
It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly - GBiT
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120102/16374417254/it-is-time-to-stop-pretending-to-endorse-copyright-monopoly.shtml
======
grellas
A few thoughts:

1\. I am against SOPA-style enforcement schemes as much as is anyone here at
HN - laws that impose potentially ruinous penalties based on vague standards
lacking all due process protections are laws that stink, however assessed, and
SOPA offers that and little more amidst a drama featuring shady lobbyists,
venal motives, and hordes of lawyers waiting in the wings to wreak havoc on
the core elements of the Internet and the public at large in order to promote
the interests of a narrow faction of copyright holders.

2\. It is not true, however, that the continued enforcement of copyright laws
in a hyper-connected world depends on having SOPA-style laws in effect. The
legitimate concerns bothering people about mass infringement on the web were
addressed years ago in the DMCA and its scheme of offering safe harbors to
those who upheld copyright while allowing for legal action against those who
didn't has been a reasonable solution to the difficult problem of how to curb
infringement when copying digital content is so easy. The SOPA-style laws are
clearly an attempted power grab by which content holders now seek to overreach
to get special advantages for themselves at the expense of everyone else. This
is wrong but it is not an inevitable part of maintaining copyright protection.
Indeed, it is not even a wise or prudent part of maintaining such protection,
as is evident from the reaction it has provoked. By framing his argument in
the way of claiming that it is, then, the author is setting up a straw-man
argument against which he can declaim (in effect, saying, "see, copyright is
culturally oppressive and can only exist as part of a regime that denies
people civil liberties and many other things they treasure" and it can be
nothing else than this - therefore, you either support copyright and its
inevitable accompanying oppression or you support civil liberties - this is a
false dichotomy).

3\. Copyright can easily be abused and that is why laws relating to it need to
be very carefully framed. That said, the protection it affords is an integral
part of our modern world and does protect creative effort to a significant
degree. Without copyright, I could take apart J.K Rowling's billion dollar
Harry Potter empire by simply republishing and selling all the works myself,
without compensation to Ms. Rowling. Without copyright, I could take Pixar's
Toy Story movies and characters and reproduce them for my profit at my whim.
Without copyright, I could take any company's source code and lift it for my
commercial use while leaving the company that spent millions developing it
without recourse. Without copyright, anything you or I write on our blogs, or
in books, or anywhere else, can freely be used by anybody, word-for-word, and
passed off as something having nothing to do with the author who in fact put
in the creative effort to compose it. This list of such consequences is long
and extends far beyond a narrow "content industry" composed of conglomerates -
it reaches down to everyday people who, knowingly or not, rely on copyright to
ensure that their creative work belongs to them and cannot be used
indiscriminately by others.

4\. There is, of course, a philosophical argument that all information ought
to be free and that its use and dissemination should not be restricted in any
way by any form of legal restriction. There is a case to be made for this
argument, one with which I would not agree but one which nonetheless can be
made in good faith as a goal of trying to achieve a better society. I do not
denigrate that argument even as I oppose it. It is undeniable, however, that a
society cast in this way would be radically different in terms of how it
treats intangible rights and I believe that most people would oppose those
changes. SOPA has whatever momentum it does have precisely because many people
do feel it is a problem that creative content can be copied at will and
without compensation in so many ways across the web. This gives a colorable
reason for why SOPA is needed and SOPA proponents exploit this widespread
feeling among the public, in effect, to try to put one over on people.

5\. In the U.S., copyright has deep roots and is seriously grounded in the
federal constitution and in congressional enabling legislation going back to
the nation's founding. While copyright acts dating back hundreds of years to
England were sometimes used as instruments of government oppression, that
can't be said of how such laws have been implemented and enforced in the U.S.
for over 200 years now. This fact is not changed by using loaded expressions
such as "cultural monopoly" to describe those laws. Yes, studios and
publishing houses have used the force of those laws to set up distribution
mechanisms that have often given them large slices of the profits from the
creative efforts of authors, filmmakers, etc. But that simply reflects the
fact that huge sums of capital were needed to set up and maintain such
distribution mechanisms and few could afford to take such steps independently
of a close group of large entities. This "monopoly," if you want to call it
that, is being broken up today because of the increased independence creative
people have with modern technology. Those creative people, though, want to
_profit_ from their efforts even as they shed the old constraints - they don't
want their works to become instant common property, usable and salable by all
without compensation to the original creator, simply because technology
enables easy copying.

6\. Therefore, it is possible to oppose SOPA and endorse copyright laws with
complete consistency. One can oppose overreach that leads to manifold evils
while protecting the core of something that is worthy of protection. I think
this article gets it all wrong on this score and therefore, while making some
good points, is flawed in its core premise.

~~~
bambax
> _Without copyright, I could take apart J.K Rowling's billion dollar Harry
> Potter empire by simply republishing and selling all the works myself,
> without compensation to Ms. Rowling._

She probably would have sold a few copies before you'd be able to do that; and
maybe you could produce a slightly modified version that would be better.

It's worth noting that some of the best works of mankind were produced when no
copyright was in place, so the argument that associates copyright protections
with content creation is weak at best.

It's also worth noting that the continuous extension of copyright protection
would effectively hamper creation. Derivative works are authored all the time.
Most of what Disney ever produced is derived from popular classics from the
18th / 19th centuries (I remember that in "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame", the
original author, Victor Hugo, isn't even credited).

I think it's wrong to frame the debate as "copyright versus no copyright at
all"; it would be more useful to discuss _copyright length_. But what has been
happening thus far is that copyright proponents have cried wolf, advocated for
longer and longer copyright protections, and stronger and meaner tools of
enforcement, AND IT WORKED.

And there we are, discussing SOPA, or having to live with HADOPI (crazy French
law voted last year).

It's only fair that reasonable people who think shorter copyright terms would
be desirable, and SOPA should never have been drafted, become less reasonable,
in order to be heard.

I think that's what "zero copyright" advocates are doing; and maybe they have
a case. Would a society with zero copyright be " _radically different_ "?
Let's see. Would " _most people oppose those changes_ "? Let's ask them!

We need to frighten the MPAA just as the MPAA has been frightening everyone.
"Stop pushing or lose it all" is a start.

~~~
route66
Just some comments:

> She probably would have sold a few copies before you'd be able to do that;
> and maybe you could produce a slightly modified version that would be
> better.

I don't even know what "better" means in the context of works of art. In any
case it's about money: You would see it justified to cash in on someone else's
work after she "sold some copies"? Also this remembers me of the common
practice of the ripoff: "hendrix' greatest solo's": not mentioning that they
were recorded by john doe .

> It's worth noting that some of the best works of mankind were produced when
> no copyright was in place, so the argument that associates copyright
> protections with content creation is weak at best.

It is not weak for that reason. Currently works which are commonly copyrighted
nowadays are reproduced very easily: lossless copying, printing, electronic
editing etc. Try that with the sistine chapel. You would have to clone the
Borgias first. Quoting is indeed very common in art but it does not compare to
copying. I think that the circumstances are not comparable.

> Derivative works are authored all the time.

Yes. See above. But selling Harry Potter with some changed scenes is a ripoff
and not a derivative work.

> Most of what Disney ever produced is derived from popular classics from the
> 18th / 19th centuries (I remember that in "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame", the
> original author, Victor Hugo, isn't even credited)

Completely agree. Disney is indeed fishy what concerns his copyrights based on
other's efforts. But honestly: when and why should you be able to cash in on
coffee mugs showing disney's rendering of the seven dwarfs?

~~~
Natsu
> But honestly: when and why should you be able to cash in on coffee mugs
> showing disney's rendering of the seven dwarfs?

When the copyright expires is both the when & why. Same as Disney did when
they cashed in on the original story by the Brothers Grimm.

Granted, I don't expect the copyright to expire any time soon when they can
retroactively extend it.

~~~
bediger
How about in the case of "better quality mugs"? Trivial examples can often
reveal important points, when examined closely. What if Disney Mugs, Inc, a
solely-owned subsidiary of Giant Immoral MegaCorp, made very poor quality
mugs, ones where the handles broke off? If you infringed copyright, and made
unbreakable mugs, lots of parents and children would be very grateful.

~~~
bambax
... or toys with less lead in them... ;-)

[http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/16/toys-product-safety-biz-
com...](http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/16/toys-product-safety-biz-commerce-
cx_wp_1216toxictoys_slide_9.html)

~~~
bediger
Sure, there's a million ways to make better quality or more desirable goods.
That's why the monopoly part of copyrights is undesirable from a consumer's
standpoint. Goods of lower quality command higher prices when they're
copyrighted or patented.

------
libraryatnight
"I reject and oppose this monopoly that was never for the creators, but always
for the distributors: a guild whose time is up and obsolete, and which has no
business trampling on our civil liberties."

I like this statement. This summarizes a decent portion of the anger generated
by the RIAA, the MPAA, and the U.S. Congress.

~~~
Zirro
This one is great as well:

"I sometimes hear the old guard say that there would be no culture if there
was no copyright monopoly. That is an outrageous insult to creators all over
the world today."

When someone makes that claim, they ignore the thousands upon thousands of
pieces of original music, film and pictures that artists, normal people, make
available for free to everyone on the Internet every day.

~~~
erichocean
It's true that creators won't stop creating.

What's not true is that we'll continue to get the exact same kinds of things
created. (Some of you may think that's a good thing.)

Take a feature film, for example. A film costs around $100 million to make,
and $20 million to market.

Without copyright, that film can be easily copied by Illegitimate Theater
Chain and then shown without paying the creator. Does anyone here think that
$100 million films will continue to be made and marketed under such a system?

I don't.

Maybe, as a society, we shouldn't care about $100 million dollar feature films
and maybe no one will be upset that they're no longer made in exchange for
having no copyright laws.

One thing is clear though: copyright is the legal mechanism that allows $100
million feature films to be made today, and without it, they won't be.

~~~
joenathan
One of the reasons certain things 'cost' so much to make is because when they
are made they are worth so much. Without copyright these thing surely wouldn't
make as much money as they now do, so to take your example of a movie, actors
would therefore not be paid as much and so on down the line.

So I think the question is should so much money be made from some of these
things?

Should for example actors and sports players be insanely rich while teachers
and other public servants make so little?

~~~
dissident
Also relevant is the increased availability of professional software for
film/music production, and advanced technologies for producing creative
content which are emerging.

How much is a Hollywood movie really going to cost to produce in five years?
(Ignoring inflated writing/acting expenses.)

~~~
joenathan
Great points.

The more I think about it, America would look very different if there was no
copyright. There wouldn't be the huge companies that we have today. For
example Disney has the sole rights to produce Mickey Mouse based products, but
if anyone anywhere could produce Mickey Mouse based products, then suddenly a
hole lot less money is streaming into Disney, and just take that effect and
multiply it out=no more mega corps.

It would change the face of commerce and to that effect even employment, you'd
probably have many more small businesses and a lot less "corporations".

In any case it would have very far reaching effects...

------
sounds
I am a creator. I create:

• original songs

• original movies

• original apps

• original documents, such as this post

I am my own distributor. In other words, I am a competitor to the outmoded
entrenched RIAA, MPAA, etc.

Because I am a competitor, and I am cutting the bottom out of their market by
doing my own internet-based distribution, they are frightened.

Rick Falkvinge and the religion, Kopimism, made my day. :)

~~~
tzs
Where do you get money?

~~~
sounds
That depends on which medium you're talking about.

Apps: that's my day job. It pays very well, thank you. But if SOPA passed, I'd
be hurting because the internet would change dramatically. I need a working,
open internet to be able to compete with large software development companies.

Music, Movies: I "moonlight" this. I'm sure there are tons of software guys
who are good at music, video, or a little of both. Live concerts pay enough to
make the whole pursuit enjoyable. They wouldn't pay the bills, which opens up
another can of worms -- I think our current society discriminates against many
forms of art, and disproportionately rewards the few that it does reward. This
is in line with the way our society frequently discriminates against women,
certain racial stereotypes and many cultures.

This post (and my other writing): I don't make money directly from it. But I
think everyone benefits from the free sharing of culture. SOPA can pry it from
my cold, dead fingers...

~~~
earbitscom
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this doesn't sound like a
competitive threat to the RIAA.

~~~
dredmorbius
Whether he's getting paid or not is immaterial.

If he finds sufficient reason to generate content, and that content competes
with that produced by the RIAA, he's creating a competitive threat.

It's tough to compete with free.

That's precisely what Google does with its services in competing against
Microsoft, because Google's revenue stream (ad sales) is unlinked from
Microsoft's (OEM / site / direct software sales).

------
Joakal
I would rather like governments to punish abusers of copyright if the intent
of it was to promote innovation and creativity.

Since there had not been any attempts to punish or reduce such
disproportionate abuses, there's no place for more copyright legislation until
that happens. And I'm not talking about people's perception of piracy. If I
have my grandmother's birthday video on Youtube automatically taken down, the
judge will ask, what damages did you suffer? Is law really asking for damages
for freely sharing memories?

It's a good catch-22 to kill free sharing. Lose the ability to share or force
people to sell their content in order to claim damages against companies
abusing DMCA.

Continuing to push it further will paint a view of the proponents having
draconian intents. Especially when such myopic legislation including
restricting Internet goes against the original aims of copyright; promoting
innovation and creativity.

------
michaelfeathers
I hesitate to post this, because I think current copyright law is ridiculous,
as is SOPA, and I love mash-ups and mix-culture, etc.

But.. the fact of the matter is that for music at least, I'm pretty sure that
without copyright in the early days, we would never have had the variety and
originality we've seen over the past 100 years or so. I remember an anecdote
about the Rolling Stones, that they only started writing originals when they
realized they could make money off of the publishing. I also notice that lots
of early church hymns and political songs were merely new sets of lyrics put
on the same melody over and over again. There was no incentive to make new
melodies, so people reused. It was a far cry from the diversity we see in
music today. People are pretty much forced to make something new all the time.

That said, I love artists like Girl Talk, etc. I just don't know where the
right line is.

~~~
icebraining
_I'm pretty sure that without copyright in the early days, we would never have
had the variety and originality we've seen over the past 100 years or so_

But that's not the question, is it? Conditions have changed, and hence we need
to evaluate if copyright still makes sense, regardless of whatever benefits it
brought in the past.

~~~
michaelfeathers
That's fair. I think we get too bent out of shape trying to figure out what is
right for all time.

------
CountHackulus
I do enjoy that this piece is so well written, gets all the points across
clearly and effectively.

------
yelsgib
A law is only a law if it is enforceable. Copyright is not enforceable since
every copyrighted object is a requirement on the government's resources, and
such objects are (basically) infinitely easy to create. Therefore, since the
government has finite resources, it is simple to create a system where it
cannot protect all (supposedly) copyrighted objects, namely one in which (#
objects)*(resources required to protect an object) > governmental resources.
It is a fundamentally unenforceable law and therefore not a law.

------
Tycho
People who want rid of copyright are people who want to kill the golden goose.
They look around at all the copyright enabled businesses that have generated
so much entertainment for them, and think 'You know what, I'd rather just have
all this stuff for free, now. I don't care if we don't get any more in the
future.'

------
nl
Does anyone have any (non circular) references for the whole "the French
tortured people to death for violating copyright on fabric patterns" story?

I cannot find anything about it anywhere (including searching Google Books).

~~~
Hari_Seldon
The link in TFA takes you to a torrent freak article that explains it all with
links

[http://torrentfreak.com/and-when-even-the-death-penalty-
does...](http://torrentfreak.com/and-when-even-the-death-penalty-doesnt-deter-
copying-what-then-110807/)

From the article:

"The King responded by introducing penalties for pirating these fabrics. Light
punishments at first, then gradually tougher. Towards the end, the penalty was
death by public torture, drawn out over several days. And it wasn’t just a few
poor sods who were made into public examples: sixteen thousand people, almost
entirely common folk, died by execution or in the violent clashes that
surrounded the monopoly."

original article in swedish (sources in the comments)
[http://falkvinge.net/2010/11/04/och-nar-dodsstraff-heller-
in...](http://falkvinge.net/2010/11/04/och-nar-dodsstraff-heller-inte-stoppar-
fildelning/)

~~~
nl
I found that, but the "links" in that article go to things like "breaking on
the wheel". There aren't actually any references for the story itself.

------
jstclair
Wouldn't eliminating of copyright render the GPL unenforceable? I'd imagine
you'd have to fall back to a BSD-style license, which (according to the FSF)
is less-free? [not agreeing or disagreeing].

~~~
Karellen
Pretty much all FLOSS licenses would be unenforceable. They only work at the
moment because copyright prevents works from being distributed without
permission, and the only permission you get for distributing such works is
through the FLOSS license. If you don't adhere to the license terms (e.g.
providing source, attributing authors, whatver...) you have no other way to
distribute without breaching copyright.

So BSD licenses would be just as pointless if there were no copyright.

------
gasull
tl;dr:

 _"General-purpose networked computers, free and anonymous speech, and
sustained civil liberties make it impossible to maintain this distribution
monopoly of digitizable information. As technical progress can't be legislated
against, basic civil liberties would have to go to maintain the crumbling
monopoly."_

------
PaulHoule
... it happens just a moment after the singularity

