Some great, sane ideas on improving copyright law [1].
The amount of resources the current copyright laws waste is surprisingly high.
"For software, the direct costs every year of defending infringement suits from so-called "nonpracticing entities" – better known as patent trolls – come to more than 10 percent of total annual R&D spending by all U.S. businesses."
I've become more and more convinced that copyright laws do not promote progress of useful arts and sciences. The most obvious example is the incredible success of free and open software.
Are people really going to stop writing books, composing music, painting pictures, etc, without copyright protection? Not a chance!
Copyright is mostly a monopoly situation. I (and probably most others) are OK with Trademark use as a form of consumer protection.
Automatic copyright for some reasonable time, say 10 years, could be automatic and free. Renewals past that time (E.G. in 10 year blocks) should be exponentially more costly.
Why is open source not meaningful? Open source software has proven to be very competitive and often superior to closed source, protected software. People even make money writing open source software.
Not many make money authoring books, despite copyright protections. Same goes for musicians and artists. By making money I mean not needing another job to pay the rent.
Open source software has indeed been successful in the presence of closed source software.
However this is not true for films or books. Thus the fact that OSS is successful today is not evidence that books and films will be successful without copyright protection. It’s not evidence they won’t either. Thus it is not a meaningful comparison.
The economics of open source software and fiction books or film are wildly different.
Consider rock musicians. Suppose there were two concerts, one playing a Beatles song with the Beatles performing it (yes I know two of them are gone). Another venue is playing the same songs, just as well, but by a cover band.
Which concert is going to make boatloads of money, and which will barely be able to pay the electric bill? Copyright has nothing to do with it.
What if there were two albums, entitled "Beatles Greatest Hits" and "Best of the Beatles" and the former is a compilation album and the latter is a solo album by former Beatles drummer, Pete Best.
If a fan buys the second without realizing it is not a compilation album, should the Beatles not be able to defend their name being used to sell it? Or profit off of it?
Think of it like open source software, and the answer will be clear.
I.e. anyone can take the open source software I create and do whatever the hell they want with it. (I use the Boost license, which is the most permissive.) I encourage you to, too, if you want to profit from my work :-)
I don't think there's anything special about musicians that makes them different from open source developers.
I don't think the answer is clear at all, this specific instance is about deception. The only thing being used is the name of the project to mislead consumers without being openly fraudulent, in such a way that it damages or limits the ability of the original authors to monetize their work.
The closest analogue in FOSS is the forking or reuse of projects to intentionally cannibalize the original work - which is covered by less permissive licenses like AGPL.
Whether it's music or software isn't the point, it's about the rights of the original creator to control how the work is spread and copied, which can be a bigger deal when that impacts the ability of a creator to monetize it. Music is only substantially different than software in that it isn't maintained after creation that requires continual support payments by its consumers.
If you're in a position where you can freely distribute your work to others, you're in an incredibly privileged position to begin with.
Protection of a trade name is a trademark, not copyright. There is no deception in saying your band is playing a Beatles tune.
> Music is only substantially different than software in that it isn't maintained after creation that requires continual support payments by its consumers.
That is indeed an oddity created by copyright law. Though nothing stops people from creating new versions of music (except copyright law, of course). People are still creating new versions of Debussy tunes. I'm a little tired of hearing various versions of "Roll over Beethoven", too.
> If you're in a position where you can freely distribute your work to others, you're in an incredibly privileged position to begin with.
A lot of people are paid very well to work on open source software. It's analogous to a lot of people being paid very well to perform music.
I don't think it's possible to generalize about all IP law. There's a reason different categories of IP, with varying protections and terms, exist. It's possible for some IP law to be useful and some other to be useless or actively harmful.
Without copyright, how would The Beatles ever have become the celebrities in the first place? They'd have been copied the instant they gained a little success and been diluted away.
People proposing no copyrights always seem to focus on exploiting existing work, not on how new work will be created. It's expensive to create and promote it so why would anyone invest that money if they can't get it back? Are you counting on passionate independently wealthy hobbyists to create everything copyable for free?
Almost all successful open source software is protected by copyright and license terms that restrict its use. Would it really be just as good if it was all CC0 and no MIT or GPL?
> Without copyright, how would The Beatles ever have become the celebrities in the first place?
They were overnight celebrities. Too fast to ascribe it to copyright. And radio stations played their music for free. A cult-like following immediately grew up around them. That wouldn't happen with a clone. Look at all the fan magazines at the time printing every detail about the Beatles - a clone would be totally ignored. The Beatles' success cannot be placed on the lyrics and arrangement, it's far more than that.
> not on how new work will be created
I work on open source full time. All the collaborators on D also contribute their work to the Boost license.
> Are you counting on passionate independently wealthy hobbyists to create everything copyable for free?
Microsoft (among others) open sourced much of its software. Lots of companies make their software available for free. Open source is highly successful, does not need copyright, and the evidence for it is overwhelming.
> Almost all successful open source software is protected by copyright and license terms that restrict its use.
My work is Boost licensed and copyrighted, simply because public domain is not recognized in many countries. The Boost license is the least restrictive of all the licenses.
The amount of resources the current copyright laws waste is surprisingly high.
"For software, the direct costs every year of defending infringement suits from so-called "nonpracticing entities" – better known as patent trolls – come to more than 10 percent of total annual R&D spending by all U.S. businesses."
[1] https://www.niskanencenter.org/faster_fairer/liberating_the_...