[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

What is (in your view) fair?

For the purposes of this discussion, more than nothing... which is potentially what I could legally end up with if copyright is abolished. As I said, "fair" is a point to be debated... but I don't want to debate it in this thread. The practicality of copyright is what I want to debate here.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

The EU has never met a law they didn't like. Frankly, I don't smell a rat - I smell a Mouse! I think that Hollywood (sic) wants a Sono Bono act for the EU, and are trying to quitely get one. Their holy grail is to get copyright converted from a limited monopoly to a real (perpetual) property.

This is why I agree that patent and copyright law need to be revised for the 21st century. Killing copyright is just throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

That's why I compare copyright law with patent law. How far would technology have progressed if you had to pay a royalty on every transistor, and then every IC (both), on every chip produced since 1947 and 1957? And royalties to IBM on every hard drive until 2080? Or whatever price Fleming's hiers and assigns choose to charge for penicillin since 1929? (And every time it looks like it'll fall into the public domain, the terms get extended - after judicious lobbying.) And you can't use <any> of these things for creating new products unless the owners <allow> you to...That's what the world would look like if patent law was run like the copyright law. Where would the level of technology be? 1950? 1960? maybe 1970? It certainly wouldn't be what we now have in 2008!

I disagree there. We would still have all of those things with extended patents... they simply would have been more expensive. Patent laws did not keep them from being bought and used and experimented with, it just kept them from being cheap. In fact, most of the effective experimentation, development and initial marketing of those products occurred during their patent coverage.

And during that time, the inventors made enough in compensation for their efforts that they were willing and able to go back to their drawing boards, and develop even more. Now, imagine if AT&T had never made a dime off of the transistor, or their other developments, and ended up going bankrupt and ending the run of one of the most proficient technology developers of the twentieth century? Where would we be now... powering our iPods with vacuum tubes?

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Copyright (and Patent) are products of mass production. They are nearly self-enforcing in a mass-production environment. The unstoppable problem is that "the digital world" is <not> a mass-production environment. Because it is <inherently> different, mass production rules just don't apply to it. Like it or hate it, that is every bit as real as sunrise.

Digital products are indeed products of mass production... in fact, they are the ultimate goal in mass production: The sellable product that requires zero cost to make. Like it or not, mass production rules DO apply to digital works... it just means that the big end of the stick is firmly in the creator's hands, not the buyer's... and this is what we're really debating here, the fact that the buyer--you--aren't making out on the deal the way creators are.

No one likes to feel like they're being ripped off, and we expect a fair price for the things we buy. The digital revolution has thrown a sizable monkey wrench into the original works, as they have effectively separated materials and production costs, one of the largest financial elements, from manufacturing. It brings a serious variable to the question of "what is fair?" This is such a new idea that we, as a society, haven't wrapped our heads around it yet.

The easy answer is, "Well, just make it all free." But that doesn't solve the dilemma of a planet of approaching 7 billion people, all forced to live together and cooperate to survive, and who have needs that must be addressed. "Free" doesn't work, as there's not enough of everything to go around, and not enough people willing to share what they have. So, until we have unlimited resources and universal magnanimity, "free" isn't even on the table. This is a problem that must be worked out, because doing so will be far easier than accomplishing unlimited resources and universal magnanimity (though if you've got a good idea along those lines, now's the time to say so).

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I understand your economic problems with this reality. I, too, work in a dying profession. I'm a mainframe COBOL programmer. It doesn't matter how good you are when there is little demand for your skills. Or how much you love what you do. But I have to change my skills to survive. I get no continuing payment for work done years ago, nor do people change laws to help <my> plight. Shucks, when <my> jobs get sent overseas, I don't even get the retraining breaks an assembly line worker gets - by law!

Hey, in my life I've had and lost literally dozens of jobs, and I do understand the need to give what the market will take. I'm also familiar with giving up careers when the jobs dried up (I originally trained as a draftsman, and I've had and lost two other professions since). That's life. But there's no reason to make it even more difficult by officially taking the easy way out, because you don't like the paperwork, and making it legal to simply take other people's work. Our society cannot and will not function like that. Anyone who thinks that it can is simply ignoring the realities of the world around them.

Whether we like it or not, we need rules and laws to be able to survive on this planet, all of us together. If a rule doesn't fit anymore, we have to change it... not toss it. Copyright needs to be changed, not tossed... and it's our job as a functioning society to make sure that's exactly what happens, or suffer the consequences.

<pausing for breath>

Now, I realize that many people who have (actually) read these rants of mine are just saying, "Agh, he's just trying to protect all the money he makes from his books." In the interest of disclosure, the money I make off of these books wouldn't pay for a set of tires on my car... hell, it wouldn't pay for even one... after I cover the costs of maintaining the website that sells the books. I make my money (today) as a web developer, that's how I pay my mortgage. I'm not making enough money off of my books to make it worth much more than an intellectual exercise. If tomorrow it turns out that I can no longer sell my books, down they come... oh well... and I'll move on to something else to occupy my time.

So don't feel I'm doing this out of some desperate need to maintain my personal status quo. I am simply addressing the system as I see it, from the standpoint of a member of a global civilization who can't see how anarchy in the face of progress is going to help us to survive.