Death of copyright, film at 11?

[Robotech_Master]

Made a new post over on TeleRead, linking to two articles. One of them is Chris "long tail" Anderson on giving stuff away for free.

The other is what the subject line of this post refers to: a peer-to-peer researcher concluding that new developments in P2P could render current copyright law obsolete as early as 2010 unless copyright is reformed to bring it more in line with the way the public is using it.

http://www.teleread.org/2009/02/01/g...-of-copyright/

[zelda_pinwheel]

thanks for the very interesting article, i'm following the links now. just a little remark, your tribler link is incorrect (.com instead of .org), and currently leads (in a brilliant demonstration of inadvertant irony) to a Civil Litigation website.

[Robotech_Master]

Whoops. Link fixed, thanks for pointing that out.

[HarryT]

That article strikes me as being the equivalent of saying "too many cars are being stolen, so let's say that car theft is no longer a crime".

Let's have all the ISP's monitor traffic for illegal downloads and hand over details of all the criminals to the police, cutting off internet access from the villains. Make people realise that it is NOT "socially acceptable" to obtain such material without paying for it.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Let's have all the ISP's monitor traffic for illegal downloads and hand over details of all the criminals to the police, cutting off internet access from the villains. Make people realise that it is NOT "socially acceptable" to obtain such material without paying for it.

I really don't want to pay my ISP for the overhead of monitoring traffic. It is not their job to enforce copyright laws.

Anyway, just encrypting all traffic is enough to circumvent this. All encrypted traffic just looks like random noise.

BOb

[Robotech_Master]

But one of the points of the report is that darknets will make that kind of traffic monitoring difficult or impossible.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I really don't want to pay my ISP for the overhead of monitoring traffic. It is not their job to enforce copyright laws.

not to mention the totally unwarranted invasion of my privacy that represents. that is a completely unacceptable solution to me and to plenty of other people.

Anyway, just encrypting all traffic is enough to circumvent this. All encrypted traffic just looks like random noise.

BOb

another argument against that proposition. no point in paying for an unwarranted invasion of privacy by totally unmandated people which is also thoroughly ineffective in fulfilling its supposed purpose.

copyright laws do definitely need to be reformed and large scale copyright infringement is just a symptom of that, not the cause. however it may participate in hastening that reform, which would be a good thing.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That article strikes me as being the equivalent of saying "too many cars are being stolen, so let's say that car theft is no longer a crime".

If people are illegally distributing copyrighted material, the answer is clearly to introduce rigorous measures to prevent it, such as traffic monitoring by ISPs.

And that will work just great against encrypted packets.


If copyright dies, it will be because it is no longer technologically relevant. It was invented in the earliest days of the Industrial Age, 300 years ago. It could be seen as an artifact of that age, not the current Information Age. Something new will have to be invented to replace it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I really don't want to pay my ISP for the overhead of monitoring traffic. It is not their job to enforce copyright laws.

Anyway, just encrypting all traffic is enough to circumvent this. All encrypted traffic just looks like random noise.

BOb

That may well be the case, but I'm sure you'd agree that we shouldn't simply sit back and accept that crimes happen merely because they are difficult to detect.

I think personally that it's a matter of education - teaching children from an early age that it is NOT acceptable to download such material without paying for it.

Or perhaps the answer is to do what been mooted in a number of countries - to impose a "levy" on all internet users which is then distributed to the music industry to compensate them for their losses. Of course, this is "punishing the innocent" along with the guilty, so it's far from ideal.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

not to mention the totally unwarranted invasion of my privacy that represents. that is a completely unacceptable solution to me and to plenty of other people.

How do you balance the individual's "right to privacy" with the intellectual property owner's equal right to be able to take legal action against those infringing his or her rights? Clearly there needs to be some mechanism in place to allow the identification and punishment of those committing crimes. One cannot simply say that individuals have a "right" to commit crimes with impunity on the grounds that identify them would be a breach of their right to privacy!

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That may well be the case, but I'm sure you'd agree that we shouldn't simply sit back and accept that crimes happen merely because they are difficult to detect.

I didn't say accept it. But, it is a hard issue. For example, I am one of those that feels the "war on drugs" is a complete waste of time and money and is not getting any where. If we legalize drugs and regulate them I think that would be more effective. It works for alcohol and firearms.

Plus the killings and back alley stuff would all stop and do away with a large crime element. Also, we would have tax revenue from drug sales to help fund issues that arise due to it such as addiction and such.

Just as I don't accept the wire tapping all US citizens was a good idea either. But I don't think not doing is means we are sitting back and letting crime/terrorism happen.

So, I think a similar answer with ebooks is make them readily available for a good price and copyright violations will go down. But, I also admit there is no easy answer.

BOb

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Or perhaps the answer is to do what been mooted in a number of countries - to impose a "levy" on all internet users which is then distributed to the music industry to compensate them for their losses. Of course, this is "punishing the innocent" along with the guilty, so it's far from ideal.

Besides, if you have to pay to compensate a profit loss to companies, you may feel (at least morally) allowed to download illegal content, you are in a way already paying for it!

[HarryT]

I believe that was in fact the suggestion - to impose a levy and then "legalise" all music downloading.

[Nate the great]

I think we should go back to direct subsidy of content creators. If you look at copyright as it relates to the difficulty of reproduction as a spectrum, it makes sense.

The invention of copyright came as a direct effect of the printing press. In terms of reproduction, the printing press moved books from one end of the spectrum (very difficult) to somewhere in the middle. Now that we have digital reproduction, we are at the other end of the spectrum (really easy). The circumstances have changed. Something new has to be invented.

Unfortunately, Big Content has a vested interest in the status quo.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That article strikes me as being the equivalent of saying "too many cars are being stolen, so let's say that car theft is no longer a crime".

Let's have all the ISP's monitor traffic for illegal downloads and hand over details of all the criminals to the police, cutting off internet access from the villains. Make people realise that it is NOT "socially acceptable" to obtain such material without paying for it.

I would say it is no way equivalent.

The critical difference between your example, and what is happening with copyright is that there has never been a point where the general public didn't regard stealing cars as a crime.

That is not an insignificant point. Copyright was originally intended to last fourteen years - not the life of the author. The life of the author plus seventy years is way out.

Authors are not paying enough for copyright privileges to support the cost of this. The legal system as it is is overburdened by the amount of violent crime that goes on. If authors what their extended copyrights somehow enforced it can happen after every single abused child, mugged oldster, beaten spouse, murdered businessman, etc have had their wrongs addressed.

If they want to be in the same line or ahead of these then they need to be paying the FULL COST of court buildings, bailiffs, public defenders, judges, security, and the whole bail of wax for a parallel system. Copyright fees would likely have to run several thousand dollars a year for each title (whether it is selling or not) to make that happen. I submit to you that this is rapidly becoming the dominant view, and certainly it is childs play to support this against all comers in debate - given the current state of crime in the western world.