But why should the costs required to license it for producing a derivative be so exorbitantly huge as to limit the building-upon of culture to a few super-rich mega-companies? Perhaps maybe not everything should be “free”, but it should also not be SO monopolized either.

I agree with a comment geomark made a while back:

“All those arguments that say you must protect ideas so that people will invest in developing them accept greed as the primary driver, a fundamental mental flaw that serves to drive greed further into people’s psyche.”

What we need is a system that will allow creators, marketers, and distributors to profit while not letting a few oligarchs rake in billions of dollars to satisfy their greed.

For those who made the argument about losing jobs in the industry, how much do you think the average worker in the industry makes? I assure you, if you are not the artist or in the upper echelons of management, you make hardly enough to support a family.

Greed is not the basis for sound society. Fairness and fair profit is the best means to sustain a society and economy. Again, just look at our economic system today and the crisis it has brought us to, It was the greed of the few that has brought us to this point.

The new system works and is fair! Promotion is done directly between artists and fans and everyone has an equal chance of success on MySpace, Bebo and Facebook without the big record companies getting in the way … those who prove successful are those that can prove their ability to the public not those who are “adopted” by a committee of fat cats.

With digital distribution overheads and production costs are greatly reduced meaning music can be distributed cheaply or even free while the bands biggest income should come from performing live.

That’s only fair! Everyone else has to work every day to earn a living … why shouldn’t musicians? Why should they have 3 months hard work and then sit on their ass while they rake the money in for the rest of the year?
Let them go out and perform live every week and make their money from that … it’s still only a few hours a day of “real” work compared to all those people who work long, long shifts in poorly paid factories!

Anyone who MAKES MONEY from other people’s work should rightly be sued … that means you Google! But anyone who simply wants to enjoy the work should be free to do so … that means all you listeners, viewers and readers!

I know a lot of honest artists who are in the business for the love of the music and not just for greed would agree wholeheartedly with this business model. They still make more than enough to live on while staying in the real world like the rest of us of having to actually work for a living!

Those who make more than that for less effort more often than not only end up wasting their millions, wasting their lives and wasting their talents … take Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty as prime examples! They’ve lost sight of the true value of what they have because they got given too much, too quick and too easily!

Here is an article in InternetEvolution.com by Andrew Keen about why ‘Rethinking’ copyright law is wrong. Andrew Keen: “Arrington’s position certainly threatens our culture”.

There may be some truth somewhere in Mr. Arrlingon’s statement ” … it’s time for copyright holders to rethink their business models. The winners won’t be the companies that win or lose billion dollar lawsuits. It’ll be the companies that throw out everything that’s come before, and build new businesses around the natural behavior of people. Remove friction and win.” However, there is no truth in the sentence that preceded it … “It’s time to rethink copyright laws.” Attempting to create a nexus between the two statements is a blatant – and probably consciously devised – non sequitur.

When you cut through all of the flawed rhetoric – such as that which Mr. Arrlingon, Larry Lessig, the EFF, Richard Stallman and the other Marxist digatopeans are famous for – copyright law has one and only one purpose and that is to grant creators rights to the works they create to give them the option to get paid for the distribution of their works if they so chose thereby enhancing their motivation to keep creating.

Tearing chunks of the copyright law away to enable those who wish to use other peoples work without paying for it – and possibly, though I doubt it, suffering moral concern about what they are doing by doing so – rapes the very people that offer the creations consumers covet and technologists need to give the sterile, inanimate objects they produce – life.

History has already provided us with a look at what happens when copyright is eviscerated the way Mr. Arrlingon, the other anti creator crusaders and the greedy public suggest: “The breakdown of the copyright system in post-Soviet Russia, a nation with a rich history of creative accomplishment, can teach us all a lesson. Just as the strictures of totalitarianism were being removed from the lives of Russian creators, the traditions of copyright protection and enforcement were abandoned. The result has been the utter dissipation of Russia’s creative community. Some creators have fled to the West. Others have been forced to abandon their craft. Either way, the output of creative works has nearly ceased, a sad result for a great culture.” From: The Engine of Free Expression: Copyright on the Internet.

In a global digital environment where the rights of creators can easily be stripped away by those who wish to freely devour the fruits of their labor without attempting to understand – or give a single care about – what is takes to create something that can effect millions of people the minute they hear it and stay with them for the rest of their lives, there is no ‘West’ to which today’s persecuted creators can flee.

You can take their product. You can destroy their lives. And, sadly, when all is said and done, the losers are those who love music but can’t create it, our culture and our humanity.

Copyright is not the culprit. Copyright is an incentive. Working to destroy is a senseless attack on the very fiber of out being. “Can there ever (be) a more empty and worthless cause than fighting for the right for artists not to be paid?” — Andrew Orlowski

However, bear in mind that labour does not entitle reward (unless reward was promised), merely entitlement to possession or free exchange, whether of itself or its fruits, whether of a material or intellectual nature.

So, if you can find few who want your book of poems that took you ten years to write, you aren’t going to be able to exchange them for very much money. However, simply because they are of an intellectual nature doesn’t render them fair game for thieves.

Even so, if you chose to publish one or two poems free of charge as loss leaders to promote the book to a larger audience, those promotional poems become the property of those you give them to (notwithstanding the truth of their authorship), and their legitimate recipients are at liberty to copy and sell them if they choose (though they are unlikely to, except in those few corners of the world that the Internet doesn’t yet reach, where wealthy poetry lovers live).

Essentially, the economic incentive for a poet is their audience for their poetry. This comprises the amount of money the audience is collectively willing to offer to the poet as incentive to publish their work.

Such collective payments are greatly facilitated by the Internet.

As for Jefferson, I don’t think he was particularly happy with copyright, nor that desperate to create it.

Thomas Jefferson, The DMCA, Copyright, Fair Use, et al.
http://www.kuro...7/23/23214/3438

(Hat tip http://news.sla...mp;cid=23598667 ).

It seems you and I are the only ones still pounding away on the comments here. I’d be willing to keep at this on your own blog, but also don’t want to be a pest. This issue matters deeply to me, but I want to learn, understand, and find a method that works best for all people more than I want to be right.

See Natural Law Protects Natural Rights.

You may misunderstand my motive though, for such abolition. It is not to benefit creators, for they no longer get benefit from such privileges in any case, but to benefit those now prosecuted by the cartel of corporate publishers who believe that random persecution can educate the public into obedient surrender of their liberty.

The natural law now applies, irrespective of legislation. There’s no need to change the law in order to make natural law apply, only to change the law to protect innocent cultural exchange from unethical litigation.

Though few recognise it, there is a massive section of society who in understanding the nature of the digital domain have already changed their business practices, and have modulated copyright law to neutralise its unnatural constraint and interference. This is the Free Software movement, and their General Public License is a most effective neutralisation of copyright.

“I will not accept the enslavement of my fellow man, nor any imposition upon his liberty, as reward for the publication of my art”

I *think* that you support the end of all copyright law, not just its reform. Is this correct? I strongly support reform (the current versions extend the monopoly far too long, allow corporations to concentrate far too much power, and don’t go far enough in supporting the original creators from corporate manipulation). However, I still don’t see how ending copyright in total would be beneficial to creators.

Am I still misunderstanding your position? Thanks for your continued conversation.

I am often the first to challenge nihilists who believe intellectual property is fair game and not to be protected.

I concern myself only with everyone’s right to liberty, cultural liberty, to free speech and the sharing and building upon our cultural commonwealth.

This threatens no-one’s privacy.

It is copyright that threatens our privacy by seeking to control our use of the art we buy, and copyright that constrains our cultural liberty to share and build upon it.

The thrust of the argument in that post is this (as I understand it): currently, violators of copyright law can be imprisoned; if I create art, I am a copyright holder; therefore, by holding my copyright, I potentially , though indirectly, contribute to someone going to jail; therefore, I will no longer hold my copyright because I don’t want my art to become “an imposition on his liberty.”

If this logic were valid, then this would be true as well: currently, violators of tresspass laws can be imprisoned; if I own land, I attain the right for that land to be free from tresspassers; therefore, by holding that right, I potentially, though indirectly, contribute to someone going to jail; therefore, I will no longer hold my right to keep my land free from tresspassers because I don’t want my land to become “an imposition on his liberty.” So here: everyone do whatever you’d like with my land! I’ll work hard to maintain it, improve its aesthetic appeal, and add to its utility by maintaining a garden, etc. Come freely onto my land at any time and take what you like, without asking and without payment.

That’s called a public park. And if someone intends to do that, then that’s great. Things should be done simply for the common good. But you wouldn’t ORDER BY LAW that all citizens must do this, would you? Because that’s the analogy for the argument to abolish copyright law.

Also, all of this puts the ethical burden on the one who is upholding the law. The copyright holder isn’t forcing anyone to go to jail (and certainly not enslaving anyone). The violator of the copyright brings that consequence upon himself when he violates it.

I understand that the argument is that the law is unjust, but this argument doesn’t prove that. Instead, it’s circular. It says: “Because people can go to jail if they violate this law, this law is unjust.” What?!

If you want to get at whether or not copyright law is ethical, you’ll have to attack it from a different angle.

All I’m in opposition to are the unethical commercial privileges that suspend certain intellectual property rights – on the pretext that the commercial exploitation of such suspension is ultimately beneficial to the public.

How is Copyright Fundamentally Unethical?

How is what you said earlier any different from the claim that: once it’s in digital form, so it should be free? And on what grounds do you defend such a claim?

Ahem, I’ve fixed IP law so it accords with natural law, the US constitution, citizens of the US and the rest of the world, and the laws of information technology.

That’s gottta tick quite a few boxes.

If your complaint is that it doesn’t reiterate copyright, and achieve by some mystical power of invocation the ability for law to prevent people enjoying their cultural freedom, then you’re absolutely right. But, then I have a hunch no-one is going to come up with the law you seek.

You may as well debate how to create a time machine or otherwise put the Internet back into Pandora’s box. That debate is not one I’ll be adding to.

Article 1, Section 8, clause 81 of the US Constitution says,
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Believe it or not, but this doesn’t actually sanction copyright or patent. However, those who enact and support copyright and patent may argue that it permits such unethical privileges.

But, more importantly, the US constitution doesn’t prevent the abolition of copyright or patent.

Let’s see how, whilst still tightly adhering to the US constitution, the people’s liberty need not be unethically suspended, as it is by copyright and patent, when securing their natural intellectual property rights:

1. Authors and inventors, being human beings have a natural, exclusive right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
2. This natural right should be secured by the state – to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.
3. The natural right can last no longer than the lifetime of the author or inventor.
4. The natural right should be secured for a limited time equal to the limited lifetime of the author or inventor, except in the event of unnatural death, when this limited time should be extended to secure a now unnatural exclusive right by a further quarter of the normal lifespan.
5. The natural right ceases to be exclusive when the author or inventor voluntarily communicates (or permits the communication of) their writings and discoveries to other parties, whether by gift or exchange.
6. An author’s or inventor’s writings and discoveries naturally remain exclusive to all natural parties to whom they have been voluntarily communicated (by any such party).
7. All such communicated parties may, as a collective, be treated as if a single author or inventor and should have secured (by the state) their natural, exclusive right for as long as they each shall live.
8. No communicated party may as a consequence submit to the abridgement of their freedom of speech, which includes the freedom to further communicate (the writings and discoveries voluntarily communicated to them) to whomsoever they choose. NB This doesn’t preclude a communicant’s commercial exchange of their continued silence (confidentiality).
9. Those who are not voluntarily communicated parties, who view, remove, copy, or otherwise communicate a party’s writings or discoveries to themselves (or any other) without that party’s permission shall be penalised statutorily (for the violation of privacy) and additionally in proportion to the market value of the publication of those writings or discoveries (where publication is their exchange for money with members of the public at large), and further required to restore any removal and destroy any copies manufactured. All who have been further illegitimately communicated may also be similarly liable in so far as they are complicit, but must at least also cease and reverse any communication in so far as it is practicable.

This would seem to be in greater accord with the natural rights philosophy of Thomas Paine than the current copyright and patent legislation (that unethically suspends the public’s liberty in order to create mercantile privilege, so subjecting the people to the tyranny and oppression of immortal and sociopathic corporations who’ve adopted the privilege as their own).

From ‘Constitutional Sanction’ http://www.digi...ndex.php?id=119

It is pretty disingenious to hide behind a “free market” attitude when large companies (who happen to be copyright holders) are able to “donate” thousands? (tens of thousands? +++? ) in “campaing contributions” to individual lawmakers, PAC’s, local state and federal political parties who regularly pass laws that shape the market (no longer free) to the benefit of the large corporate donors.

This is not a case of right and wrong and crime and punishment. American industry is loosing it’s edge. When the Neo-Liberals took charge in the the ’80’s American Auto manufacturerers refused to develop fuel efficient technologies and relied on their political influece to stay in business. They are no longer at the top of their industry.

As far as the music industry goes:

“people are losing jobs in the music industry. Illegal downloading is not a victimless crime: thousands of record label employees have been laid off, hundreds of artists have been cut from label rosters, numerous record stores are closing throughout the country, and due to declining sales, record companies are finding their ability to invest in new artists at risk.”

The people that are loosing jobs are mangers, middle managers and producers. Artists like Primus, Radio Head and Trent Reznor are capitalizing on new technologies that makes the old business model obsolete. Tower Records shut down because they had ZERO web presence. That, quite frankly is their fault. The musical artists themselves now have much more controle over their careers and do not become trapped in an industry that requires them to reach “Stardom” to break even on their investments.

The copyright system as it works today is a wracket. The kind that mobsters would be arrested for in the ’30’s. You can either try to force people to deal with an archaic business model (other countries are way ahead of us in alternative power generation, i’m sure a few individuals will make out very well, but in about 20 years american power companies are going to be in worse shape than the Auto manufactures are now)

Technology is part of the environment that you are operating in, and you must adapt to the changing environment or become obsolete.

Let’s see you give away your copyrights that you say are outmoded and the basis of broken business models.

Or maybe you’re very comfortable by taking advantage of all the copyright laws that you decry others for taking advantage of? That’s what I thought…