

What if copyright infringement were made completely impossible? - blasdel
http://www.marco.org/287081391

======
cschwarm
Short summery of his conclusion: People would use permissively licensed
content and commercial content publishers would die if they wouldn't adopt.

Well, I wouldn't be bet on that.

Maybe, the author of this piece would do so, and maybe quite a few others. But
some would switch to something completely different while the majority would
simply pay for the content -- just like they did before it was possible to
make illegal copies.

Free (whether in beer or speech) is not the only criterion for making buying
decisions.

~~~
unalone
Absolutely agreed. I wrote a series of posts regarding Capitol Records's suing
Vimeo yesterday that says something similar.
([http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/286389590/vimeo-sued-by-
capi...](http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/286389590/vimeo-sued-by-capitol-
records-over-lip-dubs) and [http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/286413219/amanda-
lyn-ferri-s...](http://marinich.tumblr.com/post/286413219/amanda-lyn-ferri-
star-of-the-original-lip-sync))

It's not even that people are sheep who're getting screwed over by record
companies. It's that, much as we may dislike them, record companies are
providing quite a lot of value, and they're doing their best to preserve the
value of the content they're providing, however flawed their approach may be.
While I don't think they're doing a service to musicians, the strategy
espoused here and by others — make music valueless and profit by other methods
— doesn't sit well with me at all. Even if it _is_ inevitable, and I'm still
not _entirely_ certain that it is, I think it would be a great loss if people
started seeing music as intrinsically worthless.

~~~
Retric
I view music as worthless. I don't download music off the net or listen to the
radio and I have never payed for music. If music cost a million dollars a song
or zero it would have no effect on my life at all.

So where is the loss? Do I miss out on bad poetry or meaningless
instrumentals? Simple patterns of sound? What?

PS: No I am not deaf, I just find music to be boring.

~~~
bioweek
That's funny, I feel that exact same way. No one has ever understood this view
point. I'm glad to know there's another like me out there. I always figured it
was just me.

I can appreciate music sometimes but I just can't imagine sitting down to
listen to music as a pastime... or paying for it.

~~~
unalone
Can you imagine people reading as a pastime? Or watching movies? Or watching
sports?

Music is a technical display wherein people each create something and, woven
together, it becomes a song. You can't imagine being riveted by five
instruments each weaving around one another, by the various techniques each
one employs, by the editing process required to create each sound? It's just
like watching fourteen people run a ball around on a field, but the movements
are planned ahead of time and the execution is key.

Maybe it's not your thing, but I'd hope you can at least understand the appeal
to other people.

------
mechanical_fish
_(I know this isn’t possible, but bear with me. It’s a “thought experiment”.)_

Theorizing too much about the impossible is a risky activity, like
deliberately practicing bad rhythm. You can train your mind to fall into
patterns of misguided thought. You can wind up being deathly afraid of shadows
that do not exist. Abstraction can be good for a while, like training wheels
on a bicycle, but try to respect the limits of your abstractions and spend a
healthy amount of your time in the real world.

I don't remember which lawyer -- might have been Lessig, might have been
Moglen -- made the obvious point that copyright law can't be adjudicated by
computer. Here are fifteen words taken from a copyrighted work:

 _In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people
very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move._

A computer can detect that these words are from a copyrighted work and censor
them. But it can't figure out that in this context -- a brief educational
example as part of an essay -- my use of these words is obviously a case of
fair use. That's for a judge to decide. Judges are not run by algorithms that
we know how to duplicate.

If quotations that matched previously copyrighted work were literally
"completely impossible" human thought would grind to a halt. Just read the
Spider Robinson short story, which will tell you everything you need to know
about this counterfactual, and then worry about something more subtle but
actually real, like the problem of corrupt judges, or selective enforcement of
unrealistic laws, or the fact that fair use could end up being so expensive to
defend that only rich people can exercise it without fear.

------
stse
I find it strange that copyright law is becoming more and more restrictive.
Before the Internet it was a lot harder to violate copyright laws and also one
had far less legitimate reasons to do so. I mean 10-15 years ago no one cared
about old movies still having copyright, because there was no way to
distribute or watch them in an effective way. Also there are "markets" today
where it's virtually impossible to violate copyright, one being playstation 3
games.

~~~
roc
It was still an issue. It just didn't affect the average person quite so much.

The industry still hated vcrs, xerox machines, libraries, radio, mix tapes,
etc. They still sued any time they could.

It was just impossible for them to identify the people copying cassettes,
taping concerts, swapping mix tapes, xeroxing a passage from a book, etc. And
when they did try to sue libraries to, say, try to block their lending VHS
tapes, the average person didn't take much notice.

~~~
Retric
They also lost a lot of important cases back then.

------
wglb
This has been thought about for quite some time: see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu>

------
rajat
The gist of this article seems to be that some copyright infringement is fine
and should be tolerated. Does this view hold for the GPL?

~~~
bediger
Indeed, some copyright infringement IS fine: casual whistling of a tune,
quoting passages of books for reviews, copying the cut and fit of stylish
trousers, things like that.

Since copyright is enforced by the state, for the purposes of advancement of
art and science, we have to draw a balance. "Copyright" isn't state-policed
money to be given to an "artist" and his/her/its heirs for ever. Copyright is
supposed to entice people to create more stuff, by allowing a small monopoly.

If and when that monopoly becomes too costly to society, the state gets to
revoke it. Like it or hate it, the GPL doesn't really have that kind of cost
to society. GPL'ed code is open for people to build on, to create with.

Beyond that, "GPL" is a license, not a copyright. Actions against entities
under the GPL are not really "copyright" suits, as I understand it, but rather
contract suits.

To sum up: you're hoping that people forget what purpose copyright has, and
you're hoping that people don't understand the difference between "copyright"
and "license".

~~~
blasdel
No, the GPL2 is a conditional copyright grant agreeing to waive some of the
standard "All Rights Reserved" terms provided that you meet its copyleft
terms.

It's not a contract, and hasn't been enforced that way -- _all GPL2 violations
are copyright infringement_ \-- you're distributing someone else's work
without their permission.

This is also why the AGPL is unenforceable bullshit (it attempts to restrain
your right to run the software, not just distribution), and why the GPL3 is
extremely questionable (restraining the system on which you distribute the
work).

~~~
bediger
You know what? You're correct: GPL suits have been copyright suits - but only
because the terms of the LICENSE have been violated. Apparently the SFLC (main
GPL litigator) hasn't done any of their suits under contract law. Perhaps the
overly strict (a.k.a. "draconian") copyright regime we suffer under allows
them to more easily win, or at least threaten for more damages.

However, GPL _is_ a license, and it does waive some of the "rights" that
usually get claimed, as long as you observe the terms of the license. In that
respect, it's identical to EULA's.

But the GPL doesn't do the "it's mine, all mine, my precious" sort of hoarding
that the usual licensing does, so I doubt that we'd ever see anyone busting
copyright because the GPL is used to create artifical scarities, or jury-rig
markets or the other stuff Big Media does with "all right reserved" copyright.

~~~
blasdel
The GPL2 is less restrictive than any EULA I've seen -- it only addresses
distribution, and only restricts things that standard "All Rights Reserved"
copyright would restrict anyway. It's purely a copyright license, and I
respect it for that, even if morons paste it into the "I accept" textarea in
their installer-builders.

The AGPL, _now that's a EULA_. It hits the trifecta of basic wrongheadedness,
poor implementation, and total unenforceability. The only thing it's missing
is the admonition against using it in a Nuclear facility or exporting it to
Libya.

