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harold aptroot wrote: but because of the copyright reform
and
harold aptroot wrote: Pirate Party
are an oxymoron I'm pretty sure. Those guys are definitely not the solution.
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Well.. have you actually read what they want to do? It doesn't sound like you have. They're not a bunch of students who just want to download everything for free.
These are their three main points:
* An end to excessive surveillance, profiling, tracking and monitoring on individuals performed by Government and big businesses.
* Ensuring that all members of society have real freedom of speech and real freedom to enjoy and participate in humanity's shared culture.
* Reform copyright and patent law to legalise non-commercial file sharing and reduce the excessive length of copyright protection, and prevent patents being used to stifle innovation or manipulate prices.
Voting PPUK might prevent the UK from become a police state..
Except maybe for legalizing non-commercial file sharing, I don't see why anyone would disagree with any of their points.
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No, but the few articles I've seen about them in El Reg (OK, OK, I know perhaps not the best source) don't paint them very impressively. In the US at least, I'm not sure we need copyright reform as opposed to actually enforcing it in a sensible manner. The one exception being stripping out the ridiculous copyright extensions that got added in the 90's.
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You know, outside of sites like theregister, this is the only mention I've even seen of the Digital Economy Bill in the media.
To be honest though I don't sit all the way through the news on TV, it's always about tiger woods or something happening abroad.
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Maybe it's being censored to avoid protests? With all that's been going on in the UK lately, that wouldn't even surprise me anymore.
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harold aptroot wrote: With all that's been going on in the UK lately
Please elaborate for those of us in the US.
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
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Blatant internet censorship, arresting photographers under the cover of "anti-terrorism", passing the Digital Economy Bill (that no one actually wants and which is described as "draconian" by an UK ISP) just before the elections so people couldn't even vote to stop it, banning demonstrations in certain places, etc.
That doesn't sound like a western country to me.
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harold aptroot wrote: Blatant internet censorship, arresting photographers under the cover of "anti-terrorism", passing the Digital Economy Bill (that no one actually wants and which is described as "draconian" by an UK ISP) just before the elections so people couldn't even vote to stop it, banning demonstrations in certain places, etc.
And don't forget all the CCTV.
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Ah yes, fortunately I also wrote "etc" so I could just claim that I filed CCTV under 'etc', instead of admitting that I forgot to mention it 
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I found that document on Wikileaks. I made several copies, distributed them to various places around the net and made sure that many others knew where to find it. I know for certain that I am not the only one.
A single source for the document has been shut down. Trust me: it is not gone.
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Just because something is electronic, doesn't give you license to steal it. Don't give me the bullshit about how it's only a copy--if it doesn't belong to you, it simply doesn't belong to you. The notion that you have a "right" to digital copies is absurd. I believe quite strongly that copyright and patent terms are way too long--copyright being especially ridiculous--but that doesn't give you license to steal. (I believe copyright should be twenty-five years. Many people think is too short so say they come up with fifty years. Does that give me the "right" to pretend my standard is the legal one?)
BTW, I vehemently oppose ACTA at many levels (and really do believe copyright should be twenty-five years and that the law should be changed now with no grandfather clause. I'm also against software patents and patenting discoveries [versus inventions.] I'd also support a provision that says that if you don't make a copyrighted work available, it loses its copyright and one that says that if you don't produce a commercial product on a patent within, say, seven years, the patent goes into the public domain.)
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Joe Woodbury wrote: I believe quite strongly that copyright and patent terms are way too long--copyright being especially ridiculous
I've never quite understood why these terms weren't simply forever rather than one which expires. If I buy a car, it's mine forever, to be passed down to as many generations as we please without ownership ever being contested. And that's just something purchased. If I create something, it's mine. I simply don't grasp how nothing more than the passage of time should change that.
[edit]
It's worth mentioning that I agree most vigorously with much of what you said, I just don't understand why ownership of created works should expire.
[/edit]
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It's based on the notion that creativity isn't all your own; that you are standing on the shoulders of your predecessors AND that your creativity is given by God and thus not your own anyway. By logic, then, future creativity must rest on your shoulder's (and on God's gifts.)
This is an explanation, not an endorsement; I'm quite agnostic. However, even removing the God part, I think there is merit in the argument.
Another question is how far does your creativity go. Do you own the actual words or even sentences? What if there is only one way to say something without sounding dorky?
[Edit: Perhaps copyright shouldn't expire; it's a debate worth having. Perhaps it should simply be for the life of the creator, though that might encourage murder.]
Christopher Duncan wrote: If I buy a car, it's mine forever, to be passed down to as many generations as we please
Not if you buy a Dodge passenger car.
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Religion aside (my standing rule is that I don't talk politics or religion with anyone that I've known for less than ten years), you make some interesting points. Even if I don't understand the Dodge reference. But then, I drive a Vette. 
That said, it's always seemed to me that anyone opposing intellectual property rights (I speak more fully on this below) is doing so simply because it's a way to get something for nothing. You benefit from someone else's creativity, but you give nothing back in return. When this is enforced on the artist via legal statute, I still think it's stealing from that perspective. You have somemone getting something for nothing, with the lawyers cleaning up afterwards saying, "No, but that's really okay."
Of the people who have strong opinions on what rights they should have to the creativity of others, I stand among the vast minority of people who have actually lived the lifestyle of a full time artist. If you're not willing to sleep on floors, go without food and give blood just to have a couple of bucks in your pocket until you get your next gig, I think you lose the right to say how much of my creativity you have a right to - now or ever.
All respectfully said, of course, and I do agree with much of your perspective (one of those fives is from me). Right up to the part where you reach for my stuff.
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Oh I see now! I always thought you were a bit "butthurt" over the whole piracy issue, now that's finally explained. I'm sorry if any of my posts offended you.
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I suspect my friends would all agree with you on the butthead thing, but then, friends are like that. 
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Sir Cliff had something similar to say about the length of Copyright duration. He first started recording 50 odd years ago who would've imagined that his music of that period would still be popular today and still make him money? (Not me, for sure - I think he and his music sucks). It can't be right, for him, that just because 50 years have passed he can no longer enjoy the protection of Copyright law.
I do think, however, that the publishing world (and I'm going to be bold here and draw a distinction between those who create content and those who publish it) has singularly failed to grasp the significance of digital content and digital distribution. Harold's argument is probably something like this (and he can correct me if I'm putting words in his mouth):
If he buys a film, cd, book or whatever over the "wire", it's probable that he will:
-Be restricted to which device he can play it on
-Have to endure tedious, and unskippable, anti-piracy messages
-Be unable to make legitimate backups
-Be unable to transfer ownership
-May have software installed on his computer without his permission (rootkits etc.)
-May be limited to how often he can play the media
...
However, if he downloads a pirated copy none of that is true, so in effect he can get a higher quality version of something, for free, than if he legitimately pays for the content.
The way to get rid of piracy is not, in my opinion, to become even more draconian in restricting what legitimate users can and can't do with the content they've paid for, but to provide a service which is quick, convenient, high-quality and cheap for end users. Doing so would make piracy a lot less worthwhile, so much so I would imagine that a large number of those who are involved in piracy now wouldn't bother.
How that would effect the bottom-line for publishers, is difficult to say. But since the publishing industry quote year on year all the billions in lost profits piracy causes, if I were in their shoes I'd be willing to re-think the way I was doing business.
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martin_hughes wrote: singularly failed to grasp the significance of digital content and digital distribution.
As Bugs Bunny once said, "You ain't just whistling Dixie, bub."
RIAA / MPAA make me embarrassed to admit that I'm a musician, and both industries have handled the digital age so poorly that if the factual history were written and published in a book, it would mistakenly be filed under Fiction since no one could possibly screw up that badly in the real world, right?
The print industry is ever so slightly better in some areas. At least there's a movement to provide some form of digital book whose user experience doesn't suck. However, the newspaper business has been so off-the-charts stupid it boggles the mind. I'm secretly rooting for Rupert Murdoch and his quest to get news back behind a paywall because I'm a writer, and I believe writers should be paid. That said, these guys should have been the very first adopters on the web. They had the chance to do what Jobs did with iTunes but instead floundered miserably.
Idiots. The lot of them.
There's an obscenely large amount of money just waiting to be made by someone. Sooner or later, some bright young person (because the old ones don't seem to have a clue about the implications technology) is going to come up with a new model for intellectual property that makes money for The Machine and also lets the creators enjoy a good life. It'll be a major paradigm shift, but I wish they'd get on with it. As it stands today, every time I think of creating something professionaly, part of me says, "Why, so that it can be pirated worldwide in the next ten minutes?"
Programmers live in an isolated little world where extremely good wages are paid for intellectual / artistic property. Everyone else is getting badly screwed on a regular basis. But then, we have been for decades, so what the hell.
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I think the biggest step forward will be when you, "the creator", get the lion's share of the reward. In the digital era I don't know how publishers justify such small royalties to the creators and such high prices for consumers. Publishing needs to move to a model where volume produces the profits - something akin to retail.
Agree with you on the newspaper front. There was an interesting article in today's Guardian about how the Financial Times may well have got that model right (can't find the link, sorry). Fools the lot of them - I have a feeling Murdoch is trying to bolt the stable door long after the horse has bolted and all that remains is dust on the horizon
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With you on the stable, to be sure.
Regarding the publishers, in fairness I have to say that they're not totally out of line on royalties. Consider this scenario.
A book costs $20 retail (i.e. the "on the cover" price). Publishers sell wholesale to distributors (discounts of 50% or more are not uncommon) because the latter needs to make a living, too. So, that $20 is now closer to $10.
Most people say that digital removes the cost of printing. This is true. However, just like in the programming world, that's only a small part of the overall cost. The bulk of it is labor. My books have had the benefit of a copy editor (the guy who shakes his head over my dubious grasp of the English language and keeps me from looking stupid in public), as well as a project editor who provides conceptual advice & perspective, project management, etc. Additionally, I get the benefit of graphic artists and layout professionals. Oh, and don't forget indexing (a mindless, tedious, thankless task for which I say, "Thanks!" - I sure as hell don't want to do it myself). Then there's all those people in PR and marketing, without whom it's doubtful that thousands of people would have heard of me or bought my book.
Then there's all that pesky business stuff. You know, fixed overhead like building rent, electricity, etc. It all costs money.
All these guys have to get paid out of that remaining $10. And that's on a digital version with no printing costs. To print a hardcover book like Tribes, you're going to chew another five bucks out of the mix. However, even though that chops the $10 we're using to pay everyone down to $5, at least a physical book is a helluva lot more hassle to pirate.
So, on my print editions, we're all trying to make a buck out of very few remaining bucks. Consequently, I'm not making Harry Potter money on this stuff and won't be unless I do Harry Potter volume. Is that unfair to me? Not at all. The alternative is for me to do all that stuff myself in order to pocket all the margin. Could I do it? Of course. Do I want to? No. Just like a programmer and his code, I'd rather be writing the next book.
Yeah, the industry is a mess. However, there are a lot of good, hard working people out there trying to do right by the creatives. Can't burn 'em all down in the same house.
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Years ago I worked in publishing (for HarperCollins). This was just shortly before the Net Book Agreement (a price-fixing mechanism) collapsed. That was an odd industry, to say the least! What always struck me as most peculiar was the distribution of profits, specifically how those who committed the least recouped the biggest reward. I'm sure it's true of other industries as well, but I always had this sense of the whole process being unsustainable.
I think digital distribution will re-address that imbalance, eventually, and might make things a bit fairer, not least by removing unnecessary thumbs from the pie. Certainly I see a huge amount of scope for companies like Amazon, Apple and even Google to actually become publishers and distributors of e-Media. And that would knock everything the current publishing world knows into a cocked hat
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martin_hughes wrote: However, if he downloads a pirated copy none of that is true, so in effect he can get a higher quality version of something, for free, than if he legitimately pays for the content.
That's been the biggest reason why I don't buy ebooks. I like it when I buy a paper version and get a digital copy of the book with it. I usually look for that. This way I can use the pdf version for mobile use on my laptop.
martin_hughes wrote: But since the publishing industry quote year on year all the billions in lost profits piracy causes
I think those numbers are bogus. How can you measure what you can't control? If they knew how many people had illegal copies of something they'd be able to do something about it like suing them. They did that to Napster.
That's called seagull management (or sometimes pigeon management)... Fly in, flap your arms and squawk a lot, crap all over everything and fly out again... by _Damian S_
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wolfbinary wrote: I think those numbers are bogus. How can you measure what you can't control? If they knew how many people had illegal copies of something they'd be able to do something about it like suing them. They did that to Napster.
A lot of it probably is made-up. On the other hand, though, there are those that claim piracy has no effect on profits - so the true story if probably somewhere in the middle.
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While that is not my argument in this case, I am not a big fan of DRM and other "stupid restrictions" (to put it mildly)
I like your suggested solution, but it has been suggested before and it seems that most publishers are somehow scared of it (GOG.com is nice though). Also, while I expect it to reduce the influx of new pirates, I'm not too optimistic about the number of pirates that would stop being a pirate, and then you're still stuck with millions of pirates..
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In regards to the Sir Cliff section, his music is still making someone money, just not him. Sort that out and all related problems would probably be solved in the process.
On topic, copyright in general should be drastically rewritten.
Americans own copyright to Australian songs like "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree" and "Waltzing Matilda". I think Happy Birthday is copyrighted as well?
Video gaming nowadays is getting ridiculous, all the games I want are unplayable, quite literally.
Then there's the "standing on the shoulders of giants" and, modified, reductio absurdum arguments.
Art imitates life), inspiration is needed from some place, right? And if everyone has timeless copyright on their productions, the world ends overnight. Legally anyway, some of us just don't care. 
If someone copyrighted the wheel, transport is finished. If someone copyrighted the processor, computing ends.
Put simply, copyright does more harm than good and increasingly draconian licensing really isn't helping. Removing it completely and living in a communist style society is ideal, rewriting it so it's less silly is an acceptable solution.
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