Copyright [was Re: Python obfuscation]

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 21:18:20 -0800, The Eternal Squire wrote:

>>Perhaps there is no way to make a living from writing novels without
>>copyright. [snip] I can ask "But without it, how
>>could one possibly make a living playing solitaire?"
> 
> Reductio de absurdum counterargument.

You say that as if it is a bad thing.



[snip]

> Thomas Edison (I think it was him) once said it took 999 failures to
> make 1 success.  That makes SourceForge 10 times more successful.

Argument by platitude is it?


>>The world is filled with
>>millions of wanna-be poets, writers and creators whose sum total
>>contribution to the artistic wealth of the world is negative.
> 
>>I'm not just using hyperbole. By poisoning the well with their garbage,
>>they just make it that little bit harder for genuinely talented artists to
>>be heard.
> 
> Whose opinion?  Yours, or the market's?

It isn't a matter of opinion, it is a matter of objective fact. Ask any
publisher: all the promotion in the world won't increase the number of
book sales in total, but merely shift sales from some other books to the
ones you are promoting. 

Believe me, publishers have been trying to influence the market to buy
more books, and if there is a way, they don't know it. The Harry Potter
fad is exceptional, and the publishers don't know what triggered it any
more than anyone else. (It certainly isn't the writing, which is only
moderately good, or the plot, which is terribly unoriginal.)

Walk into any book shop -- there are thousands of books. I just spent a
wonderful, but frustrating, afternoon yesterday shopping for books at six
different shops. I ended up with three books in my bag and a sinking
feeling that there are thousands of titles that I never even glanced at,
let alone made a rational decision whether or not to buy. I never even
walked through the history section, and I love history books.

With tens of thousands of new titles coming our every year, I can't even
notice all the new books, let alone the back catalog or out of print
books. Not read or buy -- merely notice.



>>Despite this, people keep trying to write the Great American Novel.
>>Creative artists will create, even if they would be economically better
>>off washing dishes at Greasy Joe's Diner for a buck an hour. Michaelangelo
>>didn't stop painting because he had no copyright protection.
> 
> And so the only valid income for a creative type is psychic income?

Do you think Michaelangelo survived on psychic income? Or Shakespeare, or
Bacon, or Ovid?



>>The natural state of things is not copyright. "No copyright" is not
>>punishing the author any more than "no flying unicorns" is punishing
>>little girls with a fantasy for flying through the sky on the back of a
>>horned horse. It is just the way things are.
> 
> Nature can be cruel. Do we dare drink unpasteurized milk because
> natural is always good?

I've drunk unpasteurized milk. It is lovely. There is nothing wrong with
unpasteurized milk, if it is fresh. Keeping it fresh is the hard part.

> For millenia slavery and serfdom were
> considered "natural", but it caused endless human misery.  And what
> about plumbing and flush toilets?  Those are not natural means to
> convey eliminated wastes, but having just that in a society increases
> the life expectancy of all its members by at least 10%.

It is irrelevant that natural things can be bad -- firstly, you have to
demonstrate that the alternative is better, and secondly you accused me of
"punishing" writers. Punishment doesn't come into it.

But please, if you can demonstrate that some level of copyright and/or
patent protection is good, I'm all ears. I already have my opinion, as I'm
sure you do, and if you read my earlier post carefully instead of jumping
to conclusions you will probably be able to work out what that is.


> The purpose of humanity is to NOT accept the way the things are... but
> to apply compassion in all situations which if unaided cause great pain
> and suffering.

Exactly, which I why I'm doing my best to have the excessively strong
so-called "intellectual property" laws rolled back. I may never succeed,
but at least I'm trying to prevent abominations like the lawyer who has
applied for a patent on storylines.


>>Copyright is a gift granted by the government, not the natural state of
>>the world. When kings and emperors and presidents give commercial and
>>economic gifts, like monopolies, they rarely are for the benefit of the
>>majority.
> 
> Last I knew, we had government by, for, and of the people.

And a wonderful fairy tale that is too.

> We give
> these gifts to ourselves, our officials serve at our pleasure.  I
> believe we decided to choose to give ourselves the gift of copyright
> because that way a creator can be rewarded for his efforts rather than
> his hiers.

Yeah, right, that's why the Sony Bono Act extended copyright to 90 years
for corporations. You think Walt Disney is still alive to enjoy the riches
generated by Mickey Mouse?

Perhaps you should tell that to musicians, who were robbed of copyright
protection by an underhanded trick committed by a glorified clerk Mitch
Glazier, who later got a job for the RIAA:

http://www.cdbaby.net/articles/courtney_love.html

Yeah, government by, for, and of the people. It is to laugh.



Did you know that when copyright was first introduced in the United
States, you had to register to get 14 years protection, and then could
re-register for another 14 years if you wished? Registration was
essentially free of cost except for time. Only TWO PERCENT of books
published at the time were protected by copyright, the authors and
publishers making the decision that registering for copyright wasn't even
worth their time, and of those that did bother to register once, less than
one percent bothered to re-register 14 years later.

The market spoke: something like two out of a thousand authors felt that
28 years of monopoly protection was worth perhaps a day filling out a
couple of forms. The result was a wonderful vibrant public domain for
publishers and authors and other creators to work from.

Today, the merest scribble on a napkin is automatically protected by
copyright for 90+ years, and the public domain for authors to build on is
impoverished. In the twenty years since the Sony Bono Act was enacted,
more than one million patents will expire and not one copyright.

When you replied to my post, and your software automatically copied my
text into your reply, you were infringing my copyright -- as I have
infringed yours. The chances of me collecting damages from you are
essentially zero, but you were breaking the law. Laws which make ordinary
behaviour criminal or civil offences are not good laws, even if they
aren't enforced: they encourage disrespect for laws.

 
>>Lots of ideas have no legal monopoly. There is no legal monopoly on
>>(say) good gardening skills, or the specific way of mixing the batter to
>>make extra light and fluffy bread.
> 
> Reductio de absurdum counterargument again.

No, it comes to the very heart of the matter. Why are some ideas given
monopoly protection and not others? Why shouldn't cooking, which is an art
form, be given legally enforced monopoly protection? When you go to a
restaurant and see a dish on the menu, why shouldn't the restaurant be
permitted to sue you if you steal their intellectual property? They
worked hard to invent that recipe, why should anybody be allowed to just
duplicate it?


>>Why should some ideas be privileged over others?
> 
> This is a corallary of the idea that people have the right to pursue
> happiness... which could basically mean either increased convience of
> life, longer lifespan,  or greater joy within.  Any idea which increases
> happiness in a society as a whole is more worthwhile than an idea which
> does not.  And the market decides which is which.

Oh dear, a market-worshiper. "The Almighty Market Shall Provide".


>>Lack of copyright doesn't need to be defended, as it is the natural
>>state of the world.
> 
> And again, is everything about nature always good?  God made us just a
> little less than the angels, so that we could apply our sense of
> compassion to natural situations that are bound to cause misery.
> Copyright produces less misery, IMHO, than it causes.

Where is your evidence for this? Economic analysis of the Sony Bono Act
was that it would add an average of just pennies of extra income to
the average copyright owner over an entire lifetime, while costing
publishers and readers hundreds of dollars in lost opportunities.

 
>>But my point is that there is a serious lack of evidence one way or the
>>other
> 
> Billions of dollars supporting the lives of hundred of thousands of
> people is pretty strong evidence that we are doing something right.

What billions of dollars? What hundreds of thousands of people? The
average writer does not make a living from his or her books -- they are
lucky to make minimum wage. The average advance for a first novel is
$2000. It might take an author a year's work to get the book in a state
that they will be offered a contract, and another six months of extra work
before it is ready to be published. Something like 90% of books never get
any royalties beyond that first advance, and they never get offered a
second contract. You do the maths.


>> It churns my stomach to see
>>thieves and con artists like the RIAA trying to take the moral high
>>ground with talk of "copying is theft".
> 
> Copying is theft of opportunity for the creator to be rewarded for his
> efforts.  The RIAA serves an important role in attempting to introduce
> this idea as part of our social norms and courtesies.

The RIAA are the biggest thieves and pirates out there. Their concern for
artists is *negative* -- they will, and have, deliberately attempted to
impoverish artists out of spite or an attempt to control the market, even
if it costs them money in the short term. I'm married to a musician who
had a long career in California, I know what I'm talking about. Or ask
George Michael what he thinks of the RIAA and the labels.

Or read this:

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html


-- 
Steven.