[T]o accept that the functionality of a computer program can be protected by copyright would amount to making it possible to monopolise ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.
- Press release accompanying the European Court of Justice ruling that you can’t copyright a programming language.
People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
- Banksy, via Jack of Kent.
And while we’re on the subject, here’s Bill Hicks on Marketing:
Observant watcher(s) of this blog may have noticed a slight category change recently. Under the Ranting category there used to be a category of rants filed under Copyright, Patents and Trademarks. This has now been split out into three separate categories: Copyright, Patents and Trademarks.
The reason for this split is that clarity matters. Copyright, patents and trademarks are different constructs with different histories and different reasons for existing. Consequently, the issues that stem from each are different. When these issues are clumped together, the result is invariably an unholy mess of confusion and, ultimately, bad legislation. Like ACTA.
There are a variety of issues that need to be worked through with regards to these things, and a whole range of questions that need to be resolved. We will never be able to build a consensus, however, if we can’t even agree what we are talking about.
It comes from The Register who managed to caption an article about the family estate of science fiction writer Philip K. Dick abandoning their attempt to leech money out of the makers of The Adjustment Bureau with: Dick estate gets stiffed.
Many advocates of extending copyright and bringing the full weight of the legal system down on copyright infringers cite the need to protect content creators against the hordes of downloaders swapping material for free. Here’s an example (via) of how this works in practice:
After nearly five years of bitter and depressing legal back-and-forth only slightly ameliorated by the fact that it concerned a biker with a flaming skull, Marvel has won a lawsuit that forces Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich to stop identifying himself as “Ghost Rider creator Gary Friedrich,” simply because he is the creator of Ghost Rider.
This all started back in 2007 when Friedrich sued Marvel claiming that rights to the character had reverted back to him in 2001. Marvel responded by arguing that Friedrich had relinquished all rights when he cashed his paychecks, all of which were stamped with a bit of boilerplate legalese. Marvel then counter-sued Friedrich in 2010, seeking damages for all of the Ghost Rider prints and other merchandise Friedrich had sold at conventions.
As payback, not only can Friedrich no longer sell his own Ghost Rider merchandise, he can’t even represent himself as its co-creator, thereby robbing him of any potential financial gain he might accrue from convention appearances and the like. (He will, however, still be able to sign officially licensed Marvel merchandise, either with ink or bitter tear stains.) In addition, Marvel is also demanding $17,000 from the unemployed, financially destitute 68-year-old, which Comic Book Resources surmises will serve as a warning to all others who currently enjoy the privilege of selling their own unlicensed merchandise, and should maybe just keep their mouths shut then.
The problem with copyright, as it currently stands, is not that it is too weak or that random downloaders are destroying the entertainment industry. The problem with copyright is that it works to the benefit of distributors and against the interests of creators.
Copyright reform is long overdue.
And, for the last word on SOPA, here’s a copyright infringing YouTube video that I found via Nina Paley.
Last month, Cory Doctorow gave a keynote speech to the Chaos Computer Congress. It turned up online but I have to admit to not having watched it as yet. Handily, though, the text of the speech has been posted on Boing Boing and he makes a strong case.
The TL;DR version is that legislators keep on reaching for regulation that won’t work to solve problems they don’t understand. This is happening now with copyright (the US SOPA legislation being the currently most obvious example), but will continue to happen – and probably increasingly so – as technology progresses.
If we want to be able to own and trust our devices – from the MP3 players we listen to to the cars we drive – the instinct to regulate needs to be stopped. Now.
Glyn Moody reviews the UK Government’s response to the Hargreaves Report
By setting himself a more modest goal of pointing out the most flagrant absurdities of the system in our digital world, and offering plausible fixes, Hargreaves seems to have managed to convince the UK Government of the wisdom of accepting more or less all of them. That’s no mean achievement, and both parties deserve kudos for arriving at this starting point, even if the real legislative journey has only just begun.
Yesterday was World Intellectual Property Day which the World Intellectual Property Organisation has dedicated to, among other things:
[increasing] understanding of how protecting IP rights helps promote creativity and innovation;
In the 1930s an audio engineer named William Savory made a lot of high-quality recordings of live jazz performances of Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Teddy Wilson, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan, Coleman Hawkins and others. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired the collection after Savory died.
Steven Seidenberg of the ABA Journal reports that “jazz experts were stunned,” by the recordings. “The extent and quality of the Savory collection was beyond anything they had imagined.”
Unfortunately, we will probably never get to hear the recordings, thanks to current copyright laws.
The copyright system, as it currently stands, is broken and badly in need of reform. It doesn’t protect creators, nor does it promote innovation – instead it works to keep the control of creative work in the hands of a small cabal of monopolies. Rather than celebrating a broken system, we should be taking a serious look at what we want IP laws to achieve and how they need to change to meet these aims.
As a first step, Leo Loikkanen (via Glyn Moody) has put together a World Sharing Day manifesto – completely open and editable, of course – although the inital deadline for changes will probably have passed by the time you read this.
But do go read it. If nothing else the document provides an excellent basis to start talking about what we do want copyright (and it’s related licences) to achieve.
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