UK Publisher's Association Accuses British Library Of 'Tawdry Theft' For Supporting More Reasonable Copyright
from the no-shame dept
The UK Publisher's Association seems to be making sure it appears as out of touch and obsolete as possible these days. This is the same group that, a few months ago, announced that fair use would put a "chokehold on innovation" despite the fact that we've got plenty of experience with fair use in the US, and see no such chokehold due to it. The latest is that the Publisher's Association has apparently decided to go on the offensive (and I mean that in multiple ways), attacking all who call for more reasonable copyright laws -- including the British Library -- as defending "tawdry theft":[PA chief executive Richard Mollet] attacked organisations such as the Open Rights Group, research councils and the British Library, who he said all to varying degrees wish to erode copyright, and the tactics of lobby groups, who have "the temerity to appropriate the language of freedom of expression as a cloak for their tawdry theft". He said it was "a grotesque attempt to draw moral equivalence between stealing someone's work and the struggle for political representation".That's pretty funny, since it appears that he (and many others on his side) are the ones who are actually "appropriating" language in a ridiculous way -- such as referring to things like the public domain, open access and fair use as "stealing" or "tawdry theft." The thing is, Mollet is coming down on the wrong side of history. People are growing up today with the internet understand the importance of unfettered communication and openness, and they don't buy the mythical story that locking up works is good for anyone. All the Publishers' Association is doing here is guaranteeing that they're seen as obsolete and out of touch for the entire next generation.
But, really, when you stoop so low as to accuse the British Library of supporting theft, you would think that someone, somewhere, would point out to Mollet how ridiculous he looks. However, it does reveal the publisher's true belief: things like libraries are apparently evil copyright abusers. Incredible.
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Filed Under: british library, publisher's association, theft, uk
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Re: Richard Mollet
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Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Why can't he accuse the British Library of theft? How do the Greeks feel about the Elgin Marbles sitting around the corner at the British Museum? They're quite happy to use the word "theft".
How do the Egyptians feel about the mummies sitting in the museum? I'm sure they're quite happy to use the word "grave robbery" to describe what the Brits have done to their Egyptian ancestors.
The fact is that the British institutions have been quite happy to hide behind the curtain of rank, class, status and legal privilege to perpetrate crimes in the past. It looks like the British Library can't break the habit. If they see something they like, they'll just nick it and come up with any old preposterous rhetoric to justify it.
Mollet is not coming down on the wrong side of history because there is no side to history. Despite your dreams, there is no grand sweeping arc leading to the final shangri-la of Pirate Bay. It's always been a battle about rights and it will always be so.
Throughout history, the countries that do the best job strengthening property rights-- within reason-- end up with the most prosperity. Once again, if you're looking for a file-sharing/libertarian paradise, why don't you go to Somalia and see how all of that freedom to innovate is working out there. There's no RIAA forcing people to share development costs and so, surprise, there's no development.
We have a choice. If we give the creators rights, the readers are going to have to suck it up and pay more than they like. But they will have things to read. Content will be created.
But if the readers insist on the right to read without contributing their fair share of the cost of creation, the publishers will die. Then the readers will have nothing to read-- except, perhaps, trashy political astroturfing funded by billionaires to bamboozle the people.
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
I assume this is what you actually meant as you said "win-win"
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Imagine I came in front of you and said, "The billionaires have decided that from now on, the people will not be paid when they create something wonderful. They must give it away."
Ack! You would scream and cry and about the injustice. You would say that it's only fair to allow artists to earn a living. If anything, the world needs artists more than ever and they should be compensated for their work in making the world a more beautiful place just like the garbage men and the doctors.
But somehow the devil came along and now you're arguing that the world will be a better place if the artists are kept poor. Somehow the old system that made artists rich resulted in "spoon fed culture" but the new system where everyone is poor will be nice because we'll create our own.
Plenty of people created their own before the Internet and they'll continue. Copyright never stopped anyone from creating their own culture, it just stops them from plagiarizing someone else's.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
That's how it's supposed to be and that's what we are discussing here.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Except, of course, that nobody's arguing that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
FTFY (using your own tired rhetoric)
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Don't get me wrong, I really do want my freedom of expression trampled, and my government corrupted by American industry bodies, but, you know, if I'm ever expected to explain to my children why they have a Great Firewall Of Britain, and only "enjoy" RIAA certified products that they pay for every time they consume them, I'll need to be able to recite the your illogical rhetoric for them.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
And cut the crap about having your freedom of expression trampled. You are not expressing yourself when you download something from a P2P network. You are not expressing yourself when you tell someone else where to "share" protected works. The people who believe in supporting the content creators through intellectual property have no desire to ever stop you from genuinely expressing your own opinion. They just want to stop you from nicking theirs.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
What about when the website you rely on to distribute your solely owned and created copyright works gets shut down by over zealous governments and media lobbies? Is that not having your freedom of expression trampled?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
NBC also fibbed when they reported on pickup trucks. Does that mean we should stop all reporters?
And while I think it's wrong for governments to shut down web sites that are distributing legit goods, I think it's something that can be surmounted easily. We hear again and again around here that the pirate sites will just pop up again with another domain name. If it's so easy for them to do that, it's not a great inconvenience.
The fact is that it's even easier for legit publishers to set up a new site. If they were doing nothing wrong before, they'll be able to move over to a new site.
The point is that it's not fair for pirate sites to wave the flag of censorship because shutting them down has nothing to do with real censorship. Speaking of the shut downs that way just confuses things.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Interesting, Megaupload comes to mind. Two weights, two measures?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
There are easy technical controls that they could have put in place and many of the surviving remote file systems put them in place. Megaupload made a conscious desire to give people a financial incentive to steal.
So if Megaupload could morph into a legit file sharing network, I'm all for bringing them back. But that means cutting off the payments to the infringers.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
So you support all of NBC's holdings being seized by the government, the government telling the courts to delete all the content, and their executives held under house arrest?
Good to know, Bob.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
You mean like when Google goes through search take-down requests by hand? I take it you are not technical, since you think all technology is magical and programmers can easily program magical algorithms to detect infringement. Probably a 1/4 of the posts on Techdirt report on failures of this magical technology.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
What about if MU was always legit? You talk as if it's clear that MU was a bad actor. Initially, I thought so too, but the more we learn about it, the less it looks like MU was actually doing anything nefarious.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Stuttered it's way through the script?
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
That's not what anybody means by freedom of expression, and you know it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Every download from a P2P network is me 'expressing' my middle finger to the **AA's.....
Now are you saying that my freedom of expression is not as important as the **AA's freedom of expression?
They are free to claim 'ownership' of things they don't own and demand that nobody else be able to see them (and not suffer any penalties, even though they swore under penalty of perjury that they 'owned' the work in question).
So I should be free to 'claim' their things so that I can see them when I want to see them, regardless of what they think... I didn't swear under penalty of perjury not to share things I like with others... did you?
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Copyright is not a property right and claiming that abolishing copyright would somehow erode the rule of law is misleading at best.
As far as the rest of your argument goes the evidence is that monopoly rights like copyright tend to appear after prosperity has arrived. They are the result of people trying to pull the ladder up after they have already climbed it themselves.
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Imagine what these people could do if they applied the amount of time and effort this crap must have taken to something useful...
"There's no RIAA forcing people to share development costs and so, surprise, there's no development."
There's no RIAA forcing it in Kickstarter projects or open source software either, dumbass. Plenty of development there.
"But if the readers insist on the right to read without contributing their fair share of the cost of creation, the publishers will die."
I've never paid for a book I borrowed from the library before, yet publishers flourished. That might be because I also bought books, without anybody trying to force me to. What a shock, the issue isn't all or nothing and contains nuances completely ignored in your screeds. Can't you at least come up with arguments that aren't immediately ridiculous to anyone who spent more than 5 minute son this planet?
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
An abundance of natural resources, the industrial revolution, and a few world wars from which the US emerged as the only unscathed participant are why the US is doing so well and is able to impose its economic imperialist agenda on the rest of the world, including the worsening of monopoly-granting laws like copyright.
But what's worse is that Bob keeps trotting out the terms artists and creators when he's actually defending the lawyers and businessmen who screw over artists, customers, and even just citizens. He really deadpans his supposed belief that the RIAA and MPAA actually represent content creators.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
And I'm not arguing about British imperialism, I'm just pointing out the problems with wrapping up a piece with the pious question about how could anyone accuse a British institution of theft. I was merely pointing out that British institutions have been accused of evil before and it's actually easy to do.
If anything, I'm against the plunder that sustains them.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Oh come on. Who really screws over the artists and the creators? The lawyers and suits who only give the artist 15% or the P2P cheapskates who give them 0%. If we measure the crime by how much ends up in the hands of the artists, the P2P nutcakes are infinitely more evil because they give the artist zip, zero, zilch.
This is not true. You are generalizing the P2P world. While there are the ones that would never pay for anything they are NOT the entirety of the file sharing world. Much like not all copyright is bad.
As for the British institution issue, please, stop. While there MIGHT have been the case at some point we are talking about a library. You are accusing a library of stealing? Srsly?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Now show me one contemporary who's come close? Is Rebecca Black, the Internet darling behind "Sunday", sitting on a similar sized bank account? I doubt it. And she's getting legit paychecks from YouTube.
The only one cashing big checks at Megaupload was Kim Dotcom. Oh, he tossed a few coins to a few artists/apologists, but he kept the cash for himself. Show me one picture of one mansion paid for with P2P cash. Come on.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
And it's not about fat bank accounts either. Ask Louis CK if he will ever sue any1 that downloaded his stuff. And he's just one example.
As for MU, Dotcom is obviously cashing the checks. I mean, it's his business, it's supposed to generate money. He cashed a few bucks from me and my team before MU met its demise cause we used it intensively to share files from a project.
P2P doesn't pay anything. People that use P2P might pay if you deserve. Or if it sounds interesting (see kickstarter and the $10M project). You showed yet again how out of touch you are. Again, go take your medicine.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
How is this in any way relevant? Or are you actually arguing that so long as a tiny percentage of people can get incredibly rich then the system is fine?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
No, that wealth was given by consumers who purchased their music and went to their concerts. A large portion of those earnings were kept by the businessmen who didn't create any of the music.
Consumers create jobs and consumers provide money to middlemen who squeeze out as little as possible to give something to the artists. The middlemen are the leeches who do the least amount of work and get the most rewards.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
2) "I've never paid for a book I borrowed from the library before" -- Nothing could be more wrong. You paid for every book you read from the library and everyone you didn't read too. They taxed you and you had no choice but to pay. Then they waved some magic Men-In-Black memory eraser and you started thinking that the library was somehow free.
Face it: if Big Search didn't want to spread the propaganda about the wholesome goodness of libraries, everyone here would hate them. Gatekeepers? Check. Librarians decide which books to buy. DRM? Check. The libraries check out the books and start fining you if you don't return them. Anti-green? Check. You've got to drive there and they spend a fortune to light and heat the building even at night.
I could go on. Get a clue. This is all propaganda bought and paid for by Silicon Valley billionaires who don't want to share their money with the people who produce it.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
2) Yes, one copy might have been paid for. But thousands read without paying for further copies. Thousands of lost sales? Not in a million years.
Gatekeepers? Nop, you can always go to another library. And there are some systems where you can borrow from several other libraries through an exchange program (you get the book in your local library) in case the local library doesn't own the book in question. DRM? you are RENTING the book. If you buy a DRM'ed digital good it is YOURS and yet you can't do what you want with it. Anti-green? Besides being the bottom low stupidity I've ever seen from you, there are enough cases (reported on TD too) where libraries try to offer e-books but can't because of the DRM/anti-piracy bullshit.
bob, you've reached depth lows here. Stop embarrassing yourself.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
You do know that Google is not exactly beloved by a large percentage (maybe the majority) of the commenters here and elsewhere, right?
Ummm, that's not even close to being analogous to DRM. Do you understand what DRM is?
And why is this an important data point?
This is a really bizarre conspiracy theory, and it doesn't make any sense at all. Why would tech companies want to or have any obligation to share their income with companies who they are not doing business with and are not contributing to them? These same tech companies absolutely share their wealth with companies that do.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Still haven't bothered reading how it actually works, have you?
"Paywall"
Do you get paid every time you type this word? I can't think of any other reason you're so obsessed with it in every thread where it doesn't apply. Maybe you need to check that dictionary again?
"Kickstarter is a proof of everything that the RIAA and the MPAA have been saying from the beginning: innovation occurs when everyone pays their fair share of the development costs. "
Perhaps you can point out where I've ever been invited to share in the development of any **AA product, especially with regard to my choice about which ones get developed. Buying (or more recently, not buying) whatever crap they've chosen to spew out is not the same as funding development of projects.
Please, come to reality. You're still welcome if you choose to.
"They taxed you and you had no choice but to pay."
Which I did gladly, and this is exactly how the British Library is funded as well. What's your specific problem with that library compared to the others that have thrived over the centuries?
"Face it: if Big Search didn't want to spread the propaganda about the wholesome goodness of libraries, everyone here would hate them."
What. The. Fuck. You're actually thinking people would hate libraries? I can see your education is lacking, maybe you should have visited a few more in your time.
"You've got to drive there"
No you don't, especially with modern libraries that allow online ebook rentals.
Any other fantasies you want to masturbate over, or are you going to keep attacking that threadbare strawman so that you don't have to deal with reality. Oh, I forgot, you know my opinion better than I do.
"This is all propaganda bought and paid for by Silicon Valley billionaires "
My opinion on libraries hasn't changed since I used tham as a child in the 1980s. Which Silicon Valley billionaire caused my opinion in 1981?
You, on the other hand, are a conspiracy-minded idiot who can't even deal with the basic facts underlying your argument. You're a fool.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
And are you really trying to claim library checkout limits are like DRM? What the fuck are you smoking?
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
The mentality of money > consumer is kind of a detrimental one, bob. Even you should realize that.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
That's the only reason I keep harping on this. I want artists to be able to eat. I want artists to be able to be rewarded when their work makes people happy.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Me too. I just don't want them to do so at the expense of others or myself, which is what the major media companies are demanding.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
This is the structure of your argument:
"If A then B,
C,
Therefore if D then E"
For a deductive argument to literally be devoid of logic is.....uncommon. I'm not sure I've seen that before.
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
It should require a reasonable number of registered users (in good standing!) click it, of course...
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Besides, if we were able to kick bob off of Techdirt for short periods, then where would we get our daily Poe's Law?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Just thinking it would be nice, pipe dream, you know.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Unless someone is within your subnet they can't see your mac address by inspecting packets.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Sigh.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Actually I was born with my nice shiny halo that lights the darker regions and corners of the house. Now that that's out of the way.
You bring a lot of this on yourself, bob, by inventing history that doesn't exist, somehow seeing Kickstarter as some odd form of DRM when I can legally download the product(s) of a Kickstarter project whether or not I contributed to it, make copies of it all over my hard disk and the known universe without circumventing anything. Insisting that fans pay their "fair share" as if that means something even if the end product is crap which means that I pay MSRP on everything rather than take part in a free market where things like demand and quality have nothing to do with the price in cash when I pay it. If that means the artist is eating hotdogs tonight that's what it means.
No, you're not evil. Ignorant yes, evil no. Desperate at times to make your point to the point where your agruments become circular. "Insert Mike's post topic here", "bob's posts repeating everything he's ever posted without so much as a new thought", "if all else fails bring up 'Big Search'" as if search engines are all evil themselves, and on it goes.
Speaking of search engines and libraries when will you ever learn that the results of a search engine query are the web analogue of a card catalogue? Just because you don't like the result of the search doesn't change it. It's on the "shelf" somewhere on the Web. In that sense Google's no different than Yahoo or Bing. For advertising as both Microsoft and Yahoo are in the display ad placement biz Google, in reality, is absolutely no different that Yahoo or Bing.
There, stick that in our pipe and smoke it. Instead of whatever it is you're smoking now.
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Sadly, this won't help with our AC problem, but it might be a start. My only concern would be that if people aren't reading his posts to counteract his idiocy, newcomers might be swayed by his ridiculous arguments. As annoying as he is, bob occasionally hit upon a wrong-headed idea than might seem reasonable to those less versed in troll tactics...
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
If the publishers would perish, books will still get written, and music and movies will still get made.
Readers will have plenty to read still.
Nice try, bob, but I think you're out of your league here.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
I would've gone with the following:
"Donny, you're out of your element!"
or
"Shut the fuck up, Donny!"
And just substituted "bob" for "Donny".
Only because bob, much like some of the other ACs here, seems to believe that without copyright/publishers/labels/studios nothing would ever be produced. History, which he conveniently uses to not so quite prove his point (insofar as what he referred to had no actual bearing on the article itself or libraries being accused of support theft for their stance on fair use), would very much beg to differ.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
And yes, people give their work away today, but I bet you that 99.9% of the buskers would take a standard record contract in 10 seconds if it were offered to them.
Let's look at the flip side. How many works of art are coming out of Somalia today? How many hit records? How many best selling books?
Artists need to eat and copyright is how we force all of the consumers to pay their fair share of the artists' costs. Until a better way comes along, I'm afraid we're stuck with it. Alas, for all of my hope, none of Mike's grand dreams are working out, except for Kickstarter, which is DRM on steroids.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Digital rights management (DRM) is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that are not desired or intended by the content provider.
bob, you don't know what a paywall is. You obviously don't know what DRM is.
"Let's look at the flip side. How many works of art are coming out of Somalia today? How many hit records? How many best selling books? "
Your obsession with talking about Somalia (a place where there has been fighting for so long, as someone else has pointed out, that they don't have time to focus on innovating much less developing anything more than thinking up ways on how to stay alive for another day or protect their families or feed themselves) and trying to bring it up in a manner that benefits your argument when it actually does nothing of the sort is turning from stupid to annoying. It's not helping your point at all.
"but they benefited from copyright-like protections like the Church's control over knowledge"
bob, and what about before "the Church's control over knowledge"? No one, at any point prior to that created anything? Please, just stop. Without copyright, creation would still happen and people would still make money by doing so because humans value creation and reward those who they feel deserve such rewarding. It's a fact.
"And yes, people give their work away today, but I bet you that 99.9% of the buskers would take a standard record contract in 10 seconds if it were offered to them."
bob I don't care what you believe, the fact of the matter, and as it relates to your original point, is that at the end of the day people will create. One way or another. Whether they get paid for it or not. Whether there is copyright or not. That negates everything else you've said up until this point.
"Artists need to eat and copyright is how we force all of the consumers to pay their fair share of the artists' costs. Until a better way comes along, I'm afraid we're stuck with it."
So now you're talking about forcing people to pay, for stuff they may not necessarily want. Very FAIR of you. Everyone needs to eat bob. That's the stupidest point you've ever made, which is saying a lot. PEOPLE GET JOBS TO SUPPORT THEMSELVES AND THEY DO NOT GET PAID INDEFINITELY FOR THAT ONE BIT OF WORK THEY DID ONE TIME IN THEIR LIVES. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with creating and benefiting from it, but stop trying to hold it up as a gospel truth that the artists are starving and will starve to death without copyright. It's not true. And like many people say, if you can't make it in what you're doing you'll get no sympathy from me because you can ALWAYS choose to do something else. Period. End of story.
Also, I may have jumped around addressing your points, but meh. I do what I like.
I stand by my original statements. bob, you're out of your element. Shut the fuck up, bob. Take your pick.
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god you ARE ###### up.
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Actually, no, that's not the purpose of copyright.
I would also argue that any system that requires "forcing" consumers to pay anything is a faulty system.
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
perhaps the best thing that could have happened throughout history is for any and every invention to have been destroyed as soon as it was invented, unused, or after it's first use. that way there would be nothing, no one could copy anything or steal anything so no need for copyright, no possibility of copyright infringement and no disputes over who did what, made what, could do what etc etc. remember also that we would not be able to complain about anything either because we wouldn't be able to speak, let alone write and no one person would be more rich than the next. now that would hurt a lot of people, i am sure!!
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
You're making a sarcastic joke, right? The article is about copyright and fair use and you immediately conflate that with stolen statues and mummies to "make your point".
You do know this means you have no point, don't you? If you can't discuss the actual topic using related facts, then you invalidate your whole point.
Nah, you must be making a parody comment, you really can't think that way.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Mike ended up by wrapping himself in the flag as asking how anyone could accuse the British library of theft. If you ask me, he sounded like he was being sarcastic and I called him on it. British institutions have been nicking things forever.
If he didn't claim that British institutions were immune from criticism, I wouldn't have bothered.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
BOO TO POLITICAL RHETORIC!
BOO EVIL BRITISH COLONIALISM CLASS SYSTEMS!
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia
tl;dr: Somalia used to be a prosperous region, until the British Empire crushed the local nations and raped their land. So much for property rights.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
The bit the Brits had is now a separate, even if it is diplomatically unrecognized country of Somaliland which is actually quite prosperous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somaliland
Now, if we could stop fighting (and blaming) old colonial wars on everything wrong in Africa and pay attention some 50 years after to what's actually going on there it would be nice. ;-)
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Now I already knew that your grasp of history is spotty at best and made up at worst. This is a beautiful example of made up. Copyright, as originally envisioned, was a response to the invention of the movable type press and the explosion of books that followed. (Note, no copyright at that point.) Nor did it have much of anything to do with author's rights it was put in place for publishers who were busy bankrupting themselves when the Statue of Anne was passed. Of course, you're free to make history up if you like but please, please stop passing it off here as fact.
Onto IP, whose altar you worship at. As there was no copyright at the time would you be so kind as to explain the outbreak of invention, creation and authorship of the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hebrews, Persians, peoples of the Indian subcontinent and, most importantly, Chinese when Intellectual Property laws didn't exist. And the continued advances in all areas by the Byzantines and Arabs after the fall of the western Roman Empire based in Rome and the "Dark Ages" which followed. All these were quite prosperous.
(There were more but Mike would kill me if I outlined it all globally.)
And since when did the RIAA, as an organization share development costs of artists or technology during its existence. Outside of their dreams and too much reading and believing their own propaganda. I'll give the MPAA some credit for forcing technological change early on. Most of that, incidentally, by ignoring or willfully violating patents and copyrights.
"why don't you go to Somalia and see how all of that freedom to innovate is working out there." I'm going to make the silly assumption that you do realize there's a genocidal civil war going on there which doesn't exactly encourage innovation in anything but coming up with better and deadlier small arms and explosives.
As long as you take pot shots at the British Library and British Museum I'm also going to make the idiotic assumption that you know the Smithsonian in Washington DC also "nicked" stuff back in the day when that was acceptable. And that there's this monument in the US Capital that was "nicked" from Egypt without asking permission or paying for it.
The worst thing is that "fair use" or "fair dealing" has nothing what all to do with "nicking" content. But you're more than happy to adopt the IP extremist view that it does. Creators still get paid -- that is if you view publishers, record companies and today's movie companies as creators rather than what they really are which is marketers. Some damned good at it.
Publishers are born and they die every day. Paper based ones are having a hard time of it now because people, it seems, would rather read ebooks or on line. Go figure, eh? Gotta be piracy, I guess.
You are right on one score. Content will be created just as it was before copyright existed. Invention will continue just as it did before patents existed. At periods it will explode just as it did before the legal framework around copyright and patent law existed.
I'd advise that you get stuffed though I know you already stuffed full of something. I just don't want to know what it is because it still reeks.
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Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Our current IP laws may not be ideal, but they're much better than the IP rules that existed in the past. That's why we have even more innovation than in those worlds.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
you want to know what the problem is? its that you wont admit there is a probelem. you kkep making excuses for people who have abused twisted and broken the system and demonized anyone who even give criticism. your giving life support to dead old lady who you know is gone and saying she is still alive. you know there is flaws in the sytem but you never bother to take care of them ehen there are better ones. so you make twisted rationalizations of it to justify it.
textbook sociopath.
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Re: Re: Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
The church, which magically existed in ancient Egypt controlled things there? Guilds controlled things in ancient China, India or Persia? Are you completely off your rocker?
Yes, authors, artists, actors, musicians, architects and more existed and created massively before copyright (and patents) existed. Often they just tossed it out there, mostly they were paid by patrons to create or were employed to do other things and did their creative stuff on the side. In many cases they made sure they were paid before doing anything.
After, say, publication, they had no control over how many copies were circulated, to whom, or at what price and at good or horrid quality.
Our current IP laws suck the big one because they've become so corrupted from their original purpose(s). As for us being more innovative if I had the time or space I'd challenge that assertion on a number of grounds. Not that we aren't but the reason for it is less IP laws but the effect of two world wars, the cold war, the space race and the basic and simple reason that innovation today is built on much, much more knowledge that ever existed before.
(I'd also point out how that would bring us back to the evil Web, even more evil search engines and the increased ability for scientists, researchers and others to actually access far more of that ocean of knowledge that they ever could have before.)
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
It becomes complete nonsense when claiming Somalia as a country with freedom to innovate...
My 3-way list of useless posts are pretty well covered:
- Sweeping generalisation of anyone not agreeing with you and/or ad hominem
- Completely unsubstatiated and/or illogical claims
- Ranting posts with little to do with the topic at hand
Please think about what you post so I do not need to waste braincells on these kinds of posts.
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
I've never read an article here advocating abolishment of all IP laws (if one exists, please cite), and the vast majority of comments favor recompense for content creators. I don't agree with most of what bob says (some comments are, frankly, baffling). But I admire the attempt to rationalize strong feelings into words.
The point of my ramble is this: unthinking IP maximalism is irrational, but so is unthinking 'piracy'. The IP industry shills' arguments merely reflect whiny entitlement. bob's arguments at least contain shreds of reasoning - enough to change me from an unthinking pirate freetard into a thoughtful pirate freetard.
So shine on, you crazy diamond. You may be a nut job, but you're our nut job.
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Re: Stealing someone's work is not a right...
Mike, why are you against our children's futures, freedom, rainbows, and the yips of small puppies?
When will you ever admit to those clones of hitler you keep in your attic?
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No they don't. If it's more than they are willing to pay, they'll simply not pay.
Well of course. Content will always get created, regardless of the economic model in place.
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But if you want competent work from real artists, it's nice to pay the artists so they'll give us their best work instead of all they can muster after working on their day job.
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Yes, there is no question about it. Unless humans work differently now than ever before in history, I'm on very solid ground. 80% of it will be crap, of course, but that's no different than how it is right now, or how it has ever been.
I never said otherwise.
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2. No one here opposes paying artists, they may oppose the methiod you advocate(monopoly) or think that the monopoly shouldn't last as long or think that it's scope should be scaled back. But claiming artists should work for free? nope.
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Maybe author/creators and libraries should just leave the publishers out from now on. Come on, people, let's have a revolution. It may shake up things like journal impact factors and so on, but to be honest, they're probably pretty meaningless ways to 'evaluate' success, rack up kudos and government funding based on quality of research output. Content is (should be) king. There's no reason why the academic community shouldn't create it's own publishing empire...
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You speak about the academic community creating their own publishing empire. Here's a hint: they already did. The scientists created the AAAS which created Science magazine. Many of the journals were started by academics. It's not like someone came along and put a gun to the head of the professors. The current system was one that they created themselves.
Here's a plan: why don't you hire some editors and typesetters in house. Then try to get your professors to use your inhouse team at the library instead of a traditional journal. If you succeed, you'll be able to stick it to the evil ones.
In reality, you'll just create another university press or academic society.
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And badly mutated in some money-making gatekeeper for articles that were once free for use.
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The Library of Alexandria went up in flames not because of a religious disagreement but because Moses' descendants objected so strongly to the fact that a thousand years later they weren't getting the royalty payments they so richly deserved from his works known as the Pentateuch (or the first 5 books of the Bible) as they were the centre of Torah and this crazy bunch of nuts who were saying an executed rebel and criminal from Nazareth, of all places, was the Messiah, had also stolen.!
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eh?
Publishers? Association? ahem. Old skool killer.
You have every right in the world to throw down some words, notes and pictures, however, due to recent events, you have no right to expect money for it (especially if you require more law to help you earn money for it) nor should one expect to be able to control any aspect of it once released (without extremely careful forward looking handling - there are no rear view mirrors here).
We, society, are moving on rather rapidly with regard to information and who can see what, how and when. We are almost at the point where we will not and can not recognize value that any past "association" once contributed. Will the real creators and contributors please stand up and be recognized.
We now have information flow at full throttle. Your ilk, publishers, associations, gate keepers and heretics alike, do not get to throttle that flow. You can choose, however, to keep your words, pictures, notes and any other whathaveyous under your mattresses or in your closets. It will not be missed. So, if you think somebody "owes" you something like control or money or a helpful hand propping you up... hit the road because your dog's shit is not welcome on my lawn.
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Example:
bob: So how much has Somalia developed/created?
AC: so how much does the pirate bay pay artists?
Both bring up a part that has no relevance to the discussion at hand, at all. Why? To prove some kind of point that isn't actually any kind of point at all.
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This is just the first time he's given any passing glance at the starting article before his fingers magically started typing out his rant about how Mike is the devil and Techdirt is an anarchist cell attempting to destroy all IP.
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I have a good supply of barf bags if anyone needs some. ;-)
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TEAR DOWN THE WALL
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(anime reference: R.O.D the TV. the British Library's Special Operations Division: think a bibliophilic version of the various RL intelligence agencies, with super powered agents, who also deal with various paranormal situations. and that's before they go rogue and try to take over the world.)
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Instead of discussing the unethical propaganda spread by the UK Publisher's Association...
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the logic ponits that, just like many people(more than I can count) have said here people are willing to pay for content they want.
and also, We don't want copyright to be eliminated, We want it to be reformed. I don't think anyone here wants to have everything for free, but, just as some have been saying wanting to forever profit for something you did once is no better than that.
if the law was like it was suppoused to be then they'll produce a digital good and would be given a certain amount of time (let's say the original 14yrs, though I'd argue it should be the cost of the product multiplied by two divided by the anual income or the optimum copyright lenght (if someone manages fo find that)) to recoup that money, if they manage then they did a good job if not, i don't think people would want that product anyway.
just to be clear I'm talking about the costs of a movie with middle class investment that has middle class income.
sorry for my bad english
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Now we definitely know you're an idiot, Bob
Not only is Rebecca Black your best example ("Internet darling", WTF?), you don't even know what the song is called!
>Am I so wrong? Take a look at the mansions owned by members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones or really any of the top 100+ bands from the 60s to the 90s. That wealth was given to these artists by the evil suits you hate.
How many hits did those guys have compared to Rebecca Black?
I'll be honest, when you decided to rail against libraries of all things I was certain this was a parody, but bob parodies never inflict such huge walls of text against everyone. I think the above statement is clear of one thing: you absolutely refuse to fact-check because it might sound a little anti-paywall and it makes you die a little bit inside.
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Better Off Stateless
http://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf
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R
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