
IP - sant0sk1
http://mattmaroon.com/?p=379
======
aston
As a sometimes musician, I really want someone to get a little more creative
about the future of the music industry than just "make all of your money from
live concerts." If the only musicians that can make money from recordings are
ones who are so widely known and liked that people stealing their music online
is irrelevant, the gap between "unknown" and "world famous" is basically
impossible to cross.

~~~
jdanieli
I'm pretty sure Pandora, etc. do give a small amount of money to the music
owners each time the song is played. Is that not a source of revenue?

~~~
rms
I've been curious about this... do cafe/restaurants play a type of commercial
satellite or digital radio intended to be played in stores? Or do they license
the music themselves?

~~~
kingnothing
The good ones use Muzak.

~~~
rms
Sounds like Muzak has this particularly niche completely mastered.

<http://music.muzak.com/delivery/>

------
maxklein
That's an example of a long opinion piece with no point. Yes, Matt thinks that
Copyright is actually useful, but what's your point? What's the action you
want me to take? Why did I just read that - I know some people think copyright
is okay, and some think that it's not okay, I did not have to read a long
article with absolutely no new conclusions or any clear purpose.

You basically took a two sentence argument and stretched it to waste 3 minutes
of my time.

~~~
zasz
I thought it had a lot of points. Defending the usefulness of copyright is a
rare position on the internet, and he does give some actual reasons as to why
copyright is useful (which is why his article is pointful rather than
pointless)--it protects movies and books and other forms of creative content
that are difficult to produce. He also takes some common defenses of copyright
infringement (though he seems to reconstruct a couple as strawmen) and debunks
them.

~~~
maxklein
Defending copyright is not a rare opinion in my world. The opinions he talks
about there are like the most basic opinions that anyone trying to defend
copyright would come up with. Nothing new at all.

It's as if he suddenly decided to think contrarian, then quickly wrote down
the first thoughts he could think of.

I used to work in the development division of a very major recording company.
Reading his article would be like a competent C++ programmer reading an
article about why classes are useful - sure, the article may be correct, but
it's pointless reading, except for people who have never even entertained that
thought.

~~~
zasz
Then the problem is not that it was pointless, but that it was not novel. The
article in question for your C++ programmer has a point; the programmer just
doesn't care.

As a college student, defending copyright is rare in MY world, and people look
at me funny when I tell them I buy CDs, and my brother laughs at me when I say
I'm going to support Obsidian by buying their next game full price as soon as
it comes out. I liked Matt's article; it was pretty basic analysis, but it was
reasonable.

------
jfarmer
Argh. I can't stand it when people conflate theft and copyright infringement.
They are different things and it's lazy to treat them the same.

I tried to explain the differences as best as I could:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=207440>

~~~
mrtron
For someone with the whole Internet as their resource, I would consider it
beyond lazy. It is ignorant to treat them the same.

Copyright infringement has been responsible in increases for 'victim', both in
exposure and revenues. Theft has never (that I am aware of) benefited the
victim.

~~~
andreyf
_Copyright infringement has been responsible in increases for 'victim..._

Good example, but I think it's more important to point out where copyright and
property law come from - that property is accepted in our society as a
fundamental right, while copyright is monopoly power which our government may
grant "for a limited time" "to promote the progress of useful arts".

See here:
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.article...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html)

~~~
davidw
Precisely! It's supposed to be a compromise between "no IP" (where IP is
copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc...) and some sort of permanent and
ironclad possession of works and ideas. I believe the balance has tilted too
far in favor of the producers of IP, and that it should be shifted back the
other way, but not eliminated.

In a more general sense, the problem is "provisioning of public goods":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good>

Creating property where none naturally exists is one solution, but there are
others (some good, some bad, depends on the type of good).

------
rms
Matt hasn't realized just how awesome piracy of music is if you are a member
of a site like waffles.fm. It is _much_ better than any legal music service.
How could the RIAA compete with a mainstream waffles.fm?

~~~
JesseAldridge
Um... I think his point was that the RIAA _wouldn't_ be able to compete. They
would go out of business, likely taking a large portion of the music industry
with them. Copyright laws prevent this from happening by preventing waffles.fm
from going mainstream.

~~~
rms
Laws only have so much power... Oink was close to breaking into the mainstream
before Interpol hit. Problem was that Oink was hosted in the UK. Waffles is
hosted at the PRQ, so given sufficient server capacity they can dabble in the
mainstream.

~~~
mattmaroon
I'm pretty sure that the government will not let this become mainstream.
There's always a way to combat a site.

~~~
ivankirigin
You should follow the Pirate Bay. They've been very good at avoiding arrest.

Making a sea-steading country is also a good solution. If your servers live
there, and can connect to everyone else, it will work.

~~~
mattmaroon
Ha, sea-steading still seems a little out there. They still have to connect to
everyone else through an actual country.

I don't know how TPB has lasted as long as they have. It is impressive.

~~~
ivankirigin
Darknet fiber is the way to go. But I don't know enough about internet
backbones.

I do know that the side benefits of starting your own country could easily
finance it. Surprisingly, this is somewhat relevant to Tipjoy if you go out on
a long enough timeline.

~~~
rms
If you ever have billions of dollars it becomes extremely economical and even
moral to stage a takeover of Equatorial Guinea (a real, wealthy country with
an evil dictator that CIA/MI6 wants deposed). Just to keep in the back of your
mind.

~~~
ivankirigin
Then you have to deal with people.

I think of population of a new country a lot like hiring. You want only the
best if you're really trying something new.

Most countries ripe for revolution probably wouldn't be stable enough for the
goals. It's like Woody Allen quipped "I just don't want to belong to any club
that would have someone like me for a member"

------
andreyf
_Often they phrase it as intellectual property that needs to be abandoned..._

This is very silly ... such a position would only be taken by someone who
doesn't understand the extent of IP.

IP is a huge blanket term, legally speaking. Patent law, copyright law, and
trademark law have very little in common, but are all "IP". I haven't met
anyone who seriously argued that we should get rid of patents...

As far as copyright goes, in my experience, most intelligent, impartial, and
well-informed individuals tend to converge on the constitutional opinion:
"Congress should promote the progress of useful arts, by securing for limited
times to authors the exclusive right to their respective writings" (this is
almost a direct quote from article 1, section 8).

The point of copyright law should be to promote progress of useful arts - I
think this is the basis on which we should all agree. The term "intellectual
property" muddies the discussion because one's right to property is a
fundamental right, whereas one's power to restrict other's copying of your
work is a power that congress can grant you for a limited time.

------
abstractbill
_Theft of a song is no more natural than theft of a car, so should we take
those laws off the books too?_

Please stop reading this comment Matt. You're stealing it from all the other
people who want to read it.

~~~
mrtron
I would be willing to subscribe to your newsletter after reading your comment.
Do you accept tipjoy?

Doesn't that blow your mind? Without this free medium and my 'theft' I would
never have even known of abstractbill.

~~~
DougBTX
It's easy to test. Talk PG into putting a "tipjoy" link right beside "link"
above every comment, and see what happens.

------
antiismist
Matt didn't get the viacom / youtube thing right. The DMCA provides a certain
copyright-related safe harbor to online service providers, not just ISPs as he
states. It is far from clear that youtube violated copyrights (that is the
point of the litigation after all).

see: <http://www.lessig.org/blog/2007/03/viacom_v_youtube.html>

~~~
mattmaroon
I've read in a number of places (and this may be incorrect) that YouTube loses
safe harbor by converting the videos from one format to another. Mark Cuban
said that for one, and he has paid entertainment lawyers on staff.

~~~
abstractbill
Regardless of what the law says, this doesn't make sense.

An automated process blindly converts video from one format into another, and
the company hosting the video suddenly has a duty to examine each and every
video to look for potential infringements? I don't see how that follows at
all.

Of course much of this law is untested, so any lawyer who makes claims about
this is most likely just telling you what he _thinks_ he can make a court
believe.

~~~
antiismist
The safe harbor provision is here:
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_0...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000512
----000-.html)

It could make sense, depending on the analogy that someone picks. For example,
I have a coffee shop with a community message board. Someone posts copyrighted
information there - someone tells me about it and I take it down right away.
That sounds pretty fair.

But what if I make a whole operation out of it - like if there are pictures,
then I take those, clean them up, copy them, frame them, and put them on the
wall of my shop. Now it seems like I have a lot more responsibility for what
is going on. Is it fair for me to just blindly frame every single picture I
find, even if some of the pictures are obviously copyrighted? Anyway that is
my logical argument (as opposed to a legal one...)

------
tx
Matt, you're confusing IP with copyrights. I've dealt with IP lawyers in the
past, and those two terms mean very different things. Copyright law is
actually a very murky water and certain kind of fish (lawyers) feel pretty
comfortable swimming in there. Early YouTube investors clearly knew what's
coming and they're prepared, they've get their fishies ready.

But those are boring technicalities. What matters is the fundamental question
if one can proclaim things like music, literature and images as his property.
Technically I can repeat one of your sentences and you can accuse me of
stealing.

That's all huge bullshit in my opinion. A song or a movie by itself shouldn't
be copyrightable simply because it's not fair: it takes a lot of money to
enforce such laws, this is why there are only a few privileged "customers" of
this system. I can copy and distribute your blog posts all I want and there is
nothing you'll (likely) do about it. This "copyright club" doesn't treat
outsiders nicely, this is why Google (clearly and outsider) has been bit so
often by those assholes, even something as awesome as their "Street View" is
facing idiotic copyright complaints.

And, personally, I believe they will all fail and technology will overtake. We
will not be paying for songs and movies, we'll be paying for comfortable
theaters with nice sound and live concert performances. And someone with a law
degree will have to find a real job.

~~~
andreyf
_What matters is the fundamental question if one can proclaim things like
music, literature and images as his property._

I believe the founders of the USA had this argument exactly, and this is what
they came up with:

 _The Congress shall have power [...] to promote the progress of science and
useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the
exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries._

 _Sigh_ I wish more people read it:
[http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.article...](http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html)

In response to your question: no.

------
dejb
>Without IP protection, the industries that have made our media our chief
cultural export would be economically unfeasible.

I guess the 'our' is supposed to be Americans. No chance that someone outside
the US might read the article or have views on the issue. There are actually
those who would argue that this 'chief cultural export' hasn't entirely been a
good thing but I guess they don't really count according to this article's
viewpoint.

------
astine
"My position is that it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior."

Violence is natural. It must be wrong to criminalize it.

------
Xlp-Thlplylp
The historical evidence contradicts Matt Maroon's assertion, conventionally
held by corporate intellectual monopolists, that copyrights "incent" [sic]
creativity. See Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine's Against Intellectual
Monopoly for a detailed discussion.

~~~
mattmaroon
Why sic? It's in dictionaries.

~~~
aston
As is "irregardless." Not that anyone should begrudge you the use of either
word.

~~~
mattmaroon
I didn't actually know that. I know incent was just put there because people
started using it widely, even before it was a word, but for some reason I like
that and not irregardless.

Maybe we should go one step further and start saying irregardlessly?

~~~
aston
I'm a big fan of saying whatever you want as long as people understand you.
Shakespeare made up stuff all the time, and people got it. Meanwhile, I can't
understand Steve Gillmor, even when he's using all one syllable words.

~~~
mattmaroon
Do I detect a fellow amateur etymologist?

------
randallsquared
"I don’t think our current copyright system is failing. I think that right now
it’s working incredibly well. iTunes is proof of that. Despite the fact that
anyone with an iPod could, with just a little effort, fill it with stolen
music, millions of people are paying to do so. Without the laws we have in
place, that would not happen."

Since you assert that people need not pay attention to the copyright laws
which are in place, how does it follow that they'd stop buying music if the
laws didn't exist? I would suggest that the success of the iTunes Store in the
face of various well-known sharing methods suggests that it can compete
without needing copyright law.

------
sgibat
The good thing is that even if, starting tomorrow, no one makes any more money
from recordings of music, music recordings will still exist. It may even
thrive -- music creators, the ones still doing it for fun, suddenly feel a
lifting of pressure to maximize or even create profit, and creativity shoots
through the roof. A diversity of aural culture previously unknown, spread
entirely by word of mouth and recommendation engines, dances mainstream, and
everyone is the better for it.

------
colortone
IP is a non-rival good. I take your idea, you still have it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalrous>

