Free Open Shared: A Conversation With Me About Copyright At Wikimedia

from the come-join-us dept

Tue, Oct 25th 2016 1:35pm — Mike Masnick

For folks in the San Francisco area, on Thursday night, I'll be at the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikimedia's brand new, awesome event series: Free Open Shared. I'll be giving a talk on copyright, why it matters, and how the fight over copyright reform impacts all sorts of important stuff, including many things that people don't think of as being related to copyright. I'll be giving a talk and then there will be a Q&A session as well. For those not in the area, they're planning on live streaming the event, and there should be a recording that we can post here as well, but it's always nice to see folks in person (and also, it's much easier to take part in the Q&A that way...). RSVP is required and space is limited, so if you can make it, join us for a fun conversation on copyright.

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Filed Under: copyright, copyright reform
Companies: wikimedia

12 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 25 Oct 2016 @ 2:25pm

Unfortunately I'm not in the area to be able to see it, but I'm looking forward to the live stream!
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Oct 2016 @ 4:14pm

Shorter Mike: "Copyright is bad. Copyright is dumb. We need more and more exceptions."
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Oct 2016 @ 4:52pm

Re:
Still salty about Betamax, huh?
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Oct 2016 @ 5:06pm

Re:
What's wrong? You don't like the thought of the little people participating in culture?
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Oct 2016 @ 6:14pm

Re:
You're one of the sociopaths ( https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161012/15260335785/us-chamber-commerce-complains-about-people-pi rating-presidential-debate.shtml ) in favor of overly restrictive IP laws I take it.

It makes sense that the CoC would want the debates locked up. IP extremists are notoriously anti-democracy (our existing IP laws were not democratically passed at all) and so it makes sense that they would want to lock anything that may resemble democracy away from the public as much as they can.

and so far IP laws have only ever been extended and expanded and that's entirely the result of corporate influence and not democracy. The moment anyone tries to criticize IP laws at all you cry like a baby. You are just upset that someone is trying to participate in democracy to get the laws fixed and that your opinion is not the only opinion that gets to be heard. You're even more upset that the overwhelming majority of people disagree with your opinion. It scares you, it's now much harder for those interests that agree with you to get the laws and 'trade negotiations' that they want passed and maybe some day the laws may even start to move in the opposite direction now that everyone is getting more aggressive about how bad our laws are and how they need to be fixed.

You sound like an evil tyrant that can't tolerate when everything doesn't exactly go their way. Even one word of anyone dare criticizing your opinion and suddenly they are a radical extremist at the other end of the spectrum. But it is your opinion that is the extreme one, the opinion that anyone that disagrees with you is a radical extremist. and it is your IP absolutist opinion that is the extreme opinion here.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 25 Oct 2016 @ 9:48pm

Re:
Shorter Mike: "Copyright is bad. Copyright is dumb. We need more and more exceptions."

Awesome. Was having trouble coming up with anything at all to say, so I'll just use your version.

Thanks.
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PaulT (profile), 26 Oct 2016 @ 1:54am

Re:
That's Fictional Mike, not Shorter Mike. You need to stop getting your sources mixed up.
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Ninja (profile), 26 Oct 2016 @ 2:13am

Re: Re:
Sadly that summary is pretty much right even though the person meant as some sort of insult. Still I will have a good laugh if you actually say it there before developing the ideas. *crosses fingers*
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Oninoshiko, 26 Oct 2016 @ 7:41am

Copyrights can make for strange bedfellows.
It's actually worth noting that the GPL (and similar "strong copyleft" licenses) actually becomes MORE effective by having a infinite "mickey mouse" copyright term. If copyright were "reformed" (we can debate if this is good or bad), it would affect open source/free software just as much as it would anyone else, meaning the strong "protections" would melt away as, for example, versions of linux became public domain after 40 years and it could be used as the basis for closed commercial code bases.
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TheResidentSkeptic (profile), 26 Oct 2016 @ 7:42am

The name needs to change
It really isn't copy"right" anymore - more like copy"control"
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2016 @ 4:54pm

Capacity is limited and registration closes on Oct. 26, 2016.

Like Oreos...
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Oct 2016 @ 7:26pm

Re: Copyrights can make for strange bedfellows.
"it could be used as the basis for closed commercial code bases."

At least those portions would still be in the public domain.
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