Re: copyright under stress

On Wed, 31 May 2000, David Hale <dhale[_at_]aggt.com> wrote:
>
> This is a really incredible post. Incredibly offensive, that is.
> If I create something, it is mine, not yours, and not the public's.
> I do not have to give you access to it; I can take it to my grave
> my secret. If I don't have copyright to back me up, I will either
> not give you access without a contract in which you explicitly
> promise me your first born if you reproduce it, or I will not
> create it in the first place if such a contract is found to be
> not enforceable.

What you have revealed to the public no longer belongs to you. That is the universal law of communication which means to make the knowledge common to the people to whom the knowledge is communicated. It is very childish to claim that what you have created belongs to you because you already forget that you have also used others' knowledge (be they uncopyrightable, copyrightable, and public domain intangible and tangible things) as the building blocks for your creative works. If you don't want to share your creative works with us, then, don't. It is that simple.

> Copyright is not evil.

Oh, yes. It is evil but not on the same magnitude as, say, genocide. It is a little evil but it ain't a good thing that comes from the heavens.

> It is simply a step (and money) saving device which allows me
> to distribute my works without having to go to the effort of
> drafting and having signed a contract limiting rights to
> redistribution. Naive Thoreu-esque visions of civil disobedience
> aside, those who violate the law with full knowledge (excluding
> good faith attempts to comply, or areas of judgement calls --
> neither applicable when downloading the entirety of the latest
> Metallica album), are not honest.
>
> Look at the alternative. With no copyright, how does a performer
> create a revenue stream? Embedding endorsements in its material.
> Every Metallica song pauses in the middle to thank their sponsor,
> Pepsi. With a little thought, these devices can be woven into the
> threads of the work so tightly they can not be extracted. In the
> meantime, the unknown and naive author of the next great American
> novel has his book published by Random House -- but gets absolutely
> no money for it, because there is no law stopping the publishing
> company from reproducing it as much as it wants for free. Not that
> it matters, because Random House won't bother publishing it because
> as soon as it's digitized it's available anywhere for free. So the
> author of the next great American novel decides not to bother and
> spends his time day trading instead. THAT is a crime against
> civilization.

Generally speaking, there are two groups. First group loves money (and control) more than knowledge (which includes art, crafts, etc.). Second group loves knowledge more than money and control. If copyright disappears, only the first group will cease to exist. The second group will always exist - mothers don't stop singing to their babies, children don't stop drawing, adults don't stop telling stories.

> The founding fathers were not insane when they gave Congress the
> authority to establish copyrights (and patents) to promote science
> and the useful arts. They do.

They knew that people tend to be selfish (as easily demonstrated by the first paragraph in your post) and to goad them into showing their creative works to the public, they gave them a temporary incentive known as copyright (and patent).

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 6,783 Received on Tue Jun 06 2000 - 08:51:03 GMT