31 ms·

Arguably, the only reason you have to worry about the lawsuits is because of stupid IP laws in the first place though.

by jdjb 11y ago

dangrossman 11y ago
Is the argument that copyright law was a stupid idea, or that 18th century lawmakers were stupid not to consider the law's impact on the internet?
- Maken 11y ago
  The stupid thing is how 18th century's laws were updated on the 20th century.
- zanny 11y ago
  200 years ago when IP had volume costs associated with it, where there was no way for creator to interact with consumer, they were useful. Flawed, but served their purpose. Today, the purpose is lost, and the use is exploitative.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    The original purpose was to incentivize creative works, and the desirability of that hasn't really gone away. For example, Free software would be a lot further along if there could be a lucrative business model behind it. Enforcement is just utterly at odds with physics and at this point, the idea of "owning" control of bits in someone else's possession is incompatible with a free society.
    - tremon 11y ago
      Actually, it was "to promote science and the useful arts". Not all creative works.
      - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
        This (obviously biased) text has an entirely different take http://questioncopyright.org/promise http://questioncopyright.org/promise "The first copyright law was a censorship law. It was not about protecting the rights of authors, or encouraging them to produce new works. Authors' rights were in little danger in sixteenth-century England, and the recent arrival of the printing press (the world's first copying machine) was if anything energizing to writers. So energizing, in fact, that the English government grew concerned about too many works being produced, not too few. The new technology was making seditious reading material widely available for the first time, and the government urgently needed to control the flood of printed matter, censorship being as legitimate an administrative function then as building roads."
    - zanny 11y ago
      There are plenty of lucrative business models behind free software - look at anything from Red Hat, who uses support contracts to fund development, to Krita, which uses crowdfunding each year to fund full time development. And within that spectrum you have projects like Qt, which offers proprietary licensing to appease lawyers to fund development of what will soon be a fully open source toolkit. Gitlab is doing fine despite their platform being open source, too. At that, I agree that when you are offered a government enforced monopoly on information, that will be much easier to extort revenue from users with than trying to use one of these alternative means of funding development and profiting from information creative work. But like you said, its wholly imaginary and artificial.
- lmm 11y ago
  14 year copyright was reasonably sensible. Life+70 is stupid.
acdha 11y ago
This requires equating “stupid” with “all”. Once you recognize a concept of copyright, lawsuits are inevitable once you allow users to share files. All you need at that point is one copyright holder who believes – right or wrong – that you are in sufficiently zealous about protecting their content and, poof, lawsuit. This goes treble if you have money and the actual infringer is likely to be a broke college student in another country.
superuser2 11y ago
Copylefts only have teeth because of these "stupid" IP laws. Free Software would be nowhere without copyright. (Yes, you could redistribute binaries, but you could not compel the release of source code for derivatives.)
- wallacoloo 11y ago
  Very interesting point which I'm sure gets overlooked quite often. It seems even Richard Stallman is in favor of preserving the idea of copyright (albeit reducing its duration), which came as a bit of a surprise to me given his otherwise radical views: http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/could-free-software-exist-without-copyright-3568939/ http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/could-f...
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    Well one interesting thing about Stallman's "radical" views is that, unless I'm missing something, he doesn't actually advocate any kind of governmental action or laws to support his views (aside from shortening copyright duration as you mentioned). He wants people to voluntarily demand and require Free software; he never talks about having the government force it on people in any way. Now contrast this to many other people, including the people in favor of stronger IP law, who want the government to enact their views into law. Now what's really bad is that Stallman is the less pragmatic and realistic of these two camps, because he wants regular people to "see the light" and voluntarily subscribe to his views, which obviously isn't happening (he's been at this for 3 decades now, and while Free software has made traction for sure (e.g. Linux kernel in most smartphones and many other devices), users seem to have less real freedom than ever thanks to locked bootloaders, app stores, etc.). By contrast, the jerks who want to force more DMCA-style silliness and even lengthier (effectively perpetual) copyright terms are more realistic because their approach actually works: we have or are getting all these bad laws. This somehow reminds me of the quote by Shaw about all progress depending on the unreasonable man.
- zo1 11y ago
  I'd argue that you don't need the whole set of "IP laws" that are being complained-about, in order for free-software to function correctly. IP law has grown into a gigantic hydra monster.

Arguably, the only reason you have to worry about the lawsuits is because of stupid IP laws in the first place though.

by jdjb 11y ago

Arguably, the only reason you have to worry about the lawsuits is because of stupid IP laws in the first place though.

Is the argument that copyright law was a stupid idea, or that 18th century lawmakers were stupid not to consider the law's impact on the internet?

Maken 11y ago
The stupid thing is how 18th century's laws were updated on the 20th century.
zanny 11y ago
200 years ago when IP had volume costs associated with it, where there was no way for creator to interact with consumer, they were useful. Flawed, but served their purpose. Today, the purpose is lost, and the use is exploitative.
- mindslight 11y ago
  The original purpose was to incentivize creative works, and the desirability of that hasn't really gone away. For example, Free software would be a lot further along if there could be a lucrative business model behind it. Enforcement is just utterly at odds with physics and at this point, the idea of "owning" control of bits in someone else's possession is incompatible with a free society.
  - tremon 11y ago
    Actually, it was "to promote science and the useful arts". Not all creative works.
    - CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
      This (obviously biased) text has an entirely different take http://questioncopyright.org/promise http://questioncopyright.org/promise "The first copyright law was a censorship law. It was not about protecting the rights of authors, or encouraging them to produce new works. Authors' rights were in little danger in sixteenth-century England, and the recent arrival of the printing press (the world's first copying machine) was if anything energizing to writers. So energizing, in fact, that the English government grew concerned about too many works being produced, not too few. The new technology was making seditious reading material widely available for the first time, and the government urgently needed to control the flood of printed matter, censorship being as legitimate an administrative function then as building roads."
  - zanny 11y ago
    There are plenty of lucrative business models behind free software - look at anything from Red Hat, who uses support contracts to fund development, to Krita, which uses crowdfunding each year to fund full time development. And within that spectrum you have projects like Qt, which offers proprietary licensing to appease lawyers to fund development of what will soon be a fully open source toolkit. Gitlab is doing fine despite their platform being open source, too. At that, I agree that when you are offered a government enforced monopoly on information, that will be much easier to extort revenue from users with than trying to use one of these alternative means of funding development and profiting from information creative work. But like you said, its wholly imaginary and artificial.
lmm 11y ago
14 year copyright was reasonably sensible. Life+70 is stupid.

acdha 11y ago

This requires equating “stupid” with “all”. Once you recognize a concept of copyright, lawsuits are inevitable once you allow users to share files. All you need at that point is one copyright holder who believes – right or wrong – that you are in sufficiently zealous about protecting their content and, poof, lawsuit. This goes treble if you have money and the actual infringer is likely to be a broke college student in another country.

superuser2 11y ago

Copylefts only have teeth because of these "stupid" IP laws. Free Software would be nowhere without copyright. (Yes, you could redistribute binaries, but you could not compel the release of source code for derivatives.)

wallacoloo 11y ago
Very interesting point which I'm sure gets overlooked quite often. It seems even Richard Stallman is in favor of preserving the idea of copyright (albeit reducing its duration), which came as a bit of a surprise to me given his otherwise radical views: http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/could-free-software-exist-without-copyright-3568939/ http://www.computerworlduk.com/blogs/open-enterprise/could-f...
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  Well one interesting thing about Stallman's "radical" views is that, unless I'm missing something, he doesn't actually advocate any kind of governmental action or laws to support his views (aside from shortening copyright duration as you mentioned). He wants people to voluntarily demand and require Free software; he never talks about having the government force it on people in any way. Now contrast this to many other people, including the people in favor of stronger IP law, who want the government to enact their views into law. Now what's really bad is that Stallman is the less pragmatic and realistic of these two camps, because he wants regular people to "see the light" and voluntarily subscribe to his views, which obviously isn't happening (he's been at this for 3 decades now, and while Free software has made traction for sure (e.g. Linux kernel in most smartphones and many other devices), users seem to have less real freedom than ever thanks to locked bootloaders, app stores, etc.). By contrast, the jerks who want to force more DMCA-style silliness and even lengthier (effectively perpetual) copyright terms are more realistic because their approach actually works: we have or are getting all these bad laws. This somehow reminds me of the quote by Shaw about all progress depending on the unreasonable man.
zo1 11y ago
I'd argue that you don't need the whole set of "IP laws" that are being complained-about, in order for free-software to function correctly. IP law has grown into a gigantic hydra monster.