Intellectual Property Manifesto for the UK 238
feepcreature writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the British Library has published a Manifesto calling for a balance in Intellectual Property rights between the interests of users, creators and publishers. There are 6 key recommendations, including: DRM should not override users' statutory rights; analogue rights should apply to digital media; and copyright terms should not be extended without evidence that this would be good for society. There is also part of the debate on the UK Government's Gowers review of Intellectual Property, due to report in the Autumn."
Life + 70 years (Score:4, Insightful)
The real point I was struck by was how they still hold on to the belief that copyright must last "life+70 years". That can easily last over 100 years of copyright, bestowing on heirs of the creator the benefits of his hard work. This does not incent those heirs to do any creating and only pools the money in their pockets while simultaneously making poor the common intellectual property pool.
a (age) + p (plus 70) = t (too freaking long)
What we need is an ool. Notice there's no 'p' in it.
hmm. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't forget the immense possible benefit to producers: zero cost of production.
Re:Life + 70 years (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is, because digital reproduction is both a) instant and b) free.
IMHO, the fact that digital reproduction *is* fundamentally different, is what it has taken to demonstrate how broken the whole idea of copyright is.
Re:DRM in the UK (Score:2, Insightful)
All this "sharing" stuff - don't you know that denying companies their deserved profit is stealing?! Think of those poor starving authors whose work you borrowed from the library instead of buying it! Thieving old gradmas, reading books for free! There should be a law I tells ya!
(Note for the humour impaired: The preceding was not serious, and should not be read if you are sarcasm deficient. Warning: Sarcasm should not be taken internally).
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost to produce the first copy will still exist.
The Primary Prerequisite to Progress (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really, no. But drastically lowered cost of production, zero cost of distribution and near-zero cost of marketing. These can be recouped in other ways than selling physical copies of content -- in ways that are more diverse, more resilient to technology shifts and gives more money to the real creators. No wonder the distributors are scared shitless...
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
As another poster already pointed out, the initial cost of production still exists. Depending on what it is being produced, the move to a digital distribution method may have little or no impact on the cost of production (eg for a writer going from typewriter to PC isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to the amount of money they spend producing the work).
zero cost of distribution
Bandwidth is free now? Servers are free?
Cost of distribution is much lower per unit, but it most certainly is not zero.
and near-zero cost of marketing.
Why is that? Because the moment you put something on the web, google and word of mouth will do all your marketing for you? Why does going digital all-but eliminate the need to market your product?
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm. Would we suddenly see all sorts of mysterious deaths of authors directly after they publish their works, if the copyright on their works would immediately end? I do agree in principle, but I think a fixed duration of copyright, regardless of how long the copyright holder lives, might be better.
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's take the iTMS move store, for example. I submit that the bandwidth needed to download a 1.2GB file has SOME cost, as does building and maintaining the infrastructure needed to ensure that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people can do so simultaneously.
And anytime you want to talk about delivering a million copies of anything I think you'll find the costs are far from inconsequential.
As far as that goes, I'd almost be willing to bet that once those costs are taken into account, the actual costs of delivering a movie online is perhaps only a single order of magnitude away from that of delivering a piece of plastic to a store.
The actual cost of a mass-produced disc is pennies on the dollar anyway. You pay for the content.
Public libraries and P2P have similarities (Score:5, Insightful)
Libraries have many roles, but almost none of those roles are exclusive. The three most important ones are collecting, sharing, and archiving for posterity, but these roles are also performed within society as a whole (as a normal part of life and culture), and therefore libraries do not have exclusive need for protections here. We all do.
P2P is probably the most contentious sharing technology today, yet what P2P'ers do is not significantly different to what libraries do --- ie. provide access to their collections to the public. They're similar not only in function, but also in social neutrality and economic effect: sharing is available to everyone equally, no money is made or taken from the sharing, they both reduce somewhat the sales of the items in question, and they both provide free public promotion for the items as well.
The role of archiving for posterity is not exclusive to libraries either --- nobody wants to lose their collected works through media deterioration from old age, so being able to make copies and not being at the mercy of DRM is important for everyone, not just libraries. Indeed, passing down our digital collections to our descendents will undoubtedly be a common interest.
So, while I support what the British Library is saying for the most part, their preoccupation with the needs of libraries sends the wrong message --- we are all in that same boat.
Re:DRM in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
These desires for DRM are supported heavily by Microsoft, which wants to protect its software licenses and prevent other software from writing or even reading the private formats they use, especially for "personally encrypted" files. The whole field of DRM is about to get much worse with the "Trusted Computing" software program, led by Microsoft, which locks software and media to a specific motherboard's encryption and authentication chip, and which will als be built into the next generation of AMD and Intel CPU's. These tools are aimed squarely at preventing duplication of digital media, and create a real burden for making backup or archival copies of these media. They also specifically restrict the authorized software tools to play these media, making "fair use" sampling or even using other non-specifically licensed players very difficult.
The libraries of the world are quite right to be concerned about this.
Different times for different things (Score:2, Insightful)
IP law should respect the fact that there are many different fields of endevour, and different terms are appropriate for each of them. It's perfectly reasonable that the copyright on a novel should last a pretty long time (I think the author should receive some compensation if it gets made into a film 10 years later for example), but patents on computer related things should last a very short time - the computer industry is changing much faster than the book writing industry, and if the entire industry is held up for 10 years because of one guys patent, that is a very serious detriment to the public good.
Regardless of what is decided, it seems very obvious to me that the current lengths of these things are far outside what is reasonable. I'd be much more in favour of 20 years for literary/artistic works, and 3 years for patents, with the posibility of a single extension for 5 more years for patents, requiring a large fee (so only patents that are being used get extended).
That's what I think for IT patents, but longer terms might be more appropriate for slower moving industries.
kind of hard to do (Score:4, Insightful)
money and power will steamroll all laws, morals, decency, justice, fairness, and accountability in order to be with each other, no matter what system of government you devise or imagine
money and power will find the path of least resistance to get to one another and shortcircuit all of your good intentions
look at modern china, where 50 years of hardcore communist rhetoric has created... drum roll... the most social darwinistic model of capitalism on this planet right now. with all of the social inequalities that go along with that, abject squalor sandwiched against diamond encrusted bathrooms, modern china would make the robber barons of the gilded ages of victorian times in the usa blush
money+power: i think it's one of the fundamental forces in physics... along with entropy and taxes and magnetism
you can't beat it even in glorious goody two shoes canada: look at their recent corruption scandal that recently swept the liberals out of power up there
i'm not saying it's a good thing, i'm just saying it's pretty formidable force of nature you are contending with rather lightly
Lifetime plus some is an incentive (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm guessing you are quite young then? I'm over 40 and have 2 children. I write but haven't made a penny at it. Much as I enjoy writing, there is definitely an incentive to "publish" in knowing that if my work becomes popular late in my life (or just after) then my kids will benefit.
Parents want to provide for their children.
Copyright Infringement is not Theft! (Score:1, Insightful)
That's simply not going to happen, I'll tell you why after a little background for the benefit of Johnny Foreigner.
In the UK we have this organization called "FACT", the "Federation Against Copyright Theft". These idiots put "piracy funds terrorism" type trailers are at the head of every video/DVD release and cinema screening. My favourite trailer makes the points that "you wouldn't steal a car", "you wouldn't steal a film" and then flashes "copying is stealing" accross the screen in huge letters. The purpose of these offensive little skits is to decieve the public into believing that all copyright infringement is a criminal offense comparable with theft.
How do you propose to conduct an intelligent, reasonable debate with people who will not even come to the table without lying and misrepresenting their cause?
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Except buying a lot of digital goods second hand is going to become next to impossible as they get tied to USERS rather than being tied to a physical product like a CD or DVD.
Re:Lifetime plus some is an incentive (Score:2, Insightful)
Because often an artist does not make much (or any) money from his/her work until years after it was done.
I'm not suggesting artists should be paid more than anyone else; just that they (or their children) should be paid.
Yes, I agree, a fixed term (50 years) would probably be better. But maybe that might encourage well known artists to stockpile work for their kids to publish?
Re:DRM in the UK (Score:3, Insightful)
Something my copyright prof said (Score:3, Insightful)
The term of the copyright doesn't upset this analysis. What does upset it is that with the advent and rapid development of the Internet, distribution is no longer a limiting factor. There is no longer a danger that one's work won't be distributed.[1] Society has solved this issue on its own, independent of copyright laws. We don't need to protect distributors with copyrights any more.
Furthermore, the economic incentive that copyrights provide to distributors simply isn't justified. While the demand for copyrighted works has increased due to population growth and increased expressiveness, the 'supply' given to the people by increasing Internet bandwidth and ubiquity has exponentially outpaced it. Without artificial regulation (i.e., copyright law), these developments would ordinarily drive profit margins to nothing. Thus the distribution monopoly power becomes Yet Another Pointless Government Subsidy, benefiting a special interest group that isn't even contributing anything particularly worthwhile. Farm subsidies are one thing, they keep the price of bread low. Subsidizing an inefficient alternative to the Internet is pure waste.
I say end copyright protection for distributors, with the trade-off of guaranteed Internet access for everyone as a new human right. Subsidize libraries and public kiosks for net access to ensure this right. Of course, this shifts the subsidy to ISPs and the 'backbones', but their worth to society is justifiable independent of copyright law.
[1] One's work may not be watched or heard, but it will always be available for the watching. That's a demand problem, not a supply problem, and it's solved by artists competing for attention in the marketplace. This, in turn, naturally drives up the quality of the art in the eyes of the public, which is a good thing.
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Who said anything about snatching property? Nothing is being removed. The state granted a monopoly of production to the original author, and this would simply mean that they don't grant that monopoly to someone else when that person dies).
If I die, my family get to keep my possessions. But they don't get to continually be paid my salary, or have any rights to my job in anyway. Why should children of artists be treated any differently? I mean, non-artists could make the same emotional argument by whining about how their family will starve if the income is no longer there, but that's tough luck. Family of non-artists have to rely on welfare or insurance for that situation, and those of artists should do to.
Perhaps making copyright a fixed-term for everyone might be a way round these issues.
Re:Life + 70 years (Score:3, Insightful)
There is an old rule that says a classic must be re-translated and re-intrepreted in each generation to remain attractive and readable to a modern audience. That is why Project Gutenberg is no threat to sales of the Penguin Classics.
I think the reason people don't see infringement as immoral is because they don't understand the social contract that underlies copyright law...Joe Average isn't stupid...he has never seen any copyrights expire during his lifetime, and may never see it
Joe Average may not own a burner and he may not have any significant involvement eith the P2P nets. Joe is a convenient fiction for the Geek.
But assume, for the moment, that Joe does exist.
Joe hasn't seen any copyrights expire in his lifetime because Joe has no interest in content that hasn't been produced in his lifetime. Joe has damn little interest in content that hasn't been published in the last ten years.
He may, in retro mood, he want Elvis or The Beatles. But not homemade rips from the warped 45s and vinyl LPs to be found in his Grandma's basement. What he wants is expert restoration from the original analog masters.
Skills he does not have. Sources he does not own.
Copyright reform would have NO impact on lawsuits by the rights agencies.
You are never going to get an unrestricted license to redistribute commercially viable content over the Internet.
Not from China, not from Canada, not from Sweden, not from any country with a domestic cultural product to protect, not from any country with a significant export market in culture. There are no safe havens.
The P2P hit list is a mirror reflection of those published by weekly by Billboard and Variety. The artists are still very much alive and active, the content is always derived from contemporary commercial sources.
The Geek doesn't get sued because he uploaded his own scan of Steamboat Willie--nitrate stock, synchronized sound on disk-- the Geek gets sued because he uploaded a screener of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Re:Agree and disagree (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM in the UK (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the thing is, the whole point of that attestation process is to prove to a third party that you're running the software they want you to be running. It doesn't help you at all, except for the fact that they might choose not to speak to you if they suspect you're running something else. But that's none of their business, is it?
What would really make TPM work for users, instead of against them, would be a "fake out" switch. That is, the ability for the owner of the PC to make his TPM chip attest to a software configuration that he isn't actually running. That way, you'd still get the advantages of TPM (hardware encryption with keys that can't be stolen), without the disadvantages (hardware-enforced DRM).
It'd essentially do for TPM what a user agent switcher does for web browsers. Today, if you go to a site and it says "Sorry, you can't get in unless you're running IE", you can turn on your UA switcher, and now the site thinks you're running IE. But tomorrow, maybe that site won't be satisfied with your User-Agent header; maybe it'll want a digital signature from your TPM chip proving that you're running IE 7.0 on Windows Vista. If you had a fake out switch, you could still access the site, even if you're running Firefox on Linux. That might upset the people who want to lock their sites to a specific software configuration, but they can go fuck themselves - this feature would be good for users, and that's what matters.
Re:Lifetime plus some is an incentive (Score:3, Insightful)
Parents want to provide for their children.
Then you are a terribly irresponsible parent. As a copyright lawyer, let me point out to you that the odds of your work ever being even slightly valuable economically, are very very small. And then, the work typically is only worth something immediately upon publication in a given medium, with the value rapidly declining (roughly 90% of the lifetime value will be realized in under a year, sometimes in just a few weeks). The odds of creating a work with lasting value, or value long after publication, are astronomical.
Frankly, you would have better odds of getting money with which to provide for your family by buying lottery tickets.
If you want to be a good parent, you will have a job, you will carefully invest money, you will have insurance policies, and so forth. You will support government programs that would help as well, should your family hit bad times. These are ordinary, conventional methods of providing for your family that do not rely on tremendous amounts of luck. But they actually work. Better yet, they work for everyone, and not just authors.
Copyright is probably one of the worst systems imaginable for helping 'widows and orphans' since it is just so damn bad at actually doing it. If you want something that works, look elsewhere. If you want to daydream, and ignore your responsibilities to your family, then by all means, pretend that copyright will ever mean something to them.
And so long as we're dealing with rational actors, long copyrights aren't an incentive. I don't care for the idea of a copyright system that is meant to appeal to irrational people.