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It’s frequently claimed that copyright law should be made more restrictive and copyright terms extended in order to provide an incentive for content creators.
But with growing use of works put into the public domain or released under free and permissive licenses such as Creative Commons or the GPL and its derivatives, it’s possible to argue the opposite — that freely-available works also generate value.
Public domain works — those that exist without restriction on use either because their copyright term has expired or because they fall outside of the scope of copyright protection — create significant economic benefits, according to research my colleagues and I have conducted, now published in a report for the UK government’s Intellectual Property Office. ( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/copyright-and-the-value-of-the-public-domain )
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 28 2015, @12:22AM
Good to have another study showing that greed does not work well. One more thing to counter the "greed is good" believers. We've seen that greed is weak, in politics, in war, and in scientific advancement. But there will probably always be people who just can't believe that, can't believe that the move that brings the most gain the soonest is not always the best.
One of the best examples of the failure of greed is the Confederacy. That was a society based at its root upon greed. Extract the maximum work for the minimum pay from people, by making them into slaves. Consequently, their society fell further and further behind. The South had a far smaller population and far less infrastructure and industry than the North, for decades before the US Civil War. And the reason why is slavery. Not only did slaves lack any incentive for innovation, they were punished if they dared try it, and just to make extra sure they couldn't, they were denied an education. A great deal of their economic output was spent to maintain slavery, which didn't do them the favor of being a good investment, no, it reduced their economy further thanks to the severe underutilization of people who could have contributed much more to the wealth of the nation if only they'd been allowed. The war was hopeless before it was started. Yet they were so attached to their wrong beliefs in the inherent inferiority of the African, so full of their own propaganda about the Southern Gentleman being a plain tougher and stronger man than a Northerner, that they started the war anyway. The only remarkable thing was that the Confederates held up as long as they did, didn't collapse immediately. A lot of people had to die to show the world, and especially the Southerners, that they were wrong.
So today, it is somewhat disheartening to see a sort of "neo-slavery" reemerging in the workplace. More and more, employers are treating employees like slaves. We learned that a 40 hour work week yielded about the maximum productivity, and got industry on board by convincing them of that. Now they've forgotten that, and routinely push workers to work 60 plus hours per week. They seek holds over the workers, encouraging them to get financially upside-down, so that they can more easily bully them, and force work for less pay and longer hours.
It's the same with copyright. If any endeavor needs sharp thinking and innovative work, it's story telling. Slaving on a Work for Hire basis takes away the edge. That's the reason Disney's output is so bland. Even worse is the whole Clear Channel radio empire. Safe, formulaic, and dull, with occasional propaganda campaigns in the form of Payola.
(Score: 1) by rondon on Saturday March 28 2015, @01:20AM
When you segued over to copyright, I thought that was a leap to far (especially from slavery). But, after reading your comment, it makes enough sense that the metaphor has value; perhaps artistic work for hire does follow some of the pitfalls of the practice of slavery. Still a pretty long stretch, in my humble opinion.
Other than that, I think you nailed it. The Plutocracy/Aristocrats absolutely want a return to feudalism, fueled by debt and illegal collaboration to depress wages. The evidence is all there.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 28 2015, @03:52AM
Thanks. Meant to say also that greed retards progress, to the detriment of us all. Greed and fear of loss are the driving motivations for extending copyright scope to cover things that should not be copyrighted, and duration to such extreme lengths. It has nothing to do with the public interest or desire. And it is harmful to us all. Not even good for artists. Our public libraries should be allowed to embrace digital storage. A digital public library would be far cheaper to operate and at the same time far more useful because it is far more searchable. And it could be current. No more returns, late fees, damaged media, and denial because all copies are checked out.
But no, we live with the antiquated and much more costly libraries we've had for years, and many other idiocies, all so that Big Media can drag their feet about changing their business model. It took equally big business interests, like Apple and Amazon, to drag them kicking and screaming into allowing downloads. They would rather continue to sell CDs, with the massive overhead of that distribution method. The ludicrous size of their estimates of losses to piracy that ignores the supply and demand curves of basic economics is telling, one of the clearest indicators that greed is what drives them. I'm looking forward to the demise of the last private bookstores. Used to like them, but paperbacks went up faster than inflation. When they passed the $5 point around 1990, I quit buying. Tried the used bookstore, but meh. Too much trouble to have to check back repeatedly when seeking specific titles. Borders, Waldens, and B. Dalton are all dead. Barnes and Noble is the only large chain I know of that's still in business. I was also unhappy with the game publishers played of holding up the cheap paperback release until a year after the release of expensive hardback versions. Pure profiteering, that. This applies even more to academic and research oriented ones like Elsevier. If anything directly retards the progress of science, it's those greedy private publishers, trying to lock it all up and charge hugely for access, for work that they did not help create or fund, and do not help preserve, indeed make it harder to preserve by trying to stop others from keeping comprehensive copies.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday March 28 2015, @01:28AM
We learned that a 40 hour work week yielded about the maximum productivity
I've heard this about software engineering, but I don't imagine it applies to, say, assembly-line work.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday March 28 2015, @02:40AM
But many business oriented people seems to apply the assembly line paradigm onto creative professions. Which is self defeating in the long term.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Saturday March 28 2015, @02:48AM
http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs201/projects/crunchmode/econ-hours-productivity.html [stanford.edu]
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time [wikipedia.org]
tl;dr: no country has worked put the best working week, but everyone seems to agree more / excessive hours are bad.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 28 2015, @04:37AM
> I've heard this about software engineering, but I don't imagine it applies to, say, assembly-line work.
I bet it applies even moreso. That kind work ranks up there as one of the most mind-numbing forms of drudgery there is, right after being a TSA agent. Overwork has to take a toll in the form of fatigue and inattention to detail. I bet music would help, but only to a point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by darkfeline on Saturday March 28 2015, @07:19PM
You misunderstand. Greed is good for ME, or at least, it puts me in a better position, with power over everyone else, if only in the short term. Why would sociopaths give a single damn about anyone else?
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