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[Ben Sizer]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> Successful software businesses are not merely founded on the process of
> having ideas and implementing them - they might also need to be
> effective at delivering those ideas and going through the whole process
> again and again. Writing a neat utility for Windows is not by itself
> the foundation of a successful business - other factors are critical,
> whether they be continuous improvements, service, support, or a number
> of other things.

Yes, but this was never about 'successful software businesses' as such.
I'm not saying anyone deserves to earn a living just because they
created something, but that it is useful for them to be able to reduce
the ways in which others with more resources can replicate that
creation. You don't even need to be a 'successful' business to kill a
competitor, just to have more money in the bank for as long as the
competition exists. (eg. MS vs Netscape, Creative vs Aureal.)

> So, if we decide to ignore people waving pieces of paper around which
> make some claim to an idea or some way of solving some problem, instead
> investigating the actual code, others have pointed out already that if
> you provide just a binary and there exist people who want to know what
> you've done, those people will find it out whether you make it easy for
> them or not.

Yes, in much the same way that there is no point ever locking your
doors or installing burglar alarms, as a determined thief will
eventually steal your belongings.

I find it strange that people (at least on c.l.py) often equate
'imperfect protection' with 'pointless protection'. The all-or-nothing
attitude makes no sense. If you can halve the number of people who can
deduce your algorithm, that helps. If you can double the time it takes
for those people to deduce it, that also helps. If it took you months
of R&D, the value of even imperfect protection rises.

> Now, if we sidestep the issue of decompiling binaries and
> cast the affected work as some kind of service, the question can now be
> expressed as whether you should expect to be rewarded forever for
> providing such a service.

But what is 'forever'? Is it a single service for one customer that
persists forever? Or is it a service that will be invoked many times by
different customers forever? Since these are completely different
scenarios, the answer is "it depends".

> such issues could possibly increase competitive
> pressure rather than enhance any supposed competitive advantage if
> people felt that the market wasn't providing enough in the way of
> choice in that area.

I'm not interested in whether it's a sound business decision or not.
I'm just interested in the developer's right and/or ability to make
that call.

> > I'm not saying I agree with extending the copyright period, however I
> > do think you can't just compare it to 'a day at work'. It's a totally
> > different set of circumstances which requires a different set of rules
> > to both encourage artists to continue creating while benefitting
> > society in the long run too.
>
> For some of those musicians (ie. probably not Sir Cliff Richard), it
> probably was a day at work for which they were badly paid, whilst
> others (eg. Sir Cliff Richard) went on to make quite a bit of money. Of
> course, one can always argue that the result of this particular kind of
> day at work is something that can be enjoyed again and again, but then
> you should consider the issue of why the person working at the car
> factory doesn't get paid royalties every time you turn the key in the
> ignition (even if it's just $0.0001 each time).

There's a key distinction to be made here, at least legally.

Session musicians do work for hire - they're paid by the
hour/day/whatever, and typically have no copyright to the work they
perform on. They are analogous to the person at the car factory. Any
royalties they receive - typically none - would be from the contractual
agreement and nothing to do with copyright.

On the other hand, writing musicians/composers typically will be paid
absolutely nothing for their original creation. They never get paid for
it as such, but they can (and typically do) yield the copyright to a
publishing company in return for an agreed royalty rate on sales of the
reproduced item. They don't so much get paid forever for a service
rendered long ago, they just have their payment spread out over an
indefinite period of time, and that is dependent on people buying that
item.

This is no different from me investing my own time and money into
manufacturing 10,000 cars and selling them between now and 50 years
from now. The major difference is that replicating creative work is
typically much cheaper and easier than replicating automobiles, hence
the existence of various laws safeguarding intellectual property, as
without such laws there would be little incentive to create any such
works that were non-trivial. No-one is going to pay you up front for
it, so you need a way of protecting future potential income. Since that
future income is typically strongly linked to the quality of your work,
it's arguable that this is in fact a fairer business model than being
paid a normal salary.

-- 
Ben Sizer