In Capitol vs. Thomas, the plaintiff’s actually claim that she had violated the copyright on over 1700 songs, they merely focused on 24.

This is technically incorrect in two ways. First, “focused” is the wrong word. The forensic experts could find only 24 songs that could be used in the trial. The judgement relies solely on the number of songs they can prove were a) on her hard drive and b) in her shared folder. Second, the 1700 song number is a fictitious number that the RIAA gave the press to garner sympathy for their abuse of the legal system. There never were that many song files on her drive, and no evidence for such a number exists.

If you believe what the mainstream news outlets say about these trials, let me ask you a question: Have you ever seen on TV or in a mainstream newspaper a report about the RIAA losing?

. . . in a second trial of violating the copyright on the 24 songs… in this case being found guilty meant that she had either illegally downloaded the songs or that she had allowed others to illegally download the songs from her (not potentially).

The question was over “willfull infringement”. Title 17 states the remedies for this which were quoted in most of the blurbs about the trial.

The question is: How can anyone consider a law fair that has these kinds of statutory damages for non-commercial actors? What kind of a world do we live in where a corporation can get the courts to produce a judgement like that?

Regardless of the convictions (one of which was thrown out because it was based upon a legally unsupported theory), this whole case and every other RIAA filesharing case is a gross injustice. These cases are a very clear demonstration of what harm copyright is doing to society and the fact that something has to be done about these absurd laws quickly.

Also, your position on information tyranny is interesting, but I think hardly supported by history. In the 300 years since the concept of copyright has existed, we have enjoyed the creation of more works of literature, plays and art than at any time in the history of the world.

China produced more books in the Song Dynasty than the West produced in the 1700’s, and that was about 700 years earlier with no copyright.

Freed from the need to have a sponsor, authors can express themselves in ways they never could have before when they may have been worried about how their sponsor might react to their work.

If this is true, why is the news so consistently biased? Why do I read things on the Internet that are better than many of the books I see in book stores?

Greg, you said:

Do you honestly think it would be fair for some other authors or authors to start publishing new novels with Rowlings’ characters.

There is no doubt in my mind. This is more than just fair, it is right. Rowling writes well, but she is not the only person in the world with an imagination. Star Wars proved this to me. In the late 70’s, Star Wars changed the world. It was different than anything ever seen. By the turn of the millenium, though, Lucas had changed, and in many ways and according to many fans, he destroyed the story. If someone else could have stepped up and made another version of the story that was more true to the old, I would rather have watched that.

Let authors compete. Let the Free Market reign. Let people like Lucas show us that they are better than all the other producers or story writers out there. The story is for everyone.

Do you know free speech means? It does not mean “free” as in you don’t have to pay for.

I agree completely. I am not disputing copyright because I do not want to pay for books. I am disputing copyright because I want to use the information to create. As you pointed out above, a Harry Potter adventure not written by Rowling might be very interesting. There is an entire underground Net culture devoted to just this called fanfic. People write whole books in violation of copyright just to entertain a bunch of people they have never met. Should we haul these people off to jail for their efforts? Or should we praise them for their literary skill and contribution to our culture?

In a nutshell, it the the freedom to speak or write freely without censorship, limitation, or punishment. That means you can basically say what you want, in any form you want without fear of arrest.

You mean like that individual who compiled a dictionary of Harry Potter terminology and got sued for it by Rowling? Copyright makes me afraid to speak. That is why I guard my Right to Free Speech by using a pseudonym. I am afraid to speak freely because of copyright. Copyright is censorship on the Net and in the real world.

Copyright used to be limited. When formalities and copyright certificates existed, its impact on Free Speech was very limited. One might even say negligible.

Since 1978, things are different in the US. Now, everything is automatically copyrighted. There are no records of who copyrighted what, and all speech in “fixed and tangible form” is copyrighted. Now, anyone at any time can claim a copyright on any information, and the only way to resolve the situation is to go to court. On the Internet and because of the nature of computers, all speech is copyrighted. Copyright used to cover a small fraction of a percent of speech. Now, it governs virtually all (or all virtual speech . It should be obvious to anyone without a vested interest that copyright is the only way to make an end run around the First Amendment.

But the last thing I’ll say on the subject is this: Improper use of a law is a reason to fix a law… not to abolish it.

If there is a possibility of fixing the law, I totally agree.

1) Dickens’ copyrights were never violated in the US. Dickens did not have copyrights in the US, and therefore, there were no copyrights to violate. Dickens could have had representatives, such as a law firm, apply for copyrights for his works in the US if he had thought to do so before publication. The fact that he forgot or thought it was important to get his books copyrighted in the US does not justify Dickens crying over spilled milk.

2) I disagree that encouragement of authors to write is the only goal of copyright. If the information never makes it into the Public Domain, they might as well have never written. The entire point of copyright is “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”. When society cannot reap the benefits of these works, they are equivalent to useless secrets that only benefit an individual or small group at the expense of society. Copyright’s only justification — which goes back as far as the Statute of Anne — is that it increases social and cultural knowledge and sharing of that knowledge. If copyright does not do this, society trades the economic harm of a monopoly and, in the case of copyright, suppression of Free Speech for no benefit to progress.

If one cannot repeat the speech of others, is speech truly free? If all speech is “owned”, can there be Free Speech at all?

3) Interesting point. I still believe that copyrights longer than about 10 years are a violation of everyone’s rights, but your idea is worth consideration.

4) Well, in that case, we should not have to pay again. I paid my ISP, and all the information of the world should be mine. I paid my taxes, so all the books of the world should be placed on the Net by the libraries of the world, and the Teleread dream can finally come true.

5) I agree with you that authors deserve fair compensation. The real question is: What is “fair compensation”? What costs do the people of the world have to bear in order to pay these authors?

However, in principle, I could not agree with you more. If money is to be made from a given work, that money should go to the author. I also believe that the author’s cut should be higher than that of the publisher (especially now since publishing digital works is trivial and POD is available). If I believed that copyright was actually upholding these principles, I would never even oppose part of it.

Finally, this statement must be answered:

The main reason why a term should expire on payment of royalties is not because the royalties are themselves objectionable, but because after a while, it becomes rather difficult to determine who should receive the royalties.

If this were the system, then works would never enter the Public Domain. They could never be used to stand “upon the shoulders of giants”, to be remixed into new works, to be annotated, to become part of newer greater works. Does anybody here really think it is reasonable to have to pay the future equivalent of today’s US$10,000 because a 10 second clip of The Simpsons is playing in the background of a home movie a thousand years from now?

Compensation to authors should not be unlimited. Any author who asks for such a thing is greedy — in the most traditional sense of the word. Copyright was designed as a temporary market advantage. It should continue to be so. Otherwise, there is no justification for having a feudal relic such as state backed monopolies in any sort of democracy. State supported monopolies contradict the concepts of democracy and Freedom to the very core. If such laws are to be allowed, they must be severely limited or the destruction of democracy and Freedom are assured.

What is the point of creating this art at all if no one can ever use it?

A lot depends on what you mean by “use it”. You could write a scholarly book on the effects of Harry Potter on popular culture, and that, in one sense, is using it; you juts couldn’t write a new novel with Harry Potter as a main character. Do you honestly think it would be fair for some other authors or authors to start publishing new novels with Rowlings’ characters.

If anything, his books being out of copyright in the US made him more money than he could have ever made in the same period in England, or touring Europe for that matter.

Pure speculation at best. And, as someone else said, it does does justify copyright violation.

Information is for all. It is speech. It is free. Free Speech is a universal and inalienable human right.

[Bolding mine]

Do you know free speech means? It does not mean “free” as in you don’t have to pay for. It isn’t “Free Parking” in other words. In a nutshell, it the the freedom to speak or write freely without censorship, limitation, or punishment. That means you can basically say what you want, in any form you want without fear of arrest. In practice, the right to free speech is not absolute and is commonly subject to limitations, such as on hate speech, slander, or… dare I add… copyright violations.

Also, your position on information tyranny is interesting, but I think hardly supported by history. In the 300 years since the concept of copyright has existed, we have enjoyed the creation of more works of literature, plays and art than at any time in the history of the world.

Freed from the need to have a sponsor, authors can express themselves in ways they never could have before when they may have been worried about how their sponsor might react to their work.

I would like to see direct and irrefutable proof that copyright has not, in actuality, suppressed our speech over the last half century or so.

As I would like to see your direct and irrefutable proof that copyright has suppressed our speech over the last two centuries or so.

So, I guess until we provide our court documentation as directed, it’s simply your opinion against mine as to the viability of copyright.

But the last thing I’ll say on the subject is this: Improper use of a law is a reason to fix a law… not to abolish it.

A lot of ideas and wordplay are being kicked around here, but the fact is that copyright, a relatively modern invention, has been directly responsible for giving us the wealth of artistic material that we enjoy today. It is an inspired and effective tool.

This is not a fact. It is an opinion, and it is precisely the opinion I am calling into question. I would like to see direct and irrefutable proof that copyright has not, in actuality, suppressed our speech over the last half century or so.

It may not be “the only incentive for art or speech,” but it happens to be one of the most fair and sensible incentive for art and speech ever created.

Copyright in its current form is neither fair nor sensible. Unless one believes suing dead old ladies and children for millions of dollars is sensible and fair, copyright is neither.

Copyright, in its current form, is also unfair for the public at large. Anybody can be sued by anyone else for copyright at any time regardless of the merits of the case. This allows well funded, amoral entities like the *AAs to use the threat of litigation to extort money from ordinary people with little more than an accusation.

In Capitol v. Thomas, a jury awarded nearly two million dollars because Thomas had a grand total of just 24 songs in her “Shared” folder. There has been, to date, no proof that Thomas distributed any of the files in question. The judgement was based on the theory that making available is equal to distribution, or to put it another way, intent to distribute == distribution.

There is no other area of law where intent could be confounded with action. Most laws have different penalties for intent — even murder. Attempted murder is not murder.

I defy anyone to call this either “fair” or “sensible”. Such a statement would be bold at the very least. Copyright is excessively unfair because it forces all claims, even frivolous ones, into court. If the law were reasonable, the RIAA would not have sued tens of thousands of people and tried to stay out of court every time.

Even if this were not the case, an individual can go in an file a DMCA takedown notice and get your book removed from Amazon or any other online dealer by just claiming to be the copyright holder. The punishment for this is practically unenforced.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Calling modern copyright fair is unreasonable at best. These laws are currently inflicting massive harm on society. They are also the reason that the Teleread dream has not materialised. The libraries are not putting books online because of copyright and the galactic uncertainty surrounding it.

LuYu: As to the repeated assumption that “ideas are not (and should not be) property,” you are ignoring the fact that they have been treated as property for millennia. Private information has been kept by monarchs, physicians, scholars and political leaders since there was organization. They doled out that information as services, such as medical aid, engineering skills, or commodities accounting, and charged accordingly, or used it for the sole purpose of controlling others. Today we live in a world of physical “intangibles” that are treated as property… if electrons themselves can be treated as property, why not ideas?

Your post references paid Chinese scholars, and the Chinese were not alone in this practice. But who paid for those scholars? The leaders. And who decided what information would be made available to the people, and kept much information to themselves in order to preserve their power? The leaders. The use of “ideas as property” is as old as civilization, and has been a positive contributing force to mankind’s development. So the supposition you base your argument on is demonstrably false.

This is very interesting. I had not thought about it that way, but such statements just make my case. The “ownership” of information is a relic of earlier autocratic governmental systems and in no way belongs in a democratic, egalitarian governmental system. The concept if fundamentally classist and tyrannical, so I shall call it information tyranny.

Information is for all. It is speech. It is free. Free Speech is a universal and inalienable human right. Copyright exists only to impose the old feudal, monopolistic tyranny of monarchs upon us. This tyranny of information keeps us ignorant and manipulable for the convenience of the powers that be.

The “digital age” just makes this obvious.

1. The fact that 1/3rd of Dicken’s income was from the speaking tour of America does not justify the fact that his copyrights were violated in the United States. As far as we know, he may have made just as much on the speaking tour even if the copyrights had been enforced.

2. Any term of copyright, whether it is 10 years or 100 years is only justified by encouraging authors to write and publish. If the ideal term happens to be life plus 50 years, it does not stop our ability to respond to a work. Yes, you might not be able to write a sequel to Gone with the Wind, but you can write criticism and satire of it, and even can write a novel that addresses the same themes in a different way.

3. I have no particular objection to copyrights extending past the life of the author provided the terms are reasonable and not retroactively increased. Perhaps caring for children of grandchildren might be a great incentive for an author to write in their last years.

4. Of course people should pay for access to information. We all pay. We seem to have some idea that because most web sites don’t charge to access them, and because public libraries don’t charge an admission fee that the information there in is free. Yet we pay for all of that information through taxes, fees to our ISPs, by buying products sponsored by web sites, etc.

5. To my mind, the least odious part of copyright, is the fee that authors or their estates receive for copies of the work sold. Indeed, its only fair compensation for the work that they performed (assuming the fee is reasonable). It is the inability to reuse the work in new creations that bothers me. The main reason why a term should expire on payment of royalties is not because the royalties are themselves objectionable, but because after a while, it becomes rather difficult to determine who should receive the royalties.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

The nationalization argument is the prime example of the fact that copyright terms need to be redressed and adjusted to fit a new age–which I do not deny, though I admit I question those who want to reduce its value to that of a pauper’s wage so that consumers can get it for next to nothing, or nothing at all. The point of copyright has always been to make it worth a creator’s while to create, and putting too stringent a set of limits onto it will take that worth away.

As even a part-time author, I can say that if I knew my works would not earn me any money at all, I’d find something else to do. So would many professional authors today. And though you might not miss my work in particular, there are a lot of excellent and popular authors whose work would be sorely missed by this world if they gave up their trade and went to work pushing pencils for the government, or waiting tables at Applebees.

LuYu: As to the repeated assumption that “ideas are not (and should not be) property,” you are ignoring the fact that they have been treated as property for millennia. Private information has been kept by monarchs, physicians, scholars and political leaders since there was organization. They doled out that information as services, such as medical aid, engineering skills, or commodities accounting, and charged accordingly, or used it for the sole purpose of controlling others. Today we live in a world of physical “intangibles” that are treated as property… if electrons themselves can be treated as property, why not ideas?

Your post references paid Chinese scholars, and the Chinese were not alone in this practice. But who paid for those scholars? The leaders. And who decided what information would be made available to the people, and kept much information to themselves in order to preserve their power? The leaders. The use of “ideas as property” is as old as civilization, and has been a positive contributing force to mankind’s development. So the supposition you base your argument on is demonstrably false.

And the only difference between then and now is that, through copyright, regular people can now benefit from the advantages previously enjoyed only by the rich and powerful, that is, to benefit from their idea-property. Copyright essentially democratizes a previously elite source of income. Seeking to limit or abolish that tool is to take away from the people it was intended to help, and puts power back into the hands of the elite (for, without copyright, who’s to stop the rich and powerful from taking those ideas and keeping any profits for themselves?).

The digital age is making clear that old practices and institutions need serious upgrading to keep up. But these upgrades need to consider all parties equally, especially the creators for which they are intended, to ensure their effectiveness and fairness.

Earning a living from written works is a relatively modern development. Charles Dickens and his contemporaries were probably among the first of the working authors who didn’t otherwise have an independent incomes. Before them authors were mostly aristocrats who had enough idle time to speak their minds while not having to worry about putting food on the table.

You should have said “a relatively modern development [in European culture]“. In China there were paid professional scholars as far back as the Spring and Autumn Period, or even earlier. The beginning of the Spring and Autumn Period was around 722BC. This means that nearly 3,000 years ago, long before the Roman Empire, there were professional scholars in China. India’s history of professional scholarship is similarly ancient. People being paid to write is neither “modern” nor recent.

I am growing very tired of this presupposition that copyright is somehow necessary to “put food on the table”. Copyright predated neither professional art nor professional scholarship. Copyright is not, by any means, the only incentive for art or speech.

I am also sick of this antiquated Industrial Age mentality that books and art are somehow “products” that can be pumped out of a factory and the classism that naturally stems from such a view. Books are not “products”. They are speech fixed to paper. I am willing to pay to have those words fixed to the paper. I am willing to pay someone to speak. I am not willing to treat those words as a secret to protect some fictitious “market”.

Copyright and copyright enforcement can help authors to make a living off their works. Charles Dickens complained about the lack of copyright enforcement in the United States at the time and if England had the same standard, then, I guess, it is possible that he wouldn’t have been able to become full time author without the income from his pen.

Recently in a discussion right here on Teleread, I learned that 1/3 of Dickens’ life time earnings were derived from his second speaking tour in the US. For those who do not understand maths, that means that in the span of about a year and without copyright, this man earned the equivalent of 50% or 1/2 of everything he earned during the rest of his life. If anything, his books being out of copyright in the US made him more money than he could have ever made in the same period in England, or touring Europe for that matter.

When the Constitution was originally written, life expectancy was much shorter, and the authors were, again, probably wealthy landowners to begin with, and a short copyright term wasn’t going to effect them too bad. With a longer life expectancy and working authors nowadays, it is not unreasonable to allow longer copyright terms. The current life + 70, to me, seems to be pushing the limits, but 50 years for a novel or song is perfectly reasonable.

What about my life expectancy? Life+50 for the author generally means death for me. I cannot add my ideas and speech to works generated in my lifetime. From the standpoint of the individual, everything after that individual’s death is forever. What is the point of creating this art at all if no one can ever use it?

The concept that copyright should exist after the death of the author is just absurd. After death, the author cannot benefit from copyright. If you ask about his children, I will say, “Why do you wish to give them an incentive not to create?” It is a good question because the children may have inherited their parent’s talent, and it would be a shame for society to pay them to sit around and do nothing.

Long copyrights also reduce the incentives for successful creators to create more. If your earnings are guaranteed, why create more?

As should be obvious, the current state of copyright is not only unreasonable, but it also contradicts its own justifications. I am all for artists putting food on the table, but it would be immoral not to question why we need a monopoly to do so and to go on blindly believeing that such feudalism is the only way.

I also refuse to accept the “them versus us” or “haves and have-nots” way in which this is framed. Artists are not a privileged class. Everybody, regardless of personal wealth, deserves to be able to participate in global and local culture. No one should be forced to pay for access to any information.

Earning a living from written works is a relatively modern development. Charles Dickens and his contemporaries were probably among the first of the working authors who didn’t otherwise have an independent incomes. Before them authors were mostly aristocrats who had enough idle time to speak their minds while not having to worry about putting food on the table.

Copyright and copyright enforcement can help authors to make a living off their works. Charles Dickens complained about the lack of copyright enforcement in the United States at the time and if England had the same standard, then, I guess, it is possible that he wouldn’t have been able to become full time author without the income from his pen.

When the Constitution was originally written, life expectancy was much shorter, and the authors were, again, probably wealthy landowners to begin with, and a short copyright term wasn’t going to effect them too bad. With a longer life expectancy and working authors nowadays, it is not unreasonable to allow longer copyright terms. The current life + 70, to me, seems to be pushing the limits, but 50 years for a novel or song is perfectly reasonable.

But my opinions on the matter were not what I was arguing. I was arguing that ideas are not “property”. This is not my opinion. It is a fact. And I was arguing that copyright is not a true Right, such as the Right to Free Speech, the Right to Vote, or the Right to a Fair Trial. Copyright is neither universal nor inalienable. It is not granted by God or Mother Nature or the Universe. It is granted by Congress and can be repealed by the same at any time.

Now, of course, you have raised the same tired question you and your ancestors have been educated by Big Media over the last century and half to ask:

So, if you do not want copyright to exist, how do you propose to encourage creators to create?

People do not need encouragement to speak. They have been doing this for two million years. Books are nothing but speech “fixed in a tangible medium”. People have also been singing and acting since time immemorial. No encouragement is needed for this. None ever was.

Put another way, monetary incentives are not the only incentives. People create because they have something to say, not only because they want to get paid. People have many incentives, mostly social and instinctual, that will keep information flowing in the absence of suppressive monopolies like copyright. In fact, I would argue (and this is an opinion) that copyright is currently limiting the amount of information being produced.

Take this any way you want, but copyright is neither necessary nor an Inalienable Right, and speech and ideas are not “property” whether or not copyright exists.

My particular point of view is that published works don’t belong to anyone, but the copyright grants the creator and publisher of said work a fair chance to profit from the work.

There are other ways to encourage creativity, though I tend to believe that at least in our society, none would work anywhere as well as copyright does. The most obvious alternative model is one where the author is paid in advance to create a work in a manner similar to that of a patronage in the Renaissance. The biggest problem with that system is determining who gets rewarded and who doesn’t.

–
Bill

Don’t want me to have any money? (Or just can’t decide who’s going to pay me?) Okay: I won’t write, and the public has just been denied a work. That’s not exactly helping our society, is it?

Copyright has encouraged people to create, which in turn has accelerated the rate of progress worldwide. Name me a system (other than communism) that’s managed to achieve that.

So, instead of simply attacking the concept of copyright so singlemindedly (not to mention reading statements into my comments that I didn’t put there), perhaps some useful and practical alternatives would be in order.

At any rate, I wasn’t commenting on the value of copyright… only to the original question of whether I thought India’s scheme COULD be done in the U.S. at some point in the future. Where’s your comment to the question, by the way?

Copyright is not a true “right” either. It is a limited monopoly privilege granted to accelerate the rate at which works are placed into the Public Domain. When it stops contributing to the Public Domain, the law is meaningless. Further, it harms society just as monopolies and monarchs always have. Monopolies are a relic of feudalism. We no longer have a king. Why should we still have monopolies?

Bill: I doubt very much that I could agree more.

Greg: Why such an incredibly long term? What was wrong with the original 14 years? The majority of money is made in the first six months, anyway. Why do we give authors 50 years for a book that takes a year to write?