You have to admit, they've got a point: Digital books are inherently different from physical books. So maybe copyright should never have been applied to digital books at all.
Now if the courts decide that applying copyright, which is as old as the printing press, to digital media, which are neither printed nor pressed, makes no sense, and they declare all forms of Digital Restrictions Management to be illegal, and it all happens because of this lawsuit, specifically because of this slip of the tongue, which only happened because the Internet Archive intentionally overstepped some legal boundaries at an opportune time, I'd say: Well played, Internet Archive.
Not going to happen, though. Courts don't rule against established companies, ever.
No, copyright is censorship, so it can't have changed. Censorship isn't always bad, though. Copyright is censorship in the same way that making it illegal for someone else to say they are you (identity theft) is censorship. Copyright is a bit more abstract though, so is easier to abuse.
Yes, it is. Censorship is obscene, no matter how well-intentioned the perpetrators.
> Copyright is censorship in the same way that making it illegal for someone else to say they are you (identity theft) is censorship.
It isn't illegal for someone else to say that they are you—per se. Actors do that sort of thing all the time. It only becomes illegal if they do so deceptively with the intent of achieving some sort of financial or personal gain, i.e. to commit fraud. The illegal part is the attempt to obtain goods or services under false pretenses.
Copyright is completely different. It penalizes the unauthorized distribution of factual information—even if these facts are just the arrangement of words in a work of fiction, or a series of numbers describing a certain sound wave. There is no deception involved in copyright infringement, no goods or services obtained under false pretenses, just the communication of information through channels which certain parties would prefer to suppress.
Gosh, I'm pretty much as anti-copyright/pro-freedom of information as anyone you would ever meet.
However, I think there has to be a reasonable way to implement copyright so that artists can get paid for their creations in a reliable way.
A third party shouldn't be able to host/index a bunch of someone else's IP, sell ads, and make bank at the expense of writers, musicians, etc.
On the other hand, Michael Jackson is dead. Why is his music still copyrighted? The material has earned zillions of dollars already. The ownership of those rights by corporate randos is ridiculous. Copyright holders have, in my lifetime, behaved in a ridiculous way--even abusively towards original artists via DMCA take downs. But the notion of copyright is still important.
All that said, platforms that pay artists pennies while making billions on the activity they attract are probably a bigger threat to art these day. That also needs to be dealt with.
> Gosh, I'm pretty much as anti-copyright/pro-freedom of information as anyone you would ever meet.
Clearly you've never actually met anyone who was anti-copyright / pro-freedom of information. To begin with, they're not going to be looking for "a reasonable way to implement copyright" or saying things like "the notion of copyright is still important". Kind of goes against the whole anti-copyright mentality.
> A third party shouldn't be able to host/index a bunch of someone else's IP, sell ads, and make bank at the expense of writers, musicians, etc.
There is no "at the expense of…". The third party is performing hosting and indexing services and getting paid for that work. They benefit, the users of the site benefit, no one else loses anything. In the absence of copyright anyone else could do the same, so it's naturally going to be a low-margin business.
If we want artists to get paid in a reliable way, without wrecking the rest of society in the process, we need to look beyond copyright, to patronage, crowdfunding, sponsorship, open collaboration, and other models. The presence of copyright doesn't guarantee that artists get paid. It does ensure that we're actively crippling our technology, erecting barriers between people, undermining the art itself by making it all about money, encouraging contempt for the law (not entirely a bad thing IMHO when the law is unjust), and creating a parasitic copyright industry which leeches off of both the public in general and artists in particular, in the end serving no one but itself.
I am fully against the practices of illegitimate DMCA notices, suing torrenters, etc.
As I said, I also think terms of copyright should be deeply constrained and nontransferable upon death.
But like, megaupload? Why should such a business model be allowed to exist? 100% parasitic.
This is drastically different from what we know today.
Patronage? Who if not the people acquiring the material?
Crowd funding? Won’t that be in competition with the pirated commodity?
Sponsorship, like ads in the content?
I’d rather pay an artist for content for a reasonable price and duration, while shutting down excessive suits.
Get off your high horse. It’s a complicated issue. The whole web runs on sponsorship and ads and it sucks horribly. There are balanced approaches worth considering. Content has value.
>> Gosh, I'm pretty much as anti-copyright/pro-freedom of information as anyone you would ever meet.
You aren't even close. Stopping just short of copyright maximalism doesn't make you anti-copyright. It makes you slightly more reasonable, but you're still on the opposite side of this particular debate.
> But like, megaupload? Why should such a business model be allowed to exist? 100% parasitic.
What's so parasitic about a file hosting service? They get paid a premium right now because they're taking on a bunch of legal risk on behalf of their users. You can blame any surplus profits squarely on copyright law itself.
> Patronage? Who if not the people acquiring the material?
The patrons normally would be the ones acquiring the original copies, yes. At that point it would be up to them to decide what to do with those copies. Patrons would normally also receive credit for funding the production of the work. This model works well in situations where there is social capital (or simply a sense of self-worth) linked to being known as a "patron of the arts".
> Crowd funding? Won’t that be in competition with the pirated commodity?
You're thinking of pre-sales. Crowdfunding is more akin to patronage, just with a broader audience. Backers might get some perks, such as public credit or merchandise, but there is no guarantee of exclusivity. The resulting work may or may not be made available directly to the public, though the distributed nature of crowdfunding pretty much guarantees that at least one backer would "defect" and make their copy available shortly after the initial release.
> Sponsorship, like ads in the content?
Product placement is one form of sponsorship. It can be done well, or poorly. Quite a bit of quality content has been produced for free distribution through unobtrusive sponsorship arrangements. Sometimes content that people are interested in for its own sake also incidentally happens to benefit someone, so they're willing to pay for its production even without any direct promotion.
Information should be free to share and copy, but not at a profit if it infringes on the owner of the IP. That’s VERY short of maximalism. That is a radical reform.
Megaupload employees and owners uploaded pirated content, and profited hugely. Not small margins—they made millions.
I’m against YouTubes, Spotifys, and even megauploads screwing content creators. Tech doesn’t have the right to assume ownership of the world via content platforms.
All content production is struggling under the glut of technological wealth extraction via platforms. A good copyright implementation would help avoid this. It’s nothing like what we have, but the concept of copyright is not the same as the abusive system we know.
I feel like you are railing against copyright the way conservatives rail against socialism. Doing so mischaracterizes the sensible arguments that are classified as such.
The goal should be to promote diverse content creation by allowing creators (Not their platforms or corporate ownership) to be compensated, and to simultaneously allow for cultural exchange with concepts like free use and limited copyright durations, and by protecting/promoting library lending. Such things are possible, and I think optimal.
Every single sentence in your post is pro-copyright. I get it, you support a more limited form of copyright than we have right now. Just don't go around calling yourself "as anti-copyright … as anyone you would ever meet". Especially not to someone who is actually anti-copyright. I don't have to look around to find an obvious counter-example. It's me.
> Information should be free to share and copy, but not at a profit if it infringes on the owner of the IP.
That sounds like what the Open Source Definition would classify as discrimination based on field of endeavour. Terms like that are way more trouble than they're worth. If anyone can share and copy the content at cost, the only way to earn a profit is to provide some value-added service. Which means you're not profiting from the content, but rather from the service you've added on top. I'm not sure why you would have an issue with that.
> Megaupload employees and owners uploaded pirated content, and profited hugely. Not small margins—they made millions.
That's only because competition for hosting and indexing services was severely limited by copyright. I don't see the relevance to the scenario you're describing where there are no restrictions on (non-profit) sharing or copying. Their margins would be basically zero under those circumstances, or at least no more than any other hosting service. Any profit they did make would be due entirely to their own efforts.
Now if the courts decide that applying copyright, which is as old as the printing press, to digital media, which are neither printed nor pressed, makes no sense, and they declare all forms of Digital Restrictions Management to be illegal, and it all happens because of this lawsuit, specifically because of this slip of the tongue, which only happened because the Internet Archive intentionally overstepped some legal boundaries at an opportune time, I'd say: Well played, Internet Archive.
Not going to happen, though. Courts don't rule against established companies, ever.