’m in complete agreement here. I’m just saying than rather than just hope companies will be laid back about this we add some legal support for stuff like mashups, remixes and etc.

Brit wrote:

Of course, this gets tricky, because you don’t want someone taking snippets of media and turning it into a complete whole (which is essentially what BitTorrent does). To use an example, we could ask what plagarism is. Theoretically, I could use a single word from a book, and that’s not plagarism. But, what if one word isn’t plagarism, then what if I took two separate “unplagarized” words and stuck them together. If I add one more word over and over, I could reconstruct an entire book, which would be plagarism. At what point does N words + 1 word become plagarism?

I think this issue is currently handled by looking at the intent and context in which the word was used. I’m pretty sure the “I cut it into small pieces and posted them separately so this is not infringement” won’t fly in court because it can be proven that the intent was to commit copyright infringement.

When we add mashup and remix stuff to fair use clause we can hammer out legal language that will ensure people don’t use this as a loophole.

By the way, to backup my statement about corporations paying for open-source, here’s an article about Google paying money towards Firefox:

“In return for setting Google as the default search engine on Firefox, Google pays Mozilla a substantial sum – in 2006 the total amounted to around $57 million, or 85% of the company’s total revenue.”
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-wi th-google-for-3-years/

For obvious reasons, this isn’t a system that can work for most consumer software.

“We have copyright law right now because the invention and proliferation of printing press created a publishing business that could generate vast profits on books without kicking anything back to the author.”
I believe that’s a myth – a myth which is is being helped by people in “free culture” movement. What’s funny is that when an author makes a lot of money, people say, “He makes too much money! Eliminate copyright!” If an author makes a moderate amount of money, people say, “The publisher is stealing all his money! Eliminate copyright!” If publishers really were stealing all the authors money then explain why authors support copyright. Explain how J.K Rowling, Stephen King, or all those musicians (Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, etc) have earned so much money. Even in past centuries, authors have complained about their books being published overseas without payment to the author; and if that author wasn’t getting paid by the publishers, then why would they care? I do not believe that this money is being stolen out from under the authors, and I think you’ve bought into a myth designed to erode support for copyright laws.

“In other words Copyright law was put in place to prevent the man from screwing the little guy. It was supposed to empower the original creator. Of course the man found a way to circumvent it.”
I make more money from sales of my software than my publisher does. Again, I think this is a myth.

“Nowadays publishing houses and recoding studios make content creators sign away their rights in exchange for upfront investment and royalties. They become the copyright holders.”
I still control my copyrights, not my publisher. I will admit that small-time bands probably do give-away too much to the publisher when they sign. At the same time, they’re in the same position as every small business that gets venture capital. If you have a small business, and the odds of success are low, then investors (or publishers) will want to offset that high-risk of failure by higher rewards (for themselves) if you are successful. It’s like this: you walk up to a roulette wheel in a casino, and there are 40 numbers on the wheel. If you place your money on a single number, you want big rewards to offset the fact that you will lose 39 out of 40 times. That’s what publishers are doing. I’m not arguing that they are being entirely fair to musicians, I’m just saying that you’re always going to see it as unfair if you aren’t aware of the risks. Musicians would be in a lot better position to negotiate with publishers if they already have lots of fans – because then the publisher isn’t taking risks. I think that the elimination of copyright is like burning down a whole village because you don’t like what one guy in the village is doing. For those of us also in the village, it seems extreme.

“Publishers and distributors are starting to matter less and less now that content creators can self publish and sell their content directly to their fans online.”
So, you’re saying that things are naturally turning around in favor of the creators, and you want to do away with copyright before the creators really get to benefit from the turnaround?

“This is a common misconception. Have you noticed that we have a thriving open source community out there?”
First, most open-source advocates are blind to the weaknesses of open-source. They think it can accomplish far more than it can, and this line of argument is essentially “burn-down copyright, we have faith that open-source will pickup the slack”. Open-source is alive today. If it supplants proprietary software, then that’s fine. But, open-source hasn’t replaced it, despite the huge advantage that it’s free. Have you played any good open-source games lately? How would you compare the quality and variety of open-source games to the quality and variety of closed-source games? I don’t think there’s any contest. Closed-source still rules the game-world, despite the fact that open-source is free. If people can afford to live off their work, then more work gets done.

“We have people creating software for free. We have people building businesses around free software.”
Only in a handful of cases. The most popular and successful open-source projects are being funded by large software companies. Firefox received enormous amounts of money from Google. Linux is getting enormous money from Microsoft’s competitors. What about software that isn’t in a position to be used as a weapon against other corporations? What about software that isn’t used as middleware by corporations in an effort to sell something bigger?

“We have people making money selling open source software.”
You mean by providing support (e.g. Red Hat)? That only works for them because their software (an operating system) is flexible, difficult to manage, and used by corporations. You can’t generalize that to the rest of the software industry. (Do you think Blizzard should have to give away Starcraft 2, and charge for support?) The problem is that the biggest, most expensive thing we do is create software. Telling people to make money on support is a little like telling a waiter that he will no longer get paid by the restaurant, and that he can no longer keep his tips, but he DOES get to keep the leftover food that customers leave on their plates. Yeah, it’s not nothing. It’s just that you’ve taken away most valuable parts, and left us with scraps.

“Then again, copyrighting code is a bit like copyrighting mathematical formulas. A silly thing to do.”
Nah. Software is far more complex than just a series of mathematical formulas. Saying that is a little like saying “War and Peace” is just a string of letters, or human beings are just a bunch of molecules – it’s technically true, but oversimplistic.

“I miss the final couple of paragraphs that outlines a working suggestion on how to modernize current legislation in a way that everybody is happy with.”
I think I pointed out a couple things already – copyright shouldn’t be used to block snippets of media. I actually think media companies need to be more laid-back about what they block, but I think it’s entirely reasonable for them to block wholesale copying of their work.

Just a sidenote: Of course, this gets tricky, because you don’t want someone taking snippets of media and turning it into a complete whole (which is essentially what BitTorrent does). To use an example, we could ask what plagarism is. Theoretically, I could use a single word from a book, and that’s not plagarism. But, what if one word isn’t plagarism, then what if I took two separate “unplagarized” words and stuck them together. If I add one more word over and over, I could reconstruct an entire book, which would be plagarism. At what point does N words + 1 word become plagarism? We all know that it becomes plagarism at some point, and the same could hold true of copyright. Little snippets could be considered “non-infringing”, but we can’t allow people to stick them together back-to-back without producing copyright infringement, just like plagarism.

Tino wrote:

I miss the final couple of paragraphs that outlines a working suggestion on how to modernize current legislation in a way that everybody is happy with.

That part is left as an exercise for the reader. :)

Brit wrote:

Did we eliminate copyright because it was somehow the printing press and copy machine were incompatible with copyright law?

Nope, other way around. We have copyright law right now because the invention and proliferation of printing press created a publishing business that could generate vast profits on books without kicking anything back to the author. Before printing press we had no real concept of copyright. Books had to be copied by hand – that was the only way to preserve them. It was a time consuming and expensive process though.

In other words Copyright law was put in place to prevent the man from screwing the little guy. It was supposed to empower the original creator. Of course the man found a way to circumvent it. Nowadays publishing houses and recoding studios make content creators sign away their rights in exchange for upfront investment and royalties. They become the copyright holders.

In the past there were really three variables in this equation:

1. The content creator
2. The publisher/distributor
3. The consumer
4. The library user who waits and eventually gets to content for free

Now the stage looks a bit different:

1. The content creator
2. The distributor (often a vestigial parasite entity now that self publishing is a viable option)
3. The first hand paying consumer
4. The second hand paying consumer
5. Mashup creator (who is inspired by content creator)
6. The cracker (who “liberates” content from DRM for personal glory)
7. The Pirate/Library guy (who will consume content if available for free, but will never pay for it).
8. The non paying fanboy promoter (who doesn’t buy content, but runs fan website about the creator, participates in mailing lists and evangelizes to the masses, uploads clips to youtube and tries to turn everyone into a fan)
9. The guy who rents rather than buys
10. etc…

There are many more players, many more markets and etc. Publishers and distributors are starting to matter less and less now that content creators can self publish and sell their content directly to their fans online. All I’m saying is that we need to reform this law to get it back to it’s roots – protect the interest of content creators. Both those who create original work, and those who remix and mash up, rather than have it work to protect distributors and publishers who may or may become obsolete in 5-10 years.

Brit wrote:

As a software developer, I think we’re headed towards the dark ages if we undercut people’s ability to earn a living from their digitally-based work. This seems to be what you’re implying. Since software can’t be easily cut-up or remixed, the only thing you can do with it is wholesale filesharing. And wholesale filesharing is exactly what will undercut people’s ability to earn a living from their work (and if you do that, they’ll go do something else). So, I don’t see how copyright is at all a hindrance in the case of software.

This is a common misconception. Have you noticed that we have a thriving open source community out there? We have people creating software for free. We have people building businesses around free software. We have people making money selling open source software.

Besides, copyright laws sort of work with software. Furthermore the world of software often doesn’t have the dying parasite of “publisher/distributor” who is exploiting the content creator. In a way it’s much healthier than the entertainment industry.

Then again, copyrighting code is a bit like copyrighting mathematical formulas. A silly thing to do. Again, we are applying an archaic set of laws designed for regulating publishing industry to a new science.

Computer science is sort of the magical branch of mathematics which takes the theory and coalesces it into practical existence. Procedural dreams made reality. And it should be treated as such – as practical implementations of abstract ideas. And it should be treated as such.

Well said. But was the post cut short? I miss the final couple of paragraphs that outlines a working suggestion on how to modernize current legislation in a way that everybody is happy with. ;)

First of all, I am somewhat sympathetic to mash-ups. I also think copyright should allow for a certain degree of borrowing, provided that it’s not undercutting sales of the original product. For example, if someone uses a five second clip from a movie, I don’t believe anyone can claim that the movie-copyright holder was somehow damaged by that. If someone posts the entire movie online, then the movie-copyright holder can complain about that. If someone uses a thirty-second clip of music as background during a (non-commercial) YouTube clip, then I don’t think the music-copyright holder is harmed by that. In cases of shortened music clips, I think it even helps sales. Based on looking at iTunes (which contains 30 second clips of songs), you can conclude that having no music clip is worse than having a 30-second clip. And having a full-song is worse for sales than a full song (which is why they don’t allow you to get the full song). There is an ideal middle-ground.

Regarding the “Every piece of creative work they produce somehow tainted by these experiences.” Copyright should be about controlling the copying of the original work, not about a whole class of works (which would be more similar to a patent). If two people come up with songs that sound very similar, I don’t see a problem with that. If someone looks at a software program and writes their own version (using their own source code), I don’t see the problem with that, either. In copyright cases, it’s not about “are we influenced by”. This isn’t a binary “no there was zero influence” or “yes, there was influence”. Rather, it’s a question of how much did you copy from the original piece on a scale from 1 to 10. A “10” would be outright copying and filesharing.

“I have said it before and I’ll say it again – our copyright law is obsolete and outdated. It is an archaic relic from an era that is long gone and will never return.”
Laws that follow the spirit of copyright is necessary in modern society. Whether or not any particular details need to be changed is worth discussing.

“Anything you digitize becomes a virtual commodity – an idea. It can be copied at the speed of thought.”
Well, you could say the same thing about the printing press or copiers. Did we eliminate copyright because it was somehow the printing press and copy machine were incompatible with copyright law?

“But right now it is more of a nuisance than anything else. Tomorrow it will become a hindrance instead – it will be our cultural ball and chain.”
As a software developer, I think we’re headed towards the dark ages if we undercut people’s ability to earn a living from their digitally-based work. This seems to be what you’re implying. Since software can’t be easily cut-up or remixed, the only thing you can do with it is wholesale filesharing. And wholesale filesharing is exactly what will undercut people’s ability to earn a living from their work (and if you do that, they’ll go do something else). So, I don’t see how copyright is at all a hindrance in the case of software.

Hear, hear! It couldn’t have been said better.