13 Feb
2013
13 Feb
'13
9:57 a.m.
On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Louigi Verona <louigi.verona(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Your thinking is in the right direction. Indeed, if you are given a book
Yes this was the point I was getting to. But I would disagree that
copyright itself binds third parties. The current implementation via
legislation and execution may do so, but that is a mistake in
implementation and not in principle. Implementations can be refined so long
as the principles are sound.
under contract, then you have to abide by the
contract. But let's say you
decided to break the agreement and copied the book on the Internet or gave
it to your friends. All those people made no contract with the author and
thus they cannot be and should not be bound by the contract. What copyright
does is bind third parties, which never agreed to the contract.
There are other cases. Public broadcasting is one. You
turn on your TV and
see Harry Potter. You were not presented with any contract. Why should you
be bound by any conditions? If the author of Harry Potter wanted to
distribute her book only under contract obligations, she should not have
let it broadcast on TV.
It is widely accepted public knowledge that the material on television is
covered under copyright. I know this when I turn it on, except for when I
am very young perhaps. So there is a contract in the same way that as you
say, "some things are just out there". Also the credits for television
programs and films contain explicit copyright information. TV is not public
domain, it is for the most part a private system of distribution that most
mentally functioning adults know the conditions of use for when we buy a
TV.
The other case is the one I mentioned - someone
breaking a contract.
There are other options, like accidents. You leave a book on a bench.
Unless the book itself contains a full blown contract in it, there is no
way for Joe who finds the book to know. In fact, even if the contract is in
the book, Joe did not sign it.
I assume this is explicitly why copyright information is placed at the
beginning of books. And again, this is a flaw with the implementation if
Joe were to be punished in such a case, and not with the principle itself.
Further there *is* a way for Joe to know if he pays attention at all
throughout life, as copyright is a well known fact of cultural life.
Pleading ignorance in such a case is not a sufficient defense.
Additionally, some things are just out there. You invent something. The
other person sees it. He has no contract with you. Why
should he restrict
actions with his own body and his own property? What legitimate reason is
there to not act on a new knowledge you have?
My understanding is that this is the reason why the distinction between
ideas and the execution of them is made in copyright and patent law.
Finally, if each time you enter a store and decide to buy a DVD, you were
explicitly told that you will not simply be able to
share copies, but that
you should agree to not use the knowledge you gain from the DVD and act as
if you have no such knowledge, I am not sure most people would agree.
You watch Harry Potter. And, according to the contract a typical copyright
proponent would want you to sign, you hen have no right to act on the
knowledge you have acquired, namely, the plot, ideas, characters. All of
this is knowledge you now have in your brain. Copyright wants you to
pretend you only have this information in read-only format.
Seems like a strawman to me. There are reasonable copyright proponents who
don't think suing people for acting on the knowledge of a plotline is a
reasonable thing to do, unless that action consists of seeking monetary
gain by directly copying the original content. Yes, there are also
unprincipled types who will look for any legal justification to gouge and
increase profit lines, but this has very little to do with copyright itself.
To be clear, I don't consider myself a copyright proponent as such. But I
do think that if a group of people wants to enter into a collective
agreement to share content in a certain way, that should be their right. If
I happen to come onto some of that content without having entered into
their covenant, then that community should take action against the one who
made that content available to me. If I take the content in full knowledge
that such a covenant exists, then I am acting inappropriately So yes, I
consider it a bad habit when I download an unpaid-for copy of a copyrighted
artwork in full knowledge that such copyright exists. The reason I might do
it is that I have desire, but desire in itself is not a justification to
deny the value of content. If anything, I think we should recognize that
creative content that produces desire does have real value, and that is the
reason we are so keen to copy it in the first place.
Anyway, this has all gotten way off the Linux Audio track, so I'll leave it
at that.