Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
It is my genuine position. Abolishing copyright would achieve exactly what I want. This is what it all boils down to whenever the let's abolish copyright for the good of society. It's actually about let's abolish copyright for my own personal benefit. You simply don't want to have to pay for anything, and I'm guessing you don't produce anything creative, hence you don't benefit from copyright. It's the me, me, me, me, me! argument again - have you been down the pub with Dave Crossland too often? ;-) Cheers, Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Martin Belam Sent: 08 October 2009 22:46 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' David, I understand that DRM costs money and is never 100% effective, and I understand that it was a bit rubbish when the music industry made me pay again for downloads of music by dead people that I'd already purchased once on vinyl and then once again on CD. And I'm hearing a lot about your freedom. But at the moment I enjoy my freedom to be able to publish a picture of my daughter in public on the Internet so that my family, colleagues and friends can see it easily, but also express my choice alongside it that the photograph belongs to me and it is not be used without my knowledge or consent on an advert. I genuinely don't understand why you think forcibly taking that freedom away from me in a complete abolition of copyright enhances society. Martin Belam, Information Architect, guardian.co.uk - currybet.net - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Sorry for prattling on for so long. Hi Tom, found this interesting, and you've reminded me to read through this http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/25/1345/03329 so for 'prattling' it's decent;) Alia Tom Morris wrote: On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 22:32, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Yes, I am aware of this, but why five years, why not one year why not three months, and if three months, why at all. Well done. You've re-discovered the Sorites Paradox. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ But the copyright industry discovered it first. One thing the American Founding Fathers got right is that the test should be public benefit - whether it benefits the useful Arts and Sciences. What they got wrong was not being a bit more specific about the limited time provision. I mean, yes, life plus seventy years is a limited time when you consider it cosmically. Given that someone is likely to produce their greatest work in their thirties or forties, given a reasonable life expectancy of 70-80 years, we are talking a century. I think a decade or two is long enough for the useful Arts and Sciences to benefit from a work. The problem with copyright is a perceptual one: people see intellectual property and they focus on the second word. It's property, they think. It's like a house or a car - I *own* it. No you don't. You are leasing it from humanity. And all that inspiration that led you to the point of creating the work has external costs. The artist wanders around the National Gallery. The writer reads books in libraries. The moviemaker watches other movies. Everyone goes to school. Many go to university. Feel free to insert Locke's labour-mixing argument here. (In the case of the BBC, which we all pay for if we have TVs, it's completely apparent that we have a moral stake in as much as we are required to pay for it if we want to watch TV. But we own a stake in every other type of cultural production too because no cultural work - at least nothing of any value - exists in a vacuum.) But again, I say, we have a Sorites problem. Unless you cope with the problem, you either end up saying we should have an infinite copyright term or no copyright at all. Yes, if we were to say 10 years extendable to 20, we'd face accusations of arbitrariness. But life+70 years is arbitrary too. Except it isn't. It's arbitrary in the same way that a badly regulated banking sector is arbitrary - it's done that way because certain people are profiting greatly from locking us away from our cultural birthright. How do we resolve the Sorites problem inherent in copyright and all intellectual property that has a temporal limit built-in? Simple. We use a Rawlsian original position thought experiment modified to cope with the same situation. Imagine that you were taken back to an original position. You were placed behind a veil of ignorance. You don't know whether when you are put into the world whether you are going to be Walt Disney or Richard Stallman. You don't know if you will be a Napster user or a member of Metallica. You don't know if you are going to be a copyright creator, a copyright reuser or whatever. Now decide on your principles. I think that given this thought experiment, a short-term copyright can be justified. Life+70 years is inequitable on Rawlsian grounds. The only people who can seriously think Life+70 years is equitable are the children of pop stars who will be collecting royalty cheques for the rest of their life for doing absolutely sweet bugger all. Just because your mum or dad is a pop star doesn't mean that the law should provide you with a guaranteed income. Two generations of my family have made their money in the printing trade. I have a feeling that the next two generations are not. Boo hoo. They've got to find a different calling in life. The other problem with morality-of-IP debates is that we do not get to see the real cost of what doesn't happen because of IP laws. It's very easy to throw out a counterfactual like if we didn't have strong copyright protection, we'd never have The Beatles. But I'm pretty sure that for every quite reasonable counterfactual of that sort, there are a fair amount of flipsides - if we didn't have strong copyright protection, we'd have had (some other thing we can't tell you because it never happened). I can't tell you about the great singer we never had because of copyright limitations. I can only vaguely hint at it. The rhetorical force of specific counter-factuals has a great deal of weight compared to very general counter-factuals. But when it comes down to brass tacks, there isn't much to either of them. Are we really saying that if copyright had been 5 years shorter, the Beatles would never have existed? That seems ridiculous. (Hey, the Sorites problem works for counterfactuals too!) We can see it a bit more with technology stuff: we can see plenty of things which are perfectly legal to do with open source but which you can't
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Dave, So we can have this discussion in only a manner which is determined by yourself? Children count, pictures of dogs count, pictures of someone's gran or bank statement or a tree counts. If your arguments hold tight then they hold tight for all examples. Hard to have a discussion when people threaten to take their ball away and not play anymore. Which signifies no more than the end of this discussion with you perhaps, but thought it worth mentioning in case the negative reactions to that statement were just whistling past. Alia My answer is that only commercial interests, would respect your copyright. My suggestion is that you don't post images you don't want re-distributed in a public place. Personal items could be covered by privacy. I don't see it useful in the context of copyright. For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. I suggest personal material e.g a private letter, can substitute for the purposes of the debate. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
My suggestion is that you don't post images you don't want re-distributed in a public place. Sounds fun for all those artists with showreels David Tomlinson wrote: Martin Belam wrote: I suspect you can trust your family, friends etc to respect your wishes, and you can limit the distribution through trust. Images of children can be sourced for advertising without having to resort to using private images. So your basic answer is that in a world without copyright, instead of me being allowed to say Hey, I know you *could* just download this straight off the internet and reuse it however you want, but I'd really rather you didn't, the onus is instead on me to personally vouch for the distribution of my photos on a person-by-person basis and just hope for the best from anyone I don't know who wants a picture of a child? My answer is that only commercial interests, would respect your copyright. My suggestion is that you don't post images you don't want re-distributed in a public place. Personal items could be covered by privacy. I don't see it useful in the context of copyright. For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. I suggest personal material e.g a private letter, can substitute for the purposes of the debate. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Mo McRoberts wrote: On 9-Oct-2009, at 00:21, David Tomlinson wrote: For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. It’s not obvious at all. People need to stop with the nervousness when the words “children” and “photograph” appear in a sentence together; it’s, for want of a better term, childish and ridiculous. It’s also pretty salient, given it’s a straightforward example of a copyright-holder having a current ability to exercise control without having to resort to onerous trust mechanisms. Your position has a distinct lack of great upsides as compared to the status quo, but it -does- have some significant flaws, and I say that retaining the view that copyright as it exists today is flawed in some fairly serious ways. No the mention of Children and Photograph just distorts everything it touches, so there are better examples, where privacy or personal images are concerned. Copyright is almost useless for controlling something that does not involve commercial interests in practice. The fact is that most images are not worth anything unless used commercially, except to the owner. And that is a privacy and personal respect issue. This text is copyright, even if I don't care if someone copies it, but that is another thing, attribution and source become important, in other words reputation systems etc. As for upsides, the only one copyright has, is you are familiar with it. The Besson and Mason paper covers the accumulation of rights, that forms a thicket and stops progress (patents). A similar thing applies with copyright. You can find the copyright owner, the rights clearance process is complex. Quintin Tarentino who has resources available talked at length on Radio 4 about the difficulties of getting clearance on original music for films. Having a designer chair in the background of a shot in a film is a nightmare. Speaking of films, they also suffer from the monopoly attributes of runaway costs and marketing so as to limit choice and exclude competition, and thoose poor A lister have to manage on 20 Million USD per film (2 per year ?). I have just started to put the case, to do so requires a book. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm Here is one that makes the case, it is available free as a pdf from the website. But even this does not cover the whole argument in favour of abolishing copyright and patents. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Nick Reynolds-FMT wrote: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose Freedom is another word for self determination. Incarceration, the opposite of Freedom is no control. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Richard Lockwood wrote: It is my genuine position. Abolishing copyright would achieve exactly what I want. This is what it all boils down to whenever the let's abolish copyright for the good of society. It's actually about let's abolish copyright for my own personal benefit. You simply don't want to have to pay for anything, and I'm guessing you don't produce anything creative, hence you don't benefit from copyright. It's the me, me, me, me, me! argument again - have you been down the pub with Dave Crossland too often? ;-) It's why not do a thought experiment, after all there are several million people on the Internet, who intend to practice it. The attempts to prevent them are the real danger to society. Lord Mandeleson, and the French want to throw out the Magna Carta, and the whole legal system to maintain it. Content Vendors want to lock down every piece of consumer electronics. and impose huge costs on society. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
This seems to roughly translate to 'anything anyone makes that they show to the world, can be taken and used by anyone in the world'. Which feels like a setup for making creators very paranoid about what they share with the world. Doesnt seem like a fun place to live if it had that effect. The whole point of copyright was to encourage people to make and share things in the knowledge that the time and effort they spend doing so will have the potential to be recompensed. If instead they feel that putting their creative work in the public domain will prevent recompense (remember everyone has to eat) then you disincentivize them to share the work. In the case of industries where the work must be shown to be sold (art, music previews actually just about anything) then you disincentivize them to create the thing in the first place. If people want to share their work with all and sundry then brilliant, and it's what we have creative commons for. Copyright may be broken but chucking it out and not having something put in its place for the original aim of encouraging creative works, seems *lazy*. Apologies if I'm misinterpreting anything you're saying. Alia David Tomlinson wrote: Fearghas McKay wrote: I mis-understood your intent. If there is no copyright. When you make the images public, you relinquish control. The alternative is to keep the distribution limited, and use trust. While you may have an emotional attachment or a feeling of entitlement to the images, this is not a good basis for public policy. As to why someone should make money from them ? If they can add value in some way ? Why would people pay for the images, when they are in the public domain ? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
All we have to do now Is take these lies and make them true somehow All we have to see Is that I don't belong to you And you don't belong to me Freedom You've gotta give for what you take Freedom You've gotta give for what you take On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Nick Reynolds-FMT nick.reyno...@bbc.co.uk wrote: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Martin Belam Sent: 08 October 2009 22:46 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' David, I understand that DRM costs money and is never 100% effective, and I understand that it was a bit rubbish when the music industry made me pay again for downloads of music by dead people that I'd already purchased once on vinyl and then once again on CD. And I'm hearing a lot about your freedom. But at the moment I enjoy my freedom to be able to publish a picture of my daughter in public on the Internet so that my family, colleagues and friends can see it easily, but also express my choice alongside it that the photograph belongs to me and it is not be used without my knowledge or consent on an advert. I genuinely don't understand why you think forcibly taking that freedom away from me in a complete abolition of copyright enhances society. Martin Belam, Information Architect, guardian.co.uk - currybet.net - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Alia Sheikh wrote: Dave, So we can have this discussion in only a manner which is determined by yourself? Children count, pictures of dogs count, pictures of someone's gran or bank statement or a tree counts. If your arguments hold tight then they hold tight for all examples. Hard to have a discussion when people threaten to take their ball away and not play anymore. Which signifies no more than the end of this discussion with you perhaps, but thought it worth mentioning in case the negative reactions to that statement were just whistling past. Alia If you wish to talk about personal images use the example of adults, a spouse for example. Or personal information. Involving children is like using the word Nazi, it is designed to close down debate, because of the moral panic surrounding the issue. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Anyone remember this for earlier in the year? Prime example of privacy and personal respect being abused. A company in Prague used a family picture off facebook for commercial purposes without consent, attribution, etc. http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/are-you-kidding-me/stolen-picture / -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 11:09 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Mo McRoberts wrote: On 9-Oct-2009, at 00:21, David Tomlinson wrote: For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. It's not obvious at all. People need to stop with the nervousness when the words children and photograph appear in a sentence together; it's, for want of a better term, childish and ridiculous. It's also pretty salient, given it's a straightforward example of a copyright-holder having a current ability to exercise control without having to resort to onerous trust mechanisms. Your position has a distinct lack of great upsides as compared to the status quo, but it -does- have some significant flaws, and I say that retaining the view that copyright as it exists today is flawed in some fairly serious ways. No the mention of Children and Photograph just distorts everything it touches, so there are better examples, where privacy or personal images are concerned. Copyright is almost useless for controlling something that does not involve commercial interests in practice. The fact is that most images are not worth anything unless used commercially, except to the owner. And that is a privacy and personal respect issue. This text is copyright, even if I don't care if someone copies it, but that is another thing, attribution and source become important, in other words reputation systems etc. As for upsides, the only one copyright has, is you are familiar with it. The Besson and Mason paper covers the accumulation of rights, that forms a thicket and stops progress (patents). A similar thing applies with copyright. You can find the copyright owner, the rights clearance process is complex. Quintin Tarentino who has resources available talked at length on Radio 4 about the difficulties of getting clearance on original music for films. Having a designer chair in the background of a shot in a film is a nightmare. Speaking of films, they also suffer from the monopoly attributes of runaway costs and marketing so as to limit choice and exclude competition, and thoose poor A lister have to manage on 20 Million USD per film (2 per year ?). I have just started to put the case, to do so requires a book. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm Here is one that makes the case, it is available free as a pdf from the website. But even this does not cover the whole argument in favour of abolishing copyright and patents. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Sean DALY wrote: So if I understand you, let's abolish copyright, and that way Microsoft, Adobe et.al. can just chuck their bloated old code and incorporate formerly free software into their binaries? And charge an arm and a leg for it as well. Read Hat, SUSE etc all manage without a state sponsored monopoly, Microsoft can do so too. No thanks. I prefer the GPL, which derives its power from copyright law - the concept that creators decide how their work may be used. I support intellectual property law reform, but this is really throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The GPL only needs copyright to defend against copyright, v3 does go further, the concept is so powerful, it is widely abused (not in the GPL v2). P.S. I'm a parent, and I am glad copyright law provides me with some recourse should my teenager be dumb enough to upload a bad photo to a public internet site. I'm afraid though that next, you're going to tell me that children should be free of parental control and report their parents to the NKVD if they aren't permitted to use RapidShare or MEGAUPLOAD You think copyright is going to help, as we all laugh at your image. Who said anything about parental control. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 11:16 AM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Richard Lockwood wrote: It is my genuine position. Abolishing copyright would achieve exactly what I want. This is what it all boils down to whenever the let's abolish copyright for the good of society. It's actually about let's abolish copyright for my own personal benefit. You simply don't want to have to pay for anything, and I'm guessing you don't produce anything creative, hence you don't benefit from copyright. It's the me, me, me, me, me! argument again - have you been down the pub with Dave Crossland too often? ;-) It's why not do a thought experiment, after all there are several million people on the Internet, who intend to practice it. The attempts to prevent them are the real danger to society. Lord Mandeleson, and the French want to throw out the Magna Carta, and the whole legal system to maintain it. Content Vendors want to lock down every piece of consumer electronics. and impose huge costs on society. None of that makes any sense whatsoever. Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
It all seems moot to me anyway. No one is required to enforce or protect their copyright. If David or whoever wants to live in a copyright free world, then go right ahead. The greater problem is that copyright has been abused both by end users and corporations. The Associated Press's attempts to claim copyright over short excerpts from articles and the music industries attempts to stop copyright-infringement, even when there is no commercial gain for the infringer has, in my opinion, destroyed copyright as it existed. If I am breaking the law and will be prosecuted by rights-holders for the simple act of transferring my media from one format to another, then something is very broken. My personal view is that fair use should be extended to cover all personal-use copying. You should really only be infringing copyright if you make money based off someone else's work without permission or recompense. Or is that just too logical? Alex On 9 Oct 2009, at 11:13, Alia Sheikh wrote: This seems to roughly translate to 'anything anyone makes that they show to the world, can be taken and used by anyone in the world'. Which feels like a setup for making creators very paranoid about what they share with the world. Doesnt seem like a fun place to live if it had that effect. The whole point of copyright was to encourage people to make and share things in the knowledge that the time and effort they spend doing so will have the potential to be recompensed. If instead they feel that putting their creative work in the public domain will prevent recompense (remember everyone has to eat) then you disincentivize them to share the work. In the case of industries where the work must be shown to be sold (art, music previews actually just about anything) then you disincentivize them to create the thing in the first place. If people want to share their work with all and sundry then brilliant, and it's what we have creative commons for. Copyright may be broken but chucking it out and not having something put in its place for the original aim of encouraging creative works, seems *lazy*. Apologies if I'm misinterpreting anything you're saying. Alia David Tomlinson wrote: Fearghas McKay wrote: I mis-understood your intent. If there is no copyright. When you make the images public, you relinquish control. The alternative is to keep the distribution limited, and use trust. While you may have an emotional attachment or a feeling of entitlement to the images, this is not a good basis for public policy. As to why someone should make money from them ? If they can add value in some way ? Why would people pay for the images, when they are in the public domain ? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Steve Jolly wrote: David Tomlinson wrote: Yes, I am aware of this, but why five years, why not one year why not three months, and if three months, why at all. A year or less strikes me as too little because too many people would just wait until it was free. 5-10 years seems like a more realistic minimum in that regard. Mind you, I think that copyright terms would vary by medium, ideally. It's free from the start, their are revenue streams, e.g. advertising or paying for a physical object, be that a CD or a T-Shirt or book. How long does it take for most products to make the vast majority of their money. There are exceptions, like the Beatles etc. As has been pointed out repeatedly already, copyright is about wider issues of control than the right to make money from a work. If you want to convince people that abolition makes sense, you need to address that wider issue. I have addressed it, while I consider it natural, and people will not wish to give it up, I don't see it as desirable. It limits the Freedom of others. How long would it take for a competitor, to prepare and publish an alternative to a say a book. More than three months ? A week or two, perhaps? Longer for a really high-volume product, but if copyright was abolished then you'd see specialist piracy-houses springing up, competing to be first-to-market with copied products. And they could take pre-orders in the interim period, reducing sales beneficial to the author still further. For a Dan Brown perhaps, but that is 8 Million sales in the first week, he can afford the leakage. It is only when products are successful, it is worth producing the physical copy. But I imagine the text for book was available in multiple locations within days. I don't read Dan Brown, for reasons of sanity. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 11:23 AM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Alia Sheikh wrote: Dave, So we can have this discussion in only a manner which is determined by yourself? Children count, pictures of dogs count, pictures of someone's gran or bank statement or a tree counts. If your arguments hold tight then they hold tight for all examples. Hard to have a discussion when people threaten to take their ball away and not play anymore. Which signifies no more than the end of this discussion with you perhaps, but thought it worth mentioning in case the negative reactions to that statement were just whistling past. Alia If you wish to talk about personal images use the example of adults, a spouse for example. Or personal information. Involving children is like using the word Nazi, it is designed to close down debate, because of the moral panic surrounding the issue. No. That's just you realising you're just digging yourself deeper and looking for a way out. Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
I don't want your Freedom. I don't want to play around. I don't want nobody baby. Part time love just brings me down. -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Sean DALY Sent: 09 October 2009 11:18 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' All we have to do now Is take these lies and make them true somehow All we have to see Is that I don't belong to you And you don't belong to me Freedom You've gotta give for what you take Freedom You've gotta give for what you take On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 10:54 AM, Nick Reynolds-FMT nick.reyno...@bbc.co.uk wrote: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Martin Belam Sent: 08 October 2009 22:46 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' David, I understand that DRM costs money and is never 100% effective, and I understand that it was a bit rubbish when the music industry made me pay again for downloads of music by dead people that I'd already purchased once on vinyl and then once again on CD. And I'm hearing a lot about your freedom. But at the moment I enjoy my freedom to be able to publish a picture of my daughter in public on the Internet so that my family, colleagues and friends can see it easily, but also express my choice alongside it that the photograph belongs to me and it is not be used without my knowledge or consent on an advert. I genuinely don't understand why you think forcibly taking that freedom away from me in a complete abolition of copyright enhances society. Martin Belam, Information Architect, guardian.co.uk - currybet.net - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
and this old chestnut http://www.creativecommons.org.au/node/126 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk on behalf of Robin Doran Sent: Fri 10/9/2009 11:25 AM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Anyone remember this for earlier in the year? Prime example of privacy and personal respect being abused. A company in Prague used a family picture off facebook for commercial purposes without consent, attribution, etc. http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/are-you-kidding-me/stolen-picture / -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 11:09 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Mo McRoberts wrote: On 9-Oct-2009, at 00:21, David Tomlinson wrote: For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. It's not obvious at all. People need to stop with the nervousness when the words children and photograph appear in a sentence together; it's, for want of a better term, childish and ridiculous. It's also pretty salient, given it's a straightforward example of a copyright-holder having a current ability to exercise control without having to resort to onerous trust mechanisms. Your position has a distinct lack of great upsides as compared to the status quo, but it -does- have some significant flaws, and I say that retaining the view that copyright as it exists today is flawed in some fairly serious ways. No the mention of Children and Photograph just distorts everything it touches, so there are better examples, where privacy or personal images are concerned. Copyright is almost useless for controlling something that does not involve commercial interests in practice. The fact is that most images are not worth anything unless used commercially, except to the owner. And that is a privacy and personal respect issue. This text is copyright, even if I don't care if someone copies it, but that is another thing, attribution and source become important, in other words reputation systems etc. As for upsides, the only one copyright has, is you are familiar with it. The Besson and Mason paper covers the accumulation of rights, that forms a thicket and stops progress (patents). A similar thing applies with copyright. You can find the copyright owner, the rights clearance process is complex. Quintin Tarentino who has resources available talked at length on Radio 4 about the difficulties of getting clearance on original music for films. Having a designer chair in the background of a shot in a film is a nightmare. Speaking of films, they also suffer from the monopoly attributes of runaway costs and marketing so as to limit choice and exclude competition, and thoose poor A lister have to manage on 20 Million USD per film (2 per year ?). I have just started to put the case, to do so requires a book. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm Here is one that makes the case, it is available free as a pdf from the website. But even this does not cover the whole argument in favour of abolishing copyright and patents. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ winmail.dat
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 11:27, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Read Hat, SUSE etc all manage without a state sponsored monopoly, Microsoft can do so too. No thanks. I prefer the GPL, which derives its power from copyright law - the concept that creators decide how their work may be used. I support intellectual property law reform, but this is really throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The GPL only needs copyright to defend against copyright, v3 does go further, the concept is so powerful, it is widely abused (not in the GPL v2). We covered this already. The effect of the GPL cannot be achieved _without_ copyright. M. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Tom Morris wrote: I agree with Tom's argument. Vanity publishing does not require copyright. It is just noise, unless someone likes it. So, yeah, counter-factuals seem like a bad way to go in the debate unless there is some nice way of finding a neutral, scientifically respectable way of measuring the actual outcomes of different intellectual property scenarios. We can see some of the opportunity costs in the works of Benkler (counter factuals) etc. Open Source and Free Software is another. The Dutch had a period without copyright. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/wealth_of_networks/Main_Page Is macroeconomics a science yet? ;) Definitely not. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Robin Doran wrote: Anyone remember this for earlier in the year? Prime example of privacy and personal respect being abused. A company in Prague used a family picture off facebook for commercial purposes without consent, attribution, etc. And taking them to court, will give you the right for compensation, and prevent a repeat. Do we have to have copyright to do that, or can other laws, including new laws) to achieve the same ends. Some people don't follow the social rules or the legal ones. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Your arguments should hold true for anything involving the word Nazi too:) Interesting the control you are trying to exercise over our freedom to discuss this topic. Alia David Tomlinson wrote: Alia Sheikh wrote: Dave, So we can have this discussion in only a manner which is determined by yourself? Children count, pictures of dogs count, pictures of someone's gran or bank statement or a tree counts. If your arguments hold tight then they hold tight for all examples. Hard to have a discussion when people threaten to take their ball away and not play anymore. Which signifies no more than the end of this discussion with you perhaps, but thought it worth mentioning in case the negative reactions to that statement were just whistling past. Alia If you wish to talk about personal images use the example of adults, a spouse for example. Or personal information. Involving children is like using the word Nazi, it is designed to close down debate, because of the moral panic surrounding the issue. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
I'm afraid you're mistaken. Talk to anyone in legal at Red Hat or Novell, or Canonical, they will tell you how much they rely on state-sponsored monopoly schemes such as copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. I attended the third international GPLv3 draft conference (http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/europe-gplv3-conference.en.html) and taped all the sessions, and I can assure you that the basis of the license is in copyright law. Watch the Eben Moglen vid if you have the time. On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:27 PM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Sean DALY wrote: So if I understand you, let's abolish copyright, and that way Microsoft, Adobe et.al. can just chuck their bloated old code and incorporate formerly free software into their binaries? And charge an arm and a leg for it as well. Read Hat, SUSE etc all manage without a state sponsored monopoly, Microsoft can do so too. No thanks. I prefer the GPL, which derives its power from copyright law - the concept that creators decide how their work may be used. I support intellectual property law reform, but this is really throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The GPL only needs copyright to defend against copyright, v3 does go further, the concept is so powerful, it is widely abused (not in the GPL v2). P.S. I'm a parent, and I am glad copyright law provides me with some recourse should my teenager be dumb enough to upload a bad photo to a public internet site. I'm afraid though that next, you're going to tell me that children should be free of parental control and report their parents to the NKVD if they aren't permitted to use RapidShare or MEGAUPLOAD You think copyright is going to help, as we all laugh at your image. Who said anything about parental control. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Well, Henry III tried to throw out the Magna Carta too, and look where it got him. That darned French influence I suppose - Eleanor of Provence and her cronies at court, no doubt with the first reading of HADOPI. On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:16 PM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Richard Lockwood wrote: It is my genuine position. Abolishing copyright would achieve exactly what I want. This is what it all boils down to whenever the let's abolish copyright for the good of society. It's actually about let's abolish copyright for my own personal benefit. You simply don't want to have to pay for anything, and I'm guessing you don't produce anything creative, hence you don't benefit from copyright. It's the me, me, me, me, me! argument again - have you been down the pub with Dave Crossland too often? ;-) It's why not do a thought experiment, after all there are several million people on the Internet, who intend to practice it. The attempts to prevent them are the real danger to society. Lord Mandeleson, and the French want to throw out the Magna Carta, and the whole legal system to maintain it. Content Vendors want to lock down every piece of consumer electronics. and impose huge costs on society. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Richard Lockwood wrote: No. That's just you realising you're just digging yourself deeper and looking for a way out. See Michael Smethurst's post, it is a topic in in itself and does not solely rely only upon copyright. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Deirdre Harvey wrote: Nick Reynolds-FMT wrote: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose Freedom is another word for self determination. Incarceration, the opposite of Freedom is no control. Isn't your argument that control is bad and that people must relinquish control for your benefit? No my argument is some controls are social necessary, we call them laws. But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. We may need to retain control over personal images, and respect peoples privacy. If we need new laws to maintain these controls we should pass them. See the link Michael Smethurst supplied in his email. The default should be Freedom. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Richard Lockwood wrote: None of that makes any sense whatsoever. It made sense to me, several million people in the UK fileshare without regard to copyright. But the proposed cure (Three strikes), which bypasses the legal system is worse than the problem. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
David, Your mention of His Dark Lordship and the Magna Carter made me wonder, perhaps you should declare yourself a 'Freeman On The Land' - www.fmotl.com- and become exempt from copyright, council tax - www.nocounciltax.com - and all other statutory laws. Regards, Dave On 9 Oct 2009, 11:21 AM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Richard Lockwood wrote: It is my genuine position. Abolishing copyright would achieve exactly... It's why not do a thought experiment, after all there are several million people on the Internet, who intend to practice it. The attempts to prevent them are the real danger to society. Lord Mandeleson, and the French want to throw out the Magna Carta, and the whole legal system to maintain it. Content Vendors want to lock down every piece of consumer electronics. and impose huge costs on society. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backsta...
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
People, places and possessions get used all the time without their consent by the big broadcasters. The only difference is that the broadcasters have used their own hardware to capture the image or sound, etc. Why is okay for broadcasters to consider their work copyright protected, but they have no consideration for the initial 'copyright' of the people involved? On 9 Oct 2009, at 11:45, Michael Smethurst wrote: and this old chestnut http://www.creativecommons.org.au/node/126 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk on behalf of Robin Doran Sent: Fri 10/9/2009 11:25 AM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Anyone remember this for earlier in the year? Prime example of privacy and personal respect being abused. A company in Prague used a family picture off facebook for commercial purposes without consent, attribution, etc. http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/are-you-kidding-me/stolen-picture / -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 11:09 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Mo McRoberts wrote: On 9-Oct-2009, at 00:21, David Tomlinson wrote: For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. It's not obvious at all. People need to stop with the nervousness when the words children and photograph appear in a sentence together; it's, for want of a better term, childish and ridiculous. It's also pretty salient, given it's a straightforward example of a copyright-holder having a current ability to exercise control without having to resort to onerous trust mechanisms. Your position has a distinct lack of great upsides as compared to the status quo, but it -does- have some significant flaws, and I say that retaining the view that copyright as it exists today is flawed in some fairly serious ways. No the mention of Children and Photograph just distorts everything it touches, so there are better examples, where privacy or personal images are concerned. Copyright is almost useless for controlling something that does not involve commercial interests in practice. The fact is that most images are not worth anything unless used commercially, except to the owner. And that is a privacy and personal respect issue. This text is copyright, even if I don't care if someone copies it, but that is another thing, attribution and source become important, in other words reputation systems etc. As for upsides, the only one copyright has, is you are familiar with it. The Besson and Mason paper covers the accumulation of rights, that forms a thicket and stops progress (patents). A similar thing applies with copyright. You can find the copyright owner, the rights clearance process is complex. Quintin Tarentino who has resources available talked at length on Radio 4 about the difficulties of getting clearance on original music for films. Having a designer chair in the background of a shot in a film is a nightmare. Speaking of films, they also suffer from the monopoly attributes of runaway costs and marketing so as to limit choice and exclude competition, and thoose poor A lister have to manage on 20 Million USD per film (2 per year ?). I have just started to put the case, to do so requires a book. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm Here is one that makes the case, it is available free as a pdf from the website. But even this does not cover the whole argument in favour of abolishing copyright and patents. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html . Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ winmail.dat - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
No. That's just you realising you're just digging yourself deeper and looking for a way out. See Michael Smethurst's post, it is a topic in in itself and does not solely rely only upon copyright. Now you're just randomly quoting bits of messages and dropping in irrelevant soundbites. You appear to be failing the Turing test. Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Alia Sheikh wrote: Your arguments should hold true for anything involving the word Nazi too:) Interesting the control you are trying to exercise over our freedom to discuss this topic. Alia I am just trying to keep on topic and not disappear along a tangent. I think I am been reasonable, but that is just my view. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Mo McRoberts wrote: We covered this already. The effect of the GPL cannot be achieved _without_ copyright. Any ends can be achieved through primary legislation that can be achieved through copyright as copyright is primary legislation. We can create a GPL like environment without having to use copyright. Some people (e.g. Linus of Linux fame) take exception to some of the clauses in GPL v3 and see them as unnecessary. Copyright has huge costs for society, we keep the good and loose the bad (monopoly control etc). - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. I'd like to see some hard numbers/evidence for this statement. How much are the costs? In dollars and pounds? How much is the benefit? Not statements of principle, but numbers. My opinion is that is you had hard numbers, the case for abolishing copyright would not stack up, and that copyright creates more benefits than it costs - in numbers. -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 12:12 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Deirdre Harvey wrote: Nick Reynolds-FMT wrote: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose Freedom is another word for self determination. Incarceration, the opposite of Freedom is no control. Isn't your argument that control is bad and that people must relinquish control for your benefit? No my argument is some controls are social necessary, we call them laws. But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. We may need to retain control over personal images, and respect peoples privacy. If we need new laws to maintain these controls we should pass them. See the link Michael Smethurst supplied in his email. The default should be Freedom. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:16 PM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Richard Lockwood wrote: None of that makes any sense whatsoever. It made sense to me, several million people in the UK fileshare without regard to copyright. But the proposed cure (Three strikes), which bypasses the legal system is worse than the problem. Why didn't you just say that then? Instead of trying to couch your reply in meaningless and obfuscating rhetoric and gobbledegook? Rich. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Sean DALY wrote: I'm afraid you're mistaken. Talk to anyone in legal at Red Hat or Novell, or Canonical, they will tell you how much they rely on state-sponsored monopoly schemes such as copyright, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. I attended the third international GPLv3 draft conference (http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/europe-gplv3-conference.en.html) and taped all the sessions, and I can assure you that the basis of the license is in copyright law. Watch the Eben Moglen vid if you have the time. Only because they have top operate in a environment where copyright exists. We can loose the bad (monopoly control) and keep the good (must supply source code), through new primary legislation. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Some legal systems, particularly in French-speaking countries, beyond commercial use do indeed restrict broadcast and print and Internet journalism use of recognizable images of persons without prior permission, with fairly well-defined exceptions particularly for the press. In the case of minors, the parent or guardian must provide prior authorisation. The UK and USA have no such legal tradition as far as I know. This is called the droit à l'image and dozens of cases are brought each year. If you read French, http://www.educnet.education.fr/legamedia/legadico/lexique/droit-limage is an excellent starting point. This creates work for those who have to blur faces and disguise voices, but does protect individuals and children in particular better than in the English-speaking countries. Sean On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:17 PM, Zen zen16...@zen.co.uk wrote: People, places and possessions get used all the time without their consent by the big broadcasters. The only difference is that the broadcasters have used their own hardware to capture the image or sound, etc. Why is okay for broadcasters to consider their work copyright protected, but they have no consideration for the initial 'copyright' of the people involved? On 9 Oct 2009, at 11:45, Michael Smethurst wrote: and this old chestnut http://www.creativecommons.org.au/node/126 -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk on behalf of Robin Doran Sent: Fri 10/9/2009 11:25 AM To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Anyone remember this for earlier in the year? Prime example of privacy and personal respect being abused. A company in Prague used a family picture off facebook for commercial purposes without consent, attribution, etc. http://www.extraordinarymommy.com/blog/are-you-kidding-me/stolen-picture / -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 11:09 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Mo McRoberts wrote: On 9-Oct-2009, at 00:21, David Tomlinson wrote: For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. It's not obvious at all. People need to stop with the nervousness when the words children and photograph appear in a sentence together; it's, for want of a better term, childish and ridiculous. It's also pretty salient, given it's a straightforward example of a copyright-holder having a current ability to exercise control without having to resort to onerous trust mechanisms. Your position has a distinct lack of great upsides as compared to the status quo, but it -does- have some significant flaws, and I say that retaining the view that copyright as it exists today is flawed in some fairly serious ways. No the mention of Children and Photograph just distorts everything it touches, so there are better examples, where privacy or personal images are concerned. Copyright is almost useless for controlling something that does not involve commercial interests in practice. The fact is that most images are not worth anything unless used commercially, except to the owner. And that is a privacy and personal respect issue. This text is copyright, even if I don't care if someone copies it, but that is another thing, attribution and source become important, in other words reputation systems etc. As for upsides, the only one copyright has, is you are familiar with it. The Besson and Mason paper covers the accumulation of rights, that forms a thicket and stops progress (patents). A similar thing applies with copyright. You can find the copyright owner, the rights clearance process is complex. Quintin Tarentino who has resources available talked at length on Radio 4 about the difficulties of getting clearance on original music for films. Having a designer chair in the background of a shot in a film is a nightmare. Speaking of films, they also suffer from the monopoly attributes of runaway costs and marketing so as to limit choice and exclude competition, and thoose poor A lister have to manage on 20 Million USD per film (2 per year ?). I have just started to put the case, to do so requires a book. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm Here is one that makes the case, it is available free as a pdf from the website. But even this does not cover the whole argument in favour of abolishing copyright and patents. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
This is so built into the economic model that it would surely be nearly impossible to separate off the cost and the benefit. Abolistion is no doubt an impossibly radical step, but subtle modifications could no doubt have disproportionate impacts across industry commerce. Ecomomies should enjoy change. Best wishes Robert Binney Broadcast Infrastructure Team Broadcast Support and Projects, FMT Desk: +44(0)2075573245 Mob: 07711910957 (Internal 312833) 123SE Bush House, The Strand, London WC2B 4PH -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of Nick Reynolds-FMT Sent: 09 October 2009 12:24 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. I'd like to see some hard numbers/evidence for this statement. How much are the costs? In dollars and pounds? How much is the benefit? Not statements of principle, but numbers. My opinion is that is you had hard numbers, the case for abolishing copyright would not stack up, and that copyright creates more benefits than it costs - in numbers. -Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 12:12 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Deirdre Harvey wrote: Nick Reynolds-FMT wrote: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose Freedom is another word for self determination. Incarceration, the opposite of Freedom is no control. Isn't your argument that control is bad and that people must relinquish control for your benefit? No my argument is some controls are social necessary, we call them laws. But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. We may need to retain control over personal images, and respect peoples privacy. If we need new laws to maintain these controls we should pass them. See the link Michael Smethurst supplied in his email. The default should be Freedom. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
The problem with varying copyright terms by medium is that it gets confusing for the average person, however I (and a majority of the PPUK) agree with you about copyright being used for reasons other than purely financial. This is one of the reasons for the debate about when the 5+5 copyright term should start. The preveilling opinion (though not yet policy) seems to be from first commercial use of your works, but there are still problems to be solved around this. regards, Vijay 2009/10/8 Steve Jolly st...@jollys.org David Tomlinson wrote: Yes, I am aware of this, but why five years, why not one year why not three months, and if three months, why at all. A year or less strikes me as too little because too many people would just wait until it was free. 5-10 years seems like a more realistic minimum in that regard. Mind you, I think that copyright terms would vary by medium, ideally. How long does it take for most products to make the vast majority of their money. There are exceptions, like the Beatles etc. As has been pointed out repeatedly already, copyright is about wider issues of control than the right to make money from a work. If you want to convince people that abolition makes sense, you need to address that wider issue. How long would it take for a competitor, to prepare and publish an alternative to a say a book. More than three months ? A week or two, perhaps? Longer for a really high-volume product, but if copyright was abolished then you'd see specialist piracy-houses springing up, competing to be first-to-market with copied products. And they could take pre-orders in the interim period, reducing sales beneficial to the author still further. S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Nick Reynolds-FMT wrote: But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. I'd like to see some hard numbers/evidence for this statement. How much are the costs? In dollars and pounds? How much is the benefit? Not statements of principle, but numbers. My opinion is that is you had hard numbers, the case for abolishing copyright would not stack up, and that copyright creates more benefits than it costs - in numbers. I don't but others do. A dutch filesharing study. http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01/20/dutch.study.file.sharing/ Outcome filesharing is revenue positive, many other studies have reached the same conclusion. A study commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs has just concluded that the net economic effects of file sharing for music, movies and games are positive. The resulting 142-page report, put together by research company TNO, doesn't narrow the results to strictly illegal content but argues that, as consumers save money on unnecessary purchases and spend it on more wanted content, they save much more in wasted spending than music production companies lose. The costs of the enforcement of the three strikes law, for BT are greater than inflated music figures for losses due to filesharing. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/04/sabip_7m_stat_sponsored_by_bpi/ Figures are from BPI study. BT has warned that the file sharing efforts proposed by the government and Peter Mandelson could cost the industry £1m every day. That would increase each customer's bill by £24 per year, said John Petter, the head of the company's consumer division. The music industry claims that file sharing costs them £200m each year, though many analysts have poured scorn on those figures, saying that that statistic is based on flawed methodology and inaccurate monitoring, as well as the assumption that one download is equivalent to one lost sale. The telecoms industry which could be damaged by lockdown, is many times larger than the Content Vendors, not to mention the Consumer Electronic Industry, again damaged by lockdown. Andrew Michael Odlyzko is a mathematician who is the head of the University of Minnesota's Digital Technology Center. http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/history.communications2.pdf The Internet is widely regarded as primarily a content delivery system. Yet historically, connectivity has mattered much more than content. Even on the Internet, content is not as important as is often claimed, since it is email that is still the true “killer app.” Table 1 presents statistics that show the relative sizes of several sectors of the U.S. economy. (See pdf for Table 1). Will that do as a start ? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Alia Sheikh wrote: This seems to roughly translate to 'anything anyone makes that they show to the world, can be taken and used by anyone in the world'. Which feels like a setup for making creators very paranoid about what they share with the world. Doesnt seem like a fun place to live if it had that effect. The point was to censorship and a monopoly to fund authors. US was promote science and the useful arts. Do you think we should review, how good a job it is doing and if we can draft a better law, or can we just abolish copyright. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Alex Mace wrote: It all seems moot to me anyway. No one is required to enforce or protect their copyright. If David or whoever wants to live in a copyright free world, then go right ahead. The greater problem is that copyright has been abused both by end users and corporations. The Associated Press's attempts to claim copyright over short excerpts from articles and the music industries attempts to stop copyright-infringement, even when there is no commercial gain for the infringer has, in my opinion, destroyed copyright as it existed. If I am breaking the law and will be prosecuted by rights-holders for the simple act of transferring my media from one format to another, then something is very broken. My personal view is that fair use should be extended to cover all personal-use copying. You should really only be infringing copyright if you make money based off someone else's work without permission or recompense. Or is that just too logical? Yes, so logical the Spanish have done something similar. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Richard Lockwood wrote: No. That's just you realising you're just digging yourself deeper and looking for a way out. See Michael Smethurst's post, it is a topic in in itself and does not solely rely only upon copyright. Now you're just randomly quoting bits of messages and dropping in irrelevant soundbites. You appear to be failing the Turing test. Sorry, theres no one home but us clever talking (typing) machines. Credit to Michael. http://www.creativecommons.org.au/node/126 - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 13:09, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: I'd like to see some hard numbers/evidence for this statement. How much are the costs? In dollars and pounds? How much is the benefit? Not statements of principle, but numbers. My opinion is that is you had hard numbers, the case for abolishing copyright would not stack up, and that copyright creates more benefits than it costs - in numbers. I don't but others do. A dutch filesharing study. http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/01/20/dutch.study.file.sharing/ Outcome filesharing is revenue positive, many other studies have reached the same conclusion. Permitting (and encouraging) filesharing is not the same as abolishing copyright. Thankfully, it’s not incompatible with copyright, either. Indeed, it’s been trialled as a catch-up/distribution mechanism by PSBs outside of the UK over the past couple of years, with decent results. M. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
-Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 12:12 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Deirdre Harvey wrote: Nick Reynolds-FMT wrote: Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose Freedom is another word for self determination. Incarceration, the opposite of Freedom is no control. Isn't your argument that control is bad and that people must relinquish control for your benefit? No my argument is some controls are social necessary, we call them laws. We don't call them all laws. But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. That is your contention, it is not a fact. Other people have been making the case that there are benefits to copyright that outweigh the costs as long as the use of copyright is proportional to the benefit it confers, e.g. time limited and with exceptions for personal copying. We may need to retain control over personal images, and respect peoples privacy. If we need new laws to maintain these controls we should pass them. Easy as that, eh? Just pass a few privacy laws... they never impinge on the freedom of people and their right to access certain information, do they? The default should be Freedom. Whose freedom? Not Martin Belam's freedom to protect his work from unauthorised copying obviously. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Mo McRoberts wrote: Permitting (and encouraging) filesharing is not the same as abolishing copyright. Thankfully, it’s not incompatible with copyright, either. Indeed, it’s been trialled as a catch-up/distribution mechanism by PSBs outside of the UK over the past couple of years, with decent results. Yes, the BBC iplayer initially used filesharing technology. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
David Tomlinson wrote: Steve Jolly wrote: A year or less strikes me as too little because too many people would just wait until it was free. 5-10 years seems like a more realistic minimum in that regard. Mind you, I think that copyright terms would vary by medium, ideally. It's free from the start, their are revenue streams, e.g. advertising or paying for a physical object, be that a CD or a T-Shirt or book. If you abolish copyright, then there's no way for the author to benefit from those revenue streams, because the people who make the CDs, T-Shirts and books have no reason to pay the author. I have addressed it, while I consider it natural, and people will not wish to give it up, I don't see it as desirable. It limits the Freedom of others. Every law on the books exists to benefit society as a whole by removing Freedoms from the individual. My right to privacy in my own home requires that other people give up their freedom to enter it without permission, for example. So I don't think you can make a case that copyright is unusual in this regard. How long would it take for a competitor, to prepare and publish an alternative to a say a book. More than three months ? A week or two, perhaps? Longer for a really high-volume product, but if copyright was abolished then you'd see specialist piracy-houses springing up, competing to be first-to-market with copied products. And they could take pre-orders in the interim period, reducing sales beneficial to the author still further. For a Dan Brown perhaps, but that is 8 Million sales in the first week, he can afford the leakage. It is only when products are successful, it is worth producing the physical copy. But I imagine the text for book was available in multiple locations within days. I don't read Dan Brown, for reasons of sanity. Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes here. My point was that a publisher who chose to pay an author for their work would be out-competed within days or weeks by competitors who have no reason to pay that author a penny. S - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Deirdre Harvey wrote: We don't call them all laws. No and not all fish are sharks, but sharks are fish. But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. That is your contention, it is not a fact. Yes, and I am defending that contention. Easy as that, eh? Just pass a few privacy laws... they never impinge on the freedom of people and their right to access certain information, do they? No but it is off topic, in that copyright is not a good tool for privacy etc. Whose freedom? Not Martin Belam's freedom to protect his work from unauthorised copying obviously. Martin Belam's Freedoms should not impose on freedoms of others, where that happens we have social conventions, laws, judges etc. I just think copyright is a bad law and we should review (abolish) it. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
review or abolish? bit pointless abolishing flippers before inventing feet David Tomlinson wrote: I just think copyright is a bad law and we should review (abolish) it. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Sean DALY wrote: So if I understand you, let's abolish copyright, and that way Microsoft, Adobe et.al. can just chuck their bloated old code and incorporate formerly free software into their binaries? And charge an arm and a leg for it as well. No thanks. I prefer the GPL, which derives its power from copyright law - the concept that creators decide how their work may be used. I support intellectual property law reform, but this is really throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Some reasonably good points Basically echoing this: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html Note: PPUK are NOT PPSE: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blog/2009/aug/18/rms-talks-pirate-party-uk/ P.S. I'm a parent, and I am glad copyright law provides me with some recourse should my teenager be dumb enough to upload a bad photo to a public internet site. Ahaha. Yeah this wasn't a great real life example to promote copyright law to me though. Firstly, you should remember that the exclusive rights belong to your teenager, not you. In practise, though you should remember this it is not likely to be an issue. Copyright law provides some recourse if they upload a bad pictures that they took themselves to, say flickr. If another teenager takes a bad picture of your teenager and posts it on flickr. You and your teenager have pretty much no recourse under traditional copyright law. It may depend a little bit on where the photos are taken - football stadiums try and use EULA's on tickets to claim copyright over all In my humble opinion, I don't think you should be able to claim any exclusive rights under copyright, of photos of you just because you are in a photo. For more information about photographers rights see http://www.sirimo.co.uk/2009/05/14/uk-photographers-rights-v2/ I'm afraid though that next, you're going to tell me that children should be free of parental control and report their parents to the NKVD if they aren't permitted to use RapidShare or MEGAUPLOAD ??? This is completely unrelated? :S Cheers, Tim - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Steve Jolly wrote: If you abolish copyright, then there's no way for the author to benefit from those revenue streams, because the people who make the CDs, T-Shirts and books have no reason to pay the author. Fans will buy T-Shirts, from the bands official site shop, or Gig;s for which the band can charge (live performances). Every law on the books exists to benefit society as a whole by removing Freedoms from the individual. My right to privacy in my own home requires that other people give up their freedom to enter it without permission, for example. So I don't think you can make a case that copyright is unusual in this regard. Not unusual just unnecessary. Perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes here. My point was that a publisher who chose to pay an author for their work would be out-competed within days or weeks by competitors who have no reason to pay that author a penny. The argument is that, the copying is only worth doing, for hits. By the time you identify a hit the author is already adequately compensated. The current system allows the publisher to capture value that should belong to the public. You may find Marl Lemleys work interesting although it does not directly address this issue. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=982977 Courts and scholars have increasingly assumed that intellectual property is a form of property, and have applied the economic insights of Harold Demsetz and other property theorists to condemn the use of intellectual property by others as free riding. In this article, I argue that this represents a fundamental misapplication of the economic theory of property. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Alia Sheikh wrote: review or abolish? I think there is a case for abolish, other may wish to review it first. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Alia Sheikh wrote: I am not alone: http://ssrn.com/abstract=976733 It is not surprising that such broad criticism, from such a diverse group of critics, has now emerged. Intellectual property products form the core of today’s New Economy of high technology, communications, and entertainment [...] We need at least some voices to remind the courts and policy makers of the costs of monopoly and the view that competition has a vital role to play in incentivizing innovation - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Simon Thompson wrote: A quote from the abstract of an accepted paper to a non-peer reviewed journal edited by second year law students about US intellectual property law does not prove the case the argument. I think it is prima face evidence that I am not alone in expressing doubts about Intellectual Property Law and Copyright in particular. Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine make a much better case. http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty. Michele Boldrin Department of Economics Washington University in St. Louis David K. Levine is John H. Biggs Distinguished Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis. While I am typing this Prof Lessig, and Prof Boyle have books related to Intellectual Property. They have a more moderate view, as do many legal scholars. http://www.lessig.org/ http://www.thepublicdomain.org/ Available as PDF's - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Mo McRoberts wrote: Um. yes, but “use of filesharing technology” is completely unrelated in anything but a technical sense to sanctioning individuals sharing content themselves on filesharing networks. The implication is that the BBC approved of the sharing of iplayer content, of course it was subject to DRM. Yes, the Spanish, allow filesharing as long as it is non-profit. It does not require the abolision of copyright, which is subject of international treaties (Berne Convention). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
With regard to Spain, I am not familiar with the current situation but some decision are going the way of the torrent sites, http://torrentfreak.com/spanish-judge-non-commercial-filesharing-is-legal/ The ruling was made yesterday (Thursday) by Judge Paz Aldecoa in a penal court in Santander, a northern city in Spain. He said that because the man was not profiting from sharing these files, he could not be held liable. Judge Aldecoa said that a guilty verdict would imply the criminalization of socially accepted and widely practiced behavior in which the aim is in no way to make money illicitly, but rather to obtain copies for private use. http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/11510.cfm Spanish court decides linking to P2P downloads is legal 19 October 2007 8:16 by Matti Siggy Vähäkainu | 7 comments Spanish court decides linking to P2P downloads is legal In Spain, a Madrid magistrate has declared the case against Sharemula, a website publishing download links through which users can acquire TV series, music, software, etc., dismissed. In October 2006 15 individuals were arrested, among which were people responsible for Sharemula. Now a year later court came to a decision that the site or its administration have not committed any violations against the copyright law by publishing links to peer-to-peer downloads. The ruling was a considered a success by the Sharemula attorneys, who based the defense on three existing court rulings on similar cases. By not directly profiting from the downloads or storing illegal content, Sharemula did not break the law and was released from the accusations. http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-sites-step-closer-to-legality-in-spain-081104/ Essentially, the court has decided that TodoTorrente operated in a similar manner to Sharemula. The decision is open to appeal, but there is no doubt that BitTorrent sites are getting closer to legality in Spain. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 15:43, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: The implication is that the BBC approved of the sharing of iplayer content, of course it was subject to DRM. No, it really didn’t. That’s adding two and two together and getting pi. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
RE: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
-Original Message- From: owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk [mailto:owner-backst...@lists.bbc.co.uk] On Behalf Of David Tomlinson Sent: 09 October 2009 15:38 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom' Simon Thompson wrote: A quote from the abstract of an accepted paper to a non-peer reviewed journal edited by second year law students about US intellectual property law does not prove the case the argument. I think it is prima face evidence that I am not alone in expressing doubts about Intellectual Property Law and Copyright in particular. You aren't expressing any doubts about Intellectual Property Law and Copyright. Most of the rest of the contributors to the thread are expressing doubts. YOu are alone in your dogmatic certainty, not your doubt. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Mo McRoberts wrote: No, it really didn’t. P2P requires the sharing of the content, only between users to the iPlayer, using the BBC approved software. I don't mean the BBC intended to share it on public P2P networks or internationally. http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029471,49291924,00.htm iPlayer uses an application called Kontiki that manages your programme downloads. The problem is Kontiki is a P2P application that not only downloads content, but uploads it too. Files are distributed by 'seeders', or people who have chunks of the file to upload to others, which means the BBC can reduce its costs. iPlayer no longer users Kontiki or P2P. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Deirdre Harvey wrote: You aren't expressing any doubts about Intellectual Property Law and Copyright. Most of the rest of the contributors to the thread are expressing doubts. YOu are alone in your dogmatic certainty, not your doubt. I think the evidence justifies the abolition of copyright. It is not a new position for me. see: The Against Intellectual Monopoly book, for a comprehensive argument, I have also argued against software patents etc. I am also familiar with the arguments of the content vendors. I am defending my position in a thought experiment. Details like the fact that copyright is protected by the Berne convention, can be ignored in a thought experiment. I would suggest I am confident rather than dogmatic, on the whole I am defending against several of people at once, and keeping my replies prompt. So if I miss some details. For example, we could require all source code to be supplied, in the absence of copyright and disallow EULA's which are of dubious legal value. http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/blog/2009/aug/18/rms-talks-pirate-party-uk/ This addresses the main issues R. Stallman has, details like the clauses in GPL v2 vs GPL v3 are a minefield of detail. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Alia Sheikh wrote: If you abolish copyright, then there's no way for the author to benefit from those revenue streams, because the people who make the CDs, T-Shirts and books have no reason to pay the author. Fans will buy T-Shirts, from the bands official site shop, or Gig;s for which the band can charge (live performances). or any other shop. What is a musician doesnt want to sell tshirts and cant play live? Is the music alone worthless? No some fans may still wish to pay for the music, even if it is available for free. http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/coldplay-digital-album-success-confirms-downloads-are-king Radiohead shocked the music industry last year when they allowed fans to pay as much or as little as they wanted to download their latest album. Some music fans paid up to £100 to download In Rainbows, the band’s seventh studio album, despite it being offered for nothing. [...] Gennaro Castaldo, of HMV, said: Coldplay will not have made a huge loss by giving away their first single because they are very much a group that connects with their fans via their album. The industry will be looking very carefully at how the album sells following their decision to allow their fans to downlaod the first single for free. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
[Swapped order of paragraphs to make more sense] On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 17:16, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: iPlayer uses an application called Kontiki that manages your programme downloads. The problem is Kontiki is a P2P application that not only downloads content, but uploads it too. Files are distributed by 'seeders', or people who have chunks of the file to upload to others, which means the BBC can reduce its costs. iPlayer no longer users Kontiki or P2P. I (and I suspect most others here) are very well aware of what the iPlayer Desktop of Yore used, but thanks for the history lesson. P2P requires the sharing of the content, only between users to the iPlayer, using the BBC approved software. I don't mean the BBC intended to share it on public P2P networks or internationally. So why bring it up in the context of sharing content publicly on P2P networks? [You said: “The implication is that the BBC approved of the sharing of iplayer content, of course it was subject to DRM.”] It doesn’t imply that they “approve” of sharing the content on P2P networks as you suggested—it was used in a limited, closed-loop fashion as a means to an end (i.e., a distributed CDN); the user had little to no control over it (depending upon technical competence). Within the context of the discussion, this fact is almost completely irrelevant, except that the underlying technology used is “peer-to-peer”. Technologies get reused all the time, and it doesn’t imply any sort of endorsement. M. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
I'll just run this by everyone again If you wish to talk about personal images use the example of adults, a spouse for example. Or personal information. Involving children is like using the word Nazi, it is designed to close down debate, because of the moral panic surrounding the issue. Yep, absolutely David. Using a real world example of something I have actually done in the last two weeks that used the existing copyright law framework and Internet distribution is clearly an attempt to stifle your debate and restrict your freedom rather than actually test your argument. Let me be clear, I wouldn't want to impose upon you in any way, please feel free to continue to dismiss any example that doesn't fit into your world view. m - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Perhaps we are at cross purposes... http://torrentfreak.com/bbc-gets-ready-for-bittorrent-distribution-090409/ Like many broadcasters today, the BBC is open to experimenting with online video distribution, allowing viewers to watch shows online. However, due to complex copyright issues people are not generally allowed to share or remix the videos – until now. For their new RDTV production, the BBC is using a Creative Commons license, giving the viewer the freedom to redistribute and re-use the show. To add to the excitement there are also plans to use BitTorrent to distribute the show and source material. The BBC is one of the partners in the EU funded P2P-Next research project that uses BitTorrent technology to shape the future of web based TV delivery. BitTorrent is very effective in reducing bandwidth costs and thanks to technology developed by the P2P-Next team it can also be used to stream TV-shows, and even live video. Here is an example of the BBC allowing content, to be distributed by P2P. Is this 4 or 3.1472... - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Martin Belam wrote: I'll just run this by everyone again If you wish to talk about personal images use the example of adults, a spouse for example. Or personal information. Involving children is like using the word Nazi, it is designed to close down debate, because of the moral panic surrounding the issue. Yep, absolutely David. Using a real world example of something I have actually done in the last two weeks that used the existing copyright law framework and Internet distribution is clearly an attempt to stifle your debate and restrict your freedom rather than actually test your argument. Let me be clear, I wouldn't want to impose upon you in any way, please feel free to continue to dismiss any example that doesn't fit into your world view. Sorry Martin, It is just safer to use adults, as an example (less chance of misunderstandings) Fearghas was been a pain, providing an example of why it is easier to avoid references to children. Yes: copyright gives you redress against commercial organisations, but I think other laws would be more appropriate (in my opinion) to address the very real problem you raise. These laws may not currently exist. Respect for the person and the privacy of individuals, seems a more appropriate route (to me). I accept it is a real issue, and your intentions were honorable. Sorry for any offense I might have caused. I don't give myself much thinking time between posts. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
It's the old http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law 2009/10/9 David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk Alia Sheikh wrote: Dave, So we can have this discussion in only a manner which is determined by yourself? Children count, pictures of dogs count, pictures of someone's gran or bank statement or a tree counts. If your arguments hold tight then they hold tight for all examples. Hard to have a discussion when people threaten to take their ball away and not play anymore. Which signifies no more than the end of this discussion with you perhaps, but thought it worth mentioning in case the negative reactions to that statement were just whistling past. Alia If you wish to talk about personal images use the example of adults, a spouse for example. Or personal information. Involving children is like using the word Nazi, it is designed to close down debate, because of the moral panic surrounding the issue. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ -- Brian Butterworth follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/briantist web: http://www.ukfree.tv - independent digital television and switchover advice, since 2002
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Dear David, You are getting less and less reasonable with each posting you make. I assert that you are a dickhead of the highest order and are going straight into my trash folder. If you could off a bit quicker, that would be much appreciated. Best regards etc, Rich. On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 2:24 PM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Deirdre Harvey wrote: We don't call them all laws. No and not all fish are sharks, but sharks are fish. But the particular law of copyright, imposes more costs than benefits and should be abolished. That is your contention, it is not a fact. Yes, and I am defending that contention. Easy as that, eh? Just pass a few privacy laws... they never impinge on the freedom of people and their right to access certain information, do they? No but it is off topic, in that copyright is not a good tool for privacy etc. Whose freedom? Not Martin Belam's freedom to protect his work from unauthorised copying obviously. Martin Belam's Freedoms should not impose on freedoms of others, where that happens we have social conventions, laws, judges etc. I just think copyright is a bad law and we should review (abolish) it. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On 8-Oct-2009, at 19:35, David Tomlinson wrote: How about this one: (In no particular order). [In view of various things] Why don't we just abolish copyright ? Being pragmatic, I’d posit that taking such an extremist perspective is unlikely to achieve what you want. Actually, abolishing copyright would unlikely to achieve what you want :) Copyright was dreamed up by people I would humbly suggest were smarter than most (if not all) of us—not to say they’re beyond criticism, but that I would think long and hard about the ramifications of throwing it all away for diving into it. The problem, as far as I can see it, isn’t copyright itself, but the evolved form which grants _extended_ monopolies which persist for multiple generations. Personally, I’m no great fan of this. Copyright was supposed to create a -temporary- monopoly as an incentive for the furthering of society’s creative bleeding edge. It’s not an absolute monopoly (there are things like fair dealings, the right to time-shift broadcast programmes, and so on). Once it’s no longer temporary, the ultimate purpose of it is lost. I would argue that an extended temporary monopoly begins to share some of the same problems that a permanent one does. However, in light of this, we’ve been creative in a different way: we’ve learned to use copyright as a tool to create anti-monopolies. Things like the GPL and Creative Commons rely specifically upon copyright’s functions both to work and to prevent others from subverting their own purpose. Without copyright, a license such as the GPL, which grants you permission to redistribute a work _only_ if you adhere to its conditions, would be void. In a no-copyright world, ignoring the reduced incentive to create works in the first place (because there are plenty of people who do it purely for enjoyment), somebody would be free to take your source code, modify it, compile it, and release the binaries without giving anybody the option of getting the source of their version: exactly what the GPL attempts to prevent. Essentially, everything becomes public domain, whether you like it or not, and it actually ends up being the worst of both worlds. The real solution is to redress the balance: bring consumer rights up to date to more closely match expectations (for example, the fact that it’s copyright infringement to rip a CD that you bought is way out of step with modern reality); and restore the temporary nature of the monopoly—15 years, perhaps? I’m not sure—it needs careful thought. But abolishing it altogether? Irrespective of its merits, by taking a far-flung stance, you’re more likely to get yourself written off as being crazy than make real headway in affecting change. Softly softly catchy monkey :) M. -- mo mcroberts http://nevali.net iChat: mo.mcrobe...@me.com Jabber/GTalk: m...@ilaven.net Twitter: @nevali Run Leopard or Snow Leopard? Set Quick Look free with DropLook - http://labs.jazzio.com/DropLook/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Fearghas McKay wrote: David On 8 Oct 2009, at 19:35, David Tomlinson wrote: Why don't we just abolish copyright ? No - because those of us who create content want to be able to say no to other people just taking our work and making money from it, I want to keep my images as all rights reserved. I don't want you using them to advertise your agenda, your poster on a wall for teenage students, your happy image for tots. If you want to do any of those things I want you to have to talk to me first and discuss it. That is what copyright gives me, and I do not want to loose control of my creative work. You may have a different view of copyright but that is my view of some of the benefits of copyright. Sure, You may want that, I want want lots of things but why should society respect what you want ? any more than they respect what I want ? Why should you be able to control the actions of other people ? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Mo McRoberts wrote: On 8-Oct-2009, at 19:35, David Tomlinson wrote: How about this one: (In no particular order). [In view of various things] Why don't we just abolish copyright ? Being pragmatic, I’d posit that taking such an extremist perspective is unlikely to achieve what you want. Actually, abolishing copyright would unlikely to achieve what you want :) It is my genuine position. Abolishing copyright would achieve exactly what I want. Copyright was dreamed up by people I would humbly suggest were smarter than most (if not all) of us—not to say they’re beyond criticism, but that I would think long and hard about the ramifications of throwing it all away for diving into it. Statue of Anne (1710) was actually censorship. We have the Hansard speeches, and they were worried about creating a monopoly as was Jefferson in the USA The problem, as far as I can see it, isn’t copyright itself, but the evolved form which grants _extended_ monopolies which persist for multiple generations. Personally, I’m no great fan of this. This is the cumulative effect of granting a monopoly, special interests lobby for it's extention at the cost of the public interest. Copyright was supposed to create a -temporary- monopoly as an incentive for the furthering of society’s creative bleeding edge. It’s not an absolute monopoly (there are things like fair dealings, the right to time-shift broadcast programmes, and so on). Once it’s no longer temporary, the ultimate purpose of it is lost. I would argue that an extended temporary monopoly begins to share some of the same problems that a permanent one does. No that is the US constitution, it was a form of censorship. However, in light of this, we’ve been creative in a different way: we’ve learned to use copyright as a tool to create anti-monopolies. Things like the GPL and Creative Commons rely specifically upon copyright’s functions both to work and to prevent others from subverting their own purpose. Without copyright, a license such as the GPL, which grants you permission to redistribute a work _only_ if you adhere to its conditions, would be void. You would have to insist on the source code been made available, by the only reason the GPL need copyright, is because copyright exists ! In a no-copyright world, ignoring the reduced incentive to create works in the first place (because there are plenty of people who do it purely for enjoyment), somebody would be free to take your source code, modify it, compile it, and release the binaries without giving anybody the option of getting the source of their version: exactly what the GPL attempts to prevent. Essentially, everything becomes public domain, whether you like it or not, and it actually ends up being the worst of both worlds. Software is a special case with source and object code, we would also require the source code be provided by law. The real solution is to redress the balance: bring consumer rights up to date to more closely match expectations (for example, the fact that it’s copyright infringement to rip a CD that you bought is way out of step with modern reality); and restore the temporary nature of the monopoly—15 years, perhaps? I’m not sure—it needs careful thought. The real solution is to abolish copyright. But abolishing it altogether? Irrespective of its merits, by taking a far-flung stance, you’re more likely to get yourself written off as being crazy than make real headway in affecting change. Softly softly catchy monkey :) Thanks for the advice, but I am deadly serious. As I hope to demonstrate. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
vijay chopra wrote: I'm a paid up member of the Pirate Party http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/ (UK) and even we don't take this line. Current official policy appears to be heading towards 5 years + 5 more if you register. There's some debate from when this period should start. Yes, I am aware of this, but why five years, why not one year why not three months, and if three months, why at all. How long does it take for most products to make the vast majority of their money. There are exceptions, like the Beatles etc. But the vast majority make most of their income in the first three months on sale. How long would it take for a competitor, to prepare and publish an alternative to a say a book. More than three months ? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
I will have another go ... David Tomlinson wrote: Copyright was dreamed up by people I would humbly suggest were smarter than most (if not all) of us—not to say they’re beyond criticism, but that I would think long and hard about the ramifications of throwing it all away for diving into it. Statue of Anne (1710) was actually censorship. We have the Hansard speeches, and they were worried about creating a monopoly as was Jefferson in the USA http://www.baen.com/library/palaver4.htm Thomas Macaulay in Parliament in 1841 A monopoly of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very distant advantages, even when they are advantages which we may reasonably hope that we shall ourselves enjoy. But an advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, by somebody, we know not by whom, perhaps by somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no motive at all to action. [...] The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers. As for the US constitution, we all know why copyright was created, to compensate authors, and to promote science and the useful arts. We have to question, does it meet the ends, it certainly compensates authors, but can we not achieve the ends through the doctrine of first sale (most profits come in the first three months). Promoting science and the useful arts. http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patrev.pdf Nobel prise for economics indicating that patents do not meet this end. It is hard to see how copyright succeeds in this context. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Fearghas McKay wrote: I mis-understood your intent. If there is no copyright. When you make the images public, you relinquish control. The alternative is to keep the distribution limited, and use trust. While you may have an emotional attachment or a feeling of entitlement to the images, this is not a good basis for public policy. As to why someone should make money from them ? If they can add value in some way ? Why would people pay for the images, when they are in the public domain ? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
David Tomlinson wrote: Fearghas McKay wrote: For the record, I was looking for debate on the issue of copyright. I don't see how images of children are any more relevant than images of countryside, or any other content. I suggest the people raising the issue are the ones with the problem. The Internet Watch Foundation does not require copyright to operate. I will not respond to any posts that includes references children. If fact the posters future posts will be filtered to trash. And if Fergus is looking to leave the list, let me help. Put unsubscribe in the subject and post. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 22:32, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: Yes, I am aware of this, but why five years, why not one year why not three months, and if three months, why at all. Well done. You've re-discovered the Sorites Paradox. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/ But the copyright industry discovered it first. One thing the American Founding Fathers got right is that the test should be public benefit - whether it benefits the useful Arts and Sciences. What they got wrong was not being a bit more specific about the limited time provision. I mean, yes, life plus seventy years is a limited time when you consider it cosmically. Given that someone is likely to produce their greatest work in their thirties or forties, given a reasonable life expectancy of 70-80 years, we are talking a century. I think a decade or two is long enough for the useful Arts and Sciences to benefit from a work. The problem with copyright is a perceptual one: people see intellectual property and they focus on the second word. It's property, they think. It's like a house or a car - I *own* it. No you don't. You are leasing it from humanity. And all that inspiration that led you to the point of creating the work has external costs. The artist wanders around the National Gallery. The writer reads books in libraries. The moviemaker watches other movies. Everyone goes to school. Many go to university. Feel free to insert Locke's labour-mixing argument here. (In the case of the BBC, which we all pay for if we have TVs, it's completely apparent that we have a moral stake in as much as we are required to pay for it if we want to watch TV. But we own a stake in every other type of cultural production too because no cultural work - at least nothing of any value - exists in a vacuum.) But again, I say, we have a Sorites problem. Unless you cope with the problem, you either end up saying we should have an infinite copyright term or no copyright at all. Yes, if we were to say 10 years extendable to 20, we'd face accusations of arbitrariness. But life+70 years is arbitrary too. Except it isn't. It's arbitrary in the same way that a badly regulated banking sector is arbitrary - it's done that way because certain people are profiting greatly from locking us away from our cultural birthright. How do we resolve the Sorites problem inherent in copyright and all intellectual property that has a temporal limit built-in? Simple. We use a Rawlsian original position thought experiment modified to cope with the same situation. Imagine that you were taken back to an original position. You were placed behind a veil of ignorance. You don't know whether when you are put into the world whether you are going to be Walt Disney or Richard Stallman. You don't know if you will be a Napster user or a member of Metallica. You don't know if you are going to be a copyright creator, a copyright reuser or whatever. Now decide on your principles. I think that given this thought experiment, a short-term copyright can be justified. Life+70 years is inequitable on Rawlsian grounds. The only people who can seriously think Life+70 years is equitable are the children of pop stars who will be collecting royalty cheques for the rest of their life for doing absolutely sweet bugger all. Just because your mum or dad is a pop star doesn't mean that the law should provide you with a guaranteed income. Two generations of my family have made their money in the printing trade. I have a feeling that the next two generations are not. Boo hoo. They've got to find a different calling in life. The other problem with morality-of-IP debates is that we do not get to see the real cost of what doesn't happen because of IP laws. It's very easy to throw out a counterfactual like if we didn't have strong copyright protection, we'd never have The Beatles. But I'm pretty sure that for every quite reasonable counterfactual of that sort, there are a fair amount of flipsides - if we didn't have strong copyright protection, we'd have had (some other thing we can't tell you because it never happened). I can't tell you about the great singer we never had because of copyright limitations. I can only vaguely hint at it. The rhetorical force of specific counter-factuals has a great deal of weight compared to very general counter-factuals. But when it comes down to brass tacks, there isn't much to either of them. Are we really saying that if copyright had been 5 years shorter, the Beatles would never have existed? That seems ridiculous. (Hey, the Sorites problem works for counterfactuals too!) We can see it a bit more with technology stuff: we can see plenty of things which are perfectly legal to do with open source but which you can't do with closed source software and argue by analogy. There's a reason there are a hundred different Linux window managers - it's partly cultural, but it's also partly because of the liberty that software writers have to do that. But if
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
I suspect you can trust your family, friends etc to respect your wishes, and you can limit the distribution through trust. Images of children can be sourced for advertising without having to resort to using private images. So your basic answer is that in a world without copyright, instead of me being allowed to say Hey, I know you *could* just download this straight off the internet and reuse it however you want, but I'd really rather you didn't, the onus is instead on me to personally vouch for the distribution of my photos on a person-by-person basis and just hope for the best from anyone I don't know who wants a picture of a child? If you want to write software code, and are happy for people to take it away and modify it and do what they want with it, then fine, I'm not stopping you. The output of my work is writing and wireframes and designs. I'd rather someone didn't just reproduce all of my blog or my presentations or my wireframe ideas and pass them off as their own or make money from them without my permission. So why do you want to stop me expressing that wish? You can quote as many bits of historical text from the 1800s as you like, but it doesn't stop you sounding like an arrogant prick who thinks he has more right to determine what should happen to the things I produce than I do. m - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
Martin Belam wrote: I suspect you can trust your family, friends etc to respect your wishes, and you can limit the distribution through trust. Images of children can be sourced for advertising without having to resort to using private images. So your basic answer is that in a world without copyright, instead of me being allowed to say Hey, I know you *could* just download this straight off the internet and reuse it however you want, but I'd really rather you didn't, the onus is instead on me to personally vouch for the distribution of my photos on a person-by-person basis and just hope for the best from anyone I don't know who wants a picture of a child? My answer is that only commercial interests, would respect your copyright. My suggestion is that you don't post images you don't want re-distributed in a public place. Personal items could be covered by privacy. I don't see it useful in the context of copyright. For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. I suggest personal material e.g a private letter, can substitute for the purposes of the debate. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
On 9-Oct-2009, at 00:21, David Tomlinson wrote: For obvious reasons I do not wish to discuss children as a subject anymore. It’s not obvious at all. People need to stop with the nervousness when the words “children” and “photograph” appear in a sentence together; it’s, for want of a better term, childish and ridiculous. It’s also pretty salient, given it’s a straightforward example of a copyright-holder having a current ability to exercise control without having to resort to onerous trust mechanisms. Your position has a distinct lack of great upsides as compared to the status quo, but it -does- have some significant flaws, and I say that retaining the view that copyright as it exists today is flawed in some fairly serious ways. M. -- mo mcroberts http://nevali.net iChat: mo.mcrobe...@me.com Jabber/GTalk: m...@ilaven.net Twitter: @nevali Run Leopard or Snow Leopard? Set Quick Look free with DropLook - http://labs.jazzio.com/DropLook/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
Re: [backstage] Free as in 'Freedom'
So if I understand you, let's abolish copyright, and that way Microsoft, Adobe et.al. can just chuck their bloated old code and incorporate formerly free software into their binaries? And charge an arm and a leg for it as well. No thanks. I prefer the GPL, which derives its power from copyright law - the concept that creators decide how their work may be used. I support intellectual property law reform, but this is really throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Sean. P.S. I'm a parent, and I am glad copyright law provides me with some recourse should my teenager be dumb enough to upload a bad photo to a public internet site. I'm afraid though that next, you're going to tell me that children should be free of parental control and report their parents to the NKVD if they aren't permitted to use RapidShare or MEGAUPLOAD On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 8:35 PM, David Tomlinson d.tomlin...@tiscali.co.uk wrote: How about this one: (In no particular order). * In view of the power grab we have witnessed. * In view of technological developments. * In view of the fact the copyright is censorship of the public. * In view of the extension of the scope of monopoly to 100 years or life + 70 years * In view of the fact that it is a state sanctioned monopoly. * In view of the fact that there is no economic case for continuing copyright. * In view of the costs copyright imposes on society. * In view of the opportunity costs. Why don't we just abolish copyright ? - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
