If you had a vote for copyright?

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can do. Showing a single page of a book for purposes of illustration counts as "fair use" by anyone's standards.

Fair use is only determined by a judge.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Fair use is only determined by a judge.

OK, let me rephrase the question: can you give an example of a case where someone has been deemed to be in violation of copyright law by displaying a photograph showing a page of a book on a reading device? What makes you believe that it is a violation of copyright?

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Both sides of this argument are a bit contradictory: Do you want all works to be free, or do you want the creators of the works to be able to profit? You can't have both.

Also, don't forget there is another group involved here: Independent artists and creators that don't use the big publishing/recording companies. Copyright protects them most of all.

I don't think that's quite what he means by "freely available." Under copyright, there are things that are available at a reasonable price, things available at an unreasonable price, and things withheld from publication. Further, if you include the DMCA into the discussion of general copyright, there are things that are available at a reasonable or unreasonable price, but limited in use.

Creators will still be able to profit if copyright is abolished. How much is open to question. In answering that question, you can assume a "static economy" or a "dynamic economy." If you assume a static economy - i.e., nobody does anything differently - then undoubtedly profits will be reduced for some and eliminated for others.

If you assume a dynamic economy - aka "reality," - then profits will be reduced for some, eliminated for others, and increased for some. It's just that we don't immediately see how profits will be increased. But there is some glimmer of what will happen. In the music industry, for example, what seems to be happening among the kids who make very little by way of profit from sale of recorded music is that they make money selling "merch." (Which spellcheck wants me to correct to "mercy," perhaps not without reason...)

Things being what they are in a capitalist economy, it's unlikely that copyright law will be abolished. It could be replaced, though, at least in theory, by a more consumer friendly law. But as you point out, there are the big corporations to be contended with, and they want more of the same. Since to a very large extent they have our "elected representatives" in their back pockets, they will get a lot of what they want - a distorted version of copyright that only accidentally protects the smaller artists.

[BookCat]

Life+50 is fine provided SOPA doesn't pass. Donning an eyepatch and sticking a parrot on one shoulder never really harmed any author.

Maybe I should read the whole thread :-)

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by Harmon

In the music industry, for example, what seems to be happening among the kids who make very little by way of profit from sale of recorded music is that they make money selling "merch." (Which spellcheck wants me to correct to "mercy," perhaps not without reason...)

Wouldn't it have been easier to just write merchandise than that whole sentence in bold?

Speaking of merchandise, I have a little cousin that just turned 3. For Christmas, he received nothing but Thomas the Engine themed stuff, from pajamas to books to toy tools. Ditto for his birthday a week ago. He probably got several hundred dollars worth of Thomas the Engine merchandise. In general, the entertainment industry makes more from merch than content sales. From The Economist

The global market for children's TV programmes is worth about $2 billion, according to Informa Media, a research group. But the market for licensed toys alone is worth some $27 billion. Throw in all the other branded items, from birthday cards to video games, and the market for children's licensed products is worth some $132 billion...

Three years ago, 98% of the revenue at HIT Entertainment, a British firm that owns “Bob the Builder”, “Barney” and other children's TV characters, derived from television. Last year, this share had shrunk to 19%, with the remainder coming from consumer products, home video and stage shows. “Bob the Builder” is now hammering his way into living-rooms in 140 countries, from Japan to America. “We are creative producers, but we are also now brand managers,” says Charlie Caminada, head of sales and marketing at HIT.

http://www.economist.com/node/1124311
http://www.cracked.com/article_19012...s-suck_p2.html

Originally Posted by Harmon

If you assume a dynamic economy - aka "reality," - then profits will be reduced for some, eliminated for others, and increased for some. It's just that we don't immediately see how profits will be increased. But there is some glimmer of what will happen.

Every new advance in technology has created a moral panic--that this technology represented an imminent threat to the creative industry. The movie projector was supposed to be the end of live performance (revenues for theatre performance are greater than revenues for Hollywood ticket sales), radio and CDs were supposed to destroy the music industry (instead they created opportunities for more artists to make a living), video recorders and cable were supposed to destroy the movie industry (if you believe Jack Valenti), and now the internet is the creative content apocalypse, even though the entertainment industry consistently outperforms the overall economy, in spite of the fact that wages are falling and consumers desire to save more.

[pruss]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Actually I was talking about the people who download books from Project Gutenberg and sell them on Amazon as kindle books. The books are free, but someone still sells them.

True, but it's not a very stable market--it's not something one would want to be making a living off. All that's needed for this market to be killed entirely is for Amazon to decide, in the interests of making the Kindle more popular, to write a better quality conversion script and convert all of PG en masse with it, for free.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

And when it comes to the author's profit, you seem to be ignoring that fact that authors were selling their works before copyright as well. Some authors were cheated out of their profits before copyright, and some are cheated out of their profits now. Publishers provide a service to the authors just like the government provides a service to the citizens but nobody would be happy to be taxed 75% of their due income and think oh well, the government is expensive to run, this is fine.

I haven't been addressing the issues of major publishers in the copyright debates, as their position is more about long-term corporate financial profit, and that has certainly corrupted the original intent of copyright. I have been more concerned for the independent authors and creators who find themselves with less and less of a voice, less protection, and less public appreciation for their efforts, as the corporate efforts tend to drown indies out and cause them to get tarred by brushes not meant for them.

As for the corporations, they have profit to pursue--nothing surprising in that--and they'll have to deal with the reactions of authors and consumers who question the worth of their efforts.

Sure, authors sold works before copyright. And when it became easy to duplicate and redistribute someone's work without their permission, thanks to the printing press and other technologies, copyright was devised to restore fairness to the system and make it worth a creator's time and effort to create. No, it hasn't completely deterred theft, and some are cheated out of their profits now (mostly by those who ignore copyright laws).

But all of these reasons are not sufficient to abolish copyright; they are good reasons to fix it and enforce it better.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by spellbanisher

Every new advance in technology has created a moral panic--that this technology represented an imminent threat to the creative industry. The movie projector was supposed to be the end of live performance (revenues for theatre performance are greater than revenues for Hollywood ticket sales), radio and CDs were supposed to destroy the music industry (instead they created opportunities for more artists to make a living), video recorders and cable were supposed to destroy the movie industry (if you believe Jack Valenti), and now the internet is the creative content apocalypse, even though the entertainment industry consistently outperforms the overall economy, in spite of the fact that wages are falling and consumers desire to save more.

Those other forms of media had methods of ensuring profit: Theatres still must be physically attended, and people can't just walk in off the street to see a show, so you have ticket sales for profit (and thanks to TV, commercials for those who watch at home); radio found profit in advertising to subsidize the broadcasts; VCR tapes sold pre-recorded media with more advertising subsidies, and blanks kicked back a few cents to the media industries at each sale.

The internet situation is very different: There are no subsidies for content creators, and there are no tools in place to keep people away from content they want (at least, nothing that works well). If content like ebooks had a guaranteed source of profit, like ad subsidies, govt subsidies, or ways to keep freeloaders from accessing content without paying, copyright would quite possibly not be needed at all.

Since ebooks and other digital content don't have these things, we need copyright laws to provide them.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

The internet situation is very different: There are no subsidies for content creators, and there are no tools in place to keep people away from content they want (at least, nothing that works well). If content like ebooks had a guaranteed source of profit, like ad subsidies, govt subsidies, or ways to keep freeloaders from accessing content without paying, copyright would quite possibly not be needed at all.

Since ebooks and other digital content don't have these things, we need copyright laws to provide them.

But the copyright laws have never stopped people from pirating them, and never will. Even if you removed every pirate file from the internet they would still get passed around some other way. I can remember people selling photocopies of rare books at comic marts in the 80s, so it's not exactly a new problem that there pesky internet has brought along.

In the UK, writers get a few pence each time a book is borrowed from the library. We also had something called the Arts Council that would give people a grant to live on while they created something. Either, or both of those applied to independent creators of digital content would be a lot cheaper than continuing the "war" on piracy that will never be won. It could also be funded through lottery money (aka the gullibility tax), instead of that money going to wealthy organisations that don't really need it.

[toddsouth]

Originally Posted by pruss

True, but it's not a very stable market--it's not something one would want to be making a living off. All that's needed for this market to be killed entirely is for Amazon to decide, in the interests of making the Kindle more popular, to write a better quality conversion script and convert all of PG en masse with it, for free.

That post gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

But the copyright laws have never stopped people from pirating them, and never will.

Copyright laws have stopped incidents of copyright infringement. They are not perfect, nor have they caught everyone; but that's a fault of enforcement, not of the laws themselves. Again, lack of perfection is not a valid reason to junk a law; it's a reason to fix the law and better enforce it.

[spellbanisher]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Sure, authors sold works before copyright. And when it became easy to duplicate and redistribute someone's work without their permission, thanks to the printing press and other technologies, copyright was devised to restore fairness to the system and make it worth a creator's time and effort to create.

No, copyright was created to shift power from publishers to content creators. Before Copyright, an author would sell their work to publishers, who would retain a permanent monopoly over the work. Copyright (specifically the Statute of Anne) represented a shift in the social framework, from a system of privileges to a system of rights.

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

No, it hasn't completely deterred theft, and some are cheated out of their profits now (mostly by those who ignore copyright laws).

But all of these reasons are not sufficient to abolish copyright; they are good reasons to fix it and enforce it better.

I don't find the arguments that piracy is hurting the entertainment industry convincing. For one thing, the entertainment industry generally has outperformed the rest of the economy. At the peak of the bubble the savings rate had fallen to zero, and considering that wealthy Americans did have savings, that means that the average American was spending more than 100% of his income. Eliminate piracy and you reduce consumption of media, but you will not likely increase revenues.

In the current economic malaise the savings rate has risen while wages have either declined or stagnated. Since most Americans are desiring to save more (despite falling wages) to pay down debt, their propensity to spend on luxuries, such as entertainment, is very low.

However, the amount spent on entertainment is a very small percentage of GDP (something like 1-2%), so even a small change in the spending habits of the population could have a significant impact on the entertainment industry. Suppose, for instance, that revenues for the entertainment industry are 1% (150 billion dollars) of GDP. If American's increased the amount of money they spent on entertainment by half a percent, that would increase revenues by 75 billion dollars, equaling a 50% increase for the entertainment industry.

Would that justify stricter enforcement of copyright (or an extension of it, which is more relevant to this thread)? First, I think your characterization of copying as theft is wrong; reproducing something is not the same as taking something. Even so, congress (and the government in general) must always act to balance competing interests. Even if you were to suppose that copyright infringement is theft, that does not necessarily follow that it must be enforced at all costs. You would not, for instance, try to prevent shoplifting by putting a police officer in every store. The costs of that enforcement would greatly exceed any benefits from it. I think Doctorow puts it well:

"why are we prepared to sacrifice free speech, free assembly, privacy, and human rights for an industry that outperforms the US economy overall, nets more foreign profits than the pharmaceutical industry or the food sector, and is enjoying year-on-year growth?"

As for your contention that copyright infringement hurts small-time artists--that is unlikely as well. I am not saying that no small-time artist has been hurt, but it is unlikely that in general small-time artists are hurt by infringement. The entertainment industry is notoriously top-heavy--much less than 1% of all creative work is commercially viable, and only a small percent of that is very profitable. It is that 1% of creative works that would mostly be affected by infringement, and even if in ideality there would be no copyright infringement even for the massively profitable works, that still doesn't mean that congress should act aggressively to ensure that Avatar has 1.7 billion dollars in revenues instead of 1.5 billion.

Additionally, the works of small-time or relatively obscure artists tend to have very high price elasticities; this means that even a very small change in price would dramatically decrease demand. Thus, it is very unlikely that many copyright infringers would purchase the works of obscure artists at the price they are willing to sell their works if you were to more strictly enforce copyright. I'm not trying to rationalize illegal downloading, I'm just pointing out that it is unlikely that obscure artists would be even marginally better off if copyright was more strictly enforced.

The entertainment industry has very large profit margins, about 23%. Increasing the profit margins for the entertainment industry will not benefit the overall economy. Considering that those profit margins represent rent, an extra billion dollars spent on the entertainment industry will not create nearly as many jobs as an extra billion dollars spent in the rest of the economy; when discussing the lost profits of the entertainment industry we never consider the interests of people who would have jobs but don't because of the inefficiencies caused by the massive amounts of rent-seeking due to copyright laws.

http://www.ey.com/US/en/Newsroom/New...-entertainment

Lobbyists in the entertainment industry often point out that infringement costs jobs. This is assuming that a dollar not spent on entertainment is a dollar stuffed in a mattress and not spent or invested. From societies perspective, all that matters is whether a dollar spent on entertainment creates more economic value than a dollar spent elsewhere, and in general, the answer is that it does not. Indeed, it is much worse, because increased profits for the entertainment enables them to spend more on lobbying and campaign donations, distorting the democratic process.

This goes back to the original copyright regimes, whether that is the Copyright Act of 1790 or the Statute of Anne in 1706 which the Copyright Act was modelled after;the purpose of the government protection and granted monopoly called copyright (enforced using societies resources) is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," or in the words of the Statute of Anne, "for the Encouragement of Learning." Somehow this has been morphed into a belief that copyright supersedes all other rights and must be enforced at all costs. The question that should concern congress is not how to best enforce copyright, but whether or not the copyright regime (or copyright in general) is the best way to "Promote the progress of Science and useful Arts."

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Those other forms of media had methods of ensuring profit: Theatres still must be physically attended, and people can't just walk in off the street to see a show, so you have ticket sales for profit (and thanks to TV, commercials for those who watch at home); radio found profit in advertising to subsidize the broadcasts; VCR tapes sold pre-recorded media with more advertising subsidies, and blanks kicked back a few cents to the media industries at each sale.

In none of these instances (except for movie theaters) was the method of monetization apparent. That had to be figured out after congress and the courts made sure that existing content industries didn't destroy the infant industries. The point is that with any technology, you can't know how it will evolve, so you don't want to mess with it too much.

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

If content like ebooks had a guaranteed source of profit, like ad subsidies, govt subsidies, or ways to keep freeloaders from accessing content without paying, copyright would quite possibly not be needed at all.

Since ebooks and other digital content don't have these things, we need copyright laws to provide them.

Why should ebooks have a guaranteed source of profit?

I have read a few proposals for funding content producers without copyright. One is Artistic Freedom Vouchers, proposed by Dean Baker.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/public...ip_2003_11.pdf

The AFV would allow each individual to contribute a refundable tax credit of
approximately $100 to a creative worker of their choice, or to an intermediary who passes funds along to creative workers. Recipients of the AFV (creative workers and intermediaries) would be required to register with the government in the same way that religious or charitable organizations must now register for tax-exempt status.
This registration is only for the purpose of preventing fraud – it does not involve any evaluation of the quality of the work being produced.

In exchange for receiving AFV support, creative workers would be ineligible for copyright protection for a significant period of time (e.g. five years). Copyrights and the AFV are alternative ways in which the government supports creative workers. Creative workers are entitled to be compensated once for their work, not twice. The
AFV would not affect a creative workers ability to receive money for concerts or other live performances.

The AFV would create a vast amount of uncopyrighted material. A $100 per adult voucher would be sufficient to pay 500,000 writers, musicians, singers, actors, or other creative workers $40,000 a year. All of the material produced by these workers would be placed in the public domain where it could be freely reproduced.

I am not against copyright, but I don't see any imperative for congress to more strictly enforce current laws.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by HarryT

OK, let me rephrase the question: can you give an example of a case where someone has been deemed to be in violation of copyright law by displaying a photograph showing a page of a book on a reading device? What makes you believe that it is a violation of copyright?

Because we're not supposed to do it on MR, and other sites probably discourage their members from doing this as well. If nobody does it, then nobody gets sued for it.
From here:

Fair use is an affirmative defense to a claim of copyright infringement. It is a privilege, not a right.

Originally Posted by pruss

True, but it's not a very stable market--it's not something one would want to be making a living off. All that's needed for this market to be killed entirely is for Amazon to decide, in the interests of making the Kindle more popular, to write a better quality conversion script and convert all of PG en masse with it, for free.

Amazon doesn't need to kill it because they are also profiting from it.

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Sure, authors sold works before copyright. And when it became easy to duplicate and redistribute someone's work without their permission, thanks to the printing press and other technologies, copyright was devised to restore fairness to the system and make it worth a creator's time and effort to create. No, it hasn't completely deterred theft, and some are cheated out of their profits now (mostly by those who ignore copyright laws).

We'll have to agree to disagree on this^ point because I can't see how you can compare the publisher leaving the author with only 25% of the price of the book with the losses caused by 1 or 2 copies being pirated for every 1000 sold and decide that pirating does the most damage. The two cases would only be comparable if you have 3 copies pirated for every copy sold.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

From here:

Not true. Affirmative defenses are rights, not privileges. The only significant thing about an affirmative defense is that if you have one and fail to raise it on a timely basis, you are deemed to have waived it. It's totally a question of procedure.

If you raise it timely, it must be addressed by your opponent, or you win (assuming that you can prove the facts underlying the defense, or if your opponent fails to deny the facts you allege).

And at no point does a judge have the discretion to refuse to consider a timely raised affirmative defense that is properly pled. That would be reversable error.

[Harmon]

There's an awfully good thread on copyright here:

http://ricochet.com/main-feed/James-...s-not-stealing