Well, while some of Lehman's comments are interesting (and promising), and I certainly believe that a lot of this current situation is very much the fault of the RIAA, I'm seeing a pendulum effect here. Having failed to control copyright using extreme measures on one end, he's now talking about the end of copyright, which is basically the extreme on the other end. The truth, like so many truths, is somewhere inbetween.
I'm speaking as a published and agented author here - I need to know what copyright is, and how it works. My livelihood depends on it, partly when dealing with publishers (knowing what rights I'm signing away) and partly when it comes to dealing with agents (making sure that they know what rights of my work to keep from being signed away). A bad contract can nail an author to the wall, and there are very bad contracts out there. So I am very much aware of what copyright is, what it does, and how it works.
And here is the problem - most people in the grass-roots movement don't. And the fault for this lies very firmly in the hands of the RIAA. Frankly, our society needs copyright - it is the single most important tool our culture and society has to advance itself. And, I'll explain why (even though it will take a while, and probably put a few readers to sleep).
We have a society that is very unique in many ways. First of all, literacy is the norm, not the exception. Secondly, we have the technology (and have had it since about the 15th century) to efficiently reproduce the work of creative artists (first literature and visual art, now music and film). Third, we have a capitalist system where the success of an artist is based on the sales of his/her work (rather than a system of patronage). It is, broadly put, a literate meritocracy.
What this means is that there are a lot of creative people out there, and they are able to distribute what they create through a variety of means. We are drowning in content, which is good - the more content there is, the healthier our culture is, and we have a very healthy culture, make no mistake. But, how is this content to be dealt with? Many of these creative artists want to do different things with their creations. Some want to sell it, others want to share it. Some want to keep their characters to themselves, and others want to create shared worlds that anybody can write in. Even in software development, there is a disparity. And there needs to be protection for all of these creative artists, so that they can do what they need to. And that is where copyright comes in.
Copyright is the broad tool that allows the various creative artists to do what they want with their work. It really is amazing in its simplicity - if you don't believe me, look at the Berne Convention. The creative artist owns the copyright to their work until such time as they die and it runs out, or they sign it away. And that copyright simply allows them to say "this work and what is in it will be copied in X way." It provides protection for the specific implementation of an idea, but not for the idea itself. And, it requires reasonability from the creators - hence fair use and the public domain. It's this tool that allows the Creative Commons to exist, that allows the Open Source movement to fight against SCO, and that allows an author to receive royalties on his work from a publisher for copies sold. And the success of the created work is determined by the market, and nothing else.
And this is where the RIAA is so troublesome - they have spent quite a long time abusing both the letter and the spirit of copyright law, and doing it very publicly. So, while I've just described the literal truth of what copyright is, there are a lot of people who just won't believe what I've written. Why won't they? Because while copyright law is about balanced rights of the creator, the RIAA is using it to sue dead grandmothers, students, and welfare moms for copying insignificant amounts of music. And actions do speak louder than words. The irony is that copyright law over the last 300 years was designed to protect AGAINST the actions of a group like the RIAA.
It may surprise quite a lot of people to know that from its inception copyright never actually took the actions of the reader as a possible threat. Frankly, most readers simply didn't (and still don't) have a printing press. The Act of Queen Anne (1709), the very first copyright act, begins as such:
"Whereas printers, booksellers, and other persons have of late frequently taken the liberty of printing, reprinting, and publishing, or causing to be printed, reprinted, and published, books and other writings, without the consent of the authors or proprietors of such books and writings, to their very great detriment, and too often to the ruin of them and their families:"
So who are the threats? Basically, other publishers. This is one thing that hasn't really changed over the centuries. If you look at the Berne Convention, very little of the protections in it apply to anything a reader/listener/viewer could do. There is protection of the exact implementation, which is only helpful against other creators. There is protection of intellectual rights that only applies to protecting creative artists from their own distributers doing something shady. There is protection against mass redistribution, which in books you pretty much need a printing press or e-publisher for, and in movies you need one hell of a file server for. The thousands of bootleg DVDs sold in Asia are a serious threat that copyright law is there to protect against. Same with bootleg CDs. These are the things that can cause a serious threat to the livelihood of a creative artist - that is the sort of piracy the Act of Queen Anne was written against. A bunch of teenaged music fans on Napster? That barely shows up as a blip on the radar.
But we're not hearing a lot about the Asian bootleg market, are we? We're hearing about the RIAA going after student filesharers. And they're stretching the law to do it. One of the ironies is that along this road, they've probably created a serious threat out of what was once an anthill just through sheer gut reaction. And, why do they claim to be doing this? For the sake of creative artists. The same creative artists whose intellectual rights they have systematically stripped away over the last thirty years. When kids and their grandmothers are getting sued by an organization that makes sure everybody thinks they're doing it for the rights of the artist, is it any wonder that the actual letter and spirit of copyright law is met with disbelief?
And this brings me to DRM - and the pendulum effect. Forget the RIAA for a moment - they've muddied the issue, but copyright has been around for 300 years, and it will continue - it's too important for the health of our society for us to lose it. But there are new means of distribution. It is possible to put a movie, song, or book onto a fileserver and publish it that way. The question lies in how to ensure that the letter and spirit of copyright law is preserved with these new means of publication. I don't claim to have an answer to that question. All I know is that those creative artists who want to share their work should be able to do so, and all those who want to sell it through channels of their choice should have the same ability to do so. And I know that the end user shouldn't get clobbered in the process. Nobody really has the answer to this issue, and so it isn't surprising that we're seeing a pendulum effect. The DMCA went too far towards trying to control everything, and we now have acknowledgment by the people who wrote it that it was too much. Will having no DRM do? Probably not - some protection is needed. How much is, of course, somewhere inbetween, and we will reach it eventually.
I'm replying to this post because of this statement (the rest of the parent spends its time either misinterpreting what I said in my last post or putting words in my mouth, and I think my original post speaks for itself). The article that it's linked to is a very interesting one, it expands on the role of the Stationer's Log (which is a form of copyright protection predating the Act of Queen Anne), but it has a certain tunnel v
While I have no problems with your arguments there is just one problem. You can't stop the transmission of data. Without a massive invasion of piracy there is simply no way to prevent P2P networks from obsoleting any limits on your right to copy and share. So what's it going to be? Restrictions on P2P, on wireless network gear, on DRM circumvention? Or the (effective, regardless of what the laws say) abolition of copyright?
In 20 years, when we've all got 10' LCDs, electronic paper, 100+ terabyte (or more) st
Well, here I've got to theorize, because you've just raised the exact core of the issue. But, I don't think P2P networks will render copyright obsolete - in fact, I'd argue that the basic principles behind copyright are sound enough to be proof against it, and that they can be applied very easily to the P2P world.
My personal theory is that the entire argument has actually been drastically overthought. People are looking at the Internet, being wowed by the technology and how different it makes things look, b
Reading books on computers isn't much fun, however with usable electronic paper it won't be an issue. Sure, it's not here yet, but on the scale of decades it's a matter of when not if. Books won't go away entirely for a long long time, but for everyday use they will become much less common at some point. And yes, you're right, it was possible to copy works before, but the fact is it was expensive. Perhaps not in terms of money, but photocopying a book is a time-consuming process. Burning a cd, ditto.
The Constitution says that copyright is about advancing society, not about giving authors control over their writings. Usually the two line up, because artists usually want to contribute to society. A business, on the other hand, has no such motivation -- it just wants to contribute to its bottom line. DRM is a tool created by businesses to prevent people from accessing literature and music. It is against advancing art, and therefore wrong. It's as simple as that.
1. The Act of Queen Anne pre-dates the US Constitution by 60-70 years, so if you want original intent, you have to go to it (or the Stationer's Log, but while it's part of the history of intellectual rights, it isn't considered actual copyright by most).
2. The US Constitution is an 18th century document, and we do not live in the 18th century anymore. Times have changed, and society has changed. Copyright right now may be informed by its past, but it is not dictated by it.
It's more of a pendulum effect... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm speaking as a published and agented author here - I need to know what copyright is, and how it works. My livelihood depends on it, partly when dealing with publishers (knowing what rights I'm signing away) and partly when it comes to dealing with agents (making sure that they know what rights of my work to keep from being signed away). A bad contract can nail an author to the wall, and there are very bad contracts out there. So I am very much aware of what copyright is, what it does, and how it works.
And here is the problem - most people in the grass-roots movement don't. And the fault for this lies very firmly in the hands of the RIAA. Frankly, our society needs copyright - it is the single most important tool our culture and society has to advance itself. And, I'll explain why (even though it will take a while, and probably put a few readers to sleep).
We have a society that is very unique in many ways. First of all, literacy is the norm, not the exception. Secondly, we have the technology (and have had it since about the 15th century) to efficiently reproduce the work of creative artists (first literature and visual art, now music and film). Third, we have a capitalist system where the success of an artist is based on the sales of his/her work (rather than a system of patronage). It is, broadly put, a literate meritocracy.
What this means is that there are a lot of creative people out there, and they are able to distribute what they create through a variety of means. We are drowning in content, which is good - the more content there is, the healthier our culture is, and we have a very healthy culture, make no mistake. But, how is this content to be dealt with? Many of these creative artists want to do different things with their creations. Some want to sell it, others want to share it. Some want to keep their characters to themselves, and others want to create shared worlds that anybody can write in. Even in software development, there is a disparity. And there needs to be protection for all of these creative artists, so that they can do what they need to. And that is where copyright comes in.
Copyright is the broad tool that allows the various creative artists to do what they want with their work. It really is amazing in its simplicity - if you don't believe me, look at the Berne Convention. The creative artist owns the copyright to their work until such time as they die and it runs out, or they sign it away. And that copyright simply allows them to say "this work and what is in it will be copied in X way." It provides protection for the specific implementation of an idea, but not for the idea itself. And, it requires reasonability from the creators - hence fair use and the public domain. It's this tool that allows the Creative Commons to exist, that allows the Open Source movement to fight against SCO, and that allows an author to receive royalties on his work from a publisher for copies sold. And the success of the created work is determined by the market, and nothing else.
And this is where the RIAA is so troublesome - they have spent quite a long time abusing both the letter and the spirit of copyright law, and doing it very publicly. So, while I've just described the literal truth of what copyright is, there are a lot of people who just won't believe what I've written. Why won't they? Because while copyright law is about balanced rights of the creator, the RIAA is using it to sue dead grandmothers, students, and welfare moms for copying insignificant amounts of music. And actions do speak louder than words. The irony is that copyright law over the last 300 years was designed to protect AGAINST the actions of a group like the RIAA.
It may surprise quite a lot of people to know that from its inception copyright never actually took the actions of the reader as a possible threat. Frankly, most readers simply didn't (and still don't) have a printing press. The Act of Queen Anne (1709), the very first copyright act, begins as such:
"Whereas printers, booksellers, and other persons have of late frequently taken the liberty of printing, reprinting, and publishing, or causing to be printed, reprinted, and published, books and other writings, without the consent of the authors or proprietors of such books and writings, to their very great detriment, and too often to the ruin of them and their families:"
So who are the threats? Basically, other publishers. This is one thing that hasn't really changed over the centuries. If you look at the Berne Convention, very little of the protections in it apply to anything a reader/listener/viewer could do. There is protection of the exact implementation, which is only helpful against other creators. There is protection of intellectual rights that only applies to protecting creative artists from their own distributers doing something shady. There is protection against mass redistribution, which in books you pretty much need a printing press or e-publisher for, and in movies you need one hell of a file server for. The thousands of bootleg DVDs sold in Asia are a serious threat that copyright law is there to protect against. Same with bootleg CDs. These are the things that can cause a serious threat to the livelihood of a creative artist - that is the sort of piracy the Act of Queen Anne was written against. A bunch of teenaged music fans on Napster? That barely shows up as a blip on the radar.
But we're not hearing a lot about the Asian bootleg market, are we? We're hearing about the RIAA going after student filesharers. And they're stretching the law to do it. One of the ironies is that along this road, they've probably created a serious threat out of what was once an anthill just through sheer gut reaction. And, why do they claim to be doing this? For the sake of creative artists. The same creative artists whose intellectual rights they have systematically stripped away over the last thirty years. When kids and their grandmothers are getting sued by an organization that makes sure everybody thinks they're doing it for the rights of the artist, is it any wonder that the actual letter and spirit of copyright law is met with disbelief?
And this brings me to DRM - and the pendulum effect. Forget the RIAA for a moment - they've muddied the issue, but copyright has been around for 300 years, and it will continue - it's too important for the health of our society for us to lose it. But there are new means of distribution. It is possible to put a movie, song, or book onto a fileserver and publish it that way. The question lies in how to ensure that the letter and spirit of copyright law is preserved with these new means of publication. I don't claim to have an answer to that question. All I know is that those creative artists who want to share their work should be able to do so, and all those who want to sell it through channels of their choice should have the same ability to do so. And I know that the end user shouldn't get clobbered in the process. Nobody really has the answer to this issue, and so it isn't surprising that we're seeing a pendulum effect. The DMCA went too far towards trying to control everything, and we now have acknowledgment by the people who wrote it that it was too much. Will having no DRM do? Probably not - some protection is needed. How much is, of course, somewhere inbetween, and we will reach it eventually.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.questioncopyright.org/promise [questioncopyright.org]"
I'm replying to this post because of this statement (the rest of the parent spends its time either misinterpreting what I said in my last post or putting words in my mouth, and I think my original post speaks for itself). The article that it's linked to is a very interesting one, it expands on the role of the Stationer's Log (which is a form of copyright protection predating the Act of Queen Anne), but it has a certain tunnel v
Re: (Score:1)
So what's it going to be? Restrictions on P2P, on wireless network gear, on DRM circumvention? Or the (effective, regardless of what the laws say) abolition of copyright?
In 20 years, when we've all got 10' LCDs, electronic paper, 100+ terabyte (or more) st
Re: (Score:2)
But, I don't think P2P networks will render copyright obsolete - in fact, I'd argue that the basic principles behind copyright are sound enough to be proof against it, and that they can be applied very easily to the P2P world.
My personal theory is that the entire argument has actually been drastically overthought. People are looking at the Internet, being wowed by the technology and how different it makes things look, b
Re: (Score:1)
And yes, you're right, it was possible to copy works before, but the fact is it was expensive. Perhaps not in terms of money, but photocopying a book is a time-consuming process. Burning a cd, ditto.
Today, t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1. The Act of Queen Anne pre-dates the US Constitution by 60-70 years, so if you want original intent, you have to go to it (or the Stationer's Log, but while it's part of the history of intellectual rights, it isn't considered actual copyright by most).
2. The US Constitution is an 18th century document, and we do not live in the 18th century anymore. Times have changed, and society has changed. Copyright right now may be informed by its past, but it is not dictated by it.