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| <table align="right"><tr><td><div class="toc"> | | |
| Contents: | | |
| <ul> | | |
| <ul> | | |
| <li><a href="#Games_should_be_public_domain_sooner">Games should be public domain sooner</a></li> | | |
| <li><a href="#Statute_of_Anne,_the_original_copyright_law">Statute of Anne, the original copyright law</a></li> | | |
| <li><a href="#Lord_Camden_quote">Lord Camden quote</a></li> | | |
| <li><a href="#Both_Sides">Both Sides</a></li> | | |
| <li><a href="#facets_of_'IP_as_property'">facets of 'IP as property'</a></li> | | |
| <li><a href="#Happy_Birthday_song_info">Happy Birthday song info</a></li> | | |
| </ul> | | |
| </ul> | | |
| </div></td></tr></table> | | |
| <p> | | |
| Here's an article talking about how copyrights on games are too long, and | | |
| public domain should come sooner for some works: | | |
| <p> | | |
| <h2><a name="Games_should_be_public_domain_sooner">Games should be public domain sooner</a> | | |
| <span align=right class="section_edit_link">[<a href="/tbwiki/Arguments_About_Copyrights?action=edit§ion=Games_should_be_public_domain_sooner">edit section</a>]</font></span> | | |
| </h2> | | |
| <a href="http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/03/editorial-why-games-should-enter-the-public-domain/">http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/02/03/editorial-why-games-should-enter-the-public-domain/</a> | | |
| <ul><li>has some good points, but lots of straw-men as well, selectively answering only the 'dumb' opposition | | |
| </ul> | | |
| <p> | | |
| Here's a response that is more nuanced: | | |
| <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140206/07190726113/rps-takes-critics-idea-that-games-should-eventually-enter-public-domain.shtml">http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140206/07190726113/rps-takes-critics-idea-that-games-should-eventually-enter-public-domain.shtml</a> | | |
| <p> | | |
| <h2><a name="Statute_of_Anne,_the_original_copyright_law">Statute of Anne, the original copyright law</a> | | |
| <span align=right class="section_edit_link">[<a href="/tbwiki/Arguments_About_Copyrights?action=edit§ion=Statute_of_Anne,_the_original_copyright_law">edit section</a>]</font></span> | | |
| </h2> | | |
| Put something here about the original copyright law. | | |
| <p> | | |
| Mason Wheeler says: | | |
| <p> | | |
| You're ignoring the relevant facts here, attempting to twist history to fit a | | |
| harmful ideology. Yes, after they lost their monopoly/censorship regime, the | | |
| Stationers attempted various bills to renew it, but as your historian notes, | | |
| every one of them was unsuccessful. | | |
| <p> | | |
| The Statute of Anne was passed in 1709, 2 years after the last of the | | |
| unsuccessful Stationers' bills was introduced, and it was not a way to restore | | |
| the stationers' monopoly, but a way to guard authors against the abuses that | | |
| had sprung up in the power vacuum that resulted when the monopoly fell. | | |
| Attempts to equate copyright with the Stationers' monopoly are both dishonest | | |
| and harmful to the goal of positive copyright reform, so I wish you wouldn't | | |
| persist in it. | | |
| <p> | | |
| <hr size=2> | | |
| Richard says: | | |
| <p> | | |
| The idea that copyright went initially to an author was a bit of spin by the | | |
| stationers to get a bill passed. It created a right that could be transfered to | | |
| the stationers, once again giving them control over producing copies. The | | |
| problem that copyright solved was avoidance of competition on a single title in | | |
| an industry that had to use batch production. This required that a printer | | |
| estimate the volume of sales before printing copies of a book and the printer | | |
| produce the estimated number of book before selling a single copy.If somebody | | |
| else came into the market with the same title, the result was often that both | | |
| printers were left with a large number of unsold copies. That is at the level | | |
| of a single title, competition in producing copies was disastrous for the | | |
| competing parties. The control over who got to print a title was a beneficial | | |
| side effect of imprimatur. When imprimatur was abolished, the stationers made | | |
| several attempts to restore it in a milder form as a printers right, and when | | |
| they realized that parliament was not going to give them this right they came | | |
| up with the idea of creating an authors right, which could be transferred to | | |
| them by contract. | | |
| <p> | | |
| Then, as now, "think of the starving author, artist, musician" is the cry of | | |
| those who would control their works for their own profit. | | |
| <p> | | |
| <hr size=2> | | |
| Pragmatic writes: | | |
| <p> | | |
| With respect, Mason, it's true that copyright began as a censorship tool. See | | |
| this link for details: | | |
| <a href="http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/commentary/uk_1557/uk_1557_com_972007121517.html">http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/commentary/uk_1557/uk_1557_com_972007121517.html</a> | | |
| <p> | | |
| It's not just copyright that was used for censorship, but it was an essential | | |
| tool. See also <a href="http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=41">http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=41</a> | | |
| <p> | | |
| The idea was to only let "registered journalists" publish anything and light | | |
| everyone else on fire if they dissented. | | |
| <p> | | |
| <h2><a name="Lord_Camden_quote">Lord Camden quote</a> | | |
| <span align=right class="section_edit_link">[<a href="/tbwiki/Arguments_About_Copyrights?action=edit§ion=Lord_Camden_quote">edit section</a>]</font></span> | | |
| </h2> | | |
| Here's a quote apparently from the origin of copyright: | | |
| <p> | | |
| Anyway, I think it best to quote Lord Camden in his 1774 Judgement: | | |
| <p> | | |
| If there be any thing in the world common to all mankind, science and | | |
| literature are in their nature publici juris, and they ought to be free and | | |
| general as air or water. They forget their Creator as well as their | | |
| fellow-creatures who wish to monopolise his noblest gifts and greatest | | |
| benefits. Why did we enter into society at all, but to enlighten one another's | | |
| minds, and improve our faculties for the common welfare of the species? Those | | |
| great men, those favoured mortals, those sublime spirits, who share that ray of | | |
| divinity which we call genius, are intrusted by Providence with the delegated | | |
| power of imparting to their fellow-creatures that instruction which Heaven | | |
| meant for universal benefit: they must not be niggards to the world, or hoard | | |
| up for themselves the common stock. We know what was the punishment of him who | | |
| hid his talent; and Providence has taken care that there shall not be wanting | | |
| the noblest motives and incentives for men of genius to communicate to the | | |
| world the truths and discoveries, which are nothing if uncommunicated. | | |
| Knowledge has no value or use for the solitary owner; to be enjoyed it must be | | |
| communicated: scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter. Glory is the | | |
| reward of science; and those who deserve it scorn all meaner views. I speak not | | |
| of the scribblers for bread, who tease the world with their wretched | | |
| productions; fourteen years is too long a period for their perishable trash. It | | |
| was not for gain that Bacon, Newton, Milton, Locke, instructed and delighted | | |
| the world. When the bookseller offered Milton five pounds for his PARADISE | | |
| LOST, he did not reject the offer and commit his piece to the flames, nor did | | |
| he accept the miserable pittance as the reward of his labours; he knew that the | | |
| real price of his work was immortality, and that posterity would pay it. Some | | |
| authors are as careless of profit as others are rapacious of it, and in what a | | |
| situation would the public be with regard to literature if there were no means | | |
| of compelling a second impression of a useful work! All our learning would be | | |
| locked up in the hands of the Tonsons and Lintots of the age, who could set | | |
| what price upon it their avarice demands, till the whole public would become as | | |
| much their slaves as their own wretched hackney compilers. | | |
| <p> | | |
| <hr size=2> | | |
| <p> | | |
| <h2><a name="Both_Sides">Both Sides</a> | | |
| <span align=right class="section_edit_link">[<a href="/tbwiki/Arguments_About_Copyrights?action=edit§ion=Both_Sides">edit section</a>]</font></span> | | |
| </h2> | | |
| Here's a nice argument on both sides of the issue: | | |
| <hr size=2> | | |
| gwathdring says: | | |
| <p> | | |
| Sunjumper brings up a very important point, which I'm going to use as a spring | | |
| board. | | |
| <p> | | |
| The instances where creative works continue to be profitable after long periods | | |
| of time and would suffer substantially from people copying what it does well | | |
| and riding the bandwagon are exceptions. This whole line of argument, in my | | |
| view, suffers from the delusion that in America causes us to believe we have to | | |
| preserve people's path to unfettered fortune just in case one of us common folk | | |
| becomes Andrew Carnegie all of a sudden. Most authors are not J.K. Rowling. We | | |
| should not design our system primarily to protect J.K. Rowling because what | | |
| that ends up doing is protect the publisher and harm the creative industry | | |
| until such a time as another J.K. Rowling comes along in which case it is | | |
| protecting one sodding solitary person at the expense of restricting the many. | | |
| Rinse and repeat. That's just so backwards to me. Why do we feel the need to | | |
| expend such energy to protect our more fortunate few when we could instead | | |
| design realistic legislation that protected the whole system better rather than | | |
| just it's moguls and magnates? Why must the middle class always protect the | | |
| upper crust on the off chance that some day they get there? It's the same damn | | |
| thing and it's only somewhat less frustrating in economic policy surrounding | | |
| art than in economic policy surrounding everything else. | | |
| <p> | | |
| Because that's the other thing: copyright is economic policy. We should think | | |
| of it as such, not as some noble quest for the preservation of ideas. But I | | |
| suppose even if we thought of it that way, it would still be designed utterly | | |
| wrongly since currently it's designed to protect the profits of the few rather | | |
| than the ideas of the many and inventive. | | |
| <p> | | |
| Finally, let's return to J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Myer. Tell me - can you | | |
| honestly say that their ideas have not been borrowed and bungled and stolen and | | |
| copy-pasted and re-issued? Their band-wagons not thoroughly overwhelmed so as | | |
| to proceed down the bath at a mere crawl making dangerous creaking and buckling | | |
| noises as it goes? Can you honestly say that copyright has prevented other | | |
| people from profiting from their ideas? You cannot. So what *has* it done than? | | |
| It hasn't preserved their idea; it hasn't kept other people from writing Teen | | |
| Paranormal Romance so furiously following the Twilight extravaganza that it has | | |
| become a whole damn genre shelf in Barnes and Nobles. It hasn't crippled | | |
| creativity in the industry nor has it preserved ownership and sanctity of the | | |
| originator's ideas. But has it protected the originator's profits? Well, that's | | |
| a difficult question with cultural works - is Stephanie Meyer the originator? | | |
| How original was her work? How much of it was hers? What did *she* legally | | |
| steal as her many follow-alongs legally stole from her? What did she take | | |
| without technically copying? Who's work did she lean on? Whose advice did she | | |
| take without more than an acknowledgment page mention if even that returned | | |
| them? Further, has she not already been justly compensated? Has not her | | |
| published raked in enough cold hard cash such that even she will never see a | | |
| pittance in comparison? Has financial justice not already been done? | | |
| <p> | | |
| Consider how copyright is used. Oh, no! I used the word "Twilight" in my title | | |
| for "Twilight Haze," a book about werewolves forming a college fraternity at | | |
| the University of Washington in Seattle. Poor Stephanie Meyer and Stephanie | | |
| Meyer's publisher, they just must sue for me to cease and desist this travesty | | |
| never mind the shelf in Barnes and Nobles filled with thousand more flagrant | | |
| copies that avoid using this phrase, that name. That's perhaps a bad example | | |
| because with enough money I could probably win that one - but you get the idea. | | |
| You've heard those cases. You've heard of those mass-mailings, those C&Ds, | | |
| those desperate attempts to preserve a monopoly even against the least | | |
| threatening targets. All this in the name of protecting some fortunate and | | |
| extravagantly successful creator's right to profit *decades* after their death | | |
| which in turn came *decades* after they passed out of any danger of losing | | |
| their precious window of opportunity to profit either because they succeeded | | |
| and made it big or because their work had fallen into obscurity. Tolkien is | | |
| long dead, but his progeny continue to man-handle his licenses and rights and | | |
| keep a firm hold on his ideas which, while close to my heart, are hardly | | |
| representative of particularly profound originality - rather they are | | |
| representative of particularly profound creative *effort* and *labor,* effort | | |
| and labor that - duly compensated or not, can no longer be compensated seeing as | | |
| the fellow is tone dead. We need not preserve the profitability of his damn | | |
| corpse as though he created something so precious and unique and fundamentally | | |
| his own it needs must be encased in the creative and financial equivalent of | | |
| museum glass, trotted out only when the curators need to make a quick buck. | | |
| <p> | | |
| <hr size=2> | | |
| <p> | | |
| <h2><a name="facets_of_'IP_as_property'">facets of 'IP as property'</a> | | |
| <span align=right class="section_edit_link">[<a href="/tbwiki/Arguments_About_Copyrights?action=edit§ion=facets_of_'IP_as_property'">edit section</a>]</font></span> | | |
| </h2> | | |
| <p> | | |
| <UL><p> | | |
| <p> | | |
| <i>I'm quite at a loss as to how to better explain the workman analogy, | | |
| unless you think his turning up to work each day to carry out brand new acts of | | |
| manual labour in different places is the equivalent of sitting still in a chair | | |
| while a shop the other side of the world sells another copy of your game.</i> | | |
| <p> | | |
| </ul><p> | | |
| Well lets invert that analogy shall we? | | |
| <p> | | |
| Since you posit that "a plumber demanding a fee every time you use the tap he | | |
| installed in 1992"; is unreasonable, how about a developer or publisher is only | | |
| allowed to charge for one copy of their game? I mean they only made one game, | | |
| seems unreasonable for them to be allowed to charge multiple people for | | |
| multiple copies of the game right? | | |
| <p> | | |
| Good luck finding one person to pay for that one copy of the game when | | |
| development costs run to hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds. I | | |
| suspect if any creative industries worked in this way, none of them would exist | | |
| beyond the purvey of enthusiastic amateurs. | | |
| <p> | | |
| <h2><a name="Happy_Birthday_song_info">Happy Birthday song info</a> | | |
| <span align=right class="section_edit_link">[<a href="/tbwiki/Arguments_About_Copyrights?action=edit§ion=Happy_Birthday_song_info">edit section</a>]</font></span> | | |
| </h2> | | |
| <p> | | |
| <a href="http://freeculture.org/blog/2010/10/21/good-morning-to-happy-birthday-for-all/">http://freeculture.org/blog/2010/10/21/good-morning-to-happy-birthday-for-all/</a> | | |
| <p> | | |
| <a href="/tbw-files/Copyright-and-the-worlds-most-popular-song.pdf">file:Copyright-and-the-worlds-most-popular-song.pdf</a> | | |
| <p> | | |