SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, TPP, DMCA, TRIPS… There is no question that the goals of the various acts, bills and agreements governing intellectual property and copyright are consistently inline with the goals of the largest entertainment companies and stakeholders. The MPAA and RIAA, respectively, the associations (i.e. lobbying organisations) for the movie and record industries are often found to be sponsors and co-drafters of these legal provisions.
It is no wonder that this is the case. With such staggering financial incentives it is understandable and reasonable, from their perspective, to shape law and public opinion to better their margins. It’s not complex. It’s all money.
If you’re a proponent of intellectual property and copyright in principle or even practice then this is a time at which you should be reviewing the situation and figuring out what, given the status quo, is going to prevent the approaching inhibition of our freedoms. Of course, you needn’t do this, if you, like the MPAA and RIAA, aren’t fazed by the idea of having your internet traffic monitored, held on file and released to copyright holders at their whims, and without due-process. If, on the other hand, you think this is all wrong, for whatever reason, then maybe it is time to think about what copyright really means to you…
It has been said that without copyright there is no incentive to innovate. This runs contrary to works created for the public domain, open source software, and works licensed under copyright-waiving terms (e.g. unlicense.org). The claim falls apart. There is, evidently, some other motivations involved in innovating.
So what is intellectual property really worth? Is it worth inhibiting further innovation and creativity? Should I have to pay countless artists millions of dollars to mix a track and create something new? Is this fair? Is it okay to have no privacy or freedom of expression?
Is intellectual property, as a whole, really in the best interest of humanity? If it is, then it follows that it is in the best interest of humanity to create a contentious atmosphere, wherein people are pitted against each other to better not themselves necessarily, nor humanity as a whole, but simply to improve their financial standing in society. It is easy to discount one’s support of these circumstances by convincing oneself that it’s “what we need to survive”, “just how things are”, “not gonna change” etc.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I sure as damn prefer the idea of society where I can distribute my creations freely and have them built upon by other people to better society as a whole. Such a monumental shift in perspective is not going to happen overnight, but maybe something will materialise out of mass opposition, and no, that doesn’t mean changing a facebook profile pic, adopting a twibbon, or blocking your site for one day. Even this-here text you’re reading is probably an exercise in futility. This’ll take continued effort and awareness. Or, we can all stick our heads in the ground and entertain ourselves with the petty spoon-fed ideals we’ve been conditioned to uphold and never question anything other than what’s for dinner, or when is the next episode of Celebrity Bullshit Revisited?
Thanks for reading! Please share your thoughts with me on Twitter. Have a great day!
No intellectual property means Communism.
When farmers “create” food, they expect to get something in exchange and when artists do music they expect the same thing.
But the difference is that the farmer can keep his food safe by putting it in a building but when it comes to the artist, he can’t. That’s where intellectual property comes in. It builds “walls” to protect his work: laws.
But without these “walls”, either the artist wouldn’t get anything to eat or the farmer would just share with him without having to be forced into paying him for his music. And that’s communism.
@xavierm02, Communism is not defined by lack of intellectual property. It is mostly characterised by having everyone contributing towards the bettering of society. Anyway, this is all beside the point.
My point is that intellectual property and especially the legal provisions that have been made for it do not serve humanity as a whole, and in fact, as has been evident in recent events, it serves, in part, to inhibit creativity and freedom of expression.
Your argument is incomplete too, because you stop at “And that’s communism” — what follows from that point?
@James:
“Communism is not defined by lack of intellectual property. It is mostly characterised by having everyone contributing towards the bettering of society. Anyway, this is all beside the point.”
It’s paragraph 6 that made me think of this. You make it sound like people would do awesome things even if it weren’t giving them any advantage. And that’s how I see communism: people doing things not to improve their conditions but because it improves the conditions of others.
What I mean is a society without intellectual property but with capitalism can not work.
“My point is that intellectual property and especially the legal provisions that have been made for it do not serve humanity as a whole, and in fact, as has been evident in recent events, it serves, in part, to inhibit creativity and freedom of expression.”
I kind of agree with that, even though some people wouldn’t do the awesome things they do if thy weren’t forced to.
And, do you mean removing intellectual property or forcing people to share their knowledge?
In case it is the second, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Take a big company, say, Google. Do you think that if they were forced to share their search algorith, they would be the that used? Most likely not. There would be many little “google”s as as soon as one would do something new, others would imitate it. The result would be many little website maybe giving you more freedom with that “choice” but the product itself wouldn’t be as good. Google wouldn’t have grown enough to be able to start looking in other directions and we wouldn’t have V8, Chrome and so on.
In case it is the first, I think it would be even worse. You would allow people to “steal” ideas and then use them as they please… Nowadays, if you get an awesome idea, you build a startup and get money, maybe. But if these people could steal you your idea and just use it, then you would have big companies look at what you do, get 10 developers on it and build your idea but faster and better and take your place. The product would be better in the end, but for the person who had the idea, it seems really unfair. Of course, if it were in a communist country, then there would be no problem since there would be no money involved and the guy with the idea and the big “company” would work together.
And I don’t really see how it inhibits freedom of expression. Could you please expand that part?
PS: Don’t worry if some of my sentences don’t make sense. I’m french so I don’t really master English :/
what’s so bad about Communism?
@Jamie: I never said it was bad. I just said a society without intellectual property would either fail or be communist.
@xavierm02, I think you make a good point about capitalism not working (at least, in its current way) without intellectual property. I do believe, however, that we can have a compromise without such Orwellian laws surfacing.
When I said intellectual property (and the laws surrounding it) inhibits freedom of expression I meant things like posting a video of your baby or dog to youtube and then having it taken down because there’s a song playing on the radio in the background. This is a relatively harmless example, but it speaks volumes about our current attitude towards intellectual ownership. Another example is how current laws make it impossible for someone to mix a track formed of other artists’ creations.
How absurd would it be for me to claim copyright over a sentence? Well, patents for sentences and even single words exist. To me this is absurd.
At the risk of sounding too philosophical: how can one own an idea?
The freedoms we sacrifice to supposedly enable us to be freer and more creative are starting to become apparent.
What kind of compromise?
About not being able to mix things, I agree it is annoying but it’s not that important.
About words patent, I didn’t even know this was possible O_O
But putting patents on book or even small standalone texts (such as poems) seems legit to me. But then the problem is to draw the line… And if what you say is true, atm, there is no line at all.
First, your farmer analogy is a false one. When a farmer grows a grain of corn, he has exactly one grain of corn. When an artist releases anything digitally, he gets to keep that one copy and make millions of others at zero cost. Simple supply and demand, and we have an infinite supply. Plus, farmers are subsidised which is kind of Communist, if you think about it.
Expecting something in return is not enough in a Capitalist environment. The market decides the worth, not the producer. Anyhow, minor quibble.
“No intellectual property means Communism.” is a slippery slope argument. There are a huge number of steps from “reviewing how we approach copyright” to “the government owns my ass”.
Also, how is the current situation any better? Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, recently said that, should the patent troll Lodsys come calling, it’s easier to pay their settlement demands than to fight their dishonest activities in court. This basically means “He who has the most money, owns the copyright”.
Currently, it’s nowhere near about being the little farmer/artist getting his cut. Honestly, the best thing that many smaller artists can do right now is offer to share their work and I can provide you with armfuls of examples of small, independent artists encouraging sharing and remixing of their work who are doing incredibly well for themselves.
Whether or not the law changes, people are out there acting like there is no copyright. And it’s working.
The artists who are suffering are the ones who don’t have the power of the RIAA behind them but who still think that they should be paid for every MP3.
“Do you think that if they were forced to share their search algorith, they would be the that used?”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think anyone’s being ‘forced to share’ anything.
A copyright-free environment does not necessarily mean ‘I have to tell you everything I’m doing/I’ve done to get here.’ Just because I release a music track under CC licensing, doesn’t mean I have to give you the unprocessed stems. If you want to remix it, you have to use what’s out there. Some artists are generous enough to give out the individual tracks, but most don’t and that’s fine.
“But if these people could steal you your idea and just use it, then you would have big companies look at what you do, get 10 developers on it and build your idea but faster and better and take your place.”
As mentioned in the article, people are already releasing plenty of ideas, for free and without restriction, into the marketplace. Seeing as this is the case, you should be able to find plenty of examples of this happening now to prove this point.
First to market is a huge bonus, not to mention that adding more developers does not equal faster product development.
And here’s an interesting thought: Disney, one of the biggest proponents of copyright (supports SOPA/PIPA, regularly lobbies for extended copyright terms) made most of their money in the beginning by using public domain material. They didn’t pay anyone to license Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but that movie saved their company.
Now the US Government is thinking about changing the law so that something that’s already out of copyright can be put back under copyright. It’s all very, very ridiculous (and kind of scary).
I see your concerns, but they are the concerns of big business. Even if you support copyright in some form, surely you would concede that the current system is stacked against the individual innovator/small producer? In which case, what’s the alternative? Maybe saying “Everything should be without copyright” is overcompensating, but sometimes that’s necessary to get back on an even keel.
And James: Talking about this is super important. Don’t ever believe that blogging about an issue is an exercise in futility.
“First, your farmer analogy is a false one. When a farmer grows a grain of corn, he has exactly one grain of corn. When an artist releases anything digitally, he gets to keep that one copy and make millions of others at zero cost. Simple supply and demand, and we have an infinite supply. Plus, farmers are subsidised which is kind of Communist, if you think about it.”
When you pay for food, you pay for the land the guy owns, his tools and the time he spent growing them. When you pay for a song, you pay for the time the artist spent writing it and the tools he used. The fact they have infinite supply doesn’t mean it’s worth nothing.
I agree that the price aren’t what they should be but that’s not because of artists. That’s the producers’ fault, those guys getting as many money as they can and giving money to governments so that they can get even more, or so they think.
“Expecting something in return is not enough in a Capitalist environment. The market decides the worth, not the producer. Anyhow, minor quibble.”
Well no. You can sell it at any price you like. It’s just that fewer people will buy it if it’s too expensive. If I recall well, they lowered the price of music disks in the USA and it worked, they got more money. But in France, they don’t get it…
““No intellectual property means Communism.” is a slippery slope argument. There are a huge number of steps from “reviewing how we approach copyright” to “the government owns my ass”.”
What I meant was that I think Capitalism wouldn’t work without intellectual property. And as the only two models kind of working I can see are Capitalism and Communism, I went from “not Capitalism” to “Communism” but it could be something else.
“Also, how is the current situation any better? Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, recently said that, should the patent troll Lodsys come calling, it’s easier to pay their settlement demands than to fight their dishonest activities in court. This basically means “He who has the most money, owns the copyright”.”
Yes, that totally is annoying. It forbids some technologies / techniques / w/e in free things. E.g., Android. Were it not held by Google, it’d have been taken down just because they were doing too good.
That’s one bad thing with the way patents work. They should prevent you from making money from them but not from using them if you just do it to better the life of people.
“Currently, it’s nowhere near about being the little farmer/artist getting his cut. Honestly, the best thing that many smaller artists can do right now is offer to share their work and I can provide you with armfuls of examples of small, independent artists encouraging sharing and remixing of their work who are doing incredibly well for themselves.”
It does work for some people (such as Louis C.K. recently) but those artists have to be independent. And not every artist can do that… Most were at first helped to get their firsts CDs out by producers who then get the copyright and then I’m quite sure it’s kind of hard for the artist to turn away from them. That would mean doing something you really don’t know: marketing and most do not take the risk. Maybe some will follow Louis’ lead. That would be awesome.
“Whether or not the law changes, people are out there acting like there is no copyright. And it’s working.”
Well laws could get rid of that behavior… or at least slow it. But it’s nevertheless true.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think anyone’s being ‘forced to share’ anything.
A copyright-free environment does not necessarily mean ‘I have to tell you everything I’m doing/I’ve done to get here.’ Just because I release a music track under CC licensing, doesn’t mean I have to give you the unprocessed stems. If you want to remix it, you have to use what’s out there. Some artists are generous enough to give out the individual tracks, but most don’t and that’s fine.”
Then that’s unfair because for some things you *need* to share. Say, a piece of JavaScript: not compiled so anyone can read it. With copyright, you can put it out there and if someone uses it, you still can do something but without it, as soon as you put it out, it “belongs” to everyone, on the contrary of others languages such as C (even though, you can get assemble code, but that’s not half as easy).
“As mentioned in the article, people are already releasing plenty of ideas, for free and without restriction, into the marketplace. Seeing as this is the case, you should be able to find plenty of examples of this happening now to prove this point.
First to market is a huge bonus, not to mention that adding more developers does not equal faster product development.”
True. But still, you *could* get pwnd.
“I see your concerns, but they are the concerns of big business. Even if you support copyright in some form, surely you would concede that the current system is stacked against the individual innovator/small producer? In which case, what’s the alternative? Maybe saying “Everything should be without copyright” is overcompensating, but sometimes that’s necessary to get back on an even keel.”
Don’t get me wrong, I DO NOT support copyrights but I think they are necessary in a Capitalist system, which I don’t like either but humans don’t seem to be able to live in a Communist system either. But that’s not the point.
Even though with their money, big companies get an advantage over patents, they *do* protect individual innovators, kind of.
The thing is, patents should be free so that one can protect his idea even if he’s not a super-rich company with money to waste on that.
About my last sentence: It doesn’t mean that I think patents are a good thing. It just means that since they are here, they should at least be free, or have a price depending on the money the one asking has, so that people don’t “spam” but still can afford it.
Its the controversial yet very surreal take over of large corporations, leaving the little companies to fend on their own and eventually removing their existence from this inoperative void that we call home.
Great Post nonetheless!
There’s a petition against acta. It’s from the international organisation http://www.avaaz.org.
1,503,421 have signed till now and there’s gonna be more.
Help us to reach 2,000,000 🙂
This is the classic argument: if you stop paying an artist for his intellectual property, he will stop producing.
This just isn’t true. It never has, it never will.
Mozart was doing just fine without ACTA and PIPA. And without communism.
Artists produce because of the art it self.
There are 3 star Michelin chefs; they put their recipies on their website, they even film the cooking and put it on youtube.
If you want to try copying their intellecual property … go ahaed, nobody is stopping you.
Putting the algorithm online for free does not harm their business. It raises interest; it’s free advertising.
You pay the chef for putting it all together. skill, knowlege, nice restaurant building, a network (of farmers, artisans…) that provides the best ingredients, …
There is a whole new generation of musicians. They put all their songs on youtube. They get paid by filling concert halls.
Traveling around the world and playing live music is the way it should be. That’s what artists have been doing for thousands of years.
Playing a song once, recording it and expecting to be paid, for the rest of your life … that’s the new thing. That has only happend for a few decades. That is the indecent thing.
The 90’s are over, by the way.
Another business: fashion. There is no intellectual property. See this TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
One quote: asked how they can still make money if anyone can copy: “The poeple buying copied clothes are not our customers”.
By the way, in the “WHAT TO WATCH NEXT” section, you’ll find good talks.
I’m just saying: there are a lot of examples to show intellectual property is not strictly needed to make money. There are several models that work.
And I haven’t even started talking about programming.
The guys who wrote Apache (80% of the servers!!) were not paid by Fidel Castro.
Some Belgian guy.
“This is the classic argument: if you stop paying an artist for his intellectual property, he will stop producing.
This just isn’t true. It never has, it never will.
Mozart was doing just fine without ACTA and PIPA. And without communism.
Artists produce because of the art it self.”
But the DO need money to eat and buy raw material to create whatever they create.
“There are 3 star Michelin chefs; they put their recipies on their website, they even film the cooking and put it on youtube.
If you want to try copying their intellecual property … go ahaed, nobody is stopping you.
Putting the algorithm online for free does not harm their business. It raises interest; it’s free advertising.
You pay the chef for putting it all together. skill, knowlege, nice restaurant building, a network (of farmers, artisans…) that provides the best ingredients, …”
Because you cannot replicate it. With a music file, you can replicate it without knowing anything about how it was built etc.
“There is a whole new generation of musicians. They put all their songs on youtube. They get paid by filling concert halls.
Traveling around the world and playing live music is the way it should be. That’s what artists have been doing for thousands of years.”
They should be allowed to do that, not forced to.
“Playing a song once, recording it and expecting to be paid, for the rest of your life … that’s the new thing. That has only happend for a few decades. That is the indecent thing.
The 90′s are over, by the way.”
Are you suggesting they shouldn’t be paid AT ALL for recording the song? And if not, where is the limit? One month? One year? A given sum? That’s still copyright, even if it is limited.
“Another business: fashion. There is no intellectual property. See this TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html
One quote: asked how they can still make money if anyone can copy: “The poeple buying copied clothes are not our customers”.”
You can’t think of the same way of physical object and virtual ones. Music files can be copied by anyone so people get it “for free” whereas when they buy clothes, they have to choose between the original and the copies. They have to pay in both cases and the products aren’t 100% similar.
“By the way, in the “WHAT TO WATCH NEXT” section, you’ll find good talks.”
Very nice talks indeed 🙂
“I’m just saying: there are a lot of examples to show intellectual property is not strictly needed to make money. There are several models that work.”
Yes but there are some fields where it is needed, or at least I can’t see any alternative. And one is music. You could compare making an album to the chiefs explaining how to cook their things but it really isn’t the same thing. Recording a song take a lot of time because you want it to be perfect and that work should be rewarded, even if rewarding for a lifetime is a bit long.
“And I haven’t even started talking about programming.
The guys who wrote Apache (80% of the servers!!) were not paid by Fidel Castro.”
But maybe they deserved and wanted to?
About software, there are two very different cases: people doing it in order to win money and people just doing it because they want it done and then sharing with others. The second case is really cool and some softwares made in such mind help many people BUT the authors CHOSE to do it that way, they weren’t forced into releasing their work for free.
Sure they have to be paid.
“You can’t think of the same way of physical object and virtual ones.”
Well, that’s the whole point. I agree. The point is: you should not try to sell virtual content the way you sell real stuff. It just doesn’t work.
In the 90’s the record labels had something special: they knew how to make and distribute content; we didn’t. They had added value.
Not any more. Today, recording, remixing and transporting content is almost free. We don’t need the content industry the way we did.
I don’t see any added value owning a cd.
You know what’s hot in Belgium these days?
The LP, the long play vinyl record.
The music industry is just a tool. It’s not about them, it’s about the artist. You buy a cd, 15€. Any idea how much goes to the artist? Well, it’s not a lot; rather just a fraction.
I would rather download the album and transfer the artist’s share directly.
A lot of middle men can be eliminated. They have to find some new way of making money. Like make LP’s. That’s fun; people are ready to pay, when the see added value.
I suggest a Copernican revolution. Turn the logic upside down.
The record labels should be consultants. An artist hires a record label to produce quality audio, instead of the record label owning the artists, the content and the distribution.
I do see other models that could work. In lots of branches.
It seems, it’s important to convince the artists it’s in their best interest.
And look … 3 billion people are only one mouse click away. How can anyone not see new possibilities?
We can find a way. Make the right people pay, make them pay for things we want to spend some money on.
Forget the cd model, embrace the new world.
———
But hey, enough about music.
Open source is built on the idea of frog leaping.
I can start where the other guy stopped.
I use the knowledge that was passed on; I remix it,
I use it to build something better.
If any one one can use some of my code, no problem, go ahead.
You do see how this can result in all parties evolving faster.
You also have a smaller footprint. You need fewer resources. Other programmers have spent time building secure login systems, anti injection filters, … Why waste time reinventing it?
You also know, if any leak is detected, you will find security updates fast.
In a non-open-source logic you would have to hire a security expert. That particular person might not find the solution to the problem. The community will.
Open source is not always free. Just Google Open source economy. Programmers are still being paid.
Put 1 dollar in an open source company. That dollar will be used to improve code.
That same dollar, in the hands of the copyright protected companies will be used to protect itself, to build a wall. It pays lawyers, advertising, anti copy technology, …
What’s left of that dollar, that is really used to improve the application, how much would that be?
The problem with music is that when producers see good artists, they hire them and for that artist it’s like having his dream come true and I guess after that he’s kind of “trapped” since the producer might somehow have the rights over the songs? I’m not sure how it works but if they were really free I think artists would set free of their producers, maybe.
And the best way to prevent that would be some kind of association of musicians already famous who would help the once they like to start. But I never heard of something like that happening yet.
—
And yes open source and free (not the money way, the real way) softwares are awesome. But you can’t give any software for free.
Some companies manage to create a product and give it away from free and still make money by helping people install it, by providing support etc.
But when you look at a software like, for example, guitar pro. What kind of help would people need? They wouldn’t need any. Were they giving it for free, they wouldn’t make a single penny and guitar pro would stop existing. Then what would be left? Tux guitar? I tried it once, it really isn’t on the same level.
For that kind of “complicated” software, if you want them to exists, you need someone very very motivated to make them (because there won’t be a community to help before you get the thing working and popular). And for some, the only possible motivation is money.
Plus some of these softwares need money to be created, even if people make them for free. E.g. guitar pro needed to record high-quality sound for many instruments and that is far from being free…
Yes, but this article isn’t about paying versus free.
It’s about: is it really needed to copyright?
You can pay a programmer for the work he put into the program, without having to block that code for the rest of the world.
Without law suites between Apple and Samsung because of 9 lines of source code, or even because of smileys (This is really happening, these days).
Who’s that “you” that would pay the programmer?
I would highly recommend the GNU statement on this topic. Very intelligent and thought out. Among other things, then break down how ‘intellectual property’ is an absurd paradox, primarily utilized to siphon power away from less capable into the hands of the wealthy.
From a personal standpoint, I believe it is most important to focus efforts on dissuading people of the false notions they hold about copyrights and similarly obscure legal concepts, because society has, to a large extent, become ‘programmed’ ideologies that are fundamentally absurd.
The issue is not about economics (another area, incidentally, where ignorance reigns supreme) or even personal rights. The issues is about dealing with reality using terminology and communication techniques that are themselves realistic. Without these fundamental tenets, we cannot even expect to progress as a society. That is why I believe the GNU page is so great – read it all, and share it!!! =)