Just Another Reason Why Copyrights are BS

POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, March 29, 2026 18:31
VIEWED: 3303
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SIGNYM

Sunday, May 27, 2007 3:08 PM

Frem- thank you for saying what I didn't have time to post yesterday. One of the things that I really hated Clinton for was the DMCA. (Another was NAFTA.)

One of the stupider copyrights: "one click" ordering. One of the stupider patents: the wheel.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1418165.stm

Imagine where we would be today if the alphabet had been copyrighted and everyone had to pay for using it. Or if the distribution of the wheel had been limited to one person. Our inventions and entertainment - everything of a creative nature- are all based on past work and fertilized by present ideas. Copyrights do not benefit society generally, but they DO benefit large corporations, which can now hang on to copyrights for the life of the author plus seventy years. Patents cause a lot of "churning" in research: thinking up and exploiting all possible ways to either protect a patent with "thickets" of other patents, or to refresh a patent with minor tweaks. (All that "research" that the pharmas complain about being so expensive? Believe me, it's not "ground-breaking" research, it's all patent related. The REAL ground-breaking research goes on in universities and research hopsitals.)

This is one area where the Founding Fathers got it wrong. People create because they LIKE to create, not because they want tons o' bucks. The real creator of routers never made a dime off them. The creator of PCR tests - which is the founding of all our genetic research- was a university researcher. Researchers, inventors, and artists need money to do their thing, but they need it in advance of their creation, not afterwords, and turning creativity into a money-making scheme is what gives us the cr*p that we have on TV today and what killed Firefly.

Anyway, here's a good summary of the state of your creative rights today:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1213491

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

GEEZER

Sunday, May 27, 2007 3:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I was just pointing out another flaw in the popular belief that the copyrights are there to protect the artists, when the exact opposite in so many cases is true. I don't believe that copyrights are inherantly bad, but they don't serve their original purpose anymore. The rich get richer off of the talent of the uninitiated.

You're a real smart guy Geezer. Did you really not get that, or are you being deliberately obtuse here?

"I was just pointing out another flaw in the popular belief that the copyrights are there to protect the artists..."
Copyright is there to provide protection for an artist, but just like a seatbelt, if you don't use it right it does no good. Copyright is not there to protect you from yourself. It's tough that the fellow signed away his conceptual right to the black Spidey suit, but if nothing on film had ever come of it, he'd be up the $220.00 and have a nice story to tell.

I just see a disconnect between "copyright doesn't always insure a fair result if the creator isn't careful", and "copyrights are BS". I'm sure that J.K. Rowling is glad there are copyright laws.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGMANUNKI

Sunday, May 27, 2007 3:58 PM

@6ixStringJack:

You couldn't be more wrong. Even when I just turned 18 (i.e. my signature became legally binding) I knew NEVER to sign anything unless I actually understood it. If this kid was stupid enough not to contact a lawyer /before/ he signed anything, then it's his own damn fault.

Btw, copyright DOES work. As a... large example, just look at the open-source community. It wouldn't work without copyright.

Also, copyright is NOT being herded into the hands of just a few. That's what's going on with patents, which is a /very/ different thing.

"""
It baffles my mind how anybody can even stand behind the big companies and the RIAA and their blatent abuse of copyrights today. Are you a CEO at Sony, perhaps Sigma? I just don't get it.
""""

How did what I say mean that I "stand behind the big companies", etc? I said no such thing.

Btw, in the future, instead of making yourself look like perfect ass, perhaps you should ask more questions instead of assuming the asinine.

----
I am on The List. We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

GEEZER

Sunday, May 27, 2007 4:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
This is one area where the Founding Fathers got it wrong. People create because they LIKE to create, not because they want tons o' bucks.

You make this sound like an either/or proposition. Ask Dan Brown or Tom Clancy, or J. K. Rowling if they mind making a ton o' bucks. For that matter, could many creative people afford to be creative if they couldn't live from the return on their creative output? Would Noam Chomsky or Jared Diamond - or Ann Coulter, for that matter - have the time to write if they had to depend entirely on other sources of income?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Sunday, May 27, 2007 6:24 PM

Noam Chomsky and Jared Diamond are professors writing about their fields of expertise. JK Rowling wrote between jobs, for a short time on the dole. I'm sure she, and other commercial writers, don't mind making tons o' bucks. OTOH I personally find JK Rowling's writing to be a pastiche of ideas already in the public domain. (Where would Rowling be if she had to pony up every time she used the idea of a magic wand?)

AFA the free software copyleft... if copyrights were gone, copylefts wouldn't need to exist.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

FREMDFIRMA

Sunday, May 27, 2007 6:37 PM

Quote:
Would Noam Chomsky or Jared Diamond - or Ann Coulter, for that matter - have the time to write if they had to depend entirely on other sources of income?

And the world would be a better place by just that much, less drivel, more real authors getting paid and read just like they did before this copyright BS ever even existed.

And no, that's not just a personal opinion, because Jim Baen, of Baen Books, fully agrees with my take on it, so too does Eric Flint, David Drake, and many other authors, but really, it's Eric Flint who said it best.

Don't bother robbing me, twit. I will cheerfully put up the stuff for free myself. Because I am quite confident that any "losses" I sustain will be more than made up for by the expansion in the size of my audience. - Eric Flint

And they were absolutely, utterly correct, and thus, the Baen Free Library was born.
http://www.baen.com/library/
There's a *great* rant by Eric on the front page too, that goes into more detail on it.

GOOD Authors got paid before copyright law existed, and will continue to do so long after it's finally thrown on the trash heap of history where it belongs - propagandists and shills ain't gonna starve neither, cause fools and their money are easily parted, especially when a "cause" is involved, not to mention financing by those who benefit from the shilling, so THAT argument is now effectively blown to powder and bits.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

SOUPCATCHER

Sunday, May 27, 2007 7:35 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
...
And they were absolutely, utterly correct, and thus, the Baen Free Library was born.
http://www.baen.com/library/
There's a *great* rant by Eric on the front page too, that goes into more detail on it.
...

I'm glad you brought up Eric Flint, Frem. He's one of my favorite authors, in part, because of his attitude towards his customers. Some additional details... Mr. Flint publishes snippets from his upcoming books up to the date of release ( http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/category/snippets/ ). He also encourages fan fiction and has published many short stories by fans and included their developed plot points into his created Assiti Shards multiverse (also known as the 1632 universe). Most of these stories have been published in eBook form but at least three are out in hardcover (Ring of Fire, Grantville Gazette Vol I and II* - and Ring of Fire II is due out soon).

It's just a better way, in my opinion, of thinking about the creative process. Flint's creation has become a lot richer (and more marketable) through the input of others than it would've been if he had clamped down and gone all Disney on the fans.

And I wish that someone with foresight on the Firefly side of things had taken a similar path wrt fan work.

* edited to add: I found the following paragraph from the wikipedia entry on the Grantville Gazette especially telling:

Quote:
excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grantville_Gazette
This first gazette was envisioned as an e-magazine experiment funded by Baen Books, originally to be published solely as a monthly electronic serialized-book anthology from Baen Books. The experimental joint venture between author-editor Flint and publisher Jim Baen was so successful that the e-magazine has become a sustained, self-funding operation of its own, now with Grantville Gazette VII in pre-production and Grantville Gazette VI released in March 2006 as a serialized e-magazine. ...

They're now up to Gazette XII. Sustained. Self-funding. And breaking the publishing cherry for many new authors. For more details: http://www.grantvillegazette.com/

GEEZER

Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Noam Chomsky and Jared Diamond are professors writing about their fields of expertise.

Chomsky writes about linguistics?

But anyway, don't you think that the income from their books makes it easier for them to continue writing? and don't the profits their publishers expect to make from their books insure that those ideas get printed and widely distributed?

Quote:
JK Rowling wrote between jobs, for a short time on the dole. I'm sure she, and other commercial writers, don't mind making tons o' bucks.

So you'd prefer Rowling were still on the dole, and that commercial writers couldn't earn a living?

I really don't understand this. If you make something, whether it be a book, or a picture, or a chair, or a computer program, or a chocolate cake, isn't it yours to do with as you will? Should anyone be able to come take your book or chair or cake without recompense?

Quote:
OTOH I personally find JK Rowling's writing to be a pastiche of ideas already in the public domain. (Where would Rowling be if she had to pony up every time she used the idea of a magic wand?)

But her "pastiche of ideas" apparently sells well. Doesn't she deserve to benefit from the fruits of her labor, regardless of your opinion of her work?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

FREMDFIRMA

Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:34 PM

Quote:
So you'd prefer Rowling were still on the dole, and that commercial writers couldn't earn a living?

Looks to me like Eric Flint is doing a damn good job of it without robbing me of my tax dollars on top of it to pay for the copyright law gestapo, and I will be DAMNED before allowing the powers that be to add *ANOTHER* psychotic alphabet agency to enforce bullshit laws over this.

Don't we have *enough* jackbooted goons trampling us already ?

Quote:
If you make something, whether it be a book, or a picture, or a chair, or a computer program, or a chocolate cake, isn't it yours to do with as you will? Should anyone be able to come take your book or chair or cake without recompense?

Take mine, no, but if you can write that book as well or better than me, if you can bake that cake recipe better than me, or what have you - if you think YOU can clone my work with your own damned resources and do a good job of it, go right ahead, and if you can take the core product and IMPROVE it, that's free enterprise, the so-called free market you pretend to support when it benefits you, but are in this thread all so fired to shut down when it doesn't.

This again is a PERFECT example of why I call you out when the words "Free Market" leave your mouth Geeze, because you don't really believe in it.

And this brings to mind an episode of real class on behalf of a young man I know well, he is the son of a friend and runs a small thrashmetal band which isn't half bad.

So while they were jamming it up at a fest, they started doin each others stuff as covers, and one other band did some of his bands stuff and did *such* a superior job of it that Joe walked over there and handed them one of his bands T-shirts with a copy of the song and lyrics and told em they had his nod to play it anytime and place they wanted to, cause they just plain rocked it.

That was serious class on behalf of the Joemeister.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

GEEZER

Sunday, May 27, 2007 8:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Looks to me like Eric Flint is doing a damn good job of it without robbing me of my tax dollars on top of it to pay for the copyright law gestapo, and I will be DAMNED before allowing the powers that be to add *ANOTHER* psychotic alphabet agency to enforce bullshit laws over this.

Looking at my copy of 1632, I see "Copyright 2000 by Eric Flint". I've had to pay market price for every one of Mr. Flint's books I own, and every one by Baen Publishing. I'd bet that the ones I checked out from the library didn't get there for free either. I hit the 1632 site and the boards on the Baen site frequently, and have downloaded the Grantville Gazette (for a fee). If you don't have internet, you're out'a luck there.

If Mr. Flint, et al, want to peddle their works copyright-free (which I haven't seen happen) fine with me. Does this mean no one should have copyright protection? I don't think so.

Quote:
So while they were jamming it up at a fest, they started doin each others stuff as covers, and one other band did some of his bands stuff and did *such* a superior job of it that Joe walked over there and handed them one of his bands T-shirts with a copy of the song and lyrics and told em they had his nod to play it anytime and place they wanted to, cause they just plain rocked it.

So it was his choice to acknowledge a good performance of his work. What if another band had butchered both his music and lyrics, and then claimed "This is a song by Joemeister"? Should he have any recourse, or can they just abuse his craft?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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