Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
And I suppose a compulsory license grants that permission on behalf of the reluctant copyright holder?
Incidentally, all published works are in the public domain.
The only way of removing copyright's 'protection' from a work is to wait umpteen decades until it ceases, and that's not really 'removal', but expiry. The closest copyright holders can get is by issuing a copyright neutralising license. I guess it's possible they could make a public covenant not to sue, nor to transfer the copyright to anyone else not so covenanted, but that still doesn't actually dissolve the copyright. It is therefore impossible to remove copyright, except through an act of legislation.
And ultimately, the best legislative act of all is to abolish copyright.
Sure, that removes the business model of selling copies that cost nothing to make at monopoly protected prices, but it doesn't remove the business model of selling intellectual work at prices a free market will bear.
The free software movement should give you a clue that even without copyright's constraints coders are still able to sell their intellectual work, even if no-one bothers trying to sell copies of it (though they are of course free to).
No, I really mean licenses restore liberty (suspended by copyright).
They can do nothing else. Licenses are not micro-legislatures able to bind passers-by to unjust laws of their own choosing.
The possessor of a copyright protected work has a choice:
a) enjoy their own liberty restored back to them by the license (subject to its conditions, e.g. no reverse engineering), OR
b) enjoy as much of their own liberty as remains to them by (unlicensed) copyright (which doesn't prohibit reverse engineering).
c) ignore the 18th century privilege of copyright as an injustice and enjoy their own liberty underogated, especially their natural right to make copies and derivatives.
I think you'll find the last option is becoming ever more popular.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
Dave, it's the other way around. Natural laws pre-date and take precedence over 18th century privileges to the contrary. They are evident in nature, in the biosphere and man's DNA.
You don't need a law book to recognise that the individual has a natural right to life (against murder), and to privacy (against burglary).
That individuals have such natural rights doesn't mean that people won't be interested in violating them (nor powerful lobbies to petition Queens to enact privileges against them).
That's why people create and empower government to protect their natural rights (and limit their power by constitutions in an attempt to prevent its corruption, e.g. the creation of privileges).
A government is empowered to protect the natural, pre-existing rights of those that empower it. It is not empowered to derogate from those rights in order to create privileges (rewarding the few at the expense of the many).
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright not supposed to work this way?
Unethical in Thomas Paine's view, and by inspection anyone who recognises the individual's natural right to liberty (and no sanction for it to be derogated to profit mass reproduction industries).
Yes, all industries that would enforce copyright's suspension of an individual's liberty are unethical. There are some industries such as the free software industry that do not.
A lot of people believe that copyright is fair, even when youngsters sharing music are fined millions of dollars. That widespread indoctrination that an 18th century privilege is fair makes people believe it to be fair, doesn't actually make it fair.
As to a creator being able to control what they create, of course they have a right to do this (where such creations are created privately, as they so often are). What people do not have a right to is to control other people, to have power over their fellow man. Thus if you make and sell a basket or a poem to someone you have no (natural) right to control what they do with it. As you know, copyright says otherwise and grants a transferable privilege such that the holder can exclude others from making copies. This is an 18th century privilege, an anachronistic hangover from a less egalitarian era. However, it is only now that so many individuals have their own 'printing presses' that they notice this privilege's derogation of their cultural liberty (to share and build upon their own culture).
Of course, having power, being able to control what others do, is very appealing, but that doesn't make such power a good thing. It makes it a bad thing. Copyright gives the holder power over everyone else on the planet. By nature, people don't have power over anyone apart from themselves. The most they can do is to exclude others from their private domain. Being able to control what anyone, anywhere in the world does with your published work is a very seductive power and is why those who covet such power will convince themselves that such power is justly theirs.
What you've got to realise is that copyright is ineffective. Despite its claims to the contrary, it cannot and does not give you the power to control what everyone else on the planet does with your published works. The reason is that the rest of the world would rather keep its cultural liberty and damn your privilege you claim supersedes it. Your published works WILL be shared, illicitly performed, broadcast, reproduced and distributed. They WILL be derived from, incorporated, remixed, edited, translated, and mashed up as others see fit. And that's the best you can hope for. At worst, no-one will touch your work with a barge pole - because it's devoid of any cultural value.
Recognising that copyright is unethical just helps you recognise why it must end, but it isn't the thing that brings it to an end. The thing that ends copyright is people. People who prefer their cultural liberty to a profitable press*.
* Copyright is a lucrative monopoly created for the benefit of the press (to sell copies). Copyright is not necessary for artists to be paid for their art (that's a myth spread by the press).
Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright not supposed to work this way?
Dave,
If you create something it is indeed your private intellectual property, to which you have a natural right - to control, to exclude others, to prevent unauthorised copies, etc.
You have a right to exchange your intellectual work or labour in a free market (a market free of monopolies), for whatever price the market will bear. However, no-one has a natural right to be paid for their work (they may not find anyone who considers it worth the price insisted upon).
Incidentally, some creations do grow on trees, e.g. apples, fir cones, etc.
The point at which you would exert unethical privilege is when having sold or given your intellectual work (or a copy) to someone you insist on retaining control over what that person does with what is now their property (material and intellectual). That control unnaturally conflicts with that person's cultural liberty, e.g. to share, perform, improve, the work they've purchased.
Your natural choice is to keep your work to yourself, or exchange/give it away. It is only the 18th century privilege of copyright that grants you any further control, and that privilege is a plainly ineffective anachronism in this age of instantaneous diffusion. It's also unethical - as it always was. It's just only now when the people notice its legal constraint upon their cultural liberty that we see all this indignation and agitation fomenting into a civil cyberwar.
It wasn't so many years ago when nearly all of a forum's participants would share Dave's views and only a few brave souls would dare to question copyright's holy sanctity as a fine and just law.
NC is more an ill thought out aspiration for the jealous, e.g. "If you make any money out of this work I'll sue unless you come to a profit-sharing agreement with me".
Unfortunately it doesn't matter whether your commercial use is permitted by copyright or not, NC simply warns you of the publisher's antagonistic mentality toward unauthorised commercial use. It doesn't actually prevent you being sued.
For example, you can make a copy of an NC work and give it to your brother, e.g. a T-shirt transfer of a CC-NC Flickr photo. No money has changed hands so this isn't commercial. However, there's nothing in copyright that prohibits your brother from selling that transfer for $10 (or T-shirt for $50 - he hasn't made a copy, just attached the copy he's been given to a fabric backing).
Even though this commercial use is permitted by copyright, the NC clause means you'll be hearing from the copyright holder's lawyers. Well, you would if they could actually afford to hire any, which in 99.99% of cases they can't.
Unlike the GPL, which is principled on restoring the freedom of the public, Creative Commons is principled (if at all) on an assumption that the author should have a right to suspend or restore the public's liberty as they see fit. But that modulation (of copyright) is impotent if the copyright holder is also impotent to enforce any infringements. Creative commons is thus not much more than "If I could afford to sue you for infringement, I would only sue you if you did X". And that effectively translates to "If you want to stay my friend please don't do X".
As for revokability, CC licenses are perpetual (except where the jurisdiction limits otherwise).
The public has a natural right to do what they like with any published work. They still have this natural right that Homo Sapiens first demonstrated by copying each other's cave paintings, etc. and later demonstrated by copying religious texts (and works of science and literature).
Unfortunately, in a moment of infinite wisdom in 1709, Queen Anne granted a privilege for the benefit of the press that enabled holders of that privilege (initially attached to each original work) to exclude anyone else from making copies.
So actually, the public has the right, and you have an unethical privilege that suspends that right.
Indeed, the privilege of copyright is so called, because it represents the suspension of the public's right to copy, such that it is reserved as a privilege of the favoured party. See Paine's "Rights of Man".
Predictably, people with such privileges prefer to term them as 'legally created rights', or 'legal rights', or simply 'rights' for short. And then they start denying the existence of the (natural) right that their 'right' suspends.
Liberty is inalienable and can only be suspended (unethically) by legislative acts such as copyright and patent.
Because liberty is inalienable an individual cannot sign it away in a contract.
You will also find clauses in copyright legislation that jealously reserves its power (to exclude others from producing copies or performing works), i.e. NOTHING else, not even contract can suspend an individual's liberty to produce a copy of a published work.
However, because copyright does suspend an individual's liberty concerning some aspects of cultural works, people get the idea that such liberty is alienable and can be contracted away.
Licenses are not contracts. They are conditional restorations of the liberty suspended by copyright, e.g. "You are free to copy this work after 2011". Licenses therefore do not necessarily require agreement. However, licenses could be provided as part of a contract, e.g. "If you pay me $5 I will give you a license that allows you to publicly perform this work until 2011".
Contracts exchange that which can be exchanged, i.e. that which is alienable such as property, or unethically, those transferable privileges such as copyright (exchanging the public's inalienable liberty).
All this is academic. If the couch potato content consumer doesn't notice their liberty being alienated from them by copyright then you might as well let it be alienated from them by contract, even an adhesive contract (if you buy this product you surrender your liberty to give it a negative review).
The idea is that the public grants the creators this monopoly right for a limited time, supposedly as incentive to create (as you note) -- IN EXCHANGE for that content moving into the public domain at some point in the future.
That's actually a rather modern re-interpretation of the pretext for copyright.
Originally, the pretext was supposed to be that the privilege (of copyright) enabling the publisher to protect their published works (against copying) was granted in exchange for incentivising that publication. That this means of protection did not last forever was not regarded as a key benefit to the public.
It's only today, when the public CAN make copies and derivatves, that there is a perception of published works being divided into 'protected by copyright' and 'not protected'.
And so now the pretext for copyright has changed from 'encouraging publication', to 'encouraging the donation of cultural building materials for eventual copying/derivation by the public'. ('eventual' now being one or more centuries later, and would no doubt be continually extended but for imminent abolition).
Of course, both of these pretexts are just that. Copyright has never been a bargain between the people and publishers. It's been a bargain between the state and the press: establishment of a reproduction monopoly in exchange for a beholden/compliant press.
Even with copyright, the 'public domain' is supposed to comprise all published works. It's actually a severe erosion of the public domain to restrict it to 'works not protected by copyright' - a grievous concession to the copyright axis.
Well Dave, in 1709 Queen Anne claimed copyright would encourage learning, many (Mike included) believe the Framers of the US constitution eight decades later thought it would promote the progress, and far too many indoctrinated buffoons today believe that without copyright there wouldn't be even half as many novel works published.
Do you really think it's good that any privileged entity (corporation or person) should be able to exert the power of the state against all others to constrain their cultural liberty concerning a given work? Even for a year, let alone a century. Nice to have such power if you're into power, but whether it is 'good' is another matter, especially if you're on the receiving end of such power wielded by a psychopathic corporation looking for statutory damages in excess of a million dollars.
It's supposed to enable the privileged copyright holder to extort money from the instigators of any cultural exchange involving the covered work.
Did you really believe those glib pretexts that copyright is supposed to encourage learning, promote the progress, facilitate cultural exchange, or actually enrich anyone other than publishers?
Content is something you fill a container with - it is a derogatory term for intellectual work protected by copyright (so copies can be sold at monopoly prices).
The intellectual work remains valuable, and so Scott can expect to continue being paid for it (given people want him to carrying producing such good work).
What isn't valuable are copies - irrespective of an ineffective 18th century privilege that would have it otherwise.
So, while copies aren't worth much at all, intellectual work is worth as much as it's always been.
Scott must look forward to a future in which he can't sell digital copies of his cartoons, but it will still at least be one in which his fans will pay him to carry on producing and publishing cartoons.
The thing to grok is that the copy is not the work.
My dog can make copies by pressing a button on the photocopier, but he can't draw cartoons. I won't pay him to make copies because I can get a computer to produce billions even more easily than he can (and for no reward whatsoever), but I would pay him a shed load of dog biscuits if he produced some amusing cartoons.
The journalist wants their writing made public, so it can be read freely and widely, and to be paid to write by those interested in them writing more (traditionally the newspaper/publisher, now their more interested readers aka fans).
The newspaper has the copyright inculcated notion that they can sell copies, and now 'reads' as in pay-to-read. They're obsessed with charging for extracted value instead of selling their work.
It's also amusing that the vendors of eBooks (aka copies) refuse to use a really convenient file-format (such as PDF), because they need to sell something inherently copyable that cannot be copied.
The market for copies has ended.
Authors and other writers are inexorably recognising that their words must be freely copyable and that copyright is counter-productive even if largely ineffective. The access control of a paywall is thus even worse than copyright from a writer's perspective (even if it appeals to a newspaper).
We are seeing a resurgence in the market for intellectual work. The software engineers were first. The journalists will follow.
Don't sell copies, sell your writing and set your readers free.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But, I already have the answer...
There are a few of ways of interpreting 'journalist':
1) A newspaper staffer contributing to a daily/weekly paper.
2) A writer employed by a periodical - or freelance contributor to such.
3) Someone (such as a blogger) who writes on news and current issues on a daily/weekly basis.
I am using the 3rd sense. Mike was probably using another.
Whatever your definition, the credibility is not obtained from your job title, or even the reputation of your employer, but how good a writer you are, and your reputation as such. If you have no reputation as a writer, then perhaps you can obtain some credibility from your employer - until you have some in your own right.
So, it is strange for you to regard someone as losing credibility simply because they prefer not to be described as a journalist.
Anon, when anyone can make copies (legally) then there may still be a residual and dwindling market for paper copies (cf WikiTravelPress). However, the sale price pays only for the copy - not the journalism.
So, I guess you believe Mike Masnick has had his credibility removed through not being employed by a newspaper?
We are all free to decide which journalists we find more credible than others, and patronise them accordingly. Similarly, we are free to decide which blog aggregators we consider to be good judges of credible journalists, and patronise them as they patronise the journalists they select.
This is not just a paradigm inversion. It's a value chain inversion. Yesterday we were charged for copies. Tomorrow we pay journalists to write. The boot is on the other foot. The same intellectual work is produced, the same money is paid, but the old fashioned and uneconomic intermediary has lost their job due to automation.
I daresay many journalists call home now and then, and may sometimes even speak to other members of their family.
At the end of the day it is the human being we call a journalist and their intellect that works to produce what newspapers derogatorily term 'content' so they can sell copies of it.
However, when those copies cost nothing to make and distribute, and we can all make and distribute our own, then the only person left to be paid is the journalist for their intellectual work. The newspaper corporation on the other hand has no business left. The market for copies has ended, and the 18th century monopoly that shored it up is an ineffective anachronism.
Our task now is to produce facilities that enable those interested in receiving more of their favourite journalists' writing to pay them to carry on producing more.
The market for intellectual work continues - disintermediated.
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
Incidentally, all published works are in the public domain.
The only way of removing copyright's 'protection' from a work is to wait umpteen decades until it ceases, and that's not really 'removal', but expiry. The closest copyright holders can get is by issuing a copyright neutralising license. I guess it's possible they could make a public covenant not to sue, nor to transfer the copyright to anyone else not so covenanted, but that still doesn't actually dissolve the copyright. It is therefore impossible to remove copyright, except through an act of legislation.
And ultimately, the best legislative act of all is to abolish copyright.
Sure, that removes the business model of selling copies that cost nothing to make at monopoly protected prices, but it doesn't remove the business model of selling intellectual work at prices a free market will bear.
The free software movement should give you a clue that even without copyright's constraints coders are still able to sell their intellectual work, even if no-one bothers trying to sell copies of it (though they are of course free to).
On the post: Lawsuit Over Use Of Creative Commons Content Raises Contract vs. Copyright Issue
Re: Re: Licenses restore liberty. Contracts exchange property.
They can do nothing else. Licenses are not micro-legislatures able to bind passers-by to unjust laws of their own choosing.
The possessor of a copyright protected work has a choice:
a) enjoy their own liberty restored back to them by the license (subject to its conditions, e.g. no reverse engineering), OR
b) enjoy as much of their own liberty as remains to them by (unlicensed) copyright (which doesn't prohibit reverse engineering).
c) ignore the 18th century privilege of copyright as an injustice and enjoy their own liberty underogated, especially their natural right to make copies and derivatives.
I think you'll find the last option is becoming ever more popular.
A license is NOT a type of contract.
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
You don't need a law book to recognise that the individual has a natural right to life (against murder), and to privacy (against burglary).
That individuals have such natural rights doesn't mean that people won't be interested in violating them (nor powerful lobbies to petition Queens to enact privileges against them).
That's why people create and empower government to protect their natural rights (and limit their power by constitutions in an attempt to prevent its corruption, e.g. the creation of privileges).
A government is empowered to protect the natural, pre-existing rights of those that empower it. It is not empowered to derogate from those rights in order to create privileges (rewarding the few at the expense of the many).
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright not supposed to work this way?
Yes, all industries that would enforce copyright's suspension of an individual's liberty are unethical. There are some industries such as the free software industry that do not.
A lot of people believe that copyright is fair, even when youngsters sharing music are fined millions of dollars. That widespread indoctrination that an 18th century privilege is fair makes people believe it to be fair, doesn't actually make it fair.
As to a creator being able to control what they create, of course they have a right to do this (where such creations are created privately, as they so often are). What people do not have a right to is to control other people, to have power over their fellow man. Thus if you make and sell a basket or a poem to someone you have no (natural) right to control what they do with it. As you know, copyright says otherwise and grants a transferable privilege such that the holder can exclude others from making copies. This is an 18th century privilege, an anachronistic hangover from a less egalitarian era. However, it is only now that so many individuals have their own 'printing presses' that they notice this privilege's derogation of their cultural liberty (to share and build upon their own culture).
Of course, having power, being able to control what others do, is very appealing, but that doesn't make such power a good thing. It makes it a bad thing. Copyright gives the holder power over everyone else on the planet. By nature, people don't have power over anyone apart from themselves. The most they can do is to exclude others from their private domain. Being able to control what anyone, anywhere in the world does with your published work is a very seductive power and is why those who covet such power will convince themselves that such power is justly theirs.
What you've got to realise is that copyright is ineffective. Despite its claims to the contrary, it cannot and does not give you the power to control what everyone else on the planet does with your published works. The reason is that the rest of the world would rather keep its cultural liberty and damn your privilege you claim supersedes it. Your published works WILL be shared, illicitly performed, broadcast, reproduced and distributed. They WILL be derived from, incorporated, remixed, edited, translated, and mashed up as others see fit. And that's the best you can hope for. At worst, no-one will touch your work with a barge pole - because it's devoid of any cultural value.
Recognising that copyright is unethical just helps you recognise why it must end, but it isn't the thing that brings it to an end. The thing that ends copyright is people. People who prefer their cultural liberty to a profitable press*.
* Copyright is a lucrative monopoly created for the benefit of the press (to sell copies). Copyright is not necessary for artists to be paid for their art (that's a myth spread by the press).
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Copyright not supposed to work this way?
If you create something it is indeed your private intellectual property, to which you have a natural right - to control, to exclude others, to prevent unauthorised copies, etc.
You have a right to exchange your intellectual work or labour in a free market (a market free of monopolies), for whatever price the market will bear. However, no-one has a natural right to be paid for their work (they may not find anyone who considers it worth the price insisted upon).
Incidentally, some creations do grow on trees, e.g. apples, fir cones, etc.
The point at which you would exert unethical privilege is when having sold or given your intellectual work (or a copy) to someone you insist on retaining control over what that person does with what is now their property (material and intellectual). That control unnaturally conflicts with that person's cultural liberty, e.g. to share, perform, improve, the work they've purchased.
Your natural choice is to keep your work to yourself, or exchange/give it away. It is only the 18th century privilege of copyright that grants you any further control, and that privilege is a plainly ineffective anachronism in this age of instantaneous diffusion. It's also unethical - as it always was. It's just only now when the people notice its legal constraint upon their cultural liberty that we see all this indignation and agitation fomenting into a civil cyberwar.
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Dave = WTF?
It wasn't so many years ago when nearly all of a forum's participants would share Dave's views and only a few brave souls would dare to question copyright's holy sanctity as a fine and just law.
On the post: Lawsuit Over Use Of Creative Commons Content Raises Contract vs. Copyright Issue
Re: NC
Unfortunately it doesn't matter whether your commercial use is permitted by copyright or not, NC simply warns you of the publisher's antagonistic mentality toward unauthorised commercial use. It doesn't actually prevent you being sued.
For example, you can make a copy of an NC work and give it to your brother, e.g. a T-shirt transfer of a CC-NC Flickr photo. No money has changed hands so this isn't commercial. However, there's nothing in copyright that prohibits your brother from selling that transfer for $10 (or T-shirt for $50 - he hasn't made a copy, just attached the copy he's been given to a fabric backing).
Even though this commercial use is permitted by copyright, the NC clause means you'll be hearing from the copyright holder's lawyers. Well, you would if they could actually afford to hire any, which in 99.99% of cases they can't.
Unlike the GPL, which is principled on restoring the freedom of the public, Creative Commons is principled (if at all) on an assumption that the author should have a right to suspend or restore the public's liberty as they see fit. But that modulation (of copyright) is impotent if the copyright holder is also impotent to enforce any infringements. Creative commons is thus not much more than "If I could afford to sue you for infringement, I would only sue you if you did X". And that effectively translates to "If you want to stay my friend please don't do X".
As for revokability, CC licenses are perpetual (except where the jurisdiction limits otherwise).
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
Perhaps an industry shill, copyright troll, or deeply indoctrinated, but not a moron.
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
The public has a natural right to do what they like with any published work. They still have this natural right that Homo Sapiens first demonstrated by copying each other's cave paintings, etc. and later demonstrated by copying religious texts (and works of science and literature).
Unfortunately, in a moment of infinite wisdom in 1709, Queen Anne granted a privilege for the benefit of the press that enabled holders of that privilege (initially attached to each original work) to exclude anyone else from making copies.
So actually, the public has the right, and you have an unethical privilege that suspends that right.
Indeed, the privilege of copyright is so called, because it represents the suspension of the public's right to copy, such that it is reserved as a privilege of the favoured party. See Paine's "Rights of Man".
Predictably, people with such privileges prefer to term them as 'legally created rights', or 'legal rights', or simply 'rights' for short. And then they start denying the existence of the (natural) right that their 'right' suspends.
On the post: Lawsuit Over Use Of Creative Commons Content Raises Contract vs. Copyright Issue
Licenses restore liberty. Contracts exchange property.
Liberty is inalienable and can only be suspended (unethically) by legislative acts such as copyright and patent.
Because liberty is inalienable an individual cannot sign it away in a contract.
You will also find clauses in copyright legislation that jealously reserves its power (to exclude others from producing copies or performing works), i.e. NOTHING else, not even contract can suspend an individual's liberty to produce a copy of a published work.
However, because copyright does suspend an individual's liberty concerning some aspects of cultural works, people get the idea that such liberty is alienable and can be contracted away.
Licenses are not contracts. They are conditional restorations of the liberty suspended by copyright, e.g. "You are free to copy this work after 2011". Licenses therefore do not necessarily require agreement. However, licenses could be provided as part of a contract, e.g. "If you pay me $5 I will give you a license that allows you to publicly perform this work until 2011".
Contracts exchange that which can be exchanged, i.e. that which is alienable such as property, or unethically, those transferable privileges such as copyright (exchanging the public's inalienable liberty).
All this is academic. If the couch potato content consumer doesn't notice their liberty being alienated from them by copyright then you might as well let it be alienated from them by contract, even an adhesive contract (if you buy this product you surrender your liberty to give it a negative review).
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: A few good points
That's actually a rather modern re-interpretation of the pretext for copyright.
Originally, the pretext was supposed to be that the privilege (of copyright) enabling the publisher to protect their published works (against copying) was granted in exchange for incentivising that publication. That this means of protection did not last forever was not regarded as a key benefit to the public.
It's only today, when the public CAN make copies and derivatves, that there is a perception of published works being divided into 'protected by copyright' and 'not protected'.
And so now the pretext for copyright has changed from 'encouraging publication', to 'encouraging the donation of cultural building materials for eventual copying/derivation by the public'. ('eventual' now being one or more centuries later, and would no doubt be continually extended but for imminent abolition).
Of course, both of these pretexts are just that. Copyright has never been a bargain between the people and publishers. It's been a bargain between the state and the press: establishment of a reproduction monopoly in exchange for a beholden/compliant press.
Even with copyright, the 'public domain' is supposed to comprise all published works. It's actually a severe erosion of the public domain to restrict it to 'works not protected by copyright' - a grievous concession to the copyright axis.
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Re: Re: Copyright not supposed to work this way?
Do you really think it's good that any privileged entity (corporation or person) should be able to exert the power of the state against all others to constrain their cultural liberty concerning a given work? Even for a year, let alone a century. Nice to have such power if you're into power, but whether it is 'good' is another matter, especially if you're on the receiving end of such power wielded by a psychopathic corporation looking for statutory damages in excess of a million dollars.
And all you were doing was sharing some music...
On the post: UK Hairdresser Fined For Playing Music Even Though He Tried To Be Legal
Copyright not supposed to work this way?
It's supposed to enable the privileged copyright holder to extort money from the instigators of any cultural exchange involving the covered work.
Did you really believe those glib pretexts that copyright is supposed to encourage learning, promote the progress, facilitate cultural exchange, or actually enrich anyone other than publishers?
On the post: Scott Adams: The Economic Value Of Content Is Going To Zero, But Maybe It's Okay
Discontented with 'content'
The intellectual work remains valuable, and so Scott can expect to continue being paid for it (given people want him to carrying producing such good work).
What isn't valuable are copies - irrespective of an ineffective 18th century privilege that would have it otherwise.
So, while copies aren't worth much at all, intellectual work is worth as much as it's always been.
Scott must look forward to a future in which he can't sell digital copies of his cartoons, but it will still at least be one in which his fans will pay him to carry on producing and publishing cartoons.
The thing to grok is that the copy is not the work.
My dog can make copies by pressing a button on the photocopier, but he can't draw cartoons. I won't pay him to make copies because I can get a computer to produce billions even more easily than he can (and for no reward whatsoever), but I would pay him a shed load of dog biscuits if he produced some amusing cartoons.
Why is this so difficult to understand?
On the post: Writer Splits From Murdoch's Times Of London To Avoid Being Hidden Behind The Paywall
Conflict of interests
The journalist wants their writing made public, so it can be read freely and widely, and to be paid to write by those interested in them writing more (traditionally the newspaper/publisher, now their more interested readers aka fans).
The newspaper has the copyright inculcated notion that they can sell copies, and now 'reads' as in pay-to-read. They're obsessed with charging for extracted value instead of selling their work.
It's also amusing that the vendors of eBooks (aka copies) refuse to use a really convenient file-format (such as PDF), because they need to sell something inherently copyable that cannot be copied.
The market for copies has ended.
Authors and other writers are inexorably recognising that their words must be freely copyable and that copyright is counter-productive even if largely ineffective. The access control of a paywall is thus even worse than copyright from a writer's perspective (even if it appeals to a newspaper).
We are seeing a resurgence in the market for intellectual work. The software engineers were first. The journalists will follow.
Don't sell copies, sell your writing and set your readers free.
On the post: Techdirt Saves* Journalism (And Sells Some T-Shirts)
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But, I already have the answer...
1) A newspaper staffer contributing to a daily/weekly paper.
2) A writer employed by a periodical - or freelance contributor to such.
3) Someone (such as a blogger) who writes on news and current issues on a daily/weekly basis.
I am using the 3rd sense. Mike was probably using another.
Whatever your definition, the credibility is not obtained from your job title, or even the reputation of your employer, but how good a writer you are, and your reputation as such. If you have no reputation as a writer, then perhaps you can obtain some credibility from your employer - until you have some in your own right.
So, it is strange for you to regard someone as losing credibility simply because they prefer not to be described as a journalist.
On the post: Techdirt Saves* Journalism (And Sells Some T-Shirts)
Re: Re: Re: Re: But, I already have the answer...
So, I guess you believe Mike Masnick has had his credibility removed through not being employed by a newspaper?
We are all free to decide which journalists we find more credible than others, and patronise them accordingly. Similarly, we are free to decide which blog aggregators we consider to be good judges of credible journalists, and patronise them as they patronise the journalists they select.
This is not just a paradigm inversion. It's a value chain inversion. Yesterday we were charged for copies. Tomorrow we pay journalists to write. The boot is on the other foot. The same intellectual work is produced, the same money is paid, but the old fashioned and uneconomic intermediary has lost their job due to automation.
On the post: Techdirt Saves* Journalism (And Sells Some T-Shirts)
Re: Re: But, I already have the answer...
At the end of the day it is the human being we call a journalist and their intellect that works to produce what newspapers derogatorily term 'content' so they can sell copies of it.
However, when those copies cost nothing to make and distribute, and we can all make and distribute our own, then the only person left to be paid is the journalist for their intellectual work. The newspaper corporation on the other hand has no business left. The market for copies has ended, and the 18th century monopoly that shored it up is an ineffective anachronism.
Our task now is to produce facilities that enable those interested in receiving more of their favourite journalists' writing to pay them to carry on producing more.
The market for intellectual work continues - disintermediated.
On the post: Time To Live In Reality: People Are Going To Copy; So Build A Better Business Model
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The first step is to get ACTA adopted worldwide (and it's proceeding nicely).
I reckon it's about 50:50 between corporate possession of the Internet and copyright/patent abolition.
It all depends upon THE PEOPLE.
On the post: Techdirt Saves* Journalism (And Sells Some T-Shirts)
But, I already have the answer...
1) Sell copies (monopoly/copyright protected prices)
2) Sell access (paywalls + copyright protection against republication)
3) Accept donations (copyleft as charity)
4) Collect compulsory licenses (Internet/ISP tax)
** abandon/abolish copyright & disintermediate the press **
5) Sell intellectual work/production of journalism (copyleft paid by crowdfunding/patronage/subscription)
The 5th option saves journalism (it doesn't save newspapers though).
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