Hard News: The Wellington Declaration
110 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 Newer→ Last
-
And US government calls bullshit on most piracy estimates.
Really? Now that's a bloody surprise.
-
I thought of you when I first read that one
-
TRONT was consulted? -rather elements within TRONT were consulted. When the Maori Party were informed of more widespread views, they withdrew their support for the canning of ECan.
The matter hasnt yet come before the hui-a-tau (wont, until November) when much more widespread views will be made know. -
Radio NZ interviewed specialist author Adrian Johns today about the history of copyright (streaming 30 mins).
-
Thanks Sacha.
-
The first paragraph of this (courtesy of Mark Harris) seems to contradict parts of John's history, or at the very least add another fascinating element to the development of copyright in the 200 years before the 1709 statute.
-
O! Very interesting Simon Grigg - and curiously not overwhelmingly surprising. Will go back and read it again, and then digest. And then comment.
-
I need to re-listen but he did seem to miss many points for an expert. Thanks, that reference is a coherent challenge to some fundamental myths - a recommended read.
It is vital to understand that these side effects are not accidents, not unexpected consequences of an otherwise well-intentioned effort to protect artists. Rather, they are an integral part of a strategy that, at bottom, has nothing to do with encouraging creativity. The purpose of this three-pronged industry effort — the publicity campaign, the legal campaign, and the hardware "protections" — is simply this: to prevent the Internet experiment from being carried out to completion. Any organization that is deeply invested in the concept of copy control cannot be pleased to see a system arise that makes copying as easy as clicking a mouse. To the extent possible, such organizations would like to see the same pay-per-copy model that we've been using for centuries continue, even though the fundamental physics of information have changed to make pay-per-copy obsolete.
Although the copyright lobby succeeds in getting new laws passed, and even in winning some court cases, these victories rest on a disintegrating foundation. How much longer will the public continue to believe in the copyright myth, the notion that copyright was invented to make creative work possible? The myth has been maintainable so far because it always had a tiny a grain of truth: although copyright was not inspired by authors, and was not enacted to protect them, it did enable the widespread distribution of many original works.
-
That link rather definitely has an agenda that it pushes hard. As a general rule, any discussion of the economics of copyright that doesn't have the words `public good problem' in it is missing something out (also beware of any discussion without `marginal cost'). In this case they are obscuring the fact that the marginal cost of a book off a trad press is very very low.
Personally speaking, I think conceptually it is quite messy, and I especially reject the notion that there is an Internet experiment to be carried to completion in that naive sense they seem to be using it.
(Networks make enforcement of copyright very expensive; that is the real change.)
And by the way, one of the big reasons Stallman was able to make the FSF work was a really really massive subsidy from the US & Massachusetts governments called the MIT AI Lab. I think that it was one of the best investments they ever made, but it's important to remember that the FSF had a huge amount of help from the state. I would also argue it's a large part of why free software works: it is in many senses the academy in the world. Pop music doesn't have an MIT or a Berkeley yet.
-
What the fuck happened to Democracy?.
Too much energy spent nurturing and celebrating freedom of speech, too little energy extended to engaging in protest and activism or anything else of measurable significance.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.