
I have a bad feeling about this - llambda
http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-have-a-bad-feeling-about-this
======
redstripe
The BBC commissioned a study [1] that claims the Charles Dicken's brand brings
in about £280m/year to the UK's economy. This from a public domain "brand".
Meanwhile companies like Disney lobby for perpetual copyright to protect their
own interest at the cost of all the lost opportunities that will never exist.

I don't understand how politicians in the free enterprise countries,
especially American republicans with their distaste of market regulation,
could consider extremely long copyright protection to be a net benefit to the
market/country. Is Disney going to stop producing movies if their copyright
was only 20 years? Drug companies only receive 20 years protection and their
products are ridiculously expensive to produce yet they're still very viable
businesses.

I wish we could turn the argument against long copyrights to be one of the
damage they do to the economy.

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16914367>

~~~
edanm
Your mistake is thinking about brands like Charles Dickens and Disney. Of
_course_ they make money, and _of course_ they would continue producing work
if copyright was only 20 years.

What you have to think about is the author who is _not_ famous, but who makes
his living off of selling books. Not the millionaires, the ones with a regular
salary. They often sell old stories to short-story collections, for example,
for a few thousand dollars. If this happens often enough, they can continue
the life of book-writing. If not, we'll have less authors.

At the end of the day, if less money goes into writing books, we're going to
lose some authors who _won't be able to afford writing._ Some great authors
will also never be discovered, because they couldn't afford to keep writing
for long enough.

It's a balance, and I'm not saying that the balance is right at the moment.
But it's very disingenuous to say "Disney will still make movies", because
they're not the only ones around.

Note: I talk about books, but the same is true for indie bands, indie software
developers, etc.

~~~
ajuc
Do you really think it makes difference for a poor unknown author, whether he
has exclusive rights for his book for 20 or 70 years? He can still sell his
book after 20 years, after all. And regular people are not evil for the sake
of it, if they want to buy a book, they would prefer to buy it from author,
than from some opressive company.

BTW new economy makes it easy to extract value from the long tail. How much
does author earn on each book? 10 % of final price? Probably less.

With if he self-publish an e-book, he can earn 100% of the price. Think about
price difference for customer. Would you be more eager to buy book that is
1/10 the price? Would you be more eager to buy 21 years old book from author,
or from some huge distributor?

Cutting out the middle man is the way to support more content producers with
the same amount of customers. Copyright protects distributors, not producers.

Is it better for you to sell 10000 e-books, and know that for each book sold
10 more were pirated, or to sell 1000 e-books, and know nobody pirates them?
I'd prefer the former.

~~~
freshhawk
> 10 % of final price? Probably less

The only two people I know personally who have published books make more money
from the amazon affiliate link on their blog/website to their book than they
get from the publisher. I think it's standard to get 10% of the net per book
which works out to between 0% and 5% of final price depending on the
publisher.

------
feralchimp
> More jobs and businesses have been created by the decline of IBM than lost
> in Armonk.

Actually, IBM and its mainframes/midrange have continued to prosper along with
all of the newer growth markets in business computing. That's not just a
correction about IBM, it's fundamental to noticing that job growth in these
sectors was not "created by the decline of" anything. It was created by a huge
expansion in the total amount of computing value that businesses found needs
to consume in the marketplace.

 _When zero-sum your ideology is, 900 years-old you will not reach._

And not stray too far OT, but this is what I dislike about the "kill
hollywood" meme. There isn't anything inherently hollywood-killing about the
project of expanding the meaning of media production and delivery to include
new (and great!) films that aren't produced by traditional studios... _and
there probably shouldn't be._

------
twainer
Sorry, but this post is based on a false notion that intellectual property is
a beneficial crutch propping up only corporations and piggybacks on the idea
that destruction of entrenched interests is always regenerative. That second
point is likely so - but the battle isn't about finding new corporate captains
to pay creative individuals - it's about how not to pay creative individuals.

I find the irony very sad that we are supposed to move from an industrial to a
post-industrial knowledge-based economy - one presumably underpinned by the
ability and right of individuals to monetize their knowledge . . . but people
have had their free lunch and prefer it instead, perhaps as some salve.

I've said it 1000 times - if you don't like how corporations conduct their
business, set something up yourself and if you have a better solution, you'll
eventually find yourself a real market. The willy-nilly urge to destroy
intellectual property rights for individuals and corporations alike is nothing
more than a selfish catharsis - without any sense - neither common-sense, nor
business-sense, nor a sense of history. When you take power away, it hurts the
weakest first and the strongest last - all the while preserving the existing
power structure. That's not a smart solution for anything.

~~~
Helianthus
You're saying that we should play by the rules. Part of the game, though, is
that we can change the rules.

Intellectual property is more or less dead. This is not a willy-nilly urge,
nor a selfish catharsis. It's the outcome of a generation growing up with
instant access to their culture, and once such freedom is granted it is not
easily revoked.

~~~
twainer
Go ahead - look through all my comments I've written on IP. When you know what
I am saying, you'll know I am not saying one should play by the rules - I
never have in my life, that's for sure.

And yes - the current urge is selfish - as you point out it grows out of
having taken a freedom - not having worked to be 'granted' anything - and then
had that freedom 'revoked'.

There is always a greater good. I am 100% for us building one that benefits us
as individuals rather than corporate entities. But the desire to wipe out IP
does nothing to put economic power into the hands of creative individuals -
what it empowers by a much greater factor is consumption. Last I checked we
had enough of that as it was - and this is empty-calorie consumption that
flows upward to the new corporate entities that can withstand the pennies to
be made on it. It will never devolve power to the individual level.

A better system of IP exists - I have several detailed ideas of how it would
function - and it basically revolves around treating the work of corporations
differently from that of the individuals - separating ownership and
monetization. A system built like this could work as an opt-in model to
gradually replace current copyright - but it NEVER will without consumers
playing by the much fairer rules. Yes - there are still rules - no system
works without them.

If one can't meet the most basic burden of civil society by playing a game,
however new, by mutually accepted rules, then there is no recourse - is there?
And one can't, won't and shouldn't be taken seriously as a partner for change.

~~~
Helianthus
>And yes - the current urge is selfish - as you point out it grows out of
having taken a freedom - not having worked to be 'granted' anything - and then
had that freedom 'revoked'.

I suppose that is accurate as far as it goes, but labeling that "selfish"
seems to be a point of view connotation rather than a necessary one. That is
to say, whether or not a thing is a right or an overzealous demand is in the
eye of the beholder.

And I unequivocally support the right of people to their culture, and I'm part
of a world where that culture is increasingly free.

>But the desire to wipe out IP does nothing to put economic power into the
hands of creative individuals

_Exactly._ It removes economic concern from the art. No more rock stars
selected and groomed by the establishment; instead hard-working touring
musicians.

The fear that seems to drive any continuation of copyright seems to be that
artists will stop making art. The fear that seems to drive patents is similar;
that our engineers will stop building things.

You can never stop humans from constructing beautiful things! It's in our
nature!

I as an artist and an engineer _don't want my output to be property._

~~~
twainer
In my eyes, your take on things is very far from the live-and-let-live stance
that you appear to want to adopt. It's more like social engineering.

You continue to be free to do your art for free and without concern for
profit; in no way does someone else doing their art for profit affect your
ability to make your choice. So what gives you the right to champion something
that 'removes economic concern from the art'? How does your desire not to have
your output be property - totally your choice - square with your desire to
deny choice to others?

Another point oft-heard is that 'people won't stop making art' - which is a
selfish, parasitic argument if I have every heard one. For years I worked
producing independent musicians - you might not pay for art that you
experience, but I assure you someone does - there is no free lunch.

I have seen indie musicians burn tens of thousands trying to monetize their
art; have seen marriages and relationships end - and careers end. My point
here isn't about piracy - a much more important point is for consumers to
respect the work that goes into the content they consume. The art you consume
'freely' may appeal to your idealistic side, as though you are removing
commerce from art - but all you are actually doing is turning a blind eye to
the cost. There is always someone paying a price so that you might have it for
'free'.

Once upon a time, people grew their own foods, hunted them - people worked
with their hands -people had an intrinsic sense of the burden of production. I
think one bad side-effect of the internet is that it has removed people so far
from the means of production that they are incapable of appreciating the work
that goes into what appears in front of them.

I am not trying to be too pejorative, but it really is like a child who is
used to just stating their urge - whether for food, drink, or sleep - and
having a benevolent force [parents] provide those things on-demand.

We have fair-trade products from a to z and yet the work of artists isn't
worth .01. Really??

~~~
Helianthus
>In my eyes, your take on things is very far from the live-and-let-live stance
that you appear to want to adopt.

That's because I want to kill. I want to throw away copyright, I want those
musicians that sign up to work with greedy suits--not to cast aspersion on
your (former?) line of work which seems to be good-faith and productive--to
have to find other ways to express themselves, I want the systems that were
_once_ our best effort at promoting artistic expression to die.

I want these things dead because after they're dead the absurd but somehow
sometimes true accusations of "selling out" won't have any weight.

I _actually don't care_ that people will lose jobs because copyright is dead.

>I think one bad side-effect of the internet is that it has removed people so
far from the means of production that they are incapable of appreciating the
work that goes into what appears in front of them.

I think this is the most insightful sentence of your post. It attacks the
central barrier to removing copyright with a few swift words.

Thus I think it important to describe the manner in which I find that it
misses the mark. The Internet is bringing people into contact with the arts of
gardening, cooking, woodworking, electronics as never before.

Absurdly the disconnect between production of food and appreciation for food
has grown _so large_ that food production is looked at as an art--that is,
just another mode of human expression!

And I couldn't be happier about that. Appreciation of art is the act of
appreciating the work that goes into it.

\---

The problem, of course, is that our economic woes _far_ overshadow our
cultural ones. You speak from the side of "There is no free lunch," and we may
well be on a course where that is alarmingly and devastatingly true. If the
Euro collapses, if America can't afford to keep its carrier fleet's Pax
Americana running, it may turn out that the debate over copyright was not
important at all.

~~~
Helianthus
This is a test post to see if HN auto-downvotes old threads.

Edit: Huh. Well, someone downvoted that post ridiculously fast I guess.

------
SethMurphy
This artical is dead on. With this as motivation, we should all be more like
Stallman and un-marginalize his point of view. His point of view is also
mostly dead on, and always has been ... We can not let the mighty few rule the
majority, it is not the way the internet was envisioned to be, and we should
fight for it to remain as envisioned.

In response to tnicola, $10 a month, max, if I do not get that much out of an
internet service, it should be free. Unlike Stallman, I do believe in a bit of
capitalism, but a majority of freedom.

~~~
tnicola
And if I lived in the US, where my daily internet activity would be considered
a felony, I would consider it a grave injustice that I had to pay more than
companies' cost +10% for the internet service.

As it stands, I don't pay for the TV service, so I have no problem paying
going rates. (I'll let you deduct the rest and plead the 5th).

------
agentultra
The new technology will always replace the old despite the attempts to
safeguard the latter by those with vested interests. It happened to the
scribes when the printing press arrived; To the telegraph when the phone came
along; to radio, records, and even television. Big companies with a lot at
stake tried their best to prevent new technology from invading their markets
and putting them out of business.

The only one that I think is different is the development of the mobile phone
and tablet computers. These are devices that are sold with locks on them and
legislation that discourages tampering. I don't think we've seen this kind of
thing happen before and it sets a bad precedent. I've got a Kindle and I don't
really believe that I own it -- Amazon can remotely remove content from it and
brick it if they wanted to. I've got a phone that that has the capability to
spy on me. If I modify any of these devices to serve my interests I risk
"bricking" them and voiding any warranties that they came with.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but afaik that's a first for us.

------
anxrn
This, very much so.

"At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our
economy has been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not
the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies."

I would extrapolate this to progress in free societies at any given point in
history.

Oddly, this evokes a strange feeling of comfort in the inevitability of
disruption.

------
mathattack
Every business likes to buy from perfect competition and sell as a monopoly.
This keeps input prices low and output prices high. This model is so
profitable that companies bribe politicians to maintain it. Donating to a
SuperPAC is more cost effective than R and D and has anshoeter payback.

I see 2 ways of fighting this:

1) Civil disobedience - Pirate everything and share while willingly accepting
the consequences. 2) Shine lights on the evil doers. Support wiki leaks.
Publicize. Organize voting drives.

I have bills to pay so I support number two. Great social change requires
number 1.

~~~
rbanffy
> Great social change requires number 1.

Movie studios and the recording industry can, at best, delay the inevitable.
Artificial scarcities are against the laws of thermodynamics.

Of all the money these industries make, only the tiniest fraction of it goes
to the people who actually produced the good. Most of it is inefficiently
applied in side operations such as promoting sales, manufacturing the physical
support for the art, moving and storing it and selling it. All these
operations can be reduced to a download and, perhaps, a payment.

~~~
mathattack
Fair points though the Internet delivery model won't make advertising or sales
promortion go away. More efficient, yes, but not gone.

~~~
rbanffy
Any quantitative change of a couple orders of magnitude brings along a
qualitative change.

------
tnicola
Great post. But, like all good rebels, I do believe that the cooler heads will
prevail and that we will not have to surrender.

For the past year, I have been touting that the future of business is
benevolence. We are too smart and too savvy to be able to carry on
indefinitely in a malevolent way.

Google started it with the whole _don't be evil_ philosophy and whether or not
they are still following it, is largely irrelevant. It is, however,
infectious. Facebook is following suit and (I hope) it won't be long before we
all realize that the doze of benevolence will get you far. And by that I don't
mean philantropy.

1) Don't charge people more than you have to. Make money, by all means, even
get rich, but don't overcharge just bacause you don't have a lot of
competition.

2) Pay your employees well and create positive work environments. Happy people
remain working hard and make you more money at a nice and organic rate.

3) Loyalty is no longer a virtue of an employee. It is a privilege earned by
an employer. Don't be a DB and expect people to stick around and work hard for
your just cause you are putting bread on their families tables. That worked in
the 50's. Get on with the program.

4) Share the profits with your employees, share the innovation with your
customers and don't be afraid to try new things even if they appear to hurt
your bottom line. You will never know until you try it.

5) Vote for a party that will better the world, not the one that will serve
your selfish desires (I intentionally did not use a word _needs_ here. (This
is where I will exit on this one.)

I could go on. Perhaps I am naive in my thinking, but something (my gut) tells
me that if we are in Act III, the good will win in the end. Doesn't it always?

It's either that, or this rebel will need all the force I can get.

~~~
bo1024
> Vote for a party that will better the world, not the one that will serve
> your selfish desires

Good luck finding one of those.

More generally, it's like this. You can argue all day about "good" and "evil",
but what people respond to are incentives.

If you have a system in which businesses which do good and not evil are the
businesses that thrive, then people will create businesses which do good. If
your economic system rewards "evil" practices, that's what you're going to
get.

If you allow these "evil" companies to continue to _re-design_ the system to
reward patent trolling, snuffing out competitors with lawsuits, spying on
Internet users, etc etc etc etc etc, then -- you will get a system in which
the more that a company does these things, the more they thrive.

If your political system allows companies that thrive to pay to bend the rules
of the game in their favor, then they will not only continue to thrive but
actively _accelerate_ their success, to the detriment of the rest of the
world.

~~~
tnicola
> More generally, it's like this. You can argue all day about "good" and
> "evil", but what people respond to are incentives.

100% agree, but incentives and benevolence are not necessarily exclusive of
each other.

An acquaitance wrote a trillogy. She posted all three books on Amazon for a
standard price of 4.99 per e-book. She worked hard on this trillogy and deemed
that it was a fair price. She sold ~10 copies of each book a month and
generated revenue of $150.00 a month.

Then she made the first book free and dropped the price of second two books to
$2.99 each (minimum Amazon will allow). The next month she sold 10,000 copies
of second and third book generating a revenue of $60,000.

Had she stuck to her guns that she should get paid a fair price for all three
books, she would still be the starving artist indefinitely.

Benevolence will not come from a political system or from the top down. I
believe that it will come from the ground up. Because the revolution (much
like the rebels) are not organized, but they will hopefully sway the trends
for the better.

~~~
bo1024
I agree to a point, but I'm not so sure about this.

> Benevolence will not come from a political system or from the top down.

Here, you seem to be implying that incentives and benevolence _are_ exclusive.
The political (and economic) system can be set up so that it rewards
benevolence, or it can punish benevolence. To get more benevolence, I think we
must also work on changing the rules to encourage it. (As well as voting with
our wallets for benevolent companies/authors/etc.)

~~~
tnicola
> I think we must also work on changing the rules to encourage it.

You hit the nail on the head here. What I meant by not come from the top down,
I meant that it will come incrementally from the people who will reward it
with their support. It cannot be ordered, it has to be desired, recognized and
rewarded.

------
camwest
I think things like a serious implementation of the Laws of Identity
([http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Resources/PrivacybyDesign%20Book...](http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Resources/PrivacybyDesign%20Book-
ch14.pdf)) are one of the missing pieces in giving back control to the people.

It's funny because the biggest players lately (Zynga, Facebook, Google etc)
are building up these walled gardens like a bunch of wannabe imperialists.

Who exactly is leading the Rebel forces?

~~~
olefoo
Mozilla has good creds as a stalwart member of the Rebel Alliance and the work
on <https://browserid.org/> does in fact lay some of the needed groundwork for
a changing the ground of debate when it comes to identity on the internet.

That said. Corruption, like rust, never sleeps; and we must be careful to not
fall to the lure of the dark side ourselves.

~~~
eternalban
The relationship between the Empire, I mean, Google and Mozilla is disturbing
the force.

~~~
zanny
Reminds me of the Confederacy from the prequels.

Oh yeah, those are forbidden.

Regardless, the Republic and Confederacy were both toys of the Emperor, so I
guess Google and Firefox...

Ok I'll just leave.

Star Wars should be public domain though (the original 3 movies). Fuck
infinite copyright.

~~~
sukuriant
I have to disagree here. George Lucas is still alive, and he wrote it.

~~~
nitrogen
Why should copyright be tied to the life of the author (serious question)?
When I discuss copyright with friends I typically argue for a fixed copyright
term regardless of when the author dies. What are the arguments to the
contrary?

------
noibl
TL;DR: As I enter my twilight years, I know that Star Wars will continue to
comfort me long into my dotage.

raganwald: 50's nothing, get back in the game.

America: The Cold War is over. There is no Death Star to blow up. You can't
fight for freedom anymore. You can only create it.

\---

To be clear: I don't mean to ridicule the point of the post. Bad laws are bad.
But the status quo cannot last forever. It is a peculiar feature of the
current discourse around IP law that it is the so-called entrenched interests
(e.g. holders of large copyright portfolios) that are disrupting _us_ and the
way of life we hold to be normal, natural and good. It is our failure as a
populace to get over the shininess of our new technological toys and actively
build the futures we want, that allows these people to portray us as reckless
children in need of a firm hand.

Hackers are, by definition, exempt from this generalisation. We know the world
is messy. We like it that way. We want what doesn't exist yet, so we make it.
Vague appeals to stale, simplistic and belligerent pop culture allegory should
be beneath us.

~~~
Helianthus
That's a nice horse you have.

~~~
noibl
Feel free to say something that could actually be responded to whenever you
get bored with trolling.

~~~
Helianthus
Well, editing as response to a child comment makes this comment a useless
space.

Cheater :(.

------
dasil003
On a tangential note, I'm wary of relying on the job creation argument to
validate new technology. The reason being that new technology _can_ kill jobs.
Particularly as programmers, one of our main goals is to automate things that
previously required warm bodies. I don't feel guilty about this because I
would never want to do those jobs, but on the same token, not everyone wants
to be a programmer. And in the long term if we ever achieve AI then we're on
the path to making programmers obsolete as well, which is a bit scary on a
personal level (though I'm not really worried about this happening in my
lifetime). At a societal level this is not necessarily good or bad, it's just
the direction we are currently moving in. I do worry that our biology is not
well-suited to an automated environment, but there's nothing to do but
confront the problem when we come to it I guess.

~~~
acuozzo
> And in the long term if we ever achieve AI then we're on the path to making
> programmers obsolete as well ... At a societal level this is not necessarily
> good or bad, it's just the direction we are currently moving in.

I agree and I'd like to provoke further discussion on a related matter.
(Please note that I haven't yet decided whether or not I agree with the
following two statements.)

1\. Jobs don't matter as much in a GMI[1] system.

2\. Working doesn't have to be the focus of one's life.

I'd appreciate it if someone were to play devil's advocate.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guaranteed_minimum_income>

------
FourSquareToo
Don't worry. Once China and India have a sufficient manufacturing, services
and consumer base, I fully expect them to formally declare IP to be a nonsense
and an impediment to growth.

~~~
kayman
Exactly. GOod luck enforcing IP rules in China. Your only choice is to out-
innovate, not out-sue

~~~
alain94040
Actually your more likely choice is to copy
([http://blog.foundrs.com/2012/01/02/apple-vs-samsung-the-
trol...](http://blog.foundrs.com/2012/01/02/apple-vs-samsung-the-trolls-
win/)). We won't be necessarily better off in a world with no IP protection.

~~~
FourSquareToo
It's fascinating to imagine what the tech world might look like with no (or
radically different) IP laws. I doubt it would be anywhere near as simple as
the blog author makes out.

------
abecedarius
Good story, but the only sense in which the heroes are sure to win is that
whoever wins will be deemed the heroes.

------
rooshdi
I have a bad feeling too...but for different reasons. I fear society just
doesn't give a damn anymore. I fear all our warnings will steadily fall on
deaf ears and we will eventually become ostracized into oblivion. I fear
humanity will embrace a system which pushes profits before people, ego over
empathy, and lust above love. I fear elitists will eliminate innovation and
erase the integrity of the internet and information. I fear for our future,
but I have some hope in knowing their future fears us. Game on.

------
asynchronous13
Sadly, I'm more incline to think we're at the beginning of Act II.

------
CaptainDecisive
To continue the Star Wars analogy, the great thing about technological
advancement is that as sooner or later some unknown farm boy shows up out of
nowhere and bulls-eyes the fucking exhaust port and then, sha-boom, everything
changes. And the powers that be never see it coming.

Now please excuse me, I have a movie to watch.

------
RyanMcGreal
This is a beautiful, haunting essay brimming with sobering insights:

"At every point in the last forty years, wealth, health, and happiness in our
economy have been built on the freedom to disrupt the entrenched powers, not
the preservation of their rent-seeking monopolies."

------
draggnar
...that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should
be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this
we should do freely and generously. - Ben Franklin

------
rmk
Excellent article, but I found this paragraph unclear: " And that’s just how
they run politics. If you want to create the future, the possibility of
successfully navigating a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1. And I
noticed earlier, the electoral motivator has been damaged. It's impossible to
go to political innovation speed. "

------
chasingtheflow
"If you want to create the future, the possibility of successfully navigating
a patent minefield is approximately 3,720 to 1."

------
draegtun
_> > ... recall playing with punch cards in the 1960s ..._

And I recall still using/seeing them in the early 1980s here in UK!

They were still heavily used at that time in the Market Research industry for
recording data entry (of surveys). In fact the term _punching_ is still used
in the industry to this day in reference to data entry.

~~~
Erwin
They still are used, but just in a digital form. We interface with some
unnamed software that requires you to recode data into 80 columns, 12 possible
values per word (encoded as 12 usable bits within 2 8-bit bytes -- and only
one bit can be set per word).

That turns some fixed-width layout into 80-column groups, with e.g. the
requirement that the last 2 columns contain the card number, and the first 4
some record ID.

There isn't even any meta-data for that file, so someone out there must be
sitting connected to a mainframe and punching in what card 1, position 5-7
contains US State ID or somesuch, before running the cards.

~~~
draegtun
In the Market Research industry (here) this is still pretty much the _de-
facto_ standard for sending digital data between agencies!

This continues to remain unchanged by time because the leading Market Research
tool [1] still prefers to use data with 80 columns, 12 multiple values per col
(0-9, & and -) with optional multi cards (card numbers can be in any columns
and any length).

[1] Software is called _Quantum_. Originally developed in the 1970s !

------
knowtheory
I have only one question.

Who are the ewoks in this analogy?

~~~
meric
Anonymous? o.0 I've always seen them as being "script kiddies" but they are
always able to do more than I thought. Who knew they could free one of them
from a drug cartel?

------
shoham
But the focus is rarely on the inventors themselves. This is the hardest job
of all! Consumers tend to get what they want, and eat what they're given. If
we're not supporting "starving artists" what's the point in having a more open
copyright regime?

------
peterarmstrong
Update: This is now the newest post in the Uncensored ebook
(<http://leanpub.com/uncensored>) which we are producing to benefit the EFF.
Thanks Reg!

------
lists
There's also the problem that IP law is premised on what amounts to folk
psychology.

------
jarnix
I hate this kind of titles, unclear about what you're going to read, it looks
like Reddit but without the fun.

------
shingen
It's always curious when someone rails about a big government and its
encroachment on freedom. Then in the same statement, talks about the use of
big government to target specific companies to damage them instead.

As though you can really have your cake and eat it too when it comes to a big
government. Big enough to break up AT&T, regulate IBM and Intel and Microsoft
- big enough to take your freedom, silence your speech, regulate your
Internet. Good luck getting something that big and power hungry to not keep
getting bigger and more powerful and eventually wiping out your liberty. You
give a government system $7 trillion dollars to spend regulating and growing
itself, what do you think is going to happen? They're just going to be
selectively hands off? You think you can negotiate with that?

~~~
Kroem3r
There's nothing about the size of the government that limits or enhances it's
power to act in the best interest of its citizenry. (You've thrown a red
herring in there.) What we clearly see is that government's determination that
it's simply more efficient to deal with significant (read corporate) power
structures than feebly citizenly ones. This is where the limit comes from.

So perhaps I'm wrong: Perhaps a larger government is more able to engage with
diverse and fine-grained interests while a small government is more likely to
be trapped leveraging corporate power.

------
c3ouieu28763
You are wrong and I am 'insulted.' My name is C3pio- the descendant of the
famous - infamous Chinese poet. My model is chinese-american, duty lifetime
55+, similar environment.

Of course, I have worked for wall street, nuke plants and dot com or dot
boombs, but aint rich.

1.on the final rocketship ride the robot sacrifices himself in the position of
'rear gunner.' The death star is stopped.

2.diverse, strange discussion is helpful. 3.Confucious saying I meet three
class of persons: one I learn from as role model one I learn as ANTI-model, to
avoid his bad character one I learn from to be amused and just happy - that is
C3Pio

4.of course, my character is resurrected in the MATRIX

5.unlike the droids that lack COURAGE, COURAGE is the universal PROTOCOL. Call
it faith, hope, being a small bit player on the SHAKESPEAREAN stage of life.

Shame on you! Without your early pathetic experiences with phone MODEMS and
secretly reading '2600' and MEETING CAPTAIN CRUNCH at the germany rave you
would not be the DROID...errror MAN or human that you are.

My the BUDDHA be with you! and may you be re-incarnated as a small insect
flying droid. One that takes down the preadator drones. The battle of empire
continues.

afterword: thats to my Czech cousins. RUR - Rossum's Universal Robots. Many
think C3pio is talking in modem. WRONG again. He talks in protocol-hybrid-neo-
Czech.

