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This is a phenomenal book. I recommend that you buy it, but if you don't want to, the authors, being consistent, have made it available for download.
And to pre-empt the obvious question of "What's to stop me from putting my name on Ender's Game and selling it as my own if there are no copyright laws?", Here is a reply to that.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I scanned the second chapter. They seem to argue that software patents are bad. I tend to agree.
But copyright is not bad. Preemptive copyright enforcement tends to be bad, and the industry is already recognizing it. Itunes is now DRM free, remember?
The response to "what if there were no copyright laws" seems downright dumb, though. here:
quote:Ignoring the future consequences regarding music production - it is certain that from a social point of view what I did made society better off. It made me better off - I have access to music I didn't have before - and nobody is worse off. They copyright holder might not be able to sell me music in the future - but that is just a transfer payment from me to him - it has no social consequence.
Sure, let's ignore "the future consequences regarding music production." The entire reason for copyright. So ignoring that, well obviously copyright is pointless!
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quote:Originally posted by Mike: Sure the rubuttal is lame, but no, music production is not the entire reason for copyright.
Mike, I consider the sole purpose of copyright to be to provide incentive for innovation. When the author refers to "the future consequences regarding music production" he is referring to that purpose. I am saying that incentive purpose is the entire reason for copyright, not "music production."
What other purposes are there, from your perspective?
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How exactly do you see copyright to be an incentive for innovation?
In the book, they go through example after example of things that can be copyrighted now that couldn't before, and there's never been a case of innovation increasing following a grant of copyright.
I thought of copyright the same way as you, but that was theory, and the facts on the ground seem to say otherwise.
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Copyright law in the US is seriously broken. It's too much like permanent income guarantees for large rights holders.
But the core concept is still useful and important.
Let's push to scale back copyright to 20 or 30 years, period. Plenty of time to realize benefit from your creations. Let's say someone writes a song and gets royalties for 20 years, at the end of the 20 years they have incentive to write something new.
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To elaborate, what they demonstrate in the book is that the lack of intellectual monopoly (patents, copyrights) creates an environment of intense competition and innovation. It's only after this innovation has enriched people that those people decide to prevent further innovation on the part of others by means of patents or copyrights. It's a way of protecting what they've amassed so that they don't have to innovate any more.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Copyright law in the US is seriously broken. It's too much like permanent income guarantees for large rights holders.
But the core concept is still useful and important.
Why? I ask in all seriousness. I've heard the claim that intellectual monopoly encourages innovation (or at least stops innovation from being discouraged). Rather than repeat the claim, can you point to a case where this has happened? That book cites many, many, many cases where it demonstrably did not happen.
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Let's push to scale back copyright to 20 or 30 years, period. Plenty of time to realize benefit from your creations. Let's say someone writes a song and gets royalties for 20 years, at the end of the 20 years they have incentive to write something new.
Edit: And if you do that, the same thing will happen. Those who make a lot of money because of that monopoly will use part of that money to convince legislators to increase the copyright period.
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Lisa, I just look at it in terms of common sense. Right now, corporations have an incentive to invest millions of dollars into video game production. If they could only ever sell the first copy without competition, that incentive would disappear - anyone could make a copy and undercut my price, or give it away for free. Human beings aren't altruistic enough to make sure the game maker gets paid back for its investment.
Open source / copyleft IS an alternative to copyright, and it works great, for some things. (Software patents discourage this kind of thing: you can't make OpenOffice if the concept of "word processor" is patented. This is bad, I agree.) It simply would never work for things like big budget movies or big video game titles. Those things need copyright protection, or they wouldn't exist. We'd get some great stuff, still, just not the same kinds of stuff we can get now, requiring large investment. (I know you enjoy many of those movies and TV shows that depend on copyright.)
One way of looking at it as this: how much investment in creativity, in art forms that permit easy duplication, exists in countries that have no copyright protection?
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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How would you argue that patents and such do NOT breed innovation?
Why would GlaxoKlineSmith spend two billion dollars to research a life saving drug if as soon as it is invented everyone else can jump in and sell the same pill with no research costs at a penny a pill? They need to be able to recoup those losses, both so they can research the NEXT life saving drug, and because if they didn't have that protection, they never would have done the research to begin with.
I admit that there are problems with innovation after some things have been patented, and that protections make it hard for others to take and improve on those inventions, but at the same time, I can think of a lot of things that were invented and then improved upon by someone else. Look at the innovations that have come about in wind turbine design if you want something more modern.
But the crux of the argument, which I think would be common sense, is that nothing that come after really matters if the initial discovery is never made. Thomas Edison wouldn't have spent as much time doing dedicated research in Menlo Park if he knew he was just doing it out of the kindness of his own heart and that he wouldn't be able to profit from it. He wouldn't have had the money to hire anyone to help him.
I think the same argument could sort of be made for music. It's harder because technology has allowed high quality musical productions to be made at a relatively low cost, and the internet allows for distribution that bypasses any sort of production and delivery that music used to need, and for that matter, they don't really need the same advertising dollars since new things spread by word of mouth often times faster than through commercials. But a lot of people are never going to be "discovered" unless it happens by agents from music companies, and if those companies aren't making a certain amount of money to recoup investments in old acts, then they won't spend the money to look for new people, so those new people suffer, and they suffer when no one buys their album because it's all being downloaded for free.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I've heard the claim that intellectual monopoly encourages innovation (or at least stops innovation from being discouraged). Rather than repeat the claim, can you point to a case where this has happened?
Gah. Both of you, scifibum and Lyrhawn, resorted to making the same claim without any evidence whatsoever. Yes, I know the argument. I thought it made sense as well. But counter-intuitive as it may be to you, that's not what the reality shows to happen. Theory is lovely, but reality trumps it every time. Particularly when reality contradicts it every time, which it does.
"How would you argue that patents and such do NOT breed innovation?"
The simplest argument possible. They don't. Demonstrably. The book is free, Lyrhawn. It has copious footnotes and citations. And they aren't terse. Look at the evidence.
No, there isn't any economic model that shows this to be the case. It's obviously counter-intuitive, given the premises that I think most of us in this society share. It's counter-intuitive to me. But being counter-intuitive doesn't make it any less true.
Here's a scientific example that I pulled out of the Wikipedia article on Counter-intuitive:
quote:Another counterintuitive scientific idea concerns space travel: it was initially believed that highly streamlined shapes would be best for re-entering the earth's atmosphere. In fact, experiments showed that blunt-shaped re-entry bodies make the most efficient heat shields when returning to earth from space.
The initial belief makes perfect sense to me. Doesn't it make sense to you? I'd think that the more surface area you have hitting the atmosphere, the worse the friction, so make pointy noses on re-entry vehicles. Clearly, a lot of scientists thought that as well. But experimental evidence showed it not to be the case.
You can't argue with reality, guys. It wins every time.
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High doubts, hmm? Well, I have the book in hardcover about 10 feet from where I'm typing this (in the bathroom), and I think I represented what they say fairly accurately.
And to answer your question, not that it matters, since, again, theory isn't the issue, but have you heard of Linux? SourceForge? OpenOffice? The entire open source software movement? Creative Commons has worked within the framework of existing copyright laws, but the fact that so many people choose to waive copyright protection for significant portions of work they've put a great deal of time -- and sometimes expense -- into provides yet more examples.
The first person to put a good innovation out there always has an edge over the competition. Coca Cola hasn't patented their formula, but I don't believe that's hurt them a bit. Back when they announced "New Coke", another soft drink company (I think it was Canfields) was about to release a new cola that tasted just like Coke had before the change. The only reason they didn't was that Coke released Coke Classic. But even if they had, they never would have had the name recognition and reputation of Coca Cola.
Do you think Microsoft gained the enormous market share they have by means of copyright protection? On the contrary; for the first several iterations of Windows, they included next to no protection against copying, and made zero effort to prevent copying. As a result, the Windows operating system spread like wildfire. There's no way Windows could have spread as quickly as it has without the early piracy.
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Lisa, piracy might have had some benefit to Microsoft, I don't really care either way, but that is not the same outcome that would have occurred if copyright didn't exist. Rather, no one would have bought the software.
Lack of physical impediments to copying is not the same as "copyright protection."
OpenOffice might have existed without Microsoft Office, but maybe not. Someone did all the R&D to figure out how to make an office productivity suite, OpenOffice mainly imitated work that was done for profit.
But I already acknowledged that open source / copyleft works for some things.
Explain how "Saving Private Ryan" gets made without any assurance of copyright protection. That's a lot of capital outlay in a short period of time, as opposed to volunteer labor over a long period of time.
Explain how OSC finds time to write his books when he has no assurance that he gets any compensation for it.
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Copyrights belonging to individuals (writers, artists, musicians, etc.) should be for life. Copyrights belonging to corporations should be for 15 years.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Lisa, piracy might have had some benefit to Microsoft, I don't really care either way, but that is not the same outcome that would have occurred if copyright didn't exist. Rather, no one would have bought the software.
That's utterly ridiculous. And provably wrong. I've downloaded music that I liked and then gone out and bought the CD. I have several movies on DVD that I never would have bought had I not first downloaded them and watched them. And before you ask, I don't care about DVD extras, and on my TV, there's no perceptable difference in resolution.
I'm far from the only person who can say such a thing. I've paid for shareware. The kind of shareware that's "honor system". That's fully enabled, and all they can do is ask you to pay them if you value their efforts.
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Explain how "Saving Private Ryan" gets made without any assurance of copyright protection.
Explain to me how all those people who make buggy whips are going to make a living once there are automobiles all over the place. The fact that there are people who want to keep things the way they are doesn't justify creating a property right that doesn't really exist.
But I'll tell you something. I'll go and watch pretty much anything Luc Besson makes in the theater now. And it's because I illegally downloaded (La Femme) Nikita, The Fifth Element, and Leon (The Professional). I own that last on DVD, btw, because I was so overwhelmed by it.
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The showrunners for Stargate Atlantis, and to a much lesser extent Stargate SG1, both said that one of the main reasons that their shows were canceled was because their shows were not only the highest DVRed shows on cable, but that their viewership was actually extremely high, but not nearly enough people were watching the show when it actually aired or was repeated, they all watched it either online or from DVR. They especially cited a two season bloc when Stargate was being aired in the UK on SkyOne ahead of the US release, and for that bloc, ratings took a noticeable nosedive.
Evidence is naturally going to be harder to come by in this, because someone would have to prove that something never would have been created without patent and copyright protection, which is hard to do when that thing has already been created.
I don't have time to read that book right now, much as I might be interested in dissecting what sounds like a ludicrous argument at first blush, though I'm curious as to what the arguments are now and I'd like to read it if I get a chance.
But where does the capital come from for the research necessary to create a lot of this stuff? I know you don't support government spending on these sorts of things, you think the private sector should handle it, but why would they, and how could they, with no protections for their product? Patent protection for pharmaceuticals are temporary, long enough for them to recoup their R&D investment and turn a profit, and then they're opened up to cheap generic alternatives. Without that protection, how do new drugs ever get made?
How about any other cutting edge technology that costs multiple millions or even billions of dollars? Some stuff I imagine is nigh impossible to copy, like high end computer chips that are made on the microscopic level. The manufacturing technique is half the technology, but a lot of electronics can be reverse engineered much more easily.
The money for these things has to come from somewhere, and other than a type altruism that has never existed in the history of American big business, or a massive new spending effort from the US government, I don't know where the capital would come from without a firm protection of potential profits.
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I found the rebuttal to be nonsensical. Getting the music for free benefits society, because the person receiving the music is better off because of it, but paying the creator of the music has no benefit to society? Stating that as though it's fact and sweeping right past it is.... problematic. Paying the creator of the music benefits society by making the creator better off and providing incentive for him to create new music. I had assumed that would be immediately obvious to everyone. If this is a basic assumption in the argument being overlooked by the authors of that book, I have to say, it's a rather glaring blindspot that completely negates the rest of their assertions. Isn't it?
quote:And to answer your question, not that it matters, since, again, theory isn't the issue, but have you heard of Linux? SourceForge? OpenOffice? The entire open source software movement?
None of these required any significant capital investment, however. It's all labour costs. How many open-source (free, non-copyrighted, whatever we are to call them) feature-length movies are you aware of?
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quote:Why should the benefit be inversely proportional to age?
Well, that's one way of looking at it. But the answer is, if the purpose of copyright is to provide incentive for creation, then the purpose of protecting a work expires when its creator dies. He or she won't receive any further benefit from having their work protected. And it would then be to the benefit of society at large for the creation to become public domain.
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quote:Getting the music for free benefits society, because the person receiving the music is better off because of it, but paying the creator of the music has no benefit to society?
TL, the author thinks that a transfer of money from one person to another is not a net benefit. I don't know if I can agree with that, but it at least isn't patently nonsensical. It's ignoring the future impact that annoys me.
Lisa, if you want to prove that people will follow your example and pay for pirated media, you'll have to do better than that. How about the people buying DVDs off street corners in Asia? How many of them are making paypal payments to the rights owners? Assuming you acknowledge such a thing pretty much never happens, what will be different in the US once copying and selling someone else's work with no restrictions is completely legal?
Edited to show which part of TL's post I was responding to.
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quote:TL, the author thinks that a transfer of money from one person to another is not a net benefit. I don't know if I can agree with that, but it at least isn't patently nonsensical. It's ignoring the future impact that annoys me.
I'm not actually sure how this relates to what I was saying. But yes. Are we disagreeing about something? I'm not sure.
*looks around suspiciously*
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I guess not. I thought you were pointing up a contradiction between "one person gets music = benefit" vs. "creator gets money =/= benefit", and was trying to clarify that the money "lost" by the buyer offsets the money gained by the creator, at least according to that particular argument, but perhaps you weren't saying that.
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Ah. So we're disagreeing on whether or not it's nonsensical. All right.
To me, allowing a creator to profit from, and maintain control over the use of, his own creations -- is clearly and obviously beneficial. It might allow, for example, a novelist to make a living from his work.
Edited to add:
Ah. Having now read the post directly above this one.... Yes, it does clarify the argument for me. I still disagree with it for the reasons stated above. The benefit (as I see it) to society is the incentive-to-create povided by the potential/possibility of profiting from one's work.
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"To me, allowing a creator to profit from, and maintain control over the use of, his own creations -- is clearly and obviously beneficial. It might allow, for example, a novelist to make a living from his work."
I agree with that, so I don't think we disagree at all, I was just parsing the pieces of the argument a little differently.
Edit: saw your edit. yep, same page.
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It's like you guys are rehearsing a skit in communication and conflict resolution. Do you do local junior high schools, or just web forums? Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I noticed that in the rebuttle thhey give an example of if a person randomly picks a song and downloads it then no one is hurt. The individual is then having benefited with no lose to the musician.
My problem with that is people don't randomly pick music from some huge list of music. They try to find music that is similar to thier tastes, and they would otherwise buy the music. If they were willing to download a single song, then you can be fairly certain that they would be getting the entire Cd that way.
Posts: 549 | Registered: Feb 2008
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
generally i buy my games (a recent development to be sure) so that I can play online, I generally do not believe a game is worth getting without a decent multi-player component.
Mostly this is because playing online is impossible without purchasing it thats the practical reason, the ideal reason inregards to games is that the game industry has so much trouble with piracy that I persoanlyl want more games made thus am willing to purchase games to ensure more are made.
Not that theyre arent singleplayer only games I dont buy, mass effect for example I bought.
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Funny thing about games. They are having a hell of a time with DRM. Mostly because most DRM is a complete pain for games. Securom is about the worst thing I have ever seen (I bought Fallout 3 for PC, and the Securom WOULD NOT let me play the game. It took four hours to get it to work. What nearly killed me was that I ALMOST broke down and "pirated" the game.). BUT I can understand why they do it. Many gamers are honest. Like Blayne, they will support their industry(dealer), partly because of love for the game and partly because the game has a component that can only be used if you have a legit copy. HOWEVER, there are ways around that. I had both a legitimate copy and a pirated copy of half-life, because many of my friends had a pirated copy and they wanted to play together. Really what is needed is collaboration (which is happening in the games industry...to an extent) between those who produce and those who consume. There needs to be a method by which a CREATOR is gauranteed compensation for his creation and a CONSUMER can consume without much difficulty. And in this agreement needs to be a way to keep most pirates out (it is impossible to stop things from getting ripped off).
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quote:Originally posted by Xann.: If they were willing to download a single song, then you can be fairly certain that they would be getting the entire Cd that way.
I don't think this is true. Thinking back to the days before widespread digital music sharing (mid 90's or so), most of the new music I encountered was from listening to friends' CDs or mix tapes. (I didn't – and still don't – listen to the radio much.) Borrowing a friend's CD was certainly no guarantee that I'd go out and buy my own copy: sometimes I did, most times I didn't. I suspect, therefore, that the far more likely alternative to downloading a song for most people is simply to do without.
In short, I don't buy the whole 1 download -> 1 lost sale argument.
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quote:And to answer your question, not that it matters, since, again, theory isn't the issue, but have you heard of Linux? SourceForge? OpenOffice? The entire open source software movement?
None of these required any significant capital investment, however. It's all labour costs. How many open-source (free, non-copyrighted, whatever we are to call them) feature-length movies are you aware of?
They give an example in the book of a guy who made an award winning film for $218. But then he had to pay $400,000 for rights to the background music. Ludicrous! Most people wouldn't even bother. That's the kind of innovation-stifling that results from intellectual monopoly.
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Lisa, you mentioned that you have downloaded a song, enjoyed it, and then went out and purchased the CD.
Now imagine that you downloaded a song, enjoyed it, and then went out to purchase the CD and find there are 2 different CD's from that group. One CD was $19.95. The others was $5.00? Which would you buy?
The $19.95 was the one put out by the group. Big Music Co bought one of those CD's and then made a bunch of copies that it can sell for $5.
The same big music company that once paid the artists a small fraction of the income now pays for one CD and makes lots of copies.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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And the solution is to instead make sure that the same environment that precipitates the creation of the things like the music simply don't exist.
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Lisa, if you want to prove that people will follow your example and pay for pirated media, you'll have to do better than that. How about the people buying DVDs off street corners in Asia? How many of them are making paypal payments to the rights owners? Assuming you acknowledge such a thing pretty much never happens, what will be different in the US once copying and selling someone else's work with no restrictions is completely legal?
I don't have to prove it. I've told you again and again that the actual observable facts say that innovation is not encouraged by intellectual monopoly, and that it is not discouraged by the lack of it.
And there's plenty of cases to look at. There are things that only recently became copyrightable or patentable. Has genetic modification of grains increased in either scope or innovation since it became possible to patent strains of food? On the contrary, innovation has been stifled by it. The US Patent Office granted a patent to a company for basmati rice! Seriously. India went all sorts of bats*** over that, of course, and got it modified. But that's the kind of thing that happens when you allow intellectual monopoly.
My brother the IP attorney once sent me a copy of a patent for a method of swinging on a swing where you pull the chains on either side of you back and forth to cause yourself to swing sideways. He thought it was cute. It wasn't cute; it was disgusting. Forget the fact that it's unenforceable in most situations. If my daughter does that on a swingset, she's actually breaking the law. Idiotic! George Harrison gets sued because "My Sweet Lord" sounds too much like "He's So Fine". Sick.
Do you know that Microsoft has patented double-clicking? And tabbing from one hyperlink to another? And the task list?
Pangea has patented "using graphical and textural information on a video screen for purposes of making a sale" and "accepting information to conduct automatic financial transactions via a telephone line & video screen".
And check this out. Not only are you not allowed to copy any part of this public domain book, or print it... you aren't even allowed to read it out loud.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Lisa, you mentioned that you have downloaded a song, enjoyed it, and then went out and purchased the CD.
Now imagine that you downloaded a song, enjoyed it, and then went out to purchase the CD and find there are 2 different CD's from that group. One CD was $19.95. The others was $5.00? Which would you buy?
The $19.95 was the one put out by the group. Big Music Co bought one of those CD's and then made a bunch of copies that it can sell for $5.
The same big music company that once paid the artists a small fraction of the income now pays for one CD and makes lots of copies.
Okay. And your point is? So the studios don't get to roll around naked in royalties. Actors won't get paid gajillions of dollars to do a movie. I weep for them. (Not really; that was sarcasm.)
Look, suppose bank robbery had become socially acceptable at the end of the 19th century. And suppose major corporations had been created by the robbers. A century later, someone suggests that maybe bank robbery is a bad thing. Would it be reasonable to say, "But if you don't allow bank robbery, how on earth are you going to have all these things that you've become accustomed to?"
This is no different. All intellectual monopoly does is make it harder for new entry into a field. It stifles innovation and creativity. The very reason given, for example, in the Constitution for patents -- to encourage innovation -- turns out not to be the case.
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quote:Originally posted by TL: Ah. Having now read the post directly above this one.... Yes, it does clarify the argument for me. I still disagree with it for the reasons stated above. The benefit (as I see it) to society is the incentive-to-create povided by the potential/possibility of profiting from one's work.
Who says you can't profit from your work in the absence of copyright?
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quote:Who says you can't profit from your work in the absence of copyright?
Who do you think has said that? Anybody in this thread?
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Is ripping music from youtube infringement?
When it comes to music I dont download entire cds of stuff, my tastes are very specific, a song could be good to a large subset of people but either I like the way a song sounds or I dont, and so from a given cd of 30 songs I might like 2, 3 if your lucky and rip them from youtube and never get the others.
Exception is Red Army Choir, I have everything of that, but then again I wouldnt know where to buy it without paying the cost of the cd in shipping.
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I have actually observed people driving after drinking heavily *without getting into accidents*. I can cite countless examples where I have seen this. Reality proves that drinking and driving does no harm!
I know it's counterintuitive - but there are loads of examples where people drank, then drove, and no one was hurt.
...
Just because multiple examples can show something doesn't mean that's representative of "reality".
BTW, I can also cite many people who I have seen operate their computers on the internet with no virus protection software... without getting any viruses! Obviously, reality proves that virus protection software isn't important...
posted
This is such a bad idea that I can take comfort in the fact that it will never seriously be considered.
But so much about the thought processes that lead to this 'intellectual monopoly' borkum is truly, truly perplexing.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Who says you can't profit from your work in the absence of copyright?
Lisa, I don't know. That wasn't the entirety of my argument. Copyright doesn't just protect the ability for a creator to profit from his work -- though it does do that -- it also gives the creator the ability to control how that work is used. Both of these are important.
I completely agree that copyright laws have gotten entirely out of control. Like many things in this country, copyrights -- once intended for the benefit of the people -- have been twisted into some monstrous horror. It now goes to the benefit of corporations and to the great detriment of you and I; and any side benefit to individual artists is a happy accident. It used to be the other way around. The purpose of the laws, as written, was to protect you and I and the individual creators of things. If corporations could take advantage of the same laws, that was fine.
Now it seems that the entire purpose of copyright law in the United States has changed. Philosophically, on this issue, I think you and I lean the same way. But I don't think you do away with copyrights. I do think a complete reimagining of copyright law is in order. Yes.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Who says you can't profit from your work in the absence of copyright?
Miguel Cervantes.
Cervantes wrote what many literature professors consider the first true Novel--"Don Quixote".
It was a great success that flooded across Europe making the name Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and Miguel Cervantes famous.
But it didn't pay Cervantes' bills. Just as soon as his first few books were sold, other printers bought them and used them to print off more copies, and more, and more, all across Europe.
They didn't pay the creator a penny.
Instead they started creating Fan-fic and labeling it with Cervantes' name.
The stories were so odd, awful, and ruinous to Cervantes' name that he wrote a 2nd Don Quixote book. The first quarter of the book is an attack on those who "stole" his characters, his ideas, and most importantly, his income.
What my original post was about was simple. Denying copyright will not get rid of the major corporate leaches--it will just change their focus.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Lisa, you have so far been dodging the question of whether creative projects that require large capital investment are feasible if copyright doesn't exist. I know you enjoy those products. Are you ready to give up the benefit you derive from those in order to avoid the abuses of IP that you have been referring to? An award winning film with a micro budget is not an answer to the question.
Like others have noted, having lots of examples where overzealous IP owners caused harm, or where laws seem to be overly restrictive, doesn't "prove" that copyright cannot (or does not) achieve its original purpose. It goes a long way to showing that modifications are in order, which I think several of us agree with.
One problem with your argument is that you're equating copyright with anti-copying mechanisms. The fact that early software companies couldn't or didn't care to provide physical impediments to copying is not even close to operating in an environment where copyright doesn't exist. I'm talking about where you said:
quote:Do you think Microsoft gained the enormous market share they have by means of copyright protection? On the contrary; for the first several iterations of Windows, they included next to no protection against copying, and made zero effort to prevent copying. As a result, the Windows operating system spread like wildfire. There's no way Windows could have spread as quickly as it has without the early piracy.
Not preventing users from making illegal copies is not the same thing as removing the legal prohibition against unauthorized copying.
And you really can't equate copyright and software patents, especially since no one in THIS thread has been defending software patents. They are separate beasts, though they belong to the same phylum. If they were equivalent, the first time a novelist describes a blonde heroine, 25 years of age, with a glowing golden sword killing a dragon to save her world from destruction, he can patent that concept, and then no other novelist can write about a substantially similar combination of things until the patent expires. That's not the case - copyright has no such restrictions.
I'm a lot less sympathetic to software patents than other types of patents because I think the "non obvious" requirement is hardly ever met, and copyright fits better with software and sufficiently protects software creators (things like drugs and gizmos aren't protected by copyright). The patent examples you gave are indeed bad patents, IMO, but we have to consider patents separately from copyright.
You've argued that IP restrictions have stifled innovation. But I can as easily argue that the frenetic pace of competition and innovation in the 70s and 80s was because computing was a relatively new field and there was a lot of (relatively) low hanging fruit. We've pretty much got the personal computing model figured out these days, you know? There's probably not another interface milestone comparable to "point and click" that we can't reach due to stifling "intellectual monopoly." It makes a lot of sense to me that an emerging industry is going to innovate a lot more at the beginning than a few decades in.
I've now scanned a few of the chapters and I can't see that the authors really treat the TV/movie subject at all, aside from noting some small irony in the foundations of the film industry where the (now) giants had to fight against overly restrictive licensing fees, and are now vigorously trying to protect their turf in similar ways. Does the book really make an attempt to answer the question of whether creative projects with large capital investment requirements are possible without copyright protection?
By the way, my "high doubts" seem to be justified. Here are some quotes from the book that are more moderate than your representation of the book:
quote:So, by our own admission, it is a theoretical possibility that intellectual monopoly could, at the end of the day, be better than competition.
quote:Relative to the very poorly defined contractual rights of pre-seventeen century Europe, plagued by royal and aristocratic abuses of property and contracts, there is no doubt that allowing individuals a temporary but well defined monopoly over the fruits of their inventive effort was a major step forward. Even monopolistic property is much better than a system that allows arbitrary seizure by the rich and powerful. This does not, however, contradict our claim that widespread and ever growing monopolistic rights are not as socially beneficial as well defined competitive property rights.
Note they are still for "well defined competitive property rights" - this seems to refer solely to intellectual property and they are NOT calling for an end to IP. Better defined, more inducive to competition, more like.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:I don't have to prove it. I've told you again and again
I would gently suggest that you probably want to rethink this statement.
quote:They give an example in the book of a guy who made an award winning film for $218. But then he had to pay $400,000 for rights to the background music. Ludicrous! Most people wouldn't even bother. That's the kind of innovation-stifling that results from intellectual monopoly.
Winning awards is a fine thing. How many people actually watched this movie, which I notice you don't give the name of?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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