
A Tipping Point Against The Copyright Monopoly Is A Lot Closer Than You Think - Lightning
http://torrentfreak.com/a-tipping-point-against-the-copyright-monopoly-regime-is-a-lot-closer-than-you-think-130804/
======
davidw
I favor reforming copyright, patents, and so on, but this article makes a
horrible case for it, and is so full of errors and sillyness that it's really
just bad propaganda, rather than a serious argument.

> failure of its industrial capacity in the mid-1970

Manufacturing continues to _grow_ in the US. What has declined are the number
of people employed in that sector, just as the number of farmers once
declined.

> United States can have effective trade sanctions against Cuba

40+ years of trade sanctions and who is still in power? I would not call that
effective.

And then the main part of the article, that if the Pirate Party gets 5% in
Germany, they're going to "start dismantling the atrocious copyright and
patent monopolies, worldwide."

I don't think so: Germans invent a lot of stuff too, write books, software,
compose music, make movies, and so on, and are not going to throw out
Intellectual Property as a means of promoting those activities, lock, stock,
and barrel.

Hopefully some reform of the system is possible, but to be effective, this
area of law is always going to be something of a messy compromise.

~~~
igravious
> Manufacturing continues to _grow_ in the US. What has declined are the
> number of people employed in that sector, just as the number of farmers once
> declined.

You equate one type of growth with success. Given that we are living through a
period of relatively high unemployment and social inequity in the US and
Europe the onus is on you to explain why you equate growth with success. Maybe
this type of growth isn't politically/economically/environmentally stable?

> 40+ years of trade sanctions and who is still in power? I would not call
> that effective.

Again, what is your measure? You seem to be measuring the wrong thing.For
example, with the current sanctions against Iran[1] the Office of Foreign
Assets Control[2] aims to do what? You claim it would be to effect political
change in Iran. Regime change. In what other context have we heard this
expression used? The Military overthrow of Saddam in Iraq. With this view
economic sanctions are used in lieu of military force. These sanctions seem to
hurt the average man, woman and child on the street however causing hardship
and misery. Saddam was still in power when we rolled in. Mugabe is. The
Ayatollahs in Iran are still going strong. Fidel appears to be handing power
over to Raúl. So by your reckoning they have been effective nowhere. So why
still use them? To me they look a lot like collective punishment.

> I don't think so: Germans invent a lot of stuff too, write books, software,
> compose music, make movies, and so on, and are not going to throw out
> Intellectual Property as a means of promoting those activities, lock, stock,
> and barrel.

Dismantle is perhaps too strong, too rhetorically strident. Reform would be
better, yes - you use the term yourself. Remember copyright has only been
around to a serious extent† since the Queen Anne statute[3] of 1710. Patents
are younger still. The tide has flowed one way so far, maybe it's time to flow
the other. The current state of affairs seems to favour the few of the
multitude.

> bad propaganda

These guys were elected to European Parliament, I know we all have a rather
dim view of politicians but somebody seems to be buying their PR. :)

\---

† Excluding a judgment in the 6th century in Celtic Brehon law enunciated
thus, “As to every Cow its Calf, so to every Book its Copy"

[1] [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/D...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/iran.pdf)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Contro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Control)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne)

~~~
rayiner
Before Queen Anne's statute of 1710, but after the printing press had been
introduced into England in the mid 1500's, printers in the country were
licensed by the Crown. So restrictions on copying have existed literally for
as long as it has been feasible to copy on a mass scale.

~~~
davidw
To add to what rayiner writes...

This mentions a "brevetto", or patent, being issued by the Republic of Venice
in 1474:

[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevetto](http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevetto)

The English version mentions that too:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent)

Also, from this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XKA8/?tag=dedasys-20](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XKA8/?tag=dedasys-20)

Talking about one of the first practical guides/manuals on how to do double-
entry accounting.

"Pacioli was given a ten-year copyright on the initial publication and in 1508
he petitioned the Venetian Senate for a twenty-year copyright on any reprint
of the original 1494 edition, which he was granted. This made him one of the
first writers to be granted literary copyright."

Highly interesting read, by the way, despite a dull sounding subject.

~~~
igravious
Thank you for those interesting links. I never thought to explore Renaissance
Italy's dabblings in this area even though it was a commercial/financial
powerhouse at the time. Thanks for the heads-up on "brevetti". Grazie mille.

------
nohuck13
Falkvinge must be a mainstream politician now. He's pandering to the base with
ad hominems while foregoing the opportunity to make an intellectual case :)

I want to try and understand.

On the WTO

"having moved ahead from that failure with disguising lopsided rent-seeking
schemes as “free trade agreements”. The first of these was the WTO"

He seems to think his audience will just know what this means. I admit I don't
have WTO objections filed away in my (libertarian-leaning) subconscious under
"obviously true, no need for explanation."

According to Wikipedia [1], objections include

"-Rich countries are able to maintain high import duties and quotas in certain
products, blocking imports from developing countries (e.g. clothing);

-The increase in non-tariff barriers such as anti-dumping measures allowed against developing countries;

-The maintenance of high protection of agriculture in developed countries while developing ones are pressed to open their markets;

-Many developing countries do not have the capacity to follow the negotiations and participate actively in the Uruguay Round"

These actually seems like quite legitimate political gripes to me, and they
fit with what I know.

There are also structural reasons people object to the neoliberal opening of
markets, in a big bang release [Martin Khor, 2]

"The problem in trade liberalisation is that a country can control how fast to
liberalise its imports (and thus increase the inflow of products) but cannot
determine by itself how fast its exports grow. Export growth partly depends on
the prices of the existing exported products (and developing countries have
suffered from serious declines in their tenns of trade) and also on having or
developing the infrastructure, human and enterprise capacity for new exports
(which is a longterm process and not easily achieved)."

So that's at least an interesting and intelligible set of claims that one can
debate with empirical evidence. I don't know what I conclude from them, but
its too bad the rhetoric tends to be so substance-free given how important it
is.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_World_Trade_Or...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_World_Trade_Organization)

[2]
[http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/davos2-cn.htm](http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/davos2-cn.htm)

Edit: formatting

------
rayiner
What sticks in my craw is Falkvinge's continually disingenuous use of the word
"monopoly." Owning and asserting a copyright does not make you a monopolist
any more than owning a beach house on the Oregon coast makes you one. All
property rights are monopolies. That does not mean owners of property rights
are monopolists. Concretely: nobody is preventing someone from producing the
next summer blockbuster and distributing it for free on BitTorrent, just as
nobody is preventing you from building a beach house on the Oregon coast and
letting anyone stay over.

I think there is zero potential for significantly eroding copyright rights,
and a bunch of young people who don't produce anything themselves certainly
won't be the impetus for change. At the most basic level, copyright strikes a
cord with people: if I make something, I should own it and be able to control
it. Young people are willing to play fast and loose with those property
rights, as they always have (cutting through people's yards, etc) but that
doesn't signal the impending downfall of property rights as a system.

~~~
pessimizer
If your owning a beach house in Oregon prevents me from building one just like
it in Hawaii, it's a monopoly too.

~~~
rayiner
You're quite welcome to make a movie "just like" Transformers 3. But that's
not what Falkvinge is advocating for. He's not advocating for your right to
"create" or "build". He's advocating "copying", "appropriating", "using" the
work of others without compensating them.

~~~
randallsquared
Copying is creation. It's certainly a lot less work than the creation of the
first copy was, but after a copy operation, there is indeed another movie just
like the first.

What the building of the first copy of Transformers 3 accomplished, and
building of the second copy does not, is delimiting of the type. This
confusion in the context of copyright between an item and its type is the
source of a lot of bendy arguments.

~~~
rayiner
That navel-gazing definition of "creation" that is practically useless. It's
indistinguishable from "use" in the digital context.

------
dnautics
The underestimation of political change in the US is one of the bigger errors.
There is shallow but bipartisan support for this - but the interesting dynamic
is that it's actually the 'hardcore activists' in both parties for an end to
IP in general.

Important political figures, too, have opined on the matter, for example
Richard Posner, a conservative/libertarian judge sitting fairly high on the
federal bench.

~~~
rayiner
Posner has not called for an end to IP, mind you. He's called for reducing
patent terms and narrowing the scope of patentability.

~~~
dnautics
he has openly speculated if IP is necessary at all (except for
pharmaceuticals)

------
benologist
Hopefully a tipping point against Falkvinge's endless rhetoric is closer than
I think.

------
chakalakasp
It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that the EU acts as a whole and thus can be
considered a single economy. A Cyprus Euro is not a German Euro. If Estonia
decides to throw away the Berne Convention and legally allow wholesale piracy,
the Germans ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H EU will happily throw them under the bus. Happy fun
time with America is worth a lot more than indulging some minor political
party's crazy sauce in some inconsequential EU state.

~~~
vidarh
Which is presumably why his article is talking about what it will take to
achieve majority support within the EU, and focusing on Germany as way of
increasing support on EU Commission level, rather than talking about
"indulging some minor political party's crazy sauce in some inconsequential EU
state".

~~~
chakalakasp
The thing is, Germany doesn't just manufacture things, they design them as
well. It seems unlikely to me that they would adopt a stance on IP that ran
counter to their own interests. Honestly, it's hard for me to read
TorrentFreak articles, because they always seem to come from the assumed
standpoint that normal people want IP to go away and that only oppressive
corporations with outdated and unfair business models want to keep it. This is
far from the truth.

------
iSnow
Well, there is currently zero chance of the Pirate Party winning seats in the
fall election in Germany and even less (yes I know) chance to become king-
maker.

~~~
junto
I wouldn't say that it is impossible. I'm witnessing a large advertising
campaign promoting the Piratenpartei in my part of Germany.

However, I do believe that Falkvinge is naive. Although his theory (I believe)
seems sound, his tipping point is way further away than he thinks.

The reality is that the tipping point lies with the younger generation. The
older generation are (in the main), a completely lost cause. They don't get it
and they don't want to. They have other concerns; support for their children,
jobs, health, pensions and social services.

The Piratenpartei need to have a multi-faceted offering to encourage more
older people to vote for them.

In the long term, the younger generation who have a concern and understanding
of privacy concerns are the key.

However, (and this is a really important point), the next generation AFTER
them won't get it. They will have grown up in a society where (for example)
privacy is not an natural right. They will be ingrained into a habit of
downloading via iTunes, Amazon and Google. They won't know any different. They
are embedded in their world of Facebook and iPhones. They only know a narrow
internet world, that is controlled by a few large corporations.

Therefore the Piratenpartei have a narrow window of time in which to lodge a
foot in the Bundestag. They need to gain enough popular support from the
generation who grew up in a world where (briefly) the pay walls didn't exist,
and things were free. The latter generation are quite possibly a lost cause.

~~~
VMG
> They need to gain enough popular support from the generation who grew up in
> a world where (briefly) the pay walls didn't exist, and things were free

You do understand that Facebook and Google ARE free, and they are because they
can show targeted ads?

> They are embedded in their world of Facebook and iPhones. They only know a
> narrow internet world, that is controlled by a few large corporations.

They seem to prefer this world to BBSes and Geocities. Who am I to tell them
what kind of internet they should use?

~~~
efdee
Who is to say they prefer it? I strongly doubt many of today's teenagers have
ever seen a BBS or Geocities site.

~~~
VMG
I don't remember them being outlawed. As far as I can tell, they aren't as
popular because the alternatives became more attractive.

------
curiouscats
I wish the turning point were close but I don't think it is. As other comments
note he doesn't make a good case for his claim.

I am surprised how little other countries have cared how easily the USA State
Department and Trade representatives have been able to dictate terms to their
politicians.

It seems to me for a tipping point to occur other countries have to punish
politicians for being toadies to the USA's dictates. Until that happens I
don't hold out much hope. I would love it for the USA to turn against the
copyright monopolists but I think they have bought a significant majority of
our politicians and we have shown no interest in throwing out the politicians
doing favors for those that have paid them well.

------
adventured
"Therefore, the United States cannot execute trade sanctions against Europe
without getting hurt more itself."

I kind of wish this argument were plausible, sadly it's not even remotely
accurate (as another post noted).

First, the US would apply leverage on an individual basis, rather than against
the whole of Europe or EU, and end up accomplishing the desired outcome by
fracturing unity.

Second, the US has the global reserve currency. It's a huge economic influence
multiplier while it lasts.

Third, the US depends a lot more on Mexico, Canada, Japan and China than it
does the European Union, across the board economically. The poor assumption
being made is that somehow the US and the EU trade with each other equally
(such that a sanction war would be based on total GDP), but that's not even
remotely true. China is the EU's biggest trading partner.

The US is still the world's largest manufacturer (not the largest exporter of
course). The US also can be completely independent in regards to natural
resources, which is something the European Union can't do any time soon
(requiring for example Russia's natural gas and oil).

Europe has no singular political command or currency. As such it's not
difficult for the US to separate it into pieces leverage wise. Germany is the
only major power in the EU that can afford to stand against the US
financially. If the Fed wants to it can tip France or Italy into recessions at
any time by applying pressure on their bonds, and the UK simply isn't going to
go against the US. Germany would have to take a risky balls on the table stand
and hope a lot of other nations joined them.

------
api
Worth a repost here:

[http://thetrichordist.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-
worse...](http://thetrichordist.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse-than-
the-old-boss-full-post/)

So far I haven't heard a good answer as to how artists, musicians, and other
creators will get paid in this new world.

Usually people just toss out buzzwords like "micropayments," which are "magic
happens here" answers, or are ignorant of the economics of the industry. That
talk explains it well.

~~~
davidgerard
The answer is "as badly as they were before". Most musicians never got paid,
ever; Lowery's articles are nostalgia of a no-longer privileged class for
their place in the old Stalinism.

~~~
api
I think his point is that in the past, most musicians never got paid. Now no
musicians ever get paid. We've traded a horrible, unequal, corrupt system for
compensating artists for _no_ system for compensating artists.

~~~
qu4z-2
"Compensate" always seems like an odd word to use for paying someone to do
what they presumably enjoy. To me "compensate" primarily means giving someone
money/something in exchange for loss or inconvenience you've caused them. Is
that not the meaning you're using?

Personally, I suggest "pay", as in " __no __system for paying artists ".

------
PhasmaFelis
He's probably wrong, but I hope he's not.

------
JohnHaugeland
I'm really tired of a warez organization using this site as its news broadcast
point, to be honest.

It's always nonsense, and we should be better than to humor this. We're the
people they steal from.

