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It Is Time To Stop Pretending To Endorse The Copyright Monopoly

171 points by GBiT 15y ago

libraryatnight 15y ago
"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 15y ago
  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.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    Exactly. Also, I always like to ask people making that claim how they explain the apparently miraculous existence of art before 1557 (or 1710, depending on whether you consider the Stationer's Charter or the Statute of Anne to be the first real instance of copyright law).
    - tzs 15y ago
      Wasn't art then mostly paid for by the Church, the government, or wealthy patrons?
      - viking 15y ago
        There are many types of art that was created in large quantities for fun or sale to the common man like beautifully painted furniture, tree carving, jewelry, painted rooms and paintings etc. I think it's a false dichotomy to classify art based on who funded it.
    - polshaw 15y ago
      I totally agree the copyright system is unhelpful to society, but i think it's fair to say that copying wasn't exactly practical in the 1500's. Personally I broadly approve of the 5 year term proposed by the pirate party.. it would still allow business to invest and get a return, but also allow information to be freely and openly shared with society within a reasonable time frame.
  - erichocean 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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 15y ago
        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 15y ago
        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...
  - billpatrianakos 15y ago
    There definitely is a lot of creating going on but how much of it is really worthwhile? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I can make a turkey by tracing my hand. Do you really want to see it though? A hundred or so years ago we had Picasso. Now we have LOLCats. I doubt people in the future will hold up our blogs, status updates, and pictures with funny captions as examples of the great achievements from the past. More art isn't necessarily a good thing. Turning up the noise in the signal to noise ratio never helps anyone. It's a fine line we're walking here. I don't want to defend the copyright lobby but I'm not ready to say all this new "art" is good for culture either.
    - Zirro 15y ago
      Saying that everything the common man is able to create today is "LOLCats" is just as bad as the "culture will die if we remove copyright"-argument. Good things, works of art, survive. Those LOLCats will still be there in the future, sure, and some people may even appreciate them. But for those who don't, filtering out the "simple" stuff shouldn't be an issue. The music I've been listening to all day has been produced by people who love what they're doing. They don't want your money. For them, it's enough that you take time and listen to their music. That's why they distribute it for free. And I can tell you that out of the things created by teenagers today, there are things I will appreciate just as much, or even more, in 50 years. That's more than enough to make them art to me.
      - billpatrianakos 15y ago
        You mention money. Why is it important that it's free? Is there something wrong with trying to be paid for your work? I don't totally agree that artists should be thought of in the same way entrepreneurs are. Saying that the person who wrote a song shouldn't be able to stop people from sharing it is like saying Samsung should be able to install iOS on a tablet and apple should find a different way to monetize their platform. And as for culture, well culture is created by all of us. You or I or the next guy may have good taste but that doesn't mean the majority do. So when this ridiculous amount of creation goes on that means there will be far more crap than gems and with so much crap to wade through eventually it'll be lost and Lolcats will be considered culture and it'll be a sad day for culture. I'd like to believe that good things survive, I really do but that seems too optimistic to me. The music you've discovered wont be considered part of the culture of the future. Lady Gaga will. That's just what happens when there's so much to choose from.
- gvb 15y ago
  But the copyright monopoly is given to the creators. Tell me, who holds the copyright to the book you are writing? The problem is that the distributors (formerly) had tremendous leverage over the creators because they controlled the distribution (access to paying customers). Through the monopoly of the distribution channels, they were able to coerce the creators to reassign or license at a pittance their copyrights to them. The "new media" (e.g. internet) is allowing direct distribution from the creator to the customer, squeezing out the "old guild" distributors. Disrupting the distribution monopoly of the "old guild" distributors is a Good Thing and is happening right now, and with the copyright monopoly still in place. Disposing of copyright entirely as advocated by the article would cause horrible "collateral damage" to creators.
  - vannevar 15y ago
    ...who holds the copyright to the book you are writing? This is not as simple a question as it sounds. Before digital distribution, owning the copyright on a book in a world with no publishers would have been pointless. So while a writer might be granted a copyright, it was nonetheless for the benefit of distributors. People don't need to be financially incentivized to create art, but they do need to be financially incentivized to invest in printing presses, shipping networks, and book stores.
- yuhong 15y ago
  Reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3284452 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3284452
CountHackulus 15y ago
I do enjoy that this piece is so well written, gets all the points across clearly and effectively.
sounds 15y ago
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 15y ago
  Where do you get money?
  - sounds 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this doesn't sound like a competitive threat to the RIAA.
      - dredmorbius 15y ago
        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).
michaelfeathers 15y ago
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.
- econlaws 15y ago
  There was an awful lot of great variety and originality in music in the few centuries before music copyright was enforced as strongly as it is today. Mozart, among others, did make a lot of derivative music but much of that was (and still is) earth-shatteringly fantastic, like most art (and code for that matter) that builds on existing work. Popular music would survive very well with much reduced copyright laws in the same way that fashion survives today. Jungle -> Drum and Bass -> Grime -> Dubstep, no one wants to listen to the previous trend - pay for access to the latest, pay for it as it comes out, pay for concerts and live events - there are lots of models that would leave music thriving if publishing rights went away tomorrow.
- icebraining 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    That's fair. I think we get too bent out of shape trying to figure out what is right for all time.
Joakal 15y ago
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.
grellas 15y ago
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.
nl 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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-doesnt-deter-copying-what-then-110807/ http://torrentfreak.com/and-when-even-the-death-penalty-does... 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-inte-stoppar-fildelning/ http://falkvinge.net/2010/11/04/och-nar-dodsstraff-heller-in...
  - nl 15y ago
    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.
PaulHoule 15y ago
... it happens just a moment after the singularity
yelsgib 15y ago
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.
gasull 15y ago
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."
jstclair 15y ago
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].
- Natsu 15y ago
  It was written to turn copyright on its head. While it's true that eliminating it would weaken the GPL, it would also be less necessary, because freedom would be the default. That said, I think RMS wrote an essay talking about why certain 'reforms' could be dangerous, in that we might end up with a weaker GPL but little else to show for it. I can't remember it clearly enough to find a citation for that right now, though.
- Karellen 15y ago
  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.
Tycho 15y ago
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.'

171 points by GBiT 15y ago

"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 15y ago
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.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  Exactly. Also, I always like to ask people making that claim how they explain the apparently miraculous existence of art before 1557 (or 1710, depending on whether you consider the Stationer's Charter or the Statute of Anne to be the first real instance of copyright law).
  - tzs 15y ago
    Wasn't art then mostly paid for by the Church, the government, or wealthy patrons?
    - viking 15y ago
      There are many types of art that was created in large quantities for fun or sale to the common man like beautifully painted furniture, tree carving, jewelry, painted rooms and paintings etc. I think it's a false dichotomy to classify art based on who funded it.
  - polshaw 15y ago
    I totally agree the copyright system is unhelpful to society, but i think it's fair to say that copying wasn't exactly practical in the 1500's. Personally I broadly approve of the 5 year term proposed by the pirate party.. it would still allow business to invest and get a return, but also allow information to be freely and openly shared with society within a reasonable time frame.
- erichocean 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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 15y ago
      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 15y ago
        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...
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  There definitely is a lot of creating going on but how much of it is really worthwhile? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I can make a turkey by tracing my hand. Do you really want to see it though? A hundred or so years ago we had Picasso. Now we have LOLCats. I doubt people in the future will hold up our blogs, status updates, and pictures with funny captions as examples of the great achievements from the past. More art isn't necessarily a good thing. Turning up the noise in the signal to noise ratio never helps anyone. It's a fine line we're walking here. I don't want to defend the copyright lobby but I'm not ready to say all this new "art" is good for culture either.
  - Zirro 15y ago
    Saying that everything the common man is able to create today is "LOLCats" is just as bad as the "culture will die if we remove copyright"-argument. Good things, works of art, survive. Those LOLCats will still be there in the future, sure, and some people may even appreciate them. But for those who don't, filtering out the "simple" stuff shouldn't be an issue. The music I've been listening to all day has been produced by people who love what they're doing. They don't want your money. For them, it's enough that you take time and listen to their music. That's why they distribute it for free. And I can tell you that out of the things created by teenagers today, there are things I will appreciate just as much, or even more, in 50 years. That's more than enough to make them art to me.
    - billpatrianakos 15y ago
      You mention money. Why is it important that it's free? Is there something wrong with trying to be paid for your work? I don't totally agree that artists should be thought of in the same way entrepreneurs are. Saying that the person who wrote a song shouldn't be able to stop people from sharing it is like saying Samsung should be able to install iOS on a tablet and apple should find a different way to monetize their platform. And as for culture, well culture is created by all of us. You or I or the next guy may have good taste but that doesn't mean the majority do. So when this ridiculous amount of creation goes on that means there will be far more crap than gems and with so much crap to wade through eventually it'll be lost and Lolcats will be considered culture and it'll be a sad day for culture. I'd like to believe that good things survive, I really do but that seems too optimistic to me. The music you've discovered wont be considered part of the culture of the future. Lady Gaga will. That's just what happens when there's so much to choose from.
gvb 15y ago
But the copyright monopoly is given to the creators. Tell me, who holds the copyright to the book you are writing? The problem is that the distributors (formerly) had tremendous leverage over the creators because they controlled the distribution (access to paying customers). Through the monopoly of the distribution channels, they were able to coerce the creators to reassign or license at a pittance their copyrights to them. The "new media" (e.g. internet) is allowing direct distribution from the creator to the customer, squeezing out the "old guild" distributors. Disrupting the distribution monopoly of the "old guild" distributors is a Good Thing and is happening right now, and with the copyright monopoly still in place. Disposing of copyright entirely as advocated by the article would cause horrible "collateral damage" to creators.
- vannevar 15y ago
  ...who holds the copyright to the book you are writing? This is not as simple a question as it sounds. Before digital distribution, owning the copyright on a book in a world with no publishers would have been pointless. So while a writer might be granted a copyright, it was nonetheless for the benefit of distributors. People don't need to be financially incentivized to create art, but they do need to be financially incentivized to invest in printing presses, shipping networks, and book stores.
yuhong 15y ago
Reminds me of this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3284452 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3284452

CountHackulus 15y ago

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

sounds 15y ago

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 15y ago
Where do you get money?
- sounds 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    I'm going to go out on a limb here and say this doesn't sound like a competitive threat to the RIAA.
    - dredmorbius 15y ago
      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).

michaelfeathers 15y ago

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.

econlaws 15y ago
There was an awful lot of great variety and originality in music in the few centuries before music copyright was enforced as strongly as it is today. Mozart, among others, did make a lot of derivative music but much of that was (and still is) earth-shatteringly fantastic, like most art (and code for that matter) that builds on existing work. Popular music would survive very well with much reduced copyright laws in the same way that fashion survives today. Jungle -> Drum and Bass -> Grime -> Dubstep, no one wants to listen to the previous trend - pay for access to the latest, pay for it as it comes out, pay for concerts and live events - there are lots of models that would leave music thriving if publishing rights went away tomorrow.
icebraining 15y ago
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 15y ago
  That's fair. I think we get too bent out of shape trying to figure out what is right for all time.

Joakal 15y ago

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.

grellas 15y ago

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.

nl 15y ago

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 15y ago
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-doesnt-deter-copying-what-then-110807/ http://torrentfreak.com/and-when-even-the-death-penalty-does... 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-inte-stoppar-fildelning/ http://falkvinge.net/2010/11/04/och-nar-dodsstraff-heller-in...
- nl 15y ago
  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.

PaulHoule 15y ago

... it happens just a moment after the singularity

yelsgib 15y ago

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.

gasull 15y ago

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."

jstclair 15y ago

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].

Natsu 15y ago
It was written to turn copyright on its head. While it's true that eliminating it would weaken the GPL, it would also be less necessary, because freedom would be the default. That said, I think RMS wrote an essay talking about why certain 'reforms' could be dangerous, in that we might end up with a weaker GPL but little else to show for it. I can't remember it clearly enough to find a citation for that right now, though.
Karellen 15y ago
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.

Tycho 15y ago

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.'