I was so irritated by this that I wrote a long email to Unesco, and I think it doesn't hurt to share it here as well, and urge as many people as possible to do the same in their own words.
IJsselstein, 24 April 2020.
Dear people at Unesco:
As a long term volunteer for Project Gutenberg, which digitizes out-of-copyright books to be made available freely, I am utterly disgusted by the jarring proposal of Jean-Michel Jarre to introduce an eternal copyright. This will do huge damage to our mission to spread culture and knowledge to people, including the least privileged people, and is a direct assault on cultural freedom, diversity and creativity.
I believe the idea of eternal copyright idea is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose and the working of copyright. The reasoning seems to be that if copyright is good, more copyright is better, which is of course irrational. It may also be based on simple greed, as I have seen before with proposals to extend copyright.
For many centuries, culture flourished without copyrights, and copyrights only came into existence with the rise of cheap re-production means, initially as a means of censorship, but later justified as a way to correct market failures caused by free-riders. I do support copyrights to the extend that they indeed serve that specific purpose.
Unfortunately, copyright terms already have become far too long, and as a result have become concentrated with a few large consortia that have been able to obtain monopoly control over large parts of our collective cultural heritage. What these consortia are doing with their pleas for more copyright is classical rent-seeking behavior. This must be resisted.
Longer copyrights do not promote more cultural diversity or access to cultural heritage. On contrary. They lock up more works behind paywalls, and make them inaccessible, and in many cases that will even result in their total loss to humanity, as can for example be seen with a large part of early movies.
Longer copyrights do not magically provide consumers with a larger budget to purchase cultural works. It will force them to pay more for access to works by long-dead authors, and thus funnel away funds available to currently active artists.
Longer copyrights also make it harder for artist to build upon the creativity of those who came before them, which is, and always has been, the hallmark of a living culture. They will be restricted by requests for payments for even minor use of common "memes" or details accidentally included, which is already a plague imposed on currently active artists.
In conclusion: long copyrights are bad for consumers and bad for authors. They hurt culture. They kill culture!
If anything, UNESCO should be arguing for shorter copyrights, and less concentration of copyright.
I am strongly be in favor of having a maximum length of copyright of one generation (lets say 30 years) from publication, that would be non-transferable and stay with the original author, with strict limits on exclusive publication deals. That would help artists much better than pushing even more restrictions on access to cultural heritage on them, while keeping the distribution channels in the hands of monopolists.
Free access to cultural heritage is a basic human right (UDHR, article 27.1), and it is beyond me that UNESCO would even suggest to undermine it while the Covid-19 pandemic is raging across the world. To me, this is a beyond shameless. I am angry.
Please support culture and reject the awful idea of eternal copyright.
Another good reason to move (part of) your operations outside of US jurisdiction, in such a way that responding to an NSL would require that information to go to place where the US has no jurisdiction, and having things set up in such a way that that will automatically lead to its disclosure (for example, because the other jurisdiction requires such disclose, e.g. under GDPR rules in the EU; Iceland or Switzerland are probably also good jurisdictions to have in the chain.)
Then the only possible response to the the NSL would be: we are unable to comply, since we do not have the means to provide the requested information without revealing the NSL. Trying to do otherwise will be physically blocked by parties out of our control. You can go through the legally available channels following international treaties to obtain the requested information in this or that country.
Under any rational interpretation of the law, any new regulation at the same level as an old regulation that contradicts that old regulation should automatically supersede that old regulation. Only problem: Officers are not exactly known for doing the rational thing, and getting justice through the courts is either too costly or takes too long.
Under any rational interpretation of the law, any new regulation at the same level as an old regulation that contradicts that old regulation should automatically supersede that old regulation. Only problem: Officers are not exactly known for doing the rational thing, and getting justice through the courts is either too costly or takes too long.
Turn back to the method used in the Athens democracy: select officials using a lottery. Consult the Wikipedia article on sortition for some more details.
Another copyright smart-ass lawyer: "well, since you are the registered trademark owner, you are responsible for all the infringements happening under your trademark. See you in court!"
From the UK point of view it is actually a smart move: it will hinder EU competitiveness in this field, and they don't have to be bothered by it. Nice parting gift aka poison pill.
It is life+70 for works published after January 1st 1978, published prior to that it is publication + 95 years (always rounded up the the next new year).
That is not how US copyright works. For any work published prior to 1978, death dates are not relevant, but the publication date is, and you have to add 95 years to that, rounded up to the next new year. That is why 1924 is now open for harvesting by all... After January 1st 1978, this changes to live + 70 of the longest living author (unless they change that again, it will be 2074 before that kicks in, making it much harder to determine PD status of works)
I get a lot of spam from Chinese companies wishing to do business; most of them go to /dev/null straight away; but I have been considering to send an automatic response, something like this:
Thanks for your kind offer, but unfortunately I am not in a position to take it up right now. However, since we now are talking, I would love to share with you some information about [Pick one of: Tibet; Hong Kong; Uighurs; Falung Gong; Tiananmen Square; Censorship...] and add some ebooks on the subject, written in a non-confrontational style; preferably in Chinese.
Here in the Netherlands we have been using the free tax filing software provided by the Dutch equivalent of the IRS for over 25 years, and it has never taken me more than an hour to complete my income tax filings. The last 10 years or so, the forms are prefilled with all details, and all it takes is click through to verify them, add some freelance income they don't know about yet and press submit. Last year took it me at most 15 minutes.
We have about 40.000 "accidental Americans" in the country, and government officials here don't seem to understand why it is such a hardship to file taxes or get a US TIN so they can keep their (Dutch) bank accounts due to FACTA. Just getting rid of that "US Person" status would cost at least USD 8000: 5000 to fill IRS returns over five years, and some 3000 to officially renounce US citizenship. That people are willing to pay such amounts shows how much of a toxic asset US citizenship has become.
Jeroen Hellingman (profile), 27 Aug 2019 @ 12:38am
Not just Amazon, but all book-selling platforms are plagued by rip-offs. What is offered for sale is no more than a simple print-on-demand copy of a PDF downloaded from Google Books or The Internet Archive. Now there may be reasons you want to have such a thing printed, but the problem is that such copies are not marked as such, and, but when you want to buy real antiquarian books, locating them becomes very hard. Some sites have options to exclude print-on-demand and new books, but book sellers appear to intentionally mislabel their offers. Now selling them is legal (for out-of-copyright books), but this strongly undermines the value of the platform. I've totally stopped buying via Amazon since 2013 (for other reasons, and won't be back), and also try to avoid other platforms, contacting booksellers via other channels after I've confirmed they offer genuine antiquarian books, or just going to physical shops to buy books, mostly to digitize them for Project Gutenberg, which is by the way another source of many books being sold on Amazon.
Hint: always check archive.org and gutenberg.org before buying any old book, if all you need is a reading copy.
Interesting how "long term" is defined as "next year". From a sustainability point of view, for policy making, I would rather define long term as looking forward seven generations (yes, that is over two centuries, and yes, this is a radical break with the current thinking that causes so many environmental and social problems). From the position of an individual, long term in my opinion means life-planning. Investing in education, then building up a resource-pool for retirement, part of which would be investing in public corporations. In this model, going for corporations with long-term vision makes perfect sense.
Medium term investments (less than 10 years) can be fine for intermediate saving targets. "Investing" for short time (less than a few years) is pure speculation -- unfortunately, current investment practices encourage it, even when dealing with long term (retirement) savings. Lots of people are in investment funds with extremely high turnover rates (often above 100%), which is nice for the bottom line of traders, but makes little sense otherwise.
Jeroen Hellingman (profile), 16 Aug 2019 @ 12:08am
The reason politicians want to push people back to cash may very well be that corruption is very effectively detected when digital transaction are commonplace, and this is eating into the profits of politicians (who are at the top of the corruption chain, turning a blind eye for a share in the income.)
At Project Gutenberg, we've spend like 30 years to digitize almost 60.000 books. You will need about 100GB to download them all. Even in the unlikely case you can read one book a day, you'll still need two life-times to read them all.
Now start looking at the millions of books on Archive.org..., or although illicit, Library Genesis.
As a general rule, yes; however, in an environment where centralized and consolidated service becomes a single point of failure, and sufficient demand or need exists for a non-failing system, decentralized systems will be able to sustain themselves, although at a higher cost and with less functionality. What the EU basically is doing, is trying to give the decentralized systems a fighting chance. Whether it will succeed, give it ten years. If we're all exchanging SD-cards by then, as what was once the internet has become as crappy as the EU sponsored news channels, they will have succeeded (and probably be talking about liability for SD-card producers for content that can be stored on those cards....) I phantom EU digital innovation will be in the same state then as the Galileo GPS system is at the time of writing... (https://www.gsc-europa.eu/system-status/Constellation-Information)
On the post: UNESCO Suggests COVID-19 Is A Reason To Create... Eternal Copyright
I was so irritated by this that I wrote a long email to Unesco, and I think it doesn't hurt to share it here as well, and urge as many people as possible to do the same in their own words.
IJsselstein, 24 April 2020.
On the post: Federal Court Dismisses Twitter's Long-Running Lawsuit Over NSL Reporting
Another good reason to move (part of) your operations outside of US jurisdiction, in such a way that responding to an NSL would require that information to go to place where the US has no jurisdiction, and having things set up in such a way that that will automatically lead to its disclosure (for example, because the other jurisdiction requires such disclose, e.g. under GDPR rules in the EU; Iceland or Switzerland are probably also good jurisdictions to have in the chain.)
Then the only possible response to the the NSL would be: we are unable to comply, since we do not have the means to provide the requested information without revealing the NSL. Trying to do otherwise will be physically blocked by parties out of our control. You can go through the legally available channels following international treaties to obtain the requested information in this or that country.
On the post: New York's Governor Hands Down A Mask Mandate While The State's Anti-Mask Law Remains On The Books
Under any rational interpretation of the law, any new regulation at the same level as an old regulation that contradicts that old regulation should automatically supersede that old regulation. Only problem: Officers are not exactly known for doing the rational thing, and getting justice through the courts is either too costly or takes too long.
On the post: Chinese Embassy Gets Briefly Suspended From Twitter; Insists 'Free Speech Must Be Honored' On Platform Banned Across China
Under any rational interpretation of the law, any new regulation at the same level as an old regulation that contradicts that old regulation should automatically supersede that old regulation. Only problem: Officers are not exactly known for doing the rational thing, and getting justice through the courts is either too costly or takes too long.
On the post: Brave Whistleblowers Are Being Punished For Saving Lives During A Pandemic
Re: Integrity in Politics, seriously not joking
Turn back to the method used in the Athens democracy: select officials using a lottery. Consult the Wikipedia article on sortition for some more details.
On the post: Anti-Piracy Copyright Lawyer Decides To Abuse Trademarks To Shut Down Pirates
Another copyright smart-ass lawyer: "well, since you are the registered trademark owner, you are responsible for all the infringements happening under your trademark. See you in court!"
On the post: UK Says It Won't Implement The EU Copyright Directive, Which Wouldn't Have Passed Without Its Support During A Crucial Vote
Re:
By the end of this week, the UK is no longer an EU nation state...
On the post: UK Says It Won't Implement The EU Copyright Directive, Which Wouldn't Have Passed Without Its Support During A Crucial Vote
From the UK point of view it is actually a smart move: it will hinder EU competitiveness in this field, and they don't have to be bothered by it. Nice parting gift aka poison pill.
On the post: George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue Is In The Public Domain And Gerswhin's Nephew Is Worried Someone Might Turn It Into Hip Hop
Re:
It is life+70 for works published after January 1st 1978, published prior to that it is publication + 95 years (always rounded up the the next new year).
On the post: George Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue Is In The Public Domain And Gerswhin's Nephew Is Worried Someone Might Turn It Into Hip Hop
Re: Pah.
That is not how US copyright works. For any work published prior to 1978, death dates are not relevant, but the publication date is, and you have to add 95 years to that, rounded up to the next new year. That is why 1924 is now open for harvesting by all... After January 1st 1978, this changes to live + 70 of the longest living author (unless they change that again, it will be 2074 before that kicks in, making it much harder to determine PD status of works)
On the post: Chinese Skiers Training In Norway Ask Local Library To Remove 'Controversial' Books
I get a lot of spam from Chinese companies wishing to do business; most of them go to /dev/null straight away; but I have been considering to send an automatic response, something like this:
Thanks for your kind offer, but unfortunately I am not in a position to take it up right now. However, since we now are talking, I would love to share with you some information about [Pick one of: Tibet; Hong Kong; Uighurs; Falung Gong; Tiananmen Square; Censorship...] and add some ebooks on the subject, written in a non-confrontational style; preferably in Chinese.
Should solve the spam problem fairly quickly
On the post: Getting Better, Finally: Intuit's Shady Actions For Free File Program Lead To Change In IRS Deal
Here in the Netherlands we have been using the free tax filing software provided by the Dutch equivalent of the IRS for over 25 years, and it has never taken me more than an hour to complete my income tax filings. The last 10 years or so, the forms are prefilled with all details, and all it takes is click through to verify them, add some freelance income they don't know about yet and press submit. Last year took it me at most 15 minutes.
We have about 40.000 "accidental Americans" in the country, and government officials here don't seem to understand why it is such a hardship to file taxes or get a US TIN so they can keep their (Dutch) bank accounts due to FACTA. Just getting rid of that "US Person" status would cost at least USD 8000: 5000 to fill IRS returns over five years, and some 3000 to officially renounce US citizenship. That people are willing to pay such amounts shows how much of a toxic asset US citizenship has become.
On the post: Woman Complains About Trooper's Behavior, Ends Up Getting A Whole Bunch Of Cops Fired For Timecard Fraud
Re:
The racism is in the assumption that somebody with an Asian appearance cannot speak English.
On the post: NY Times Goes Off On Amazon Because Some People Are Publishing Fake George Orwell Books
Not just Amazon, but all book-selling platforms are plagued by rip-offs. What is offered for sale is no more than a simple print-on-demand copy of a PDF downloaded from Google Books or The Internet Archive. Now there may be reasons you want to have such a thing printed, but the problem is that such copies are not marked as such, and, but when you want to buy real antiquarian books, locating them becomes very hard. Some sites have options to exclude print-on-demand and new books, but book sellers appear to intentionally mislabel their offers. Now selling them is legal (for out-of-copyright books), but this strongly undermines the value of the platform. I've totally stopped buying via Amazon since 2013 (for other reasons, and won't be back), and also try to avoid other platforms, contacting booksellers via other channels after I've confirmed they offer genuine antiquarian books, or just going to physical shops to buy books, mostly to digitize them for Project Gutenberg, which is by the way another source of many books being sold on Amazon.
Hint: always check archive.org and gutenberg.org before buying any old book, if all you need is a reading copy.
On the post: Potentially Big News: Top CEOs Realizing That 'Maximizing Shareholder Value' Isn't A Great Idea
Re: Costs vs Benefits in a Social World
Interesting how "long term" is defined as "next year". From a sustainability point of view, for policy making, I would rather define long term as looking forward seven generations (yes, that is over two centuries, and yes, this is a radical break with the current thinking that causes so many environmental and social problems). From the position of an individual, long term in my opinion means life-planning. Investing in education, then building up a resource-pool for retirement, part of which would be investing in public corporations. In this model, going for corporations with long-term vision makes perfect sense.
Medium term investments (less than 10 years) can be fine for intermediate saving targets. "Investing" for short time (less than a few years) is pure speculation -- unfortunately, current investment practices encourage it, even when dealing with long term (retirement) savings. Lots of people are in investment funds with extremely high turnover rates (often above 100%), which is nice for the bottom line of traders, but makes little sense otherwise.
On the post: Kenyan Government Risks Squandering The Long-Term Potential Of Mobile Transactions In The Hope Of A Little Extra Tax Revenue
The reason politicians want to push people back to cash may very well be that corruption is very effectively detected when digital transaction are commonplace, and this is eating into the profits of politicians (who are at the top of the corruption chain, turning a blind eye for a share in the income.)
On the post: Why The Appearance Of A One Terabyte microSD Card Means The War On Unauthorized Music Downloads Is (Almost) Over
At Project Gutenberg, we've spend like 30 years to digitize almost 60.000 books. You will need about 100GB to download them all. Even in the unlikely case you can read one book a day, you'll still need two life-times to read them all.
Now start looking at the millions of books on Archive.org..., or although illicit, Library Genesis.
On the post: EU Looking To Regulate Everything Online, And To Make Sites Proactively Remove Material
Re: Re: Re: Nefarious Plan
As a general rule, yes; however, in an environment where centralized and consolidated service becomes a single point of failure, and sufficient demand or need exists for a non-failing system, decentralized systems will be able to sustain themselves, although at a higher cost and with less functionality. What the EU basically is doing, is trying to give the decentralized systems a fighting chance. Whether it will succeed, give it ten years. If we're all exchanging SD-cards by then, as what was once the internet has become as crappy as the EU sponsored news channels, they will have succeeded (and probably be talking about liability for SD-card producers for content that can be stored on those cards....) I phantom EU digital innovation will be in the same state then as the Galileo GPS system is at the time of writing... (https://www.gsc-europa.eu/system-status/Constellation-Information)
On the post: Pai FCC 'Solution' To Nation's Great Robocall Apocalypse? More Meetings
No problem in Europe
Never received a robocall in Europe ever... evidence that something effective can be done about it fairly easily.
On the post: GDPR Penalties Prove Why Compliance Isn't Enough—And Why Companies Need Clarity
Re: Re: Re:
Identity theft is a misnomer invented by banks to shift the blame to innocent victims of what used to be called fraud.
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