Copyright by its very definition is a restriction on the free market, and I find it rather pathetic that believers in Copyright call others Communists when Copyright is far more Communistic with its government-subsidised monopolies and subsequent destruction of markets. That is why file-sharers discover so much more than copyright-based models ever can.
I am a Leftist, I would say. But I know that the free-market perspective has to be the right one to take here (pun not intended..). The government does have just cause to be involved with a lot of things, such as a degree of redistribution, but I know an unjust government intervention when I see it. Copyright is an undue burden that never had any evidence to support its claims: "BEST way for incentives!"... sometimes "ONLY way for incentives!"
Extraordinary claims require... well, we damn well know what they require.
By the way, I should really say that yes of course: copyright is going to give the rights holders a lot of profits indeed (which could just be the corporations, not necessarily the artists... gatekeepers can have artists signing away their rights so easily like that). But what you must understand is that just because copyright can give people profits does not make it morally right. It also does not mean that copyright is the ONLY way in which artists (and indeed, corporations) can obtain profits, let alone the BEST way.
Allow me to turn your attention to something called ticket-based admission. This is a form of creativity that has no reliance on "intellectual property" for profit whatsoever since people are paying to go see something that by definition they will only see once. In other words, it is a market that treats creativity as services, not goods.
Apply this principle to the internet, where each computer is a seat in a theatre and crowdfunding websites form the stage, and you get a system where even corporate shrills like Justin Bieber can potentially obtain millions independently of his promoters simply by Tweeting what he is doing. "I have an album finished and ready for broadcast! If you all put in a fair share, I'll put it on YouTube and in the public domain if you wish! You can all hear it and do what you want with it! Here's a single from the album to give you an idea! Oh, by the way, tickets to my shows are now ONLY going to be for people who place a big enough bid here..." And numerous, numerous kids will flock to place a bid for a "virtual ticket" each. Not to mention certain radio companies placing bigger bids if it means they can play the songs without permission... let alone other numerous companies. The advertising potential here is also huge.
And as with all tickets... if the album isn't "put out there" for some reason (act of God, etc), everyone gets their money back.
So, no. Copyright is not the magic wand that you think it is. It is an oppressive tool of power that has no just place in the creative world. We can do just fine without it.
Destroying the public domain: taking everything, and giving you nothing in return.
Well who WOULD want to release their works into the public domain? The works always suffer from legal technicalities that allow outsider companies to buy them back into copyright protection.
Just imagine... a self-righteous corporation could take MY works (in the sense that I made them, not the IP sense) that I put into public domain and wriggle around enough until they have copyrighted it FOR THEMSELVES... meaning that I no longer have any say in the creative process of those works. Yes. I as the original artist could get sued for expanding on my works by a corporation that had FUCK ALL to do with the creative process. The very idea. It makes me physically sick.
Copyright is an absolute piss stain in this respect. And the above point means I have to have it on my works... not because I want to use it to go on a sue-streak against others, but because a company might buy it out of the public domain otherwise and go on the sue-streak themselves... in the name of my works. It is a bit like the recent gun debate going on: even although guns are dangerous apparently it is a good idea to have one because everyone else has one, and that we cannot uninvent the gun and etc etc with the excuses... thankfully we CAN uninvent copyright by simply getting rid of it from law. And then once artists get their incentives from virtual ticket websites like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter we can then look back on copyright and think "what on Earth was all that about?"
The whole point is there shouldn't BE any copyright protection to begin with! That way companies would not be able to destroy the public domain. Copyright is a dangerous buck of power that constantly gets passed around to the highest, most powerful bidder all in the name of "saving the artists from slavery"... can anything be more fucking contemptible? Don't you dare tell me that a mentality that wishes to take the rights and dignity from artists by using works against their will is somehow a mentality that favours the artist more than the corporations.
Eliminate copyright from the equation, get incentives with all-or-nothing crowdfunding, solve the moral issues of defamation, plagiarism, libel, branding and officiality on their own, and take a massive weight off of the artist's shoulders. Occam's Razor holds true here: the simplest explanation is probably the best one. Do not multiply unnecessary constants.
If you knew the first thing about basic law, the question you needed to ask at the start of your drivel was "where are all these GUILTY MegaUploaders?"
When are people going to realise that copyright is the enemy?
What we have here is a large number of people who have just realised they were unaware that they surrendered their buck of power to a higher authority without even knowing it. And if you follow the money over the long term, it becomes almost predictable that companies like Facebook will sell out as best as they can... and what better way than to exploit the evils of copyright? Claiming all rights of creativity that they had no part in! By exploiting the ignorance of people on the thousands of self-contradictory pages on copyright law!
Indeed, when bands need a label, they need to do the same. So do authors, game developers, movie makers, etc. And of course the only way to resist this since all publishers do it whenever they can is to self publish... meaning blatantly unfair circumstances. Now we ALL know how it feels.
Get rid of copyright. The issues of plagiarism, defamation and branding can go on without it. Official branding/tagging solves it all, and allows for derivative markets to flourish. Indeed, an automatic "brand" in the form of a person's name for all works made by that person would be much harder for companies to take away from you... if not impossible.
I know for a fact that I will never give away my copyrights on any creative work that I do to anyone... not because I want to have the deadly weapon for myself, but to prevent some bastard using that deadly weapon against others. Indeed, this is also because I cannot guarantee that by releasing it into the public domain it will stay there... who knows what company will laugh at the idea of public domain and push in courts to buy it up? Also, I have no libel or plagiarism protection for creative works outside of copyright law, either. Maybe a Creative Commons License is in order.
Maybe if this momentum continues we can have folks within the U.S. government and MPAA/RIAA arrested for stealing the intellectual property of innocent MegaUpload users (wait, scrap that, just say property). And I don't mean stealing in the sense of simply making a copy... I mean actually depriving the original owners of possibly the only copies they had.
Yes. But what I can gather from the article is that if Hasbro do not act on brand breaches they lose the brand name. It seems to be a part of the legislation. So it seems to be the law's fault, here.
If copyright did not exist, hundreds of spin offs would be competing vigorously for official approval from the original makers. In other words, the freedom to market without the obstacle of copyright would allow the natural selection of market survival to help the company realise what markets are succeeding, giving them the chance to make money from "officiality" licenses to the most successful spin offs.
I have always said that either making spin offs of creativity wear "UNOFFICIAL" tags on their products or give more rights to the original artists to emphasise their officiality solves a lot of problems without the need for copyright, especially the issue of libel i.e. defamation of the artist by representing ponies as Nazis, for example. With legislation emphasising what is official and what is not, no real defamation could really take place as the unofficial knock-offs are recognised as knock-offs by the public.
The fashion industry backs me up on this: if a knock-off somehow does better than the official brand wear, that brand usually takes what the knock-off is doing and adopt it for themselves, strengthening the marketing power of the brand because it has the advantage of being the genuine, original fashion. And the same can happen in the creative world.
Wait, trademark law, not copyright? This is not as bad then... bear with me, hear me out.
There is a moral right to brand signature as long as it does not get abused. A good rule of thumb is that the same standards should apply to that of what you use to sign contracts, letters etc. So no, Disney. Three black circles does not constitute something you would use to sign a paper with - the font of the "Walt Disney" name suffices just fine.
But I think I need to stress here: this does not seem to be an issue over copyright. I think the company Hasbro needs to protect its brand otherwise people will think that this fan game actually came from the company itself, which is a fair point.
Like it's been stated, the company does not seem to have a problem with the fandom, otherwise they'd be abusing the unjust morality of copyright to take down every remix, redub etc of MLP on YouTube aggressively. I think they just objected to the fact that there was a trademark ambiguity. Perhaps the game here could continue as long as the makers take away the brand signature? Hasbro might not have a problem with that.
Re: No, Mike, it's only time to patch up the holes pirates are making.
I borrowed some Anime from a friend (Gundam Wing), meaning that when I watched it I gave the makers of that anime exactly as much as I would have given if I streamed it for free off of the internet.
Am I somebody who the government just cannot cave into, either? Do you want first-sale laws extending so that my borrowing (ahem, sharing) is illegal, too? We all know Ebay is guilty of this idea. What about forcing me to pay every time I watch the anime? After all, if I watch it twice I have to pay double, right? Because in cinemas you have to pay two tickets to see a movie twice, so why not?
Don't try to say something like "where do you draw the line, here?" and then immediately attempt to draw it.
...it's exactly that kind of mentality that allows you to portray victims of government aggression - the people and businesses who lost legitimate files on MegaUpload - as somehow conspiring criminals in the grand scheme of piracy.
A whole new generation of young people have grown up to hate the copyright laws. A revolution time-bomb just waiting to go off. One SOPA act too many, and you'll light the fuse.
I don't even trust that my data on DropBox is always going to be there anymore, so I make backups. Who knows what government will swoop on it and shut it down, cutting me off from my legitimate files.
But apparently, just like this tax proposal, I am a facilitator of piracy and not any kind of true victim whatsoever.
Correction: I really ought to have said that the funding of scientific development should not be privatised. You should still have the freedom to research whatever you want, and just go to the independent body to apply for funding, an application that would be subject to scrutiny. If what you discover becomes used by pharmaceuticals in the mainstream market, specific manufacturing taxes are called for. If it is more general science that cannot quite fit into a specific market, it should be funded from general income tax.
Well what you have to remember is that taxes are unavoidable. And there are specific taxes aimed at certain kinds of property such as alcohol, air travel, etc - all for reasons that may be necessary such as a degree of regulation on drugs and attempts to slow the process of global warming. I know I often speak like a Libertarian on here, but I think when it comes to issues of what should and should not be taxed a more Socialist perspective is needed. Taxes have to be a necessity, and one important thing that would be a lot more justified in falling into a taxation system is the development of scientific research - we all have a fair obligation to contribute to it.
But of course, taxes would only be aimed at those who sell on the inventions to others and not those who build them in their own homes. The thing about patents is that we are dealing with physically scarce goods unlike copyright... so it is not like you can left-click and copy an invention 10,000 times with practically no cost. It takes time and resources.
The development of scientific research has different philosophies than creativity and copyright. We are dealing with an issue that is a lot more common and vital amongst humanity. Patents make the mistake of playing the "intellectual property" card when just like copyright we are dealing with services, not goods. Patents also have a danger of falling for degrees of privatisation and distortion, a point proven in the patent trolling nonsense. This calls for a degree of accountability in what science deserves to be rewarded, and I think an independent regulator would also be able to prevent pharmaceuticals from cheating the system by adding antacids to current drugs and calling them new, just to patent all over again. Scientific reason when brought to the table more productively like this will not allow bullshit like that to slip under the radar.
It's harder to imagine how crowdfunding could be a substitute for scientific R and D since profits are often accumulated over time, and not just in one payment. Besides, my idea of taxing those who duplicate the inventions IS accumulative crowdfunding, basically.
Also, if global treaties were put forward around this idea (since scientific development is unilateral in this respect) then taxes would be lowered since more people are contributing - supply and demand, ironically enough!
Here is another way of looking at it: education is often a social issue, when it comes to primary and secondary especially. And where I live, Scotland, it is also a social issue for tertiary education (the government pays our University tuition fees for us). The development of University education is becoming more globalised with online courses no doubt, but I reckon that there is still a universal sense of saying that young people have the right to education that is not discriminated based on their wealth and class.
I reckon this principle has to apply to scientific development. It should not be privatised, and neither should education.
Aren't patents just indirect forms of taxation, where the money goes straight to the inventors?
If so, an independent, non-profit (government body?) organisation should decide if inventors ought to be rewarded for what they find, and how much.
This way a) the inventors cannot discriminate against who gets to clone the invention and still get rewards, and b) the scientific process does not get distorted by politics, as only those actually cloning the invention will get taxed whereas those who choose not to will not get taxed, on top of innovators being free to carry out R and D without needing the permission of voters and getting the right share of profit (if it indeed does make profit in the end - if it does not, a flat tax across everybody may be more suited since this category of R and D would just be general scientific research).
Also, I think this clip from House MD is worth posting. You all remember when House completely destroyed Vogler, right?
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re:
I am a Leftist, I would say. But I know that the free-market perspective has to be the right one to take here (pun not intended..). The government does have just cause to be involved with a lot of things, such as a degree of redistribution, but I know an unjust government intervention when I see it. Copyright is an undue burden that never had any evidence to support its claims: "BEST way for incentives!"... sometimes "ONLY way for incentives!"
Extraordinary claims require... well, we damn well know what they require.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re:
Allow me to turn your attention to something called ticket-based admission. This is a form of creativity that has no reliance on "intellectual property" for profit whatsoever since people are paying to go see something that by definition they will only see once. In other words, it is a market that treats creativity as services, not goods.
Apply this principle to the internet, where each computer is a seat in a theatre and crowdfunding websites form the stage, and you get a system where even corporate shrills like Justin Bieber can potentially obtain millions independently of his promoters simply by Tweeting what he is doing. "I have an album finished and ready for broadcast! If you all put in a fair share, I'll put it on YouTube and in the public domain if you wish! You can all hear it and do what you want with it! Here's a single from the album to give you an idea! Oh, by the way, tickets to my shows are now ONLY going to be for people who place a big enough bid here..." And numerous, numerous kids will flock to place a bid for a "virtual ticket" each. Not to mention certain radio companies placing bigger bids if it means they can play the songs without permission... let alone other numerous companies. The advertising potential here is also huge.
And as with all tickets... if the album isn't "put out there" for some reason (act of God, etc), everyone gets their money back.
So, no. Copyright is not the magic wand that you think it is. It is an oppressive tool of power that has no just place in the creative world. We can do just fine without it.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
I must say, the NRA have been providing a lot of lolz lately: "Guns don't kill people... VIDEO GAMES kill people!!"
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re:
That's conjecture, I know. But hey, you started it.
On the post: The US's Public Domain Class Of 2013
Destroying the public domain: taking everything, and giving you nothing in return.
Just imagine... a self-righteous corporation could take MY works (in the sense that I made them, not the IP sense) that I put into public domain and wriggle around enough until they have copyrighted it FOR THEMSELVES... meaning that I no longer have any say in the creative process of those works. Yes. I as the original artist could get sued for expanding on my works by a corporation that had FUCK ALL to do with the creative process. The very idea. It makes me physically sick.
Copyright is an absolute piss stain in this respect. And the above point means I have to have it on my works... not because I want to use it to go on a sue-streak against others, but because a company might buy it out of the public domain otherwise and go on the sue-streak themselves... in the name of my works. It is a bit like the recent gun debate going on: even although guns are dangerous apparently it is a good idea to have one because everyone else has one, and that we cannot uninvent the gun and etc etc with the excuses... thankfully we CAN uninvent copyright by simply getting rid of it from law. And then once artists get their incentives from virtual ticket websites like IndieGoGo and Kickstarter we can then look back on copyright and think "what on Earth was all that about?"
The whole point is there shouldn't BE any copyright protection to begin with! That way companies would not be able to destroy the public domain. Copyright is a dangerous buck of power that constantly gets passed around to the highest, most powerful bidder all in the name of "saving the artists from slavery"... can anything be more fucking contemptible? Don't you dare tell me that a mentality that wishes to take the rights and dignity from artists by using works against their will is somehow a mentality that favours the artist more than the corporations.
Eliminate copyright from the equation, get incentives with all-or-nothing crowdfunding, solve the moral issues of defamation, plagiarism, libel, branding and officiality on their own, and take a massive weight off of the artist's shoulders. Occam's Razor holds true here: the simplest explanation is probably the best one. Do not multiply unnecessary constants.
On the post: Swedish Appeals Court Says Web Designer Is Responsible For Copyright Infringement On StudentBay
Didn't you hear?
On the post: DailyDirt: Beer Googling
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: London Police To Set Up Special Copyright Crime Police Force
Re: Re: Great.
I have nothing more to say to you.
On the post: Everyone's Up In Arms Over Instagram's Terms Of Service They Didn't Read In The First Place
When are people going to realise that copyright is the enemy?
Indeed, when bands need a label, they need to do the same. So do authors, game developers, movie makers, etc. And of course the only way to resist this since all publishers do it whenever they can is to self publish... meaning blatantly unfair circumstances. Now we ALL know how it feels.
Get rid of copyright. The issues of plagiarism, defamation and branding can go on without it. Official branding/tagging solves it all, and allows for derivative markets to flourish. Indeed, an automatic "brand" in the form of a person's name for all works made by that person would be much harder for companies to take away from you... if not impossible.
I know for a fact that I will never give away my copyrights on any creative work that I do to anyone... not because I want to have the deadly weapon for myself, but to prevent some bastard using that deadly weapon against others. Indeed, this is also because I cannot guarantee that by releasing it into the public domain it will stay there... who knows what company will laugh at the idea of public domain and push in courts to buy it up? Also, I have no libel or plagiarism protection for creative works outside of copyright law, either. Maybe a Creative Commons License is in order.
Fuck copyright.
On the post: London Police To Set Up Special Copyright Crime Police Force
Great.
On the post: DailyDirt: Beer Googling
Re:
After the 'plz' I put an arrow and a 3 to make a love heart, then said "Dunno how people can drink beer TBH."
Weird..
On the post: DailyDirt: Beer Googling
Only Whiskey, Cider, Jager, Vodka or gtfo plz
On the post: My Little Pony Fan Game Shut Down By Hasbro Over Trademark
Re: Re:
If copyright did not exist, hundreds of spin offs would be competing vigorously for official approval from the original makers. In other words, the freedom to market without the obstacle of copyright would allow the natural selection of market survival to help the company realise what markets are succeeding, giving them the chance to make money from "officiality" licenses to the most successful spin offs.
I have always said that either making spin offs of creativity wear "UNOFFICIAL" tags on their products or give more rights to the original artists to emphasise their officiality solves a lot of problems without the need for copyright, especially the issue of libel i.e. defamation of the artist by representing ponies as Nazis, for example. With legislation emphasising what is official and what is not, no real defamation could really take place as the unofficial knock-offs are recognised as knock-offs by the public.
The fashion industry backs me up on this: if a knock-off somehow does better than the official brand wear, that brand usually takes what the knock-off is doing and adopt it for themselves, strengthening the marketing power of the brand because it has the advantage of being the genuine, original fashion. And the same can happen in the creative world.
On the post: My Little Pony Fan Game Shut Down By Hasbro Over Trademark
There is a moral right to brand signature as long as it does not get abused. A good rule of thumb is that the same standards should apply to that of what you use to sign contracts, letters etc. So no, Disney. Three black circles does not constitute something you would use to sign a paper with - the font of the "Walt Disney" name suffices just fine.
But I think I need to stress here: this does not seem to be an issue over copyright. I think the company Hasbro needs to protect its brand otherwise people will think that this fan game actually came from the company itself, which is a fair point.
Like it's been stated, the company does not seem to have a problem with the fandom, otherwise they'd be abusing the unjust morality of copyright to take down every remix, redub etc of MLP on YouTube aggressively. I think they just objected to the fact that there was a trademark ambiguity. Perhaps the game here could continue as long as the makers take away the brand signature? Hasbro might not have a problem with that.
On the post: Let Congress Know That Now Is The Time To Fix Copyright, Not To Put Their Head In The Sand
Re: No, Mike, it's only time to patch up the holes pirates are making.
Am I somebody who the government just cannot cave into, either? Do you want first-sale laws extending so that my borrowing (ahem, sharing) is illegal, too? We all know Ebay is guilty of this idea. What about forcing me to pay every time I watch the anime? After all, if I watch it twice I have to pay double, right? Because in cinemas you have to pay two tickets to see a movie twice, so why not?
Don't try to say something like "where do you draw the line, here?" and then immediately attempt to draw it.
...it's exactly that kind of mentality that allows you to portray victims of government aggression - the people and businesses who lost legitimate files on MegaUpload - as somehow conspiring criminals in the grand scheme of piracy.
On the post: Let Congress Know That Now Is The Time To Fix Copyright, Not To Put Their Head In The Sand
On the post: Austrian Rights Holder Group Wants To Hit Cloud Services With A 'You Must Be A Pirate' Tax
But apparently, just like this tax proposal, I am a facilitator of piracy and not any kind of true victim whatsoever.
On the post: A Couple Videos About Our Crazy Patent System
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: A Couple Videos About Our Crazy Patent System
Re: Re:
But of course, taxes would only be aimed at those who sell on the inventions to others and not those who build them in their own homes. The thing about patents is that we are dealing with physically scarce goods unlike copyright... so it is not like you can left-click and copy an invention 10,000 times with practically no cost. It takes time and resources.
The development of scientific research has different philosophies than creativity and copyright. We are dealing with an issue that is a lot more common and vital amongst humanity. Patents make the mistake of playing the "intellectual property" card when just like copyright we are dealing with services, not goods. Patents also have a danger of falling for degrees of privatisation and distortion, a point proven in the patent trolling nonsense. This calls for a degree of accountability in what science deserves to be rewarded, and I think an independent regulator would also be able to prevent pharmaceuticals from cheating the system by adding antacids to current drugs and calling them new, just to patent all over again. Scientific reason when brought to the table more productively like this will not allow bullshit like that to slip under the radar.
It's harder to imagine how crowdfunding could be a substitute for scientific R and D since profits are often accumulated over time, and not just in one payment. Besides, my idea of taxing those who duplicate the inventions IS accumulative crowdfunding, basically.
Also, if global treaties were put forward around this idea (since scientific development is unilateral in this respect) then taxes would be lowered since more people are contributing - supply and demand, ironically enough!
Here is another way of looking at it: education is often a social issue, when it comes to primary and secondary especially. And where I live, Scotland, it is also a social issue for tertiary education (the government pays our University tuition fees for us). The development of University education is becoming more globalised with online courses no doubt, but I reckon that there is still a universal sense of saying that young people have the right to education that is not discriminated based on their wealth and class.
I reckon this principle has to apply to scientific development. It should not be privatised, and neither should education.
On the post: A Couple Videos About Our Crazy Patent System
If so, an independent, non-profit (government body?) organisation should decide if inventors ought to be rewarded for what they find, and how much.
This way a) the inventors cannot discriminate against who gets to clone the invention and still get rewards, and b) the scientific process does not get distorted by politics, as only those actually cloning the invention will get taxed whereas those who choose not to will not get taxed, on top of innovators being free to carry out R and D without needing the permission of voters and getting the right share of profit (if it indeed does make profit in the end - if it does not, a flat tax across everybody may be more suited since this category of R and D would just be general scientific research).
Also, I think this clip from House MD is worth posting. You all remember when House completely destroyed Vogler, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSlMthRW5AU
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