Speaker: Copyright Must Change
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Gio was suggesting that whilst the internet is surely empowering to some, as a result it may have undermined other institutions that were doing some good, and thus has simply shifted power, rather than 'generally empowered humanity'.
That's a pretty fair characterisation, yes, thank you. The fact that I might think that on balance the result is a net positive for humanity, even a significant one (it certainly is for me personally) doesn't mean that I think that there will be positives for everyone, or in equal measure, or in every single respect. And I know that nobody here thinks that, on reflection, but sometimes in the heat of the argument things go that way.
The issue is not whether we should have the Internet or not have it, of course we should. It's how we manage the transition, how we account for the disparities, how we make the most of the opportunities for democracy and social progress. Rethinking copyright is one of those things.
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I'd be very interested in your polling data in temrs of professsions
Kind of gave myself away as one of the reptilian people there, didn't I?
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The people it does happen to include have an obligation I think to examine their privileged speaking position, and not assume that they represent a totality, *the* people.
In this debate, the potential losers being existing copyright holders? People whose very work was undertaken on the explicit assumption that they would own a piece of the means of reproduction?
Certainly they will lose out some. Is this in dispute? Anyone?
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You're only part reptile, dude. I've got a copy of your thesis on my PDA now, so that I can read it in bed. I can't promise not to fall asleep if I hit a particularly postmodern patch, but I am trying to get what it is you fear so much about the future of the digital age.
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I am trying to get what it is you fear so much about the future of the digital age.
At the cost of giving the ending away, I don't have any fear whatsoever - the Internet for me personally is a godsend. My point is rather that the people who are afraid and the manifestations of their fears, which are so easily dismissed as conservative and backward looking, deserve to be understood and properly evaluated.
I'm not a futurologist, but I forsee you're going to have no difficulty at all falling asleep for the next several nights, Ben.
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Well, you have been talking about the good of society a fair bit, and I always understood it to mean the good of the networked society, made up of the mysterious and not otherwise defined "individuals" you were talking about no longer than one page ago.
If I'm talking about the networked society, I'll say so. If I'm talking about "society" then I mean everyone, on the net and off.
The people it does happen to include have an obligation I think to examine their privileged speaking position, and not assume that they represent a totality, *the* people.
And yet I don't think I've ever claimed to represent anybody at all, apart from myself.
I'm starting to think your arguement with me is actually with your own assumptions.
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I'm starting to think your arguement with me is actually with your own assumptions.
It must be that, and I don't really feel like going another twenty five rounds. But you're the one who wrote this no longer than two pages ago, right?
The net gives more power to the individual than ever before.
I took it to be a pretty good example of what I meant. Who's "the individual"? "Optimal copyright term" for whom? I think the talking past one other that has been a hallmark of this whole discussion has to do with a markedly different understanding of those key terms. But I'll shut up now.
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I'm starting to think your arguement with me is actually with your own assumptions
Aren't all good arguments like that?
My point is rather that the people who are afraid and the manifestations of their fears, which are so easily dismissed as conservative and backward looking, deserve to be understood and properly evaluated.
I often feel that way in my work. Experienced programmers get a good feel for what is easy and what is hard to program, and also what is a good way to do it, and what is not. But when confronted with a potential change to organizational procedures that are 'plainly worse' us old guys are often seen as simply recalcitrant. Sometimes that is true, and recalcitrance is exactly what it's about. But other times (IMHO most of the time), it's really that we've actually been down these stupid paths before, often many times, and we're sick and tired of being told how to program by non-programmers. It's not any inherent dislike of the proposed 'efficiencies' of the 'new' idea, it's annoyance at how inefficient and old the ideas often are, how divorced from practicality, and how hard it is to convey that without the years of experience.
Which can lead to a feedback loop. If management thinks you're recalcitrant and treats you that way, then you very often become so.
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I'm not a futurologist, but I forsee you're going to have no difficulty at all falling asleep for the next several nights, Ben.
Just as well you aren't. You might be underrating how compelling what you're talking about is. At risk of making a joke that only you will understand, reading what you're saying is like taking a walk down memory lane, something I always enjoy.
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Which is not to say that the existence of a platform for dialogue that can reach a very large group indeed (perhaps unprecedently so) of students, office workers, journalists, academics and the like is a bad thing, of course it isn't. But it privileges and empowers certain people, and not others. Those people ought to perhaps try to bear it in mind, instead of assuming that they are the voice of democracy and speak for everyone.
Oh, okay caught up now. And I simply don't accept your premise. How is this internet forum exclusionary in nature compared to, ooh, pretty much any salon that has preceded it in history?
In one sense, it's easy to see the community here as homogenous; in another it's diverse in a way that I can't picture in any other setting where ideas might be discussed.
Of the 25,000 people who visit Public Address in a decent month, a much smaller group actually comments here. But even that group is a broader church than you might find in Parliament, a university common room or a boho cafe.
The NZ segment of the World Internet Project revealed some intriguing things about the uses we have found for the internet.
A majority of Maori and Pasifika people, for example, believe the internet has helped keep their languages alive. Fewer Maori use the internet than any other major ethnic group -- but that's still two out of three.
And Maori and Pasifika people who do use the internet have a higher rate of use of most online activities than Pakeha. In particular, those groups seem to use social networking applications differently -- and very intensively.
It verges on patronising to assume any particular group might not be able to handle these great tools.
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The net gives more power to the individual than ever before.
I took it to be a pretty good example of what I meant. Who's "the individual"?
Are you serious? There's nothing deep or metaphysical here. Who isn't "the individual"?
The key strength of the net is the removal of the middle man or "disintermediation". You don't have to go through a proxy to get heard. A writer doesn't have to have a publisher, a photographer can market their images directly to the world, and not just to stock companies like Getty, a musician can release their music as they feel fit, without having to satisfy a label.
And please don't start saying it doesn't apply to people who aren't connected because I know it doesn't. The Internet mainly empowers those who are connected to it, because a connection is required to make use of it. But connectivity is growing daily. The OLPC is a perfect example of people connecting and collaborating in areas that don't even have telephones. It small, but it's a start.
Simple truth - people have been empowered by their connection to the net.
"Optimal copyright term" for whom?
Not one of mine, you'll have to quiz Jon on that one.
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Gio wasn't suggesting that anyone who did get connected was losing out. Nor was he making excuses not to connect for those who haven't yet. It was more that the connected world has a big influence on the non-connected world, and that it can hurt the non-connected world mightily, and responding to that with "SO CONNECT" isn't totally fair.
His point is especially in the context of this copyright discussion, wherein the wholesale movement to electronic form of authors will basically disconnect people who weren't connected from something they valued greatly.
My Grandmother would be a good example. I think I can safely say she will never in her life use a computer. She has enough trouble with the television. But she is still a voracious reader, indeed it's one of her last remaining joys, and probably the main thing keeping her very old mind very sharp. Any author that she reads who shifts to cut out the middle-man is going to cut her out too.
My wife's father was pretty much laid off because he couldn't really handle having to use a computer. Which was barely relevant to his job, something he was still doing quite adequately (at least the way he tells it).
Will somebody please think of the old folks? :-)
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Oh, okay caught up now. And I simply don't accept your premise. How is this internet forum exclusionary in nature compared to, ooh, pretty much any salon that has preceded it in history?
It is no more so (and possibly a great deal less) than any other new communication technology in history - writing, print, etc. That doesn't mean that the transition will be an absolute wholesale progress in every single one of its facets or that the technology won't be in some ways exclusionary - although it's a term I've explicity resisted. I've merely suggested it's going to empower some people more than others, and I stand behind that. If for no other reason that it's empowered me more than a ton of people I know.
Of the 25,000 people who visit Public Address in a decent month, a much smaller group actually comments here. But even that group is a broader church than you might find in Parliament, or a university common room.
I'm simply suggesting it's not the same as *everyone*.
It verges on patronising to assume any particular group might not be able to handle these great tools.
I never said that, although no doubt there will be people who won't be able to handle them, or whose lives will be poorly described by the digital ways of accounting for human experience. But, for the last time: I'm not a critic of the Internet. I'm a critic of the people who think that everyone stands to gain equally and all at the same time. Like, you know, this guy. Who's not the least influential person on the planet.
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Okay, Ben said it better. Wilsoooon! (Shakes fist)
But when I wrote a piece about my mum along those lines, my partner pointed out that her own experience wasn't that dissimilar. And she's pushing forty, not eighty.
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I won't say I agree with you, Gio, but I am trying to understand. One counter argument for my Grandma example is that there's nothing stopping someone like me, who already helps her with the television, from helping her get stuff off the net.
I have actually already done this - just before the current Iraq war she commented to me how horribly disconnected she felt from the truth, that what she was thinking about the war was not being represented in any of the media she could easily access. I made a point of finding a whole bunch of articles from Google News and various other places (including Hard News), printing them out, and giving them to her to read. Next time I saw her she was mighty grateful and asked what newspaper I'd got them out of. When I said it was all off the internet and had taken me only an hour to compile, she perked up interest, but when I began to explain it in any more detail it was pretty clear to me that she became frightened and angry. She's never asked for a repeat.
Now, was that fair of her ?
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His point is especially in the context of this copyright discussion, wherein the wholesale movement to electronic form of authors will basically disconnect people who weren't connected from something they valued greatly.
I think you should have put <jack_valenti> tags around that ;-)
Books aren't going to disappear, in the physical form. Not for a very long time. Live performance didn't disappear when movies and TV came along, radio is still there, etc.
And there will always be those who are excluded by circumstance or choice from any change in society. The Internet is the biggest change since the printing press. It's about doing things differently, not just faster or more abundantly. Scarcity truly disappears in the digital world (unless it is maintained artificially), and our economic value system is built around scarcity. This will have flow on effects to the non-connected world as well, I am sure. I can't begin to imagine how that will work, but it will.
There are countries that are currently not able to participate. There always have been countries that don't really participate in the world's economy (with or without globalisation). There probably will always be, if we continue along the same ideological and fiscal line. But the technology continues to get better and cheaper and those countries will eventually have the opportunity to participate digitally.
There, likewise, will always be individuals who can't or choose not to participate for a variety of reasons. I can accept that, and move on without them, because I believe that the rising tide will lift all the boats (bugger, I'm using right wing metaphors!), that the benefits will flow out to the non-connected portions. Again, I don't know how yet, but I'm sure they will. It's how change works.
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I've merely suggested it's going to empower some people more than others, and I stand behind that. If for no other reason that it's empowered me more than a ton of people I know.
Well, that's uncontroversial enough. I still feel like I'm missing your point though ...
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Well, that's uncontroversial enough. I still feel like I'm missing your point though ...
We've been having for the best part of 46 pages a conversation that is also about the asymmetrical benefits of a networked society, but I personally felt at times that the debate was framed instead as "way forward vs. backward conservatism", which is why I've been siding with robbery on more than one occasion. That's more or less it. Except to say you can't really expect me not to offer my two cents when somebody actually writes the sentence "adapt or die".
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I remember it well - and you get no quarrel whatsoever from me there.
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And yet I don't think I've ever claimed to represent anybody at all, apart from myself.
your posts come across as lectures, you're not asking questions, you're telling it how it is, there by representing the truth and there by representing everyone.
you rarely, if ever say "in my opinion" -
our economic value system is built around scarcity. This will have flow on effects to the non-connected world as well, I am sure. I can't begin to imagine how that will work, but it will.
Particularly applies to artists, authors - whose works are treated as commodities in the marketplace but never are for their creators - and who depend on their marketers, such as galleries and publishers to do a lot more than present a shop window (whether that's in the physical world or online) and take the cash. Artists are constructed as "special" because, dammit, they are. They are not a production line. Artists depend on their marketers to create a mystique around their work, do all the schmoozing and selling, so they can carry on painting etc & make best use of their time. That's the bit artists are good at.
To suggest that artists can simply cut out the middle man and market their own work online is simplistic. I would never buy a painting or sculpture online that I hadn't seen & touched - but then i wouldn't buy artworks to "go with my lounge" either. While online marketing is useful, i can't see it replacing galleries.
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I'm wondering if I fit the title from the Your Views parody thread "Pointless Peacemaker", but:
your posts come across as lectures, you're not asking questions, you're telling it how it is, there by representing the truth and there by representing everyone.
you rarely, if ever say "in my opinion"I don't think he should actually have to. You can read a lot more into Mark's tone than is necessarily there. He's just putting his case strongly, showing his level of conviction about this. Let's get back to the topic rather than the personalities?
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a musician can release their music as they feel fit, without having to satisfy a label.
They always could, I did it, all it takes is paying for it yourself but you're still in a similar place as you are with the empowered net in that you've got your wares but you still have to draw attention to it to 'sell it'. In reality that is as difficult as it ever was.
The main other difference is that now anyone can release a musicians music without consent or control from the artist in a way the artist did not intend and presently pretty much without repercussion, and I would put it that depending on the artist the internet has removed more power than it has given them, if power is control over their works.
it may have enhanced the amateur position but the professional has been left guessing how to best survive in the new environment.for all the calls for "adapt or die" and "world of opportunity" in the last 10 years the look of the music, film, and book world is predominantly not one of an empowered and in control group.
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Let's get back to the topic rather than the personalities?
the sub topic was who are we talking about when we talk about "everyone".
If you're speaking on behalf of a group of people then it helps to know who that is, if its a personal opinion then perhaps its helpful to indicate that it is infact that.
I wasn't trying to make a personal attack on mark, I like him and his discussion, I'm just noting how his posts come across. I get the impression he speaks for a big group of people. He'd make a good politician with those public speaking skills.
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