From: Alex F. Bokov (alexboko@umich.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 29 2002 - 19:42:46 MST
On Thu, 28 Mar 2002, Hal Finney wrote:
> The third idea is impossible; who would own the copyright on a movie
> that is made by thousands of people?
The author would own the script. The producer would own the actual
film. The other principals in the creation of the movie would be
employees of the producer or creditors to the producer. Just one
scenario, many are possible. I agree with you that corporations are
impossible to get rid of in the short term, but we need to keep
looking for ways to do so, preferrably peaceful, free-market, and
self-perpetuating ways. Otherwise, we will slip into a command economy
in all but name.
Oh, and let's say that 14 years is too short for a copyright. How
about for the lifetime of the original authors, and make copyrights
non-transferrable? Is that reasonable?
> In my opinion, the situation we face is very clear. If unlimited
> free reproduction of information goods continues to be possible on
> the Internet, then the profitability of those goods is going to fall
> drastically, and people are going to stop creating them. In a nutshell,
> we are not going to have much new music and movies, if no one has to
> pay for them.
You haven't had to pay licensing fees for the TCP/IP protocol, the US
Constitution (or the body of British legal precedent from which it was
plagiarized), or the content you recieve every day off this list
(which itself probably contains innumerable technical violations of
copyright law, starting with the use of URLs which are patented by
British Telecom). Most or even all content is at some level
derivative. Erecting artificial barriers to the sharing and evolution
of content would have have the same frictional effect that taxation
exerts on the physical economy. The creation of free content is an
observable phenomenon, and instead of pretending that it isn't, we
need to figure out what mechanisms are causing people to create this
content.
> Some people deny this and point to alternative ways for these products
> to be funded, but none are convincing to me. Most people prefer to
Hmm. A band plays at a venue. They are paid by the venue owner for
drawing fans who consume beer (of the non-free variety). In the
process, they cell home-burned CDs for $10 each at approximately 97%
profit. If they were signed with a record label (which a vanishingly
small proportion of musicians ever are anyway) perhaps they'd have the
ability to sic the label's lawyers on those who pirate their CDs... on
the other hand, these lawyers (and the massive weight of the entire
legal bureaucracies of the US and Europe) have so far been powerless
to stop the flood of music-sharing... oh, and if they were signed
with a record label, they'd be making maybe a 2% profit on every CD
they sell. But, like I said, if you are a musician, you're
statistically unlikely to be one of the select few who are even given
that option. As a practical matter you probably HOPE people like your
tunes enough to share them with their friends, so maybe your growing
popularity will get you more gigs. Is that convincing to you?
Let's try another example. You are a computer consultant. You're sick
of installing multiple pieces of software by hand at site-call after
site-call. So, you write a bunch of scripts to automate the process.
They aren't perfect, but better than click-and-wait. You could try to
sell your scripts, but they're only needed by a small segment of the
market, and so are unlikely to make you a big profit. If you're a
moron, you'll jack up the price to $3000 per seat, and make $3000 x
0. Or, you can continue focusing on the consulting job that's your
bread and butter and release the source code so your colleagues can
also contribute to the project and effectively give you *their* brains
for 'free' in the form of the software you wrote benefitting from
their bug-fixes and patches. Is that convincing to you?
> just bury their heads in the sand and not face up to these uncomfortable
> facts. They are like Alex in the Doonesbury cartoons running this week
That goes both ways. I'm sure you've heard of Eric Raymond, yet every
word you write here makes it clear that you've not bothered to read
anything by him. I don't expect people to agree with him, but I do
expect any serious discussion to at least address the points that have
already been raised on this topic (and in some cases beaten to death),
and rebut the arguments you disagree with instead of ignoring them.
Here's the URL:
http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/
> They think there is an inexhaustable fountain of information goods and
> that they can drink from it forever for free. I hope that around here
> we can expect a little more rigor in our discussions of this problem.
> Foaming about the evil corporations is a distraction from the real issues.
Information is non-exhaustable because it is infintely duplicable at
negligible marginal cost. Food, gas, ammo, and human muscle power are
exhaustable. So, how about this-- I'll pay for the information I use
with the information I produce, and I'll pay for the physical goods I
use with my physical labor, my physical property, or the cash I obtain
from the sale thereof.
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