Copyright....

[ComradeMan]

Is the concept of a copyright/patent/trademark actually a good thing?

There is an anti-copyright movement that outlines the problems with copyrights:-
(intellectual property)

limits creativity
denies freedom of information
increases costs of production
I also think that patents are suspect too. Big companies buy patents and rights to new inventions in order not to produce them and threaten existing business and production.

They can be very unfair, Meucci invented the telephone but didn't have the $10 to register his invention so Bell was unfairly credited with the invention of the telephone, except in Italy:D.

What's the analysis?

[Havet]

I'm in favor of copyleft: all wrongs reserved.

[ComradeMan]

I'm in favor of copyleft: all wrongs reserved.


Why? The theories against it, notably by the Austrian school, are quite convincing.

[RGacky3]

I am agaisnt copywrites, patents and all that, the argument for them is rediculous and can be derailed just by noticing things that were invented before copywrites and patents.

All of those things are just ways of Capitalists controlling things.

[Havet]

Why? The theories against it, notably by the Austrian school, are quite convincing.

Wait, what?

I said copyleft, not copyright ^^

I don't care about austrian theory, though i do now they are also against any form of intellectual property.

[Bud Struggle]

I have no problem with it-- he invented (wrote, whatever,) it, he should keep it for his liferime. After that it should go into the public domain.

[Chambered Word]

I think in a socialist or communist society we should certainly reward inventors somehow, but not to the extent where workers are actually exploited. Look at Mikhail Kalashnikov and Sergei Pajitnov: I certainly don't think they invented just for the money. And I think I speak for the rest of humanity when I say we're indebted to them for the AK-47 and Tetris. :D

Seriously, there's more to life than just money. Most intelligent people understand that. It's not like everyone will become depressed and stop thinking properly when they can't pull in billions from an idea or design. :rolleyes:

So I don't support the idea of copyright completely. I think, in its current form, it is way too strict to be compatible with socialism.

[Left-Reasoning]

Copyrights and patents are monopoly grants from the state.

Trademarks in a much reduced form seems legitimate however. A trademark is a way for a consumer to tell who made the product at a glance and thus how to judge its quality. Therefore others that would use the trademark are trying to defraud the consumer.

[mikelepore]

This may sound like a joke, but it's literally true. The U.S. Congress passed the 1998 Copyright Extension Act to give dead people's estates longer copyrights for works created before 1978, to cover a period of 95 years after the death of the creator. If the law had not been passed, a large amount of educational information would have become public, including history books, science journals, literary classics, etc. The law was passed mainly because the Disney corporation lobbied for it, so that it could retain the copyright on Mickey Mouse.

[IcarusAngel]

I favor them until after capitalism is overthrown. By the way, copyleft is protected by copyright laws.

This is also what gives GPL'd licensed products the ability to prevent resources from being privatized.

Ironically, removing copyrights may increase privatization.

[ComradeMan]

I favor them until after capitalism is overthrown. By the way, copyleft is protected by copyright laws.

This is also what gives GPL'd licensed products the ability to prevent resources from being privatized.

Ironically, removing copyrights may increase privatization.


Could you go on....? :)

[RGacky3]

And I think I speak for the rest of humanity when I say we're indebted to them for the AK-47 and Tetris. :D

Its kind of interesting that you say humanity is indebted to the inventor of the AK 47. :P.


I favor them until after capitalism is overthrown. By the way, copyleft is protected by copyright laws.

This is also what gives GPL'd licensed products the ability to prevent resources from being privatized.

Ironically, removing copyrights may increase privatization.

It also allows drug companies and technology companies a good tool to keep prices rediculously high and contribute to exploitation.

But I'd like to see the reasoning about increased privatization? As far as I know the State would'nt need copyrights for public industry.


I have no problem with it-- he invented (wrote, whatever,) it, he should keep it for his liferime. After that it should go into the public domain.

Well in todays Capitalism thats not how it works at all, copyrights and the such were not made to defend inventors, and innovators, it was essencially a way to give more power to big money, if you want something done under capitalism its not the public that decides to support you, its private, so essencially you have to suck up to banks and wealthy investors to get your product out, and they end up owning it through copyrights. Not the inventor.

Under socialism it would be democratically funded, not privately.

Copyrights, in practice, protect big money, not inventors.

[Havet]

I favor them until after capitalism is overthrown. By the way, copyleft is protected by copyright laws.

This is also what gives GPL'd licensed products the ability to prevent resources from being privatized.

Ironically, removing copyrights may increase privatization.

Copyleft IS NOT protected by copyright laws.

The GNU General Public License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License), originally written by Richard Stallman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman), was the first copyleft license to see extensive use, and continues to dominate the licensing of copylefted software.

[cska]

Well, trademarks make sense, as long as they are different enough from common phrases. Copyrights are also a good thing, though they should be made shorter (something like 5 years for films and music, and 10 years for literature, paintings, and software). Other companies should be able to pay a percentage of its revenues (say 5 percent) to a patent holder to produce and sell its invention.



Copyleft IS NOT protected by copyright laws.

The GNU General Public License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License), originally written by Richard Stallman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman), was the first copyleft license to see extensive use, and continues to dominate the licensing of copylefted software.


What do you mean? If I use GPL'd code in my BSD licensed software, I would be committing a crime under copyright law. The GPL is an undemocratic and monopolistic license.

[Havet]

What do you mean? If I use GPL'd code in my BSD licensed software, I would be committing a crime under copyright law. The GPL is an undemocratic and monopolistic license.

I don't understand what you're saying. Can you please elaborate how the GPL is undemocratic and monopolistic? What would you call standard copyright licenses then?

[Dean]

Could you go on....? :)

I think he is referring to the fact that copyright rewards those who have ideas, inventions and etc. and have a "wild-west" system in that sense would allow the moneyed elite to take any idea held by an inventor and use it for their own end, without compensation.

This already happens today to some degree (since its really expensive to defend copyright) but it would get worse under a copyright-free environment. The cincher is that the free exchange of information is directly squelched by copyright law, and that seems more relevant than the defense of an admittedly few against the excesses of the capitalist system.

[革命者]

Copyright law is needed in today's society. Patent law and practice really need to change because it only protects those with enough money to obtain a patent. Copyright law doesn't have this problem, so with relatively few means, people can create great value.

In that way it increases the chances of obtaining value by those who have little, making accumulation of capital less of a stranglehold to the impoverished by making it less relevant.

[IcarusAngel]

GPL'd code certainly is protected by copyright law. That means that if you use someone's GPL'd code illegally (privately) you can be sued - you MUST open up your source code.

I like that idea. As long as capitalism exists there will be laws, such as copyright laws.

And the BSD license is also protected by copyright law. Why it's supposedly "better" is beyond me. The license doesn't change depending upon your opinion.

http://www.linfo.org/bsdlicense.html

[IcarusAngel]

Could you go on....? :)


I think he is referring to the fact that copyright rewards those who have ideas, inventions and etc. and have a "wild-west" system in that sense would allow the moneyed elite to take any idea held by an inventor and use it for their own end, without compensation.

This already happens today to some degree (since its really expensive to defend copyright) but it would get worse under a copyright-free environment. The cincher is that the free exchange of information is directly squelched by copyright law, and that seems more relevant than the defense of an admittedly few against the excesses of the capitalist system.


Yes. Exactly. This is what I'm concerned about. You may inevitably place more power into the hands of big corporations.

With things such as the BSD license, if a team of public programmers worked really hard and made some algorithm that did something interesting, and then licensed it under BSD, it would allow a corporation to take that code and use it in commercial software, without ever releasing the source code. All they are required to do is contain a license stating that its BSD software. Thus they could make money off of other people's work.

Capitalists love to take credit for other people's work. That's why you rarely here about the state's involvement in computers anymore, or why you know about the names of individual inventerse in corporations. At least in theory copyrights allow a worker to attempt to protect his own work. I realize in practice this often means corporations end up having so many copyrights they don't know what to do with them all and will spend time suing people who have programs that are even slightly similar to their copyrights.

It's really an issue best left until after capitalism is replaced.

[piet11111]

you only need to look at medicine where essential meds do not get mass produced and distributed because some greedy fucks want to squeeze out all the money they can even if it kills people.

[IcarusAngel]

Medicine is a completely different story. As are our genes. Over one-fifth of genes have been pateneted. When you have a copyright on such things, you can prevent research from coming through, claiming you have a monopoly on such research.

Medicine is a science, but it also contains some aspects of engineering, hence why patents are coming in. Keep in mind that today's corporations are so big they can bully other corporations out of business even without copyrights. So it's a difficult issue and ultimately leads to a debate about reformism.

I love GNU and the GPL, but Richard Stallman is an absolute liberal who wants to keep capitalism in place. He's said this many of times and if you email him he will probably admit he is a 'capitalist.'

To be fair, he does vote Green Party, which stands for decentralization, community values, civic participation, free-speech, and so on. The Green Party is probably the best capitalism ever could become, and it least he doesn't buy into that bullshit the Libertarian party spews. If that's your thing so be it. (I myself am a fan of Nader but really capitalism is able to outsmart any attempts to "chain" it.)

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think copyrights should be gone - I think it would be fine if there was some precedent that ensured that credit goes to who deserves it, but the "ownership" of art, medicine, inventions and so on is a barrier to progress. So much of art history is people using the same source material to expand something create new art. Almost all of Shakespeare plays were versions of existing stories or plays. Artists in the Renaissance began as apprentices and made copies of existing works to develop their own skills. For science and technology, pooling resources and freedom of information is essential.

I go along with copyleft in my own work, but I think it's a little idealist under capitalism (or a little to "counter-culture" in its approach to this subject). I like what Communist folk-singer Woodie Guthrie had to say on his records:


This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.

[IcarusAngel]

You seriously think that if we removed copyright that means people will get credit for their own work? Copyright hasn't been around forever and that hasn't stopped the ability of people to steal.

Yes, it is possible for the government to ensure (or try to ensure) that the people who invent get credit for their work, and that they are taken care of to pursue their art. But it would have to be the government, we know we can't trust the market to do this. Corporations have deep pockets. If I'm taken to court for designing something that supposedly looks like something a corporation has done, who do you think will win? (Or maybe that's what Libertarians want - corporations bullying people.)

Here's some other things that the government could do, but doesn't: provide people with a living wage, provide people with adequate health care (in the US at least this is true), provide people with a living structure (Hong Kong does this, but not the US), provide people with a basic income, set a maximum wage for the rich so we share resources. The government could also fight global warming, and invest in cleaner technologies, forcing the US to update its standards so it isn't the world's #1 polluter. These have all been purposes but few of them are truly implemented, even in Europe.

I thought we were socialists and anarchists because we realized people must do this stuff themselves, and as long as a capitalist government is around advances are going to be blocked in one way or another.

As for copyrights "impeding" progress that's actually debatable. Art and literature has not stopped. The government funds art. Computer science made many advances at a time when University standards were the norm, and still does, and even our friends at Microsoft have made advances.

I would favor allowing University standards to be applied to all areas of the economy but I'm certain corporations would find a way to exploit even that system; people don't realize just what a large role these institutions play in our society, probably because their power grabs have come over time and have been gradual, and the laws that favor them are hidden in enormously complicated legislation.

[whore]

the three things in the op are quite different.

copyright is a government granted monopoly on an idea, including an expression of that idea (through writing or whatever), for a set time (currently at least 50 years after the author has died, i think 75 in the usa). it was originally intended to encourage people to create, by granting them a period of time when they were the only one able to exploit that creation on the market. (i don't see any dead authors writing still, i don't know why copyright needs to be so fucking long...)

arguments against long periods of copyright include that dead people don't write, and that builders don't keep getting paid for houses they've build years after.

patents are different, they are still a government granter monopoly though.they are meant to protect a particular implementation of an idea. the term is much less than copyright (seven years?). rather than the company hiding the method of mafactor, or how a device works, and risk another company finding out anyway and duplicating that method, patents are intended to make the method open, but still prevent others from using it without paying the inventor. once the time period has expired, everyone gets a free go at the invention.

trademarks are simply a method of identifying a company or product, if only the owner of the trademark uses it, you cna be sure that the product is of the quality normally expected from that company.

in the current system, there are arguments for all. there are also arguments, particularly against copyright. you can read many of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-copyright

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dear mods:




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what the fuck is going on here?

[ComradeMan]

you only need to look at medicine where essential meds do not get mass produced and distributed because some greedy fucks want to squeeze out all the money they can even if it kills people.


That is one of my issues. WTF. Medicine should not be a patent.

[cop an Attitude]

I have to say, as a cinematographer with personal intellectual property floating all around the interwebs, I copywriting is my biggest enemy. Honestly, I wouldn't care less (actually I would be grateful) if someone put one of my videos on their site. I mean my credits already on it, and as long as their not openly deny i made it then I don't really mind.

Although every song I want to use, every picture I find, every video, all restricted. Even if i source it in the credits, its still "illegal". A ridiculous practice only installed to maintain economic control over materials. I say it should be one of the first things to go!

[mikelepore]

I can't remember the details, but about 10 or 15 years ago, I read, not in the news but in one of the respected scientific journals, either Science or Nature, about a company that owned the patent on a medical diagnostic test, not for scientific reasons but for business reasons, deciding not to manufacture and market the diagnostic kit for some period of time, and using the monopoly power of the patent to say that no other company could make it either. A diagnostic test that doctors could have used to save patients' lives was being withheld because the corporation that owned the patent was thinking strategically about what moment would be the most profitable to start selling it. I'm not sure but I think it had to do with the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technology, which has been the subject of a number of lawsuits and court rulings. Does anyone know? I tore the article out of the journal to save it, and now I can't find it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

You seriously think that if we removed copyright that means people will get credit for their own work?Comrade, I think you are over-reacting to what I said a bit. I was unclear that I was not talking about copyrights right now under capitalism needing to be done away with. I said copyrights SHOULD be done away with, not that they could or would in capitalism. Hence, copyleft, as I said is idealist imo - trying to change the reality of the system by creating an "alternative" to the capitalist status quo.


Yes, it is possible for the government to ensure (or try to ensure) that the people who invent get credit for their work, and that they are taken care of to pursue their art. But it would have to be the government, we know we can't trust the market to do this. Corporations have deep pockets. If I'm taken to court for designing something that supposedly looks like something a corporation has done, who do you think will win? (Or maybe that's what Libertarians want - corporations bullying people.)Again I said that copyrights SHOULD be unessisary, not that this is a reform we should fight for.



Here's some other things that the government could do, but doesn't: provide people with a living wage, provide people with adequate health care (in the US at least this is true), provide people with a living structure (Hong Kong does this, but not the US), provide people with a basic income, set a maximum wage for the rich so we share resources. The government could also fight global warming, and invest in cleaner technologies, forcing the US to update its standards so it isn't the world's #1 polluter. These have all been purposes but few of them are truly implemented, even in Europe.Oh my god, really?:laugh: There's no disagreement, here.


As for copyrights "impeding" progress that's actually debatable. Art and literature has not stopped. The government funds art. Computer science made many advances at a time when University standards were the norm, and still does, and even our friends at Microsoft have made advances. Well capitalism is dynamic and does create new technologies but some further advances are retarded or prevented outright due to the profit motive. Corporate intellectual property control is a tool of competition between firms in capitalism and this competition often slows progress. Things like the development of smartphones should, in a different society, be realitvly easy and cheap with only user satisfaction quality, and ease of production being the factors that determine what gets produced. Instead there are many firms attacking this idea from various angles all using intellectual property rights to try and slow the competition - not of this benifits technological progress or usefulness - just profits and corporate competiton. It's the same with the drive toward Internet TV/streaming movies on demand. Cable, Satellite, Apple, Netflix, Playtstation, Wii, TiVo, and so on are all competing to become the standard in streaming movies or delivering broadcast-quality web-tv.

In addition, I don;t know about the development of the internet or comuter science, but things like the Gnome project had to consiouslly side-step normal intellectual property protocol in order to advance as quickly as they did.

There are countless examples in technology of people and companies "reinventing the wheel" or infereior technology becoming the standard due to entities like Edison, Microsoft, Comcast, having more economic sway or monopolies or copyrights.

I am thinking of the idea of copyrights in terms of the capitlaist arguments in favor of it (it creates more innovation because people have a motive to create as well as to take full advantage in using their intellectual property) vs what I consider to be the more working class (and therfore benificial to all of humanity) position on intellectual property: which is that collaboration and shared knowledge will help the most people and create the most potential for innovation. It's like the annecdote from Howard Zinn about the native americans who were given IQ tests by Jesuits... the Jesuits became angry when the native americans got together to compare answers and the people taking the test responded: Why are you mad, don't you want us to figure out the best answers?

So in a future society I would hope that in academics and art that credit be given and sources cited, but at the same time I hope there will be full freedom of the use of all ideas, art, and technological developments.

[革命者]

Copyright doesn't protect ideas. You can easily rephrase anyone's expression of his or her ideas. That's what anybody who has written anything in any existing language has done; it's what languages are made of. It's also what any work of philosophy or encyclopedias are made of, to name just two. It's what allows for any written critique of anything thought and/or written down by others.

And patents are quite different from copyright. Patents are mainly used to protect big manufacturers, but copyright is less prone to such misuse.

The only thing that is wrong in intellectual property law is what is wrong in all property law: that an investor/employer can legally rob someone of the product he produces; the fruits of his labour.

I don't think all fruits of someone's labour should be his property, but it certainly shouldn't be the property of an employer or investor.

Those people with most money can profit from your work most. Therefore, you should be able to protect it.

The thing that adds most value to intellectual property is your intellect, therefore it is a way to avoid being dependent of investors to whom you'd have to give the fruits of your labour in return for wages.

[RedStarOverChina]

Intellectual property is essentially, anti-civilization.

Everything from the paper you use to car engines to the chocolate you eat is stolen OVER AND OVER again by various nations and individuals. Through what you call “copycatting”, “thieves” then adds their own ideas to the product and only then could it be improved.Kinda like an open-source software. That’s how human civilization works.

The idea of “intellectual property” serve as a deterrence to the spread of human civilization…It prevents the passing down of knowledge to the less fortunate, and limits the flow of knowledge within a small group of elites. It is a ruthless form of censorship, with far-reaching political and economic consequences.

[ComradeMan]

Intellectual property is essentially, anti-civilization.

Everything from the paper you use to car engines to the chocolate you eat is stolen OVER AND OVER again by various nations and individuals. Through what you call “copycatting”, “thieves” then adds their own ideas to the product and only then could it be improved.Kinda like an open-source software. That’s how human civilization works.

The idea of “intellectual property” serve as a deterrence to the spread of human civilization…It prevents the passing down of knowledge to the less fortunate, and limits the flow of knowledge within a small group of elites. It is a ruthless form of censorship, with far-reaching political and economic consequences.

I agree, I think it's all a load of capitalist and elitisit protectionism that serves humanity in no way other than to make a few people rich.

Ideas belong to no one.

PS How the hell can you patent a human gene anyway? I don't get that. Isn't it like me patenting my pet hamster?

[革命者]

Protectionism in today's society is good if used by those that have few. In macroeconomics and with property within a country.

Intellectual property takes relatively little capital to produce, and creates thereby a chance for proletarians to lose the chains of debt by selling the product of their intellect, without expropriation thereof by investors; i.e. capitalists.

The open source movement is partly parasitic, partly commercial, because its producers rely on capitalism to sustain their project; without a day-job (working for e.g. software companies) they would not survive. Unless if they sell their product, but they might do that for a profit which goes to the investors/employer; again sustaining capitalism.

And patents are different from copyrights.

[Ovi]

dear mods:

You only submitted quotes.

Of course copyleft licenses are protected by copyright laws, there are no special copyleft ones. Abolishing copyright and keeping capitalism intact would be insane. It would mean programmers and others not getting paid for their work and maybe even a slow death of the free software movement, being hijacked by proprietary better products. However there are no needs for copyrights in a free society.

The fact that the BSD licenses allow leeches to make profits out of someone else's work and not give back anything to the community is not a good thing so obviously a GPL project can't be incorporated in a BSD one.


I love GNU and the GPL, but Richard Stallman is an absolute liberal who wants to keep capitalism in place. He's said this many of times and if you email him he will probably admit he is a 'capitalist.'

Since most people only know about capitalism and stalinism, picking what one considers the least of the evils might be understandable.

[Qwerty Dvorak]

Copyleft IS NOT protected by copyright laws.

The GNU General Public License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License), originally written by Richard Stallman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman), was the first copyleft license to see extensive use, and continues to dominate the licensing of copylefted software.

Don't talk about stuff if you don't know how it works. The way copyleft functions legally is by utilising copyright law. Basically, the GPL uses the law of copyright to place conditions on the use of the software; namely, that you can only use/modify/whatever it on the condition that anything you produce which is derived from the GPL'd software is also published under the GPL. In this way, copyright is used to protect freedom, as it ensures any derivative work of the GPL'd software remains copylefted.