5 ms·

MIT Economist: Here's How Copyright Laws Impoverish Wikipedia

78 points by iProject 14y ago

SagelyGuru 14y ago
It is an obvious foregone conclusion that a copyrighted image is going to be used less than one that is in the public domain. Given the administrative hassles of getting a permission, not to mention having to make royalties payments, all ensure that this is the case. Surely, to stop people using the image or whatever is the very purpose of copyright in the first place? Where is the utility and novelty in 'research' like this?
- SilasX 14y ago
  What's more, you can't fairly assess the full effect unless you account for the usable content that exists out there and would not exist but for copyright laws. I know it's popular on sites like this one to act like copyright laws are strictly bad, that no work's creation ever depends on IP laws, etc., but an honest assessment would be that some works require IP to exist, while some do not. So, after creation, copyright hurts Wikipedia's ability to incorporate a work, while some works would not exist but for copyright. Which effect is more significant, and is that a net positive or negative for Wikipedia? Well, that would take real research. You know, the kind this economist didn't do.
  - true_religion 14y ago
    Saying something is a negative doesn't mean that it is in all counts bad. A common argument is that more creativity is restricted by copyright than is enabled by it. That makes copyright a poor trade off.
    - SilasX 14y ago
      How does that disagree with or add to what I just said?
      - true_religion 14y ago
        I agree with you.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  > Surely, to stop people using the image or whatever is the very purpose of copyright in the first place? I thought the purpose was to financially compensate the original creators of the image or whatever
  - slowpoke 14y ago
    Actually, the original intention was governmental censorship.
    - greyfade 14y ago
      And the excuse for keeping it is compensation of the original creators. Funny how lies work.
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago
      I've never heard of that; can you give a citation?
      - thaumasiotes 14y ago
        Wikipedia has an article on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law Best cite from that article to a more scholarly source appears to be to this book (http://www.amazon.com/Textbook-Intellectual-Property-Oxford-Texts/dp/0199263396/ http://www.amazon.com/Textbook-Intellectual-Property-Oxford-...), in which we can read: """ In most European countries the origins of copyright law lie in the efforts of government to regulate and control the output of printers [...] printing made it possible to have as many exact copies of a work as there were persons who wanted and could afford to buy them. This meant much more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information. While the state and church thought this was to be encouraged in many aspects [...], it also meant that undesirable content -- dissent and criticism of government and established religion, for example -- could circulate too quickly for their comfort. So, all over Europe, government established controls over printing, by requiring printers to have official licenses to be in business and produce books. These licenses typically gave the printer the exclusive right to print particular works for a fixed period of years, enabling him to prevent others from doing so during that period. """ This incarnation of copyright is pretty directly prohibited by the 1A's guarantee of freedom "of the press", but there seems to be agreement that that's what copyright was about when it was established.
- vibrunazo 14y ago
  You cannot say "but it's obvious" on a court a law when there's a lawyer in the other side being payed to to point you're wrong. I'm pretty sure the MAFIAA lobbyists will try to make a compelling case why it isn't obvious. So this might become useful when there's an IP reform bill circulating around.
- majormajor 14y ago
  "a copyrighted image is going to be used less than one that is in the public domain" That wasn't the conclusion. The conclusion was that images are worth more, in terms of updates and visits, to Wikipedia articles than text. This is still a conclusion that will doubtless have its share of people calling it obvious, but it's one I haven't seen quantified like this before. And in the case of baseball players in particular, in theory an image doesn't add nearly as much as their stats and team/championship information.
gmrple 14y ago
"But Nagaraj found was that the availability of public domain material dramatically improved the article's images. Before the digitization, players from between '44 and '64 had an average of .183 pictures on their articles. The '64 to '84 group had about .158 pictures. But after digitization, those numbers dramatically changed: there were 1.15 pictures on each of the older group's articles -- but only .667 in the new group. More recent players, covered by privately-owned parts of Baseball Digest, had half as many images on their pages as did old-timers." Should that be 0.0667?
john_horton 14y ago
A conceptually similar paper by another MIT economist looked at how the IP protection afforded to different genes at the time of sequencing affected follow-on research. Genens that were immediately in the public domain stimulated about about 20-30% more research/product development than comparable Celera-sequence genes that had IP protection. The paper is here: http://economics.mit.edu/files/6803 http://economics.mit.edu/files/6803
_delirium 14y ago
Another source of imbalance here is countries being stingy with their government-created works. You end up with a larger percentage of Wikipedia articles, and therefore also anything that draws from Wikipedia as a source, being illustrated by US-government-sourced photos than should otherwise be the case, since U.S. federal govt works are public domain. It's slowly changing in a few cases, though, with initiatives like: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv
- tommorris 14y ago
  Another example at the moment is the UK government are slowly opening up with the Open Government License. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:OGL https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:OGL
lubujackson 14y ago
So for one specific example where there was one data source partially copywritten, the open content was used and the copywritten information wasn't. Thus, sweeping conclusion about copyright law. And this is why economists are useless.
- rhizome 14y ago
  It's also why generalizations are awesome!
- derleth 14y ago
  > copywritten Copyrighted. It's about rights, specifically, the rights to copy and authorize copying.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Right != write
Dylan16807 14y ago
This isn't about copyright, really. Wikipedia has a faction that dislikes fair-use non-free images. This faction is largely political in nature. It's not about the actual laws.
- derleth 14y ago
  > Wikipedia has a faction that dislikes fair-use non-free images. ... because Wikipedia can be sued for using them, and fair use is a very, very bad thing to try and rely on in an actual court. 'Fair use' is whatever a judge says it is, which isn't something you can rely on going your way.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  It is about the laws. Fair use is a very restrictive use for copyrighted images - you can only use the if you transform them significantly in some way, reduce the image quality so that you don't reduce the value for the original owner, or use the in a not for profit medium as fair use tends to be more friendly to this sort of thing. None of these things are really viable for Wikipedia. Fair use is a necessary evil, but when they can replaced with a free image then that is what is done!
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    The problem is when images are replaced with nothing or with far inferior images. I agree that free should be prioritized when the two images are in the same ballpark of quality.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      It is indeed a problem, however the project has as one of it's five pillars that it is free content that anyone can access, use, modify or distribute. This means that if the image is restricted in such a way that others can't modify or distribute it, then it can't be used. Fair use is a legal doctrine that limits the rights of copyright holders, but it is very narrow. Essentially, to be "fair use", the usage must consider the purpose of the work, the nature of the work, the amount used and the effect using the work has on the market for the work. In essence, while fair use allows for free distribution, it also severely limits it. Fair use is thus controversial on Wikipedia, and while allowed is severely frowned upon.

78 points by iProject 14y ago

It is an obvious foregone conclusion that a copyrighted image is going to be used less than one that is in the public domain. Given the administrative hassles of getting a permission, not to mention having to make royalties payments, all ensure that this is the case. Surely, to stop people using the image or whatever is the very purpose of copyright in the first place? Where is the utility and novelty in 'research' like this?

SilasX 14y ago
What's more, you can't fairly assess the full effect unless you account for the usable content that exists out there and would not exist but for copyright laws. I know it's popular on sites like this one to act like copyright laws are strictly bad, that no work's creation ever depends on IP laws, etc., but an honest assessment would be that some works require IP to exist, while some do not. So, after creation, copyright hurts Wikipedia's ability to incorporate a work, while some works would not exist but for copyright. Which effect is more significant, and is that a net positive or negative for Wikipedia? Well, that would take real research. You know, the kind this economist didn't do.
- true_religion 14y ago
  Saying something is a negative doesn't mean that it is in all counts bad. A common argument is that more creativity is restricted by copyright than is enabled by it. That makes copyright a poor trade off.
  - SilasX 14y ago
    How does that disagree with or add to what I just said?
    - true_religion 14y ago
      I agree with you.
pavel_lishin 14y ago
> Surely, to stop people using the image or whatever is the very purpose of copyright in the first place? I thought the purpose was to financially compensate the original creators of the image or whatever
- slowpoke 14y ago
  Actually, the original intention was governmental censorship.
  - greyfade 14y ago
    And the excuse for keeping it is compensation of the original creators. Funny how lies work.
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    I've never heard of that; can you give a citation?
    - thaumasiotes 14y ago
      Wikipedia has an article on this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law Best cite from that article to a more scholarly source appears to be to this book (http://www.amazon.com/Textbook-Intellectual-Property-Oxford-Texts/dp/0199263396/ http://www.amazon.com/Textbook-Intellectual-Property-Oxford-...), in which we can read: """ In most European countries the origins of copyright law lie in the efforts of government to regulate and control the output of printers [...] printing made it possible to have as many exact copies of a work as there were persons who wanted and could afford to buy them. This meant much more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information. While the state and church thought this was to be encouraged in many aspects [...], it also meant that undesirable content -- dissent and criticism of government and established religion, for example -- could circulate too quickly for their comfort. So, all over Europe, government established controls over printing, by requiring printers to have official licenses to be in business and produce books. These licenses typically gave the printer the exclusive right to print particular works for a fixed period of years, enabling him to prevent others from doing so during that period. """ This incarnation of copyright is pretty directly prohibited by the 1A's guarantee of freedom "of the press", but there seems to be agreement that that's what copyright was about when it was established.
vibrunazo 14y ago
You cannot say "but it's obvious" on a court a law when there's a lawyer in the other side being payed to to point you're wrong. I'm pretty sure the MAFIAA lobbyists will try to make a compelling case why it isn't obvious. So this might become useful when there's an IP reform bill circulating around.
majormajor 14y ago
"a copyrighted image is going to be used less than one that is in the public domain" That wasn't the conclusion. The conclusion was that images are worth more, in terms of updates and visits, to Wikipedia articles than text. This is still a conclusion that will doubtless have its share of people calling it obvious, but it's one I haven't seen quantified like this before. And in the case of baseball players in particular, in theory an image doesn't add nearly as much as their stats and team/championship information.

gmrple 14y ago

"But Nagaraj found was that the availability of public domain material dramatically improved the article's images. Before the digitization, players from between '44 and '64 had an average of .183 pictures on their articles. The '64 to '84 group had about .158 pictures. But after digitization, those numbers dramatically changed: there were 1.15 pictures on each of the older group's articles -- but only .667 in the new group. More recent players, covered by privately-owned parts of Baseball Digest, had half as many images on their pages as did old-timers." Should that be 0.0667?

john_horton 14y ago

A conceptually similar paper by another MIT economist looked at how the IP protection afforded to different genes at the time of sequencing affected follow-on research. Genens that were immediately in the public domain stimulated about about 20-30% more research/product development than comparable Celera-sequence genes that had IP protection. The paper is here: http://economics.mit.edu/files/6803 http://economics.mit.edu/files/6803

_delirium 14y ago

Another source of imbalance here is countries being stingy with their government-created works. You end up with a larger percentage of Wikipedia articles, and therefore also anything that draws from Wikipedia as a source, being illustrated by US-government-sourced photos than should otherwise be the case, since U.S. federal govt works are public domain. It's slowly changing in a few cases, though, with initiatives like: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv

tommorris 14y ago
Another example at the moment is the UK government are slowly opening up with the Open Government License. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:OGL https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:OGL

lubujackson 14y ago

So for one specific example where there was one data source partially copywritten, the open content was used and the copywritten information wasn't. Thus, sweeping conclusion about copyright law. And this is why economists are useless.

rhizome 14y ago
It's also why generalizations are awesome!
derleth 14y ago
> copywritten Copyrighted. It's about rights, specifically, the rights to copy and authorize copying.
chris_wot 14y ago
Right != write

Dylan16807 14y ago

This isn't about copyright, really. Wikipedia has a faction that dislikes fair-use non-free images. This faction is largely political in nature. It's not about the actual laws.

derleth 14y ago
> Wikipedia has a faction that dislikes fair-use non-free images. ... because Wikipedia can be sued for using them, and fair use is a very, very bad thing to try and rely on in an actual court. 'Fair use' is whatever a judge says it is, which isn't something you can rely on going your way.
chris_wot 14y ago
It is about the laws. Fair use is a very restrictive use for copyrighted images - you can only use the if you transform them significantly in some way, reduce the image quality so that you don't reduce the value for the original owner, or use the in a not for profit medium as fair use tends to be more friendly to this sort of thing. None of these things are really viable for Wikipedia. Fair use is a necessary evil, but when they can replaced with a free image then that is what is done!
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  The problem is when images are replaced with nothing or with far inferior images. I agree that free should be prioritized when the two images are in the same ballpark of quality.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    It is indeed a problem, however the project has as one of it's five pillars that it is free content that anyone can access, use, modify or distribute. This means that if the image is restricted in such a way that others can't modify or distribute it, then it can't be used. Fair use is a legal doctrine that limits the rights of copyright holders, but it is very narrow. Essentially, to be "fair use", the usage must consider the purpose of the work, the nature of the work, the amount used and the effect using the work has on the market for the work. In essence, while fair use allows for free distribution, it also severely limits it. Fair use is thus controversial on Wikipedia, and while allowed is severely frowned upon.