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On Friday, the EU Commission published a piece on Medium that suggested that Google has taken over the minds of millions of citizens, rendering them incapable of thinking for themselves in their opposition of Article 13. The piece was later deleted with a note implying that people simply aren't capable of understanding the subtle nuances of the English language.
Last week the European Parliament and European Council agreed on the final text of the EU Copyright Directive.
Supporters of Article 13 say this will lead to a better deal for the entertainment industries at the expense of Google's YouTube, since it will have to obtain proper licenses for content uploaded to platform, while taking responsibility for infringing uploads.
Opponents, on the other hand, believe that the Article 13 proposals will be bad news for the Internet as a whole, since they have the potential to stifle free speech and expression, at the very least.
It's important to note that Article 13 opponents come in all shapes and sizes, some more militant than others. However, last Friday the EU Commission took the 'one size fits all approach' by labeling every dissenting voice as being part of a "mob", one groomed, misinformed and misled by Google. [...]>
I'm not sure who in the world [h]as the expectation that lawmakers be clear and unambiguous in all their communications. But even putting that aside, it might be fun to have a quick game of logical fallacy spotting on both sides of this spat. Alas one might start with some anti-EU-commission bias, thinking that they don't understand how the internet works, as they appear to think that you can "delete" things that have appeared on the internet. Aww, how cute! -- Ed.(FP)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday February 21 2019, @07:50PM (15 children)
No. But it should be restricted to, say, two years. I used to say 20 years, but that was before they kept stretching it out so abusively.
It's patents that should be totally abolished.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:15PM (13 children)
I would like to see copyright and patents abolished, for many reasons. Not least is that they warp people's thinking. Copying is not stealing, but a lot of people halfway buy into that thinking. I'd go so far as to say that copyright is treason, in that in addition to the wrong thinking it encourages, copyright hinders education, and education is fundamental to a functioning democracy.
I'd like to see various forms of public patronage take over the job of encouraging artists with compensation. Crowdfunding with the private entities we have now are okay as far as they go, but we need more.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday February 21 2019, @11:13PM (10 children)
Should this become the law of the land, many of the works that the public has shown considerable liking for would not have been produced in the past, and works of a similar nature will not be produced in the future.
I am all for copyright becoming less crazed (both in terms of length, and in the damage it's done to the concept of public domain) and I am 100% behind "copying something freely given is not stealing", but I recognize that many things that we have now, we would not have, were there no mechanism like copyright.
Speaking as a software author (which is only one of my copyright-related hats) who has released commercial, shareware, freeware, donation-ware, and open-source software creations... I can tell you that if people are not expected and pushed to pay, they mostly don't. Unless you can come up with a reason to actually change human nature, the creative landscape would be strongly altered, and — IMHO — not in a good way.
This is the same type of argument that some libertarians make for backing off on government services such as caring for the poor: the free market will provide. That argument can be shown to be false in that the free market does not provide now even with a considerable head start given by government support.
I'm pretty confident that the "patronage" argument carries the same error forward: patronage is not now a viable thing; there's nothing at all stopping it from being viable in any practical sense, and like certain types of charity, it's something the rich could easily and usefully wear on their sleeves. But they almost never do this, and certainly not to any degree that would support art in general.
There's another potential hurdle as well. The constitution;
Article I Section 8, Clause 8:
Copyright is a direct manifestation of the "exclusive right" written there. The argument goes that those rights turn into earnings; earnings encourage the creation of significant and copious new works and discoveries; and that these in turn benefit society as a whole.
You'd really have your work cut out for you trying to show that patronage (assuming you could get that going somehow) would perform as well, or better.
--
When I get a headache, I take two aspirin and keep away from children.
Just like the bottle says.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 22 2019, @02:02AM (4 children)
We're not REALLY calling Justin Beiber "useful" now, are we?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 22 2019, @06:50PM (3 children)
To eliminate copyright, patents, and trademarks BUT NOT TRADE SECRETS one must Amend Constitutions.
"Constitutions" plural.
Good luck with that copyright, patents and trademarks which are mandated by repressive regimes.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 22 2019, @07:21PM (2 children)
Not necessarily. In the U.S. for example, the Constitution AUTHORIZES IP laws, but it does not MANDATE them.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday February 23 2019, @11:59AM (1 child)
-ion?
That Britain has Habeas Corpus is due to its King having been pressured to sign some manner of document that more-or-less began the Habeas Corpus legal tradition roughly nine-hundred years ago, but it's name escapes me just now.
Canada has its Charter Of Rights And Freedoms.
_Neither_ has an actual _Constitution_.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday February 24 2019, @08:03PM
It's a side effect of the way the respective governments evolved.
The UK evolved from a monarchy (and the monarchy still exists today) which was sharply limited by the Magna Carta. So in that sense, the modern government in the UK is rooted in a belief in divine right. Canada was a colony of England, and so shares that to this day as a commonwealth nation (as does Australia)
Since the U.S. was explicitly rejecting the monarchy in any form, a constitution was needed as a root agreement to create a legitimate government. However, in the years since, rampant violations of the Constitution (some technical, others practical) place the govbernment on shaky grounds as far as legitimacy goes and effectively re-invoke (effectively if not literally) a belief in divine right.
I'll leave comparisons between 'divine right', prosperity gospel, and watery tarts throwing swords (and their legitimacy) as an exercise for the reader.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 22 2019, @03:10AM
Patronage worked quite well in the past, and still works today. It is why we have classical music. Mozart, Beethoven, and those guys didn't make their living off copyright, they lived off patronage. The rival courts of renaissance Europe were very interested in topping one another, and war was only one way to compete. They also competed in their support of art and science. Of course, only the wealthiest of the nobility had the resources to play that game, and without the technology of recording, storage and playback, the masses very rarely heard any of the music. Before amplifiers, 3000 people was about the limit that a live performance could reach. Any more people than that would be too far away to hear.
Today, most orchestras are attached to a large city who is their chief patron. And now we have truly wondrous technology for disseminating information like never before. The Gutenberg press is regarded as the most important invention of the last millennium, and I agree, with one exception. The Internet is bigger. And it's not the Internet alone, it's also incredibly dense digital storage, the processing power and technology to record and edit text, audio, and video quickly and well, and the other related parts of the technology ecosystem. Modern technology has completely blown the cork off that bottle. Copyright depended on copying not being too easy. Copying is far easier now than even in the 1990s, and it will only get easier.
What I'm saying is that abandoning copyright is not as radical and risky as it seems at first glance. Indeed, it is copyright that is the relatively new and radical experiment. And it is a failure.
The unenforceability is the lesser reason to replace copyright. Worse, copyright is fundamentally a tyrannical, oppressive, and wrongheaded system. It creates scarcity where there is none. It harms education. It puts power in the hands of a few giant publishing organizations, who then use their unmerited influence to entrench themselves deeper at the expense of us all.
The technology that has wrecked copyright, and for which we should be thankful rather than dismayed and grieved, can more than salvage the situation. Crying over copyright is like wishing we could have the good old days of monarchy, with the likes of King George III. Dumping the monarchy was and still is reason to celebrate, not cry. Good riddance. Government ought to be doing a whole lot more. We need new standards and rules and customs. These private crowdfund management businesses are okay, but we could really use more than that. I'm all for authors being paid fairly. But copyright is terrible at that, so terrible we might be better off with nothing at all.
> but I recognize that many things that we have now, we would not have, were there no mechanism like copyright.
Who knows what we could have now if we were not constantly hindered by the "mother-may-I" permission seeking that is expected and all the other problems with the current intellectual property regime. Cures for all kinds of diseases? Maybe there would be no obesity epidemic? Maybe we all would have switched to electric cars a decade ago, and sea level rise from Global Warming would not be inevitable? On the whole, I would guess we'd be further ahead if we had just about anything other than copyright and patent law.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday February 22 2019, @07:26AM
It already is the law of the land.
Note that murder isn't stealing either. Saying something is not stealing isn't a value judgement (murder not being stealing clearly doesn't mean that murder is OK), it just means it is a different type of action, and therefore deserves to be evaluated separately.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @04:43PM
I think we all agree that the world would not be the same. But the more important question is: would it be really worse?
I write software to. It's just a hobby. It is probably less good than yours. However, I argue you can, and probably will have needed software even without copyright (there's plenty of that already). Companies would just need to invest in programmers, or smaller companies would ask programming companies to make software to do whatever needs doing. Of course, if you currently have a way of earning a living that depends on copyright you would not want that to change. And I can fully understand that. But assuming that this could be somehow taken care of, I feel it is not something that is inherently bad at all.
I also happen to make music. Nobody pays me for it. But I question your idea that my music would somehow be better IF I would get paid for it. The same is true for most of music. Now, I surely cannot make a living from it in that case, but, perhaps that would mean I have to work at producing something that gives me $$ just like everybody (well most) other people. And then, in the evening, perhaps I could make some music that I give away for free. Is the world a worse place now?
Movies? oh well. We might see a bit less initially. Until cable companies/netflix like subscription models become more prevalent. And actors will earn less. Yes, big deal. Most people will live through this I'm sure.
I think the only people that can truly feel bad about the demise of copyright would be the ones that have too much already, and their wealth depends on owning lots of copyrights. And they lobby just as hard as Google to keep laws going their way.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 22 2019, @06:46PM (1 child)
"open-source" --> "open source"
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday February 25 2019, @04:11PM
While the use of the hyphen is fading, it is still useful, and in this instance is correct, indication that "open" is more tightly bound to "source" than "source" is to "creations".
It's not software creations that are open. It's creations that are open source. The hyphen is not needed here, but was in the original sentence.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 22 2019, @06:41PM
Good Luck With That.
But what actually _works_ is government regulations that _require_ openly-documented file and network formats.
That All By Itself, I assert, quite _subtly_ mandates at least Open Source, and readily encourages Free Software itself!
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 22 2019, @06:44PM
You'll be happy to know that as a result of The Long Blinks having become quite relentless last night, despite having slept at Right 2 Dream Too during the afternoon, I _finally_ got a good night's sleep last night.
On the couch.
At _work_.
And A One.
And A Two.
And A... Soggy Jobs' Indiegogo Pitch Video [youtu.be].
Just the video.
I am _still_ working on my written pitch.
Kill.
Me.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @10:02PM
Patents don't need to be abolished, they just need to be returned to their original status, where you have to provide a fully functional model of what you're getting a patent on. And eliminate them on anything non-tangible, like software.