[LAU] Changed: Copyright laws and such

[James Harkins]

drew Roberts <zotz at ...> writes:

> 
> On Wednesday 13 February 2013 10:02:31 James Harkins wrote:
> > Returning, for example, to the "repeating a joke" example: it's a straw
> > man, because repeating a joke around the water cooler at work earns me no
> > profit. I'm not cutting into the original comedian's compensation. If I get
> > up on stage and charge admission, that's different. No one should give this
> > kind of counterexample a second thought, but Kinsella does. Yawn.
> 
> You do know that copyright law disagrees with you though right?
> 
> Jokes, at least in the form of one liners and other short forms, cannot get 
> copyright protection.

A misunderstanding here: I disagree both with copyright in its present form AND 
with the libertarian arguments against copyright. I had stated previously that I 
am not a fan of copyright, so I don't understand why you're answering my post as 
if I were defending copyright.

I want to put copyright and contracts aside for a minute, and say something 
about the ethics. (Law is a reflection of a society's ethics -- an imperfect 
reflection, but still a reflection.)

If you create an intellectual product, and I want to do something with it -- 
distribute it, or create a new work based on the original -- common decency 
calls for me to *ask permission*. To do it anyway without asking is rude or 
disrespectful, maybe even dishonest.

Turning the pronouns around, if I make a bangin' dance track in SuperCollider, 
and you email me to say you love it and you want to remix it, I'd be thrilled. 
I'll even help you out -- I'll give you stems that I didn't release publicly. I 
bet a lot of musicians feel the same. But if I hear about your remix after the 
fact... I might like the remix, but I'll also feel peeved that you just 
appropriated my work without so much as a "good morning." Depending on how 
you're releasing it, my reaction may range between mildly irritated and furious, 
the latter especially if I release with a CC-BY-SA and you don't share alike.

This is my #1 beef with the libertarian point of view. Libertarians seem to be 
saying that the rude bastard is fully justified in being a rude bastard, AND 
that the law should protect his rude bastard-ness. And the original author, who 
was rudely bastardized? Tough. They have declared, more or less a priori, that 
material possession trumps all other considerations. Since the intellectual 
product is not a material possession, the author has no recourse. Further, she 
SHOULD have no recourse because any recourse is an "invasion" of the rude 
bastard's property.

Thus we have an ethic that celebrates dishonorable behavior as an expression of 
the ideal of free use of one's material resources, and disempowers someone who 
has done honest, hard work. I choose not to endorse this ethic, and I'm afraid 
that the discussion cannot progress as long as the primacy of material 
possession is non-negotiable.

One of my problems with copyright is that the companies that enforce copyright 
have no incentive to grant permission for derivative works. So, either nobody 
makes derivative works (no fun) or people don't ask permission, which is 
ethically dodgy. That's one reason why I don't enforce copyright on my own 
works, but I do license as CC-BY-SA. (I used to add NC "non-commercial" to that, 
but realized that it doesn't bother me if my work is used in a project that is 
sold for money *as long as* it is also share-alike, i.e., permitting derivative 
works.)

So, a question on my mind is, what mechanisms could the law use to discourage 
people from being jerks and copying without asking? I don't have an answer, but 
it seems to me that it's a more productive line of thought than paranoid 
language of "invasion" and even, at one point, truly silly speculation about the 
death penalty for copyright violators. I fail to see how any of that furthers 
the discussion in any way, and I intend to ignore those portions of Louigi and 
Drew's future posts that indulge in such (and I hope others follow suit).

hjh