

Copyright and wrong: Why the rules on copyright need to return to their roots - rickmode
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15868004

======
mnemonicsloth
Let's be honest for a minute.

Copyright for music is already dead. Consumers like free music. Sometimes
they'll pay for concerts, or merchandise, or convenience, or ignorance, but
that's it. They might tell you it's wrong on an opinion survey, but they keep
downloading.

The situation isn't going to change any time soon, either. Widespread use of
DRM'd hardware might work, but the early adopters you'd need to get the new
media formats off the ground already benefit the most from free downloads.

Books, movies, and TV shows haven't been devalued yet, but only because
ripping and (especially) downloading them are still inconvenient to most
people. Bandwidth can't stagnate forever, though. Like with music, when you
can download a two-hour movie in ten minutes, and store them by the thousands
on your hard drive without missing the space, the only way to prevent rampant
piracy will be to stop selling media.

Regardless of the legal niceties, the marginal cost of digital media is zero
plus some rounding error. Isn't that a radical enough departure for us to ask
whether copyright itself, rather than just its expiration date, might have to
change?

~~~
bad_user
I kind of agree with you, except that last sentence.

I once worked for a client with no upfront contract and no initial fees, the
agreement being that I had to get paid when the work was done. After the work
was done (in an incremental agile process nonetheless) the client said that
he's going to go to someone else ... and when that someone else finished his
work, I discovered that he stole from me ideas from my design, articles
blatantly copy/pasted and some implementation details.

Sorry, but even if the cost of reproducing digital media is zero, the cost of
producing it is not. And if I'm producing something of value, it's only fair
to get paid for my work.

And in the above case I only had the copyright law to defend myself.

What the media industry needs to realize is that people don't pay for crap. If
you want to make money out of movies then stop producing crap like Jennifer's
Body and stop promoting crap like Britney Spears.

The price of a movie/music album/newspaper subscription should also variate
according to its quality / cost of production.

Personally I buy all the albums of my favorite bands (all 3 of them ... I like
supporting them and I like discovering tracks for which there aren't mp3s
available on torrents). I'm also going to the local cinema regularly but only
to see those movies that are worth the price of a ticket.

~~~
yxhuvud
So instead of learning to write a better contract, you want government bullies
to enforce the contract you didn't write?

~~~
bad_user
You like your physical properties to be protected right? If I stole something
from you, would you consider it normal for me to get away with it because you
haven't made me sign a contract? WTF dude ?!?

It's not a question of whether IP should be protected or not, it's only a
question of where to draw the line. If I create something I want full rights
on it, regardless of the ease with which it can be copied and my desire to be
in control of the results of my work should supersede your desire to get free
stuff ;)

~~~
alextgordon
If you steal a bike from me, I have lost a bike. If you "steal" a design from
me, I am still free to write code from that design, but with the added benefit
that if I don't want to bother, others can do so also. I don't want to have to
sign a waiver every time I give some advice.

Yes it sucks that you got ripped off. But you should have had a contract
before undertaking a paid project. There's a reason it's called _contract_
work.

~~~
bad_user
Yeah, but the work I did was useless to me, and I couldn't resell it.

So something was stole from me, and that's the precious time I invested in it.

And I totally understand their decision to go to someone else, but then that
someone else ripped-off my work. Sorry, but that shouldn't be legal ... the
world is full of jackasses that don't give a shit about your needs or about
the endless hours of work you've put into it.

The alternative to having laws that protect your property is anarchy ...
making your own justice ... _here's your software, it's DRMed, it regularly
phones back home with logs of your activity, and I can shut it down with the
push of a button. Enjoy!_

Don't get me wrong ... 100 years of copyright is a lot. 10 years of protection
would be much more appropriate. I'm not advocating against changes for the
good of the public ... but having a healthy copyright law also encourages
content-authors. So IMHO, all I'm saying is that we need copyright, not that
it doesn't need changing.

------
Estragon
The article does not address the central problem with copyright protection:
that it is founded on industrial-age assumptions which no longer apply. As
long as copying was capital- and labor-intensive, copyright was enforceable
with reasonable measures. But it's now so easy to privately copy a work that
copyright protection has become similar to the war on drugs in that it can
only be enforced with draconian measures.

------
rickmode
Patents and copyrights are artificial government grants making the intangible
tangible. It's the artificialness that bothers me.

Our culture has come to think ideas are _real_ like real estate. But they are
not. They are intangible, and so is information. This feels an awful lot like
the meme "ideas are cheap; execution is everything".

As all media become more like raw information--as the cost of transmission and
storage of media falls--it will act more like _ideas_. All that will be left
is the government grant to exclusive rights. Thus IP holders lobby governments
for larger and larger hammers to beat down infringement.

And anyway, the point of limited IP terms is to allow derivative works for the
greater good. I don't hear this greater good argument often enough.

The system is flawed. Perhaps short copyright terms as the article suggests
are more workable as the information will be fresh. It may also be the only
realistic solution when the time comes that infringement is effectively free
(as in beer).

------
arch_hunter
I very much agree with this article, copyright terms have become way, way too
long, and are very close to no longer being the 'limited time' that the
constitution requires. Another good read on the matter is
<http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/howard/papers/copyright99.html> .

------
hxa7241
Copyright is essentially a law of physical objects. Information is only
involved superficially, to modulate it. When information doesn't need objects
anymore, copyright is basically dead. It exists only by vestiges of
behavioural convention.

Debating the length of copyright term is pretty much useless. As are
refinements of 'fair-use'. If there are no solid 'attachment points' for
payment, and no discrete identifiable product, the machine is just spinning
but going nowhere. We need entirely different ways to pay for abstract
creative effort. It is an opportunity to make something better -- copyright
was fundamentally economically suboptimal anyway.

------
njharman
> The notion that lengthening copyright increases creativity is questionable

Really, I find it blatantly disingenuous. As "IP" owner I can sit on my ass
milking my original creation for 90+ years or I can be "forced" to actually
produce more works every 5-15 years.

~~~
praptak
But a theoretical someone who has not yet created any intellectual "property"
might get encouraged to get of his ass and write something to get profits for
90 next years, while the "mere" 5-15 years might not have that appeal.

Not that I agree with the original assertion, I just think that your
counterargument is a bit weak.

~~~
trafficlight
Nope. A person who is a creator will build and write things regardless of the
copyright protections. There is not a single person out there who is going to
say, "You know, I should publish this song, but I won't because it's just
going to end up in the public domain in 10 years."

~~~
decode
"A person who is a creator will build and write things regardless of the
copyright protections."

That's an interesting thought, but almost certainly not true. Some forms of
creation require a large amount of time and effort. Some people will squeeze
in time around their jobs and friends and families no matter what so that they
can create. Other people will not.

But even if you're right, I want some creative people to be able to create
full time. If I can get twice the output from Neal Stephenson or John
Darnielle or Linus Torvalds because they don't have to work a separate day
job, that is a world I want to promote. This doesn't mean that copyrights
should be defined the way they are, or that copyrights are even the way to
achieve this world, but don't act like economic compensation for creativity
isn't useful.

~~~
bediger
Sorry, but the record seems to indicate that your viewpoint, although common
and valiantly expressed, is wrong:

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090308/1022324034.shtml>

Copyright on music got introduced part way through composer Giuseppe Verdi's
career. He clearly coasted for the latter part. Want more from Stephenson or
Torvalds or even Stephen King? Shorten or eliminate copyright.

------
ableal
Just yesterday, I ran some calculations based on a different assumption, just
on raw economics. It goes like this:

1) Suppose that "intellectual property" (IP) is taxed, like real estate. Say
at a T = 1% rate, to keep it simple. This pays for the property protection
service the state provides.

2) But the holder does not actually pay tax. He just accumulates back payments
to the state, at an interest rate R per year.

3) When the state is owed 100% of the value, the IP reverts to the public
domain.

This has the advantage that the property value does not matter - it can be 1,
100, 100k; nothing to haggle there. It is just assumed to be constant for the
period considered.

Run your own calculations. Mine were that with a T=1% tax rate, and a R=5%
interest rate on unpaid tax, you get 37 years. (26 years for R=10%, 47 years
for R=3%.)

P.S.

I got curious, and just checked with a lower tax rate T=0.5%. R seems to
dominate T. Here is a little table:

    
    
                R=3%  R=5%  R=10%
        T=0.5%   66    50     32
        T=  1%   47    37     26

~~~
anamax
Lessig had a simpler idea.

The first n years of copyright protection are free, for a modest n (say 10).
After that, the copyright owner can get extended protection by paying minimal
fee every so often, say $1 every 5 years.

Lessig's numbers were almost certainly different.

~~~
kmak
I think there's an idea where copyright extension fee grows exponentially, so
free for first N, $1 for the next N, $10 for the next N..

And after a few N's, it'll either be economically infeasible, or you can still
keep them, but it'll be worth it for you (Mickey is worth quite a bit after
all these years).

I think Lessig's idea was basically get the "dead" copyright properties into
the public domain, where you can't get permission because you don't know who
owns things.

~~~
anamax
> I think there's an idea where copyright extension fee grows exponentially,
> so free for first N, $1 for the next N, $10 for the next N..

There are lots of ideas. However, few of them can be realized.

If we can't enact Lessig's plan, what makes you think that an exponential fee
schedule has any chance?

> but it'll be worth it for you (Mickey is worth quite a bit after all these
> years).

"Micky" isn't copyrighted. Mickey is trademarked. Things where Mickey makes an
appearance are copyrighted. (Trademark is what keeps you from producing new
works containing Mickey. Copyright keeps you from copying existing works and
deriving new works from said existing works. For example, porn mickey need not
have copyright problems.)

There are literally millions of such things. Do you really think that applying
an exponential fee to them has a chance?

~~~
kmak
Steamboat Willie is still not in the public domain.

I'm just stating an interesting plan, not that it is realistic. Please do not
make unnecessary assumptions.

~~~
anamax
> Steamboat Willie is still not in the public domain.

That's true, but misses the point. Even if Steamboat Willie enters the public
domain, Mickey Mouse doesn't enter the public domain.

Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain - I can sell new Sherlock Holmes
stories. Mickey Mouse is protected by trademark, so I can't sell a new Mickey
Mouse story, no matter how many Mickey Mouse stories have gone off-copyright.

~~~
bediger
Some questions about the copyright status of Sherlock Holmes stories still
exists:
[http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=sherlock+holmes&edi...](http://www.techdirt.com/blog.php?tag=sherlock+holmes&edition=techdirt)

If I had any literary talent, I'd think twice about writing any Sherlock
Holmes sequels, etc, althought I cheerfully bought, read and enjoyed "Shadows
over Baker Street", a mashup of Sherlock Holmes, and HP Lovecraft's Elder
Gods.

Surely this illustrates that "chilling effect" on free speech that copyright
has, eh?

------
hairsupply
This is an outstanding audio essay on the state of copyright in America:
<http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=16>

------
chbarts
So, is this article interesting because it comes from The Economist? I think
most of us here have been reading copyright law analysis and critique that's
far beyond this since before the DMCA was passed.

~~~
lutorm
One of my yardsticks is that when the Economist supports something, it's clear
that those that claim that it would be "bad for business/bad for the market"
are no longer to be believed.

~~~
dkimball
I agree. When it was Lawrence Lessig saying this, there was a certain note of
the crank about the idea (very much increased by the performance of Michael
Hart of Project Gutenberg in the lead-up to _Eldred v. Ashcroft_). But when
the world's magazine of record says it, it's as mainstream as UNICEF. (Not
that being as mainstream as UNICEF is necessarily a good thing.)

That's how changes to the world normally occur: not through a revolutionary
minority, but through the development of a consensus which serves as a
suitable powder keg. Look at British and French SF from the twenty years
before WWI, for example.

