Owning Culture
 

For those of you who follow copyright issues and the troubles they're causing, this paper, published in New Zealand, tells it very well from an author's point of view. Written by a comic book artist and worth the long read: Owning Cuture. The gist, however, is that copyright really benefits large publishing houses, but is actually bad for artists, authors and consumers. Good examples.

Well written. Copyright bugs the heck out of me. While I don't want people to copy my stuff, I won't exaggerate it!

Hmmmm.

"Examples of large corporations exploiting copyright law to their advantage" does not equal "copyright law is bad". Just because something has been used for evil (let's say for example...the game of chess) does that mean that it's bad? I can think of examples where chess has ruined someone's life, or examples where chess is used as a proxy for countries fighting a Cold War. But the game of chess is not bad, just because it can be used for bad purposes.

In the same way I maintain that copyright law is not evil, just because it can be used for bad purposes.

Trevor

I don't think he was equating copyright to evil; I think he was making the point that copyright is not really a help to creators or the public -- it benefits corporations.

It's simply like every aspect of our society where most of our laws favor large corporation and this is really no different. Even when the case is weak, they can hold us at bay with the cost of litigating this in court. Ebooks will be treated like music in the future as it's all digital. But you think with the internet, artists would be able to get away from oppressive publishers.

Copyright, in its original intent is no bad thing. It is an accepted monopoly, which allows artists to prosper from their work, in the hope that they will produce more and more work for the good of society as a whole.

The issue in the OP link is that if a company employs you to do a task, then that becomes their copyright. That Superman example is unfortunate, but perhaps the lesson there is always check the contract before you sign it. Imagine how many people work on Photoshop, and what would happen if each programmer was allowed control over copyright of their portion.

I have had a book published. I assigned the rights to the publisher (otherwise they wouldn't be able to make copies). I also agreed not to make other copies of the work (which is fair enough - what publisher would try to sell a book if the author was giving it away free?). Eventually, the publisher sold all the copies that they printed, decided not to print any more, and the contract is now at an end, and I can publish the book myself, or offer it to another firm.

In book publishing, bookshops take 50%, the author takes about 10%, the rest going to the publisher to cover printing, marketing, distribution, staff & office costs, etc before they make a profit. Book publishing is well-known as a tough and often unprofitable business, though there are the occasional successes like Harry Potter, which turned Bloomsbury from a tiny office into a huge multi-national.

In music publishing, practices there are often much worse, with the use of "Hollywood accounting", so that the artist is charged costs from his share of profits. These costs go back to the record company. Some companies have suggested that young classical artists should pay 10-15% of their concert sales to the record company that kick-started their career.

One would hope that the internet will remove the stranglehold that permits large companies to act i this way, and let artists to distribute their own works. However, publishers do act as a filter for talent, and perform tasks like fact-checking in factual texts, as well as ensuring high standards of literature, graphic design and so on. Anyone striking out on their own would have to achieve all of this standard, essentially becoming a new publishing company.

Personally, I find the current extension of copyright to 70 years after death ludicrous. If the purpose of copyright is to allow the artist to thrive, then that's impossible after his death. You have absurd situations where Jimi Hendrix's estate is being fought over by two step-brothers, neither of whom Jimi supported in life. Michael Jackson's estate is owned by lawyers and executives, not his family.
It's crazy that Mickey Mouse isn't public domain -- particularly when so many Disney films are based on public domain stories like Robin Hood, Aladdin, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.

Artists, writers, musicians, computer programmers, et al should all be able to profit from their works. If you want a copy, you should pay for it. But the internet does make that very difficult to enforce, if not impossible.

I am grateful to the open source brigade, but it has fostered a culture where people expect to get free stuff. The number of posts on this site: "Oh, I desperately need a solution to this problem, but I'm looking for something that's free?"
There's a cartoon I've seen that suggests Mac fans will pay a stack for their iPhones, but then go "Ooh, 99¢ for an app....? I'm not sure."

If you can make money from performing concerts, and use recordings as free marketing for your gigs, rather than as a commercial product itself, then best of luck to you. But if someone wants to sell recordings, then they should be afforded protection to make that a realistically worthwhile endeavour.

"I have not read and agree to be bound to the Terms and Conditions."

Some say that's the most popular lie.

@benwiggy; I think that increasing numbers of artists, musicians and authors are learning that free distribution of their work is virtually inevitable in this day and age, and that rather than suing their fans, they're better off treating the work as advertising, and giving them a reason to buy something else, something in addition to the work itself.

Even Richard Stallman's theory on "copyleft" still requires that one person own the property under the GNU license. It is an interesting concept, that of open source software, and their stance is similar in concept. They feel that closing off the system and developing software on a closed platform ruins the community and progressiveness of the software, but at the same time corporations want "ownership," of said product so they can market and sell it. You guys ever read Bill Gates open letter to computer hobbyists?

While, these copyrights do not really cater to the artist, or in the digital world of computing the developer. However, they do allow corporations to protect their interests, their assets and in some cases it does create jobs. I guess the real question would be, how does one compete with a corporation. Do artists, software developers, musicians, writers need to become more business savvy?

So, while copyright may not help a creator of something against the corporation that took a chance on them, they should probably put clauses for creative powers or royalties in their original contracts. Copyright allows Apple to create their specific platform products, and at one point many of us remember the Apple clones and the quality of them and what they did to Apple as far as business goes.

Look at the success of Linux. Linus Torvalds gets nothing really from the Linux Kernel. However, if it were not free and open source would Linux be what it is today? Should stories written 100 years ago be able to be rewritten in an open source manner? Referring to the Tarzan reference in the article.

Now look at it from the individual level. If you say, copyright something first then try to sell/market it to corporations do you have more bargaining powers? The author of the Harry Potter series held out for a long time, and she owned all of her creations, and she didn't sell until she could name her price.

Sorry if this seems like rambling...

My very unpopular idea of copyright implementation is that only the original author of any work can hold the copyrights to it. Not a corporation, not a group, not a family heritage. Simply the author(s).
When the author dies, so does the copyright.

The current crop of corporations (and their paid off politicians) would have me assassinated if I were in any position to introduce legislation to force copyrights into this model. I truly believe this.

Well, I don't agree with that either. "Examples of copyright benefiting big corporations to the detriment of the actual content creators" does not equal "copyright always benefits big corporations to the detriment of the actual content creators".

And that is wonderful when artists musicians and authors choose to do that. But it's horrible when artists musicians and authors do not choose to do that but have their work stolen anyway.

Why is it a terrible thing when a corporation steals, but accepted by some when millions of "ordinary people" steal?

Trevor

So you don't recognize work for hire? You're a musician putting out a CD, and you hire a designer to create the cover art, a writer to write the liner notes, a producer and an engineer to work on the songs and the recording. Now your record is out, but the designer, writer, producer, and engineer each own the copyright to your product?

Trevor

So musicians, computer programmers and writers should make their living selling mugs and T-shirts, but give away their actual work as advertising?

Or should we all just create meaningful culture in our spare time, while we clean toilets for a day job? Or perhaps we should go back to the days when artists are employed by wealthy patrons?

Why would anyone spend years going to art school, music college, or even studying programming, if these things are no longer skills for which you can receive payment, because someone else is giving away for free what you do? Why would anyone invest millions in a film, if they didn't think anyone would pay to see it?

Yes, open source is a lovely philanthropic ideal, and I welcome it. Yes, copying seems to be inevitable. But surely a world in which artists' creations are valued and protected is a better world. Otherwise, what's the point of doing anything?


Errr... JK Rowling was turned down by 22 publishers before Bloomsbury offered her a deal. Once her books had become successful, and the movie studios were interested, then she was in a powerful bargaining position to make sure that the films stayed as true to the books as possible.

Also, a legal point: when authors sell rights to a book publisher or a film company, they don't lose their rights. The rights are "assigned" to the company, allowing them to make the copies. The author retains the "moral rights" to be identified as the author. If the company stop selling the copies, then the rights "revert" to the author, who can make another deal with someone else. The content of the film or book may be edited or changed by the company, and the author will have varying amounts of control over that, depending on the contract.

Plenty of people will do exactly that. And if your product is good enough then people will pay for it.

Two bones to pick:

The corporation usually has substantially more resources at their disposal. Governments even more so. Therefore, a higher standard should apply.

Secondly, the basic concept of "steal" needs to be reworked in the modern world as the standard definintion just doesn't apply to the intangible works discussed above.

Plenty of people go to music college, art school or learn programming because they believe that there is a job at the end of it. Sure, there are far more people coming out of music colleges than can ever be employed in professional music-making, but everyone believes that they will be one of the few who can make a career out of it.

Same with movies. Sure, millions are invested in some complete turkeys, but no one knows what the audience reaction will be until the box office opens.

However, if the potential is EXACTLY ZERO -- because no one need pay for a film, they can get a torrent; and no one need pay to hear a musician, because they can get the tracks off file-sharing; and no one need pay for software, because there's either a free open source implementation or pirated copy -- then NO ONE would study these arts, because they would need to go to Call Center college instead.

What, so people don't share good music and films? If piracy becomes the norm, or if copyright law is done away with altogether, only a very few people would continue to pay for something that they could get free. Yes, I know about Radiohead, (who already had a fan base) but I don't think you can create an entire industry around the concept of hoping that people might throw some coins in your hat.

An oft-used phrase in Japan when they want to dismiss or deny something out of hand, is "what if everyone did that?" Yes, if everyone did that it would be a problem. But everyone will never do that.

People have, do, and will share / copy good stuff, but that doesn't necessarily mean the product is "stolen". We've had libraries for over 3 millenia and they haven't destroyed the arts yet. What if everyone goes to the local library instead of the bookstore?

And your comment about "no one need pay for software, because there's ... a free open source implementation ... then NO ONE would study these arts" doesn't hold up - the open source people are quite happy to give away their efforts, as is clearly stated in section 4 of the GPL.

I always buy CDs (tangible) for lesser-known artists. If there are no CDs available, I just might cheat and download poor-quality MP3. I always feel slightly guilty when I listen, and usually delete the album a while later.

Your argument is therefore: "It's alright if I do it, but not if everyone does." which is either selfish or hypocritical. Laws are constructed on the basis that either everyone may do it, or no one may do it. "It's ok if only a few people kill."

I agree that copying is not stealing. I never said it was. It's copying. And if people turn to free copies, then the artist is deprived the opportunity to sell his work. (I appreciate that not every copy means a lost sale.) Most countries have agreements to make a contribution to authors for library lending.

I accept that open source software writers give away their efforts freely. But if the logical consequence of software being free is continued, then it will be a hobby, not a career.

A culture that does not place a value on art will have art of no value.

Please let me have your alternative framework for how professional artists (writers, classical musicians, graphic designers, even programmers) will make a career from the fruits of their works in the absence of any copyright legislation.

I do some side work for a local independent record label. Mainly because the guy who runs it pays me in free merch and I get into all the local shows for free for fixing his office equipment, which happens to be all Macs.

I have had long discussions about piracy with them and whenever the release an album they always do torrent searches on it to see if it is being shared for free. I asked him if that just really ticked him off (to the owner) and he said it didn't. He said the people that mass download it aren't customers anyway, they most likely would have not paid for a copy at all. At least if they download it for free, perhaps they will go out and see the band when they are on tour, or go to the site and buy older albums or merch.

I have to shamefully admit I download music, but my reasons are that I collect vinyl music. I have 100s of vinyl records. I don't have the time to rip each record to my computer for digital copies for my iPod and my computers. I am not paying twice for the music I already own. Just recently some artists started bundling free digital downloads with their records, which is awesome. I bought the Them Crooked Vultures album on double cherry red 180 gram vinyl a while back, and the record came with a free digital download. I paid $17 for that record, but 180gram vinyl lasts forever and the bundled digital download which was higher quality MP3s (maybe it was AAC, don't remember) was a really nice touch.

I never buy books brand new, so the publishing companies aren't getting much money from me on that avenue. I must have bought The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a dozen times as I keep loaning it out and never getting it back, and I think I cough up a few bucks at my local used book shop to get a new copy each time. For example a brand new O'Reilly book on BASH is around $40 bucks, the previous book used is like $7. Plus I like to give books out to people, so buying cheap helps enable me to just hand them out.

My wife is a voracious reader -- two or three novels per week. She'll never be an ebook fan because when she finishes a novel it goes to her sister who passes it on to a neighbor, thence to her mother, then to a small library in the town her sister lives in. Magazines go to her sister, then to a retirement home. I collect a heap of mine (different taste) and sell them to a used book store. None of that is possible with an overpriced ebook (and I do own a Kindle on which I've only ever downloaded things that are out of print).

Peachpit press really ticked me off as their books advertise a free ebook download if you buy their books. Well their books on OS X are like $60 each, and I wanted to finish my ACSA so I bought a bunch of them. Then I go the site to download my free ebook and get this, it is a free trial of their proprietary online book system, that uses their own format and filled with DRM and that has a monthly subscription fee.

How is any of that free or appealing? Peachpitt press just lost me as a possible online customer and how dare they charge me $15 a month to download a book I already paid $60 for?

Same with Safari Books (Addison/Wesley).

That's exactly what we have now. No policeman does 25-to-life for shooting a drug dealer.

In the first case, that's another take-to-the-extreme example. In any large sample there will be enough people that want Photoshop to keep Adobe in business (lowering their prices would help). And the people at MySQL A.B. are doing alright by giving away the product and selling support. Same with WordPress.

In the second case, artists will make a career the same way they did before copyright existed - by live performances and original, quality artwork. Digital copies of the Mona Lisa in no way degrade the value of the original, in many ways they increase it by increasing recognition and increasing the Louvre's ticket sales to see the original.

In a more pedestrian case, enough people will want the hardcover version of HP to keep Bloomsbury in the black. Lending the hardcover version to a friend and lending a digital version to a friend are exactly the same, so why is the former acceptable but not the latter?

Peachpit Press = Safari Books...total sham, will NEVER support it.

I was considering getting Safari Books. I have no money on the Internet (no cards yet) so I can't afford to get such junk. I'd rather download Torrent, almost - but I don't :)

Quoting from your own following sentence, "that's another take-to-the-extreme example." Although the circumstances are usually in the officer's favor, it still depends on the circumstances.

And why expect artists to make a living the way they did before copyright? Musicians often made the bulk of their money not from performances, but from selling sheet music. More recently, musicians have had to rely on live performance because of unfair accounting and copyright issues. Earlier, there was patronage. The world has changed. Businesses fail when they don't keep up. The way art is created and distributed is changing. Business models need to change, too. But not all businesses can have the same model. The model of giving away a product and selling the support (or some other tangential item or service) is vey limited.

Digital copies of Mona Lisa isn't a good example. The original's value (and potential revenue) is calculated differently from, say the value of a work meant to mostly be distributed digitally, as in the case of music nowadays. The problem is that digital copies are easy to pirate. If free pirated copies flood the market, demand is reduced, and profits suffer. Knockoff designer clothes, etc, are treated as a serious problem. Digital copyright infringement should be considered equally serious.

It's a complicated issue, and I've been mulling it over (I was a working artist before the kids came along, and I expect to be once they are a little older). Copyright was created to account for changing markets. It's been updated as markets continue to change, although not necessarily to everybody's satisfaction. I agree with the concept of copyright, but not entirely with its implementation. Times and technology may be changing, but the basic concept of paying for something you did not produce yourself hasn't. If you are enjoying the fruits of somebody else's labor, you owe them some tangible compensation.

That is not the way the law works. Nor should it be the way the law works in my opinion. When a corporation steals, they should be prosecuted just like when an individual steals.

The definition of steal is:

You'd like to rewrite the dictionary?

Trevor

I still think the idea of buying a license, and not a tangible good can be asinine. For example, I am of the philosophy if I am just buying the license and not a piece of media, then I should be able to discard that piece of media and download said licensed item. After all, I am not buying a tangible good, I am buying a license.

An example was back in the day I went out and purchased a Windows 98se disk. I bought it OEM when I built a computer, and I was in high school and had disposable income so it was not a huge deal. Well come to find out the CDROM drive I was using was warped just a bit so the disk would spin at a slight angle and put a nice huge scratch in my media.

MS told me I had to rebuy it, but I didn't own the media, I just owned a license... Luckily, when I was a kid I was into table top strategy war games, and the local hobby shop there was a guy I knew who worked for Microsoft. I told him about what had happened and the very next day he had a brand new unopened copy of Windows for me. He was pretty high up on the sales side of MS for whatever district my city is in for the company and he had access to all sorts of software to give out to clients.

So, what ticks me off about some of the ways corporations sell media to us, is by design to make us spend more money. The copyright laws protect the creators/owners and that is a good thing, but they also harm consumers.

No, Trevor, I simply disagree with the second definition. To me, stealing involves property. Ideas, credit, words, etc. are not property.

George Lucas owns the rights to the word, "Droid." Every time someone uses that word commercially they owe him royalties. I think that is a bit of a stretch but that is how it is in practice.

By the way, what about the British laws on music?

major corporations have enough legal resources to more-or-less get away with it. And a $2000 fine isn't even petty cash. The concept you state is sound but the practical implication is unbalanced.



That part, yes. An electronic copy of an intangible item that has not deprived the creator of anything does not qualify as "stolen".


Exactly. I purchased a movie on VHS in 1999, thus also purchasing the lifetime rights to view said movie in my own home. Why is it "wrong" to download a digital version today?

Hands up anyone who thinks TLarkin should have simply handed MS another $100.

As I was saying, the British think that if you buy an album, you're really paying for a cassette/CD/vinyl album that happens to have content (music). Therefore, you have to buy another download that happens to have content (the same music) and put it on your iPod.

There was a website that let you buy your CD, and download an MP3 copy of the album. Likely banned in the UK.

According to the DMCA anytime you transfer something you own to a different media/medium you have to repurchase it.

I don't think you have a correct understanding of British copyright law. Your first paragraph is clearly not true. I don't know what website you are talking about, but there is no reason that such a site would be "banned" under British law.

I'm not sure that you did purchase the "lifetime rights". You may want to check on that.
Whilst there is a perfectly reasonable case for making backups of data that you own, it could certainly be argued that a digital download and VHS are not the same product, on quality grounds, or on the grounds on the versatility of the digital product.
However, I do see that there is some merit in the argument that if you have made a payment to the artist, then some greater flexibility might be permitted, rather than someone who just expects to get everything for free.

TLarkin's story of the MS disk is actually the reverse of usual. If you licence the software, then MS should provide you with another media. However, if you believe that you "own" the software, then if it gets damaged, you will need to buy another, as with a physical book, say.

The real problem is that people give away copied files. If they kept them to themselves, that would be reasonable. If they sold them, then that is a clear case where the artist is missing out on revenue from his labour.
When you lend someone your book, you no longer have it. When you give someone a copy, you have "bred" another instance of the book. Semantics about stealing is pointless. But just because it might not be stealing, doesn't mean it isn't necessarily wrong or illegal.

The idea that musicians should just earn a living from live gigs, and artists from physical work of arts (no digital media artists, then!) does not seem to be of any use to writers and composers. Authors of novels, writers of articles, composers of sheet music need to sell instances (copies) of their work.

I'm all for revision of copyright law, but those who create need to be reimbursed for their work. The argument that "a builder doesn't get paid again for the house" isn't a correct analogy. An author is not simply paid for the first copy of his work -- he makes a small income from each copy. Thus, if his work is popular, he earns a goodly sum. If it is unpopular, then he earn little. If you think an author should just be paid for the first year, or the first 1000 books, -- then why would anyone strive to make something that everyone wanted? Why would a publisher want to sell millions of copies?

I cannot see any other way but cultural ruin if some form of protection did not exist for artists. I'm not being melodramatic. I for one would not do the creative work that I currently get paid for, if there were no copyright laws. It simply would not be possible.

See that is my point. You aren't buying a piece of media you are buying a license. However, if your media gets lost, damaged, or stolen you have to buy a whole new license. Even though you are not actually buying the product on the CD, you are leasing it via a license.

There is where you buy something but don't actually own it. Recently there have been debates in our government (USA) about what owning a license actually legally means. I cannot find the article at the moment but I recall reading one recently about it. It had to do with redefining a few things in the DMCA.

I don't know what consumer protection legislation is like in the US -- (sounds a bit too goddam pinko! :D) But it might be possible to take MS to a small claims court. It's probably cheaper for them to give you a new disk than unleash the lawyers, whatever the merits of the case.

But that is clearly a case of MS wanting to have it both ways to suit them.
However, bad examples of companies shafting customers do not necessarily mean that the concepts of licensing or of copyright are necessarily a bad thing.

I certainly think that if you buy hardware, you should be able to mod it.

To be fair, this is the policy of everyone not just MS. All major record labels, all software and tech companies, and all publishing companies that put out any sort of digital goods. You are never buying a product you are leasing a license. Even when you buy a ticket to say a sporting event, you are actually agreeing to a small contract, in which you may exchange the ticket for a seat at said sporting event but you must agree to all the terms and conditions of the ticket and purchasing one assumes you agree to all of them.

Yes, I know about licences!:rolleyes:

I'm saying that if a company does say "you have a licence to use the software", then you should be able to play them at their own game, and insist that they give you a new copy -- like Apple does for bundled OS disks, for a nominal fee, rather than having to buy a new one.
In other words, there are times when the terms of the licence have consequences that are beneficial to the end user, and you should insist upon enforcing them.