Talk:Copyright/is copyright worthwhile?

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This page is for discussion of whether or not copyright is a worthwhile idea/policy/law/whatever. For discussion of the particular contents of the article Copyright, see Talk:Copyright.

I just changed this text of Jimbo's on the Recent Changes page to a similar statement which takes a more neutral position about the morality of intellectual property law:

"If you love freedom of information, one of the most important thing you can do is respect copyrights! You can really hurt this project if you steal. So please don't do it."

Personally I feel that infringement is quite different from theft of physical objects. So while we need to make everyone aware of what the law prevents us from doing, I would prefer not to endorse the law itself as part of the project. Because after all, the reason I'm so happy to contribute to the 'pedia itself is that I know the world will always have liberty to share and change it - a nice change from the common greedy-feeling atmosphere of authorship.

Similarly, I'd suggest something a little less loaded than "DO NOT STEAL!" at the bottom of the Edit page. Perhaps "Remember - no copyright-restricted material!" or somesuch thing.

But that's just my NSHO. -J

J, I totally disagree with your view about copyright. I think copyright infringement is every bit as serious as stealing and is very aptly considered in the same category. I am all for our keeping the "do not steal" notice up. It gets people's attention and makes it very clear how we officially feel about copyright infringement on Wikipedia. On the other hand, I think your less-strongly-worded notice on the Recent Changes page gets the point across just fine. -- Larry Sanger

Copyright infringement is different than stealing because it does not deprive the owner of something he has; You have it now, but he still does as well.
64.161.172.124 17:21, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, Larry, but I'm strongly with J on this one. Just because it's the law doesn't mean it should be the law, and there are a great many people (including Supreme Court Justice Breyer) who have expressed quite eloquently and convincingly that copyright law should be drastically curtailed if not eliminated. Calling it "theft" is an exercise in argument-by-definition, and is very much an expression of bias. You can achieve the same effect by expressing a fact: Current US law and international treaty prohibits redistribution of copyrighted creative works, and we encourage compliance with these laws. --Lee Daniel Crocker

I don't have any beef with the changing of the Recent Changes text, and I certainly think that it is within the spirit of the wikipedia to change my rant into something more "consensus oriented".

But hereon this talk page, I will gladly express my opinion. :-) Neverminding the legal situation, I think that taking someone elses writings without their permission *is* stealing. Imagine, for example, if Microsoft took the Linux kernel and incorporated it into one of their products without doing the Right Thing and making their changes open and free! Wouldn't that be morally wrong, even if the law allowed it?

I think that free software depends on copyright, because in a public domain system, anyone can take freely offered software and make it proprietary. I think that's wrong. If the author sets conditions on the use, those conditions should be respected... even if the conditions are "don't reuse it". Copyright is really important for the freedom of information!

We can debate this here, on the CopyrightTalk page, but let me stress again, that my strong opinions about this don't necessarily belong in the wikipedia on anything other than a Talk page. :-)

When I say "DO NOT STEAL", I'm not taking a position on what the law ought to be, but I am taking a position on what is morally right. Just as it would be morally wrong for Microsoft to steal GNU code by making it proprietary, it is wrong for us to take a proprietary magazine and use it without permission. The moral issue is *consent*.

--JimboWales

The only thing morally wrong about it would be the hypocracy in violating copyright on one hand, while prosecuting violators on the other. The author has no moral right to his work; In fact when copyright was instituted in the US, several of the founding fathers made it clear, in the constitution as well as other places, that they were purely utilitarian.
63.205.46.13 16:52, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

As a community I believe Wikipedia should be anti-copyright. Copyright has no place in the 21st century. It can only serve to make technology more expensive and in the hands of people once it has already become dated news (mp3). Lawyers can not keep up with technologists. Thought police, censors, laywers and other scum have no place in a free and neutral net in the 21st century. As a community I ask you to reject copyright laws, and think of your brothers and the common good instead of greedy capitalists. They can confiscate our servers and things will ultimately go p2p anyways. If we stand together they will crumble as surely as did the Berlin wall. Funny how pro-copyright "moralists" are more than willing to shake hands with Chairman Hu while the Chinese rape copyright and then turn and prosecute their own citizens. Oh, well I guess its always been one law for the rest of the world's poor and another for us. Anyone can read the writing on the wall and see technology is clearly going to give us freedom on the net. Lets just not drag this out like the marijuana and drug law fiasco.

(WARNING: long, biased, and probably interesting to only 2 or 3 people. Should probably be moved to its own page on my site as a short essay and linked to).

Yes, you are taking a moral position, and I don't quarrel with your choice to hold that particular one. But yes, you are in so doing taking a position on what the law ought to be, because IP is only "property" because the law defines it as such. The natural, instinctive, universal understanding of "property" refers to physical things which can only be used by one person at a time--if I steal your apple, you no longer have it. If I eat it, it is gone. There is, of course, a political debate over whether or not the state should protect an individual's right to sole control of his property; and on that score I am definitely in the capitalist camp. Stealing a physical thing, and depriving its owner of the use of that thing, I most definitely find immoral. If I grew the apple on my land, I expect to eat it. But ideas are fundamentally, objectively different. If I watch you plant an apple seed and water the sapling, and then I apply that same idea with my own apple seeds on my own land, I do not take away from your use of your things, I have merely used your discovery to my own benefit.

Now, in a modern marketplace, those with interesting or valuable ideas will naturally find it to their short-term benefit to be the sole user of those ideas. If you're selling apples, you'd just as soon not have the competition from other people selling their apples. The question, then, is whether or not it is right for a state to define certain ideas (like inventions, stories, music, etc.) as property, and define my use of someone else's idea (which does not in any way interfere with his use) as theft. If we do make that definition, then a creator has not only the right to use an idea for his benefit, but to prevent others from using it for theirs, protecting his market for businesses that use the idea. As expressed in the US Constitution, this is a pragmatic thing: we grant the creator this limited, short-duration monopoly so that he can make money, in order to encourage him and others like him to create other useful ideas, which will eventually become part of the public domain.

Of course in recent years, this pragmatic approach has come to be seen as a natural right, an end in itself rather than a means to the original goal (the creation of more useful ideas). The consequence is that the original goal has been subverted beyond recognition. Walt Disney, for example, is long dead, and presumably has little need of encouragement to create more ideas, yet copyright law still protects his "property" (most of which is based on stories from the public domain) and prevents it from becoming part of shared culture, which was the original goal. A large number of people favor at the very least returning copyright to its original bargain: a monopoly for a short time, which then expires and releases the ideas to the public. I personally think we could do without it entirely. I do not find anything inherently immoral about using someone else's ideas for my own benefit, or with him using my ideas for his. In fact, I find that to be the very purpose of things like language and society--to grow as beings by exchange and amplification of ideas, which (unlike physical things) are a limitless resource. In a world without copyright law, obviously traditional methods of making money from certain ideas won't work, and we'll have to be creative about business methods too. That doesn't scare me. Nearly all of my income comes from creation of IP (articles and software), but I do not fear the destruction of IP law, because creativity is a commodity that wil always be in demand, and consumers will always find a way to get it, just as they always did before the invention of copyright law (which is fairly recent idea). I have for years explicitly placed all my work in the public domain (except that which is done for my employer--but I work for a company that uses the software I write only internally, so they get no benefit from IP law).

I have written volumes on this topic, so I won't rehash all the arguments here, but I just wanted to clarify that support of IP law is a moral position that not everyone holds, and that if you really want to avoid bias as you claim, you should not so blatantly support that position in the very software that runs the system. And yes, I find even Stallman's use of copyright law to ensure free distribution wrong. For every article I produce for Wiki/Nupedia, I will place a nearly identical one (with only my own work) on my own website released to the public domain, without restrictions. -- Lee Daniel Crocker.

Well, hey, Mr. Crocker - I gotta say that as an author and songwriter (who has made precious little from either occupation) I cannot disagree more strongly with the idea that copyright should be abolished. Were it so, publishers would have no incentive to honor contracts with creators of entertainment. I would write a song, Biddle Entertainment would press and sell a load of copies until the pirates drove demand into the ground, and my share of the pie would be but crumbs. Hence, unable to make a living from the craft, I would abandon it. People gotta be protected from their ideas being ripped off, or they will quit sharing them. If I see no direct benefit to me for enlightening another, then I will only do it if moved by the most altruitstic motive. And we know how much free time and resources there are lying around for everyone to be altruistic. You can have your "all ideas belong to everyone" world. For me, it don't fly.

Because, as we all know contract law is entirely nonexistant.
64.161.172.124 17:26, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Be sure to consider the flip side of the coin, however. Biddle Entertainment provides the precious little money you mentioned in exchange for complete control of your work. If they decide to let it go out of print or stop advertising it, there's nothing you or I can really do about it. If it is in print and I find that it's a nice piece of authorship, I can tell everyone here on the Wiki about it, but I'm prevented from sharing it with them - the best I can do is suggest that they spend $15 on a CD or mail order a copy of the score/article from one of Biddle's retailers. And most detrimentally, IMHO, you and I and our children and grandchildren won't ever be able to build on your work without Biddle's permission, even long after you've passed away. I and others you've never even met may someday have great ideas about how a few tweaks here or there might make your work fit a particular need, or bring it up to date with a new development. But if Biddle doesn't feel like allowing it, it will go on rotting in their archives (assuming they actually keep your work in an archive) until our great-grandchildren are getting gray (and that's not an exaggeration - copyrights are now well past 70 years, and still growing). So much for tomorrow's Mendelssohn discovering today's Bach.

Without IP law, to be sure, companies like Biddle won't have the allure of exclusive exploitation of your work to motivate them to sign contracts with you. But when they and the pirates you mention press gazillions of copies of your work, they'll only be helping to spread your reputation to gazillions of people. If they've somehow dealt unfairly with you, I'm free to take my business elsewhere and still be able to enjoy access to your work. And you as an author will have an audience that's exactly as big as it deserves to be, and an insanely huge wealth of others' work to build on when you sit down with pen in hand. -J

"If they've somehow dealt unfairly with you..." In the real world, you will not give a hoot in hell whether people who give you my intellectual creations have dealt fairly with me or not. I have not the resources to publish them for money. So, I gotta get Biddle to do it. They won't, unless they can make a buck. So, the work has to be worthy, and it's gotta be property. Then they can sell it, and not only do my ideas see the light of day, I don't die of starvation before someone asks me to sign a copy.

That isn't true anymore: the same technology that makes "piracy" cheap and easy also makes distribution and advertisement cheap and easy. Any artist can publish his work for almost no cost to get a following (such as the the South Park guys did with their Christmas cartoon), then trade upon the popularity it generates in other (non-piratable) ways, like live performances, custom work, time-dependent work, etc. No big publishing company needed. Will lack of copyrights put lots of publishers out of business? Absolutely, and good riddance. Will it harm the artists themselves? No, not those who are smart enough to realize they don't need the publishers anymore, and whose work is good enough to create demand among consumers, who will do whatever they have to do--including pay--to get the art they want.
I agree: <A HREF="#1">internal link</A> - Mathijs

Copyrights and other intellectual "property" laws reduce the availability of information.


[edit] New Development

In 1984, The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that "When one considers the nature of a televised copyrighted audiovisual work ... and that time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge, the fact ... that the entire work is reproduced ... does not have its ordinary effect of militating against a finding of fair use."

Well, you can kiss it good-bye. Recently, the cable industry premium networks (HBO, SHOWTIME, ect.) have begun transmitting a copyguard encription in their broadcats. Older VCR devices should still be able to record their programs under fair use. However, newer machines -- especially DVD recorders -- will abort recording off these networks.

They just had to cut us off from fair use. They just had to have their control. This is a step backwards. -- Jason Palpatine 08:29, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright = Bullshit

http://thepiratebay.org/legal "Steal This Film I" "Steal This Film II"

Before debating see those two movies and the pirate bay responses to companies that don't fuck off get paid to write the complaint Steal ideas from other companies don't understand that US laws don't apply with thepiratebay.org's location tolerate sharing.


Firstly, Humans are born with the instinct to share. We learn to copy and share what have exactly the way a baby learns to speak after 2 years of age. The only reason why businesses are run successfully is because the humans are buying your products and therefore, they are practically human advertisers. LIKE THE IPOD. How do you think Microsoft got its ideas? (Mac ehem). Call it piracy if you may, but I call it Market Researching, oo sounds so nice and reasonable doesn't it? When you put it on the shelf, and allow us to trade our money for that "intellectual property" isn't that called balancing the trade? Doesn't that immediatly give the person whomever it may be, the idea of a new movie which could base some of its ideas on this one? Plagiarizing a research is not different than learning from it because putting it in your own words is practically like saying "I think therefore I am". But that's bullshit because you weren't the one who came up with the background of this idea.

Here's what I think of the Pirated world:

Transoformers <--> Gundam seed

Microsoft <--> Mac

Wikipedia, the "free" encyclopedia <--> Wikipedia, the "BULSHIT its not free encyclopedia" because when I was editing this a text above "Save Page" said "Content that violates any copyright will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. You agree to license your contributions under the GFDL*." Oo the second and third sentence sounds like copyleft material, after all, we are offering information in our own words as a network based on our ("pirated") research. Which brings to the thought, my teacher said I plagiarized a Wikipedia article even though I wrote half of the information about it there the article was Poundmaker and I was under the user Storkian (my friend's account). Non of my friends have even heard of the word copyleft, because their minds are molded for the right side.

Lets put it this way, is it illegal to bring in my friend to watch a movie I bought with my own money fair and square? How about hypothetically that there are 1 million friends and friends of friends that came over to my imaginary huge house and watched the movie? Are you going to be totalitarian about it and not let my friends speak about it, not come to my house even, or not be allowed to move a single muscle? That's nearly impossible. So please, with all do respect to copyright companies, go fuck yourself please and thank you. Anything that is immediately shared to an audience will inevitably be "lost" to the audience forever and you have no right to stop them from sharing this information (and by sharing I dont just mean peer to peer file sharing but just simply talking about the movie through oral communication et cetera).

--µWiki Talk / Contributions (YouWiki) 00:10, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

And if you're a lawyer, please dont censor me and delete this to make it look like it didnt happen

[edit] Does it have anything to do with the economy?

Perhaps its a marketing strategy which is the only reason it should be worthwhile. But I don't think it should be the law. --µWiki Talk / Contributions (YouWiki) 17:53, 12 January 2008 (UTC)