On 2/27/07, Crosbie Fitch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Fred Benenson >But suppose we don't want to take it in that direction -- How can we be effective, >or even taken seriously if we're suggesting nothing less than abolishment of copyright? I take it you're looking for an audience who would more highly regard an organisation who adopted 'being taken seriously' as a principle to supercede all others?
My wording implies that being effective is more important, though not more likely, than being taken seriously.
As Eben Moglen put it to me once, "intellectual property is pretty much a joke", but >what are our practical options of making people understand this without sounding >shrill? Or like spoiled students? To me, suggesting options like CC and the GPL, >though essentially based in copyright, appear to be the most strategic and effective. 'Shrill' or 'spoiled students'? Those are hangups, not principled arguments.
They're also realities and real prejudices that we're going to have to deal with maturely and effectively.
I'm not sure we can avoid it, but we can certainly try to find common ground...so >what does the rest of FC think, should we start advocating for complete abolishment >of copyright? How can we find consensus and develop a real position, again? You mean FC had a real position once before? What happened to it?
Ah, apologies, I was being vague here: we tried to come to a position, we just couldn't get any closer than our Manifesto. Surely, FC has a position that advocates cultural freedom?
I presume there's also a society for the promotion of progress of science and the useful arts - who are happy to propose suspending the liberty of the public and/or violating their privacy in order to achieve such an end? No doubt they have the public's best interests at heart, and feel the sacrifice worth the reward. The notion of copyright's abolition only arises within the proponents of FC because: 1) Copyright cannot actually be enjoyed in the digital diffusion system known as the Internet 2) Many artists who would like to enjoy the zero cost duplication and distribution services of the Internet don't actually want copyright's default prohibition of unauthorised duplication and distribution. 3) There is no 'cut-down' version of copyright that is effective either. 4) If you're going to make any money, it's going to be by selling your services as an artist and your art wholesale, not individual copies thereof. 5) The freedoms desired restored by FC are precisely those freedoms suspended by copyright. Abolition of copyright isn't actually much of an issue in the big scheme of things. This is because it has already been rendered moot. Abolishing copyright only serves to prevent the recording industries punishing wholly innocent families. Every other aspect of copyright is impotent (aside from its vestigial use as a gentlemen's agreement between traditional publishers). So, yes, FC should not concern itelf with copyright or its abolition, it should look to determine an independent set of principles that should constrain society in its production and enjoyment of art/culture.
Yes, I agree, but absent the terms of those independent principles, the GPL and CC licenses are as good as I think we're going to get. Ideally, we won't need the GPL or CC to depend on copyright, and they may eventually be unnecessary in and of themselves, but it's hard to come up with (and the free software community tried for a very long time before the GPL became the standard) a real alternative license that isn't toothless without copyright. Life, privacy, truth, liberty.
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