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Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

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Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#151

Post by AnthonyMouse »

lmm wrote: post #120
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users. ...in much the same way as Grokster and Napster, DMCA notwithstanding.

Post-DMCA it became a requirement to demonstrate that they were supporting copyright infringement (e.g. by showing screenshots of searching for and downloading songs that were not licensed for distribution that way in their marketing material) - see the Limewire case and the ongoing MegaUpload saga.

20th century BBS operators wore eye patches and drank rum and sailed the seas on wooden ships. The DMCA would not have saved them, so pre-DMCA cases where they lost tell you very little about what would happen to Google or Verizon without the DMCA.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#152

Post by Lawtonfogle »

josteink wrote: post #128
rubberstamp wrote: post #82

People should have the right to tinker with whatever they bought.Telling them only they can, and not an expert 3rd party, make the change is ridiculous as not everyone is a rocket scientist in the respective fields. If we buy car/tractor/phone/whatever, we should be able to modify it(its hw/sw) however we want. I fail to understand how it breaks copyright. No one is copying and distributing anything. Copyright law sh…

> Copyright law should be to protect IP theft. If you want to fix copyright, you need to realize it's a complex matter with lots of different actors and conflicting interests. Thus you will need to be able to discuss it accurately, to ensure people aren't getting a mixed message. So let me help you out with a starter pack of accurate statements. Copyright is not a fundamental right. It's an artificial monopoly enforc…

>Copyright is not a fundamental right. It's an artificial monopoly enforced by government based on promises of enriching society at large, by giving it back for free, in the future, after a limited period of exclusivity.

What right isn't granted by the government? We like to pretend that rights exist outside of governments, but the only right what a government gives is might makes right.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#153

Post by AnthonyMouse »

jamespo wrote: post #93
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Frena (1993) and Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. MAPHIA (1994). Both were held liable for unauthorized copies uploaded by users. ...in much the same way as Grokster and Napster, DMCA notwithstanding.

Grokster & Napster responded to DMCA takedowns promptly did they?

In which case was that why they lost?

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#154

Post by zodiac »

zodiac wrote: post #84
rubberstamp wrote: post #82

People should have the right to tinker with whatever they bought.Telling them only they can, and not an expert 3rd party, make the change is ridiculous as not everyone is a rocket scientist in the respective fields. If we buy car/tractor/phone/whatever, we should be able to modify it(its hw/sw) however we want. I fail to understand how it breaks copyright. No one is copying and distributing anything. Copyright law sh…

If we really put this into law in a way that works, what's going to happen is that companies will stop selling people tractors and instead lease them to people for an unlimited amount of time for a one-time payment, or something similar.

Edit: seems like people misunderstood, I meant the tractor company structures it like a lease but it is effectively a sale. For instance, unrefundable upfront cost of $10k, per annum cost of $1 after that.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#155

Post by rubberstamp »

noselasd wrote: post #142
jwr wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine, really, as long as you don't use words "purchase", "buy" and "ownership". Call a lease a lease. In this scenario, one of two things would happen: * either there is a genuine need for buying/owning fixable hackable tractors, in which case there will be a market and companies will appear that sell those, * or there is really no need, and leasing works just fine for tractor users, and it's only us couch-c…

The issue I have with that is that it screws up minorities. There's likely always going to be a minority that wants or needs to fix their own tractor(or car) or have an independent 3. party fix it. If that minority is objectively insignificant - well fine. If that minority is 20% of all tractor (or car) owners, the manufacturers can switch to a lease model, and screw over 20% of the customers, those can either give i…

20% market share is significant enough for any new manufacturer. Provided their product doesn't lack in quality it will have the 20% disgruntled customers and gain more as their product reputation increases.

What you described could happen, if tractor market is a monopoly or if all manufacturers collude, which shouldn't be allowed to happen. American broadband situation is a good example when there is monopoly due to lack of choices. They can price whatever they want for broadband and treat you royally when you contact their customer service because you can't switch ISP.

Like in the extreme case of price hike of a pill to $700, that is what happens if copyright law stays the way it is now.

Current situation is not a win for customers or the general progress. There is a lot of room for improvement.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#156

Post by marknutter »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #152
josteink wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright law should be to protect IP theft. If you want to fix copyright, you need to realize it's a complex matter with lots of different actors and conflicting interests. Thus you will need to be able to discuss it accurately, to ensure people aren't getting a mixed message. So let me help you out with a starter pack of accurate statements. Copyright is not a fundamental right. It's an artificial monopoly enforc…

>Copyright is not a fundamental right. It's an artificial monopoly enforced by government based on promises of enriching society at large, by giving it back for free, in the future, after a limited period of exclusivity. What right isn't granted by the government? We like to pretend that rights exist outside of governments, but the only right what a government gives is might makes right.

> What right isn't granted by the government

Inalienable rights (by definition, in fact).

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#157

Post by JoshTriplett »

mindslight wrote: post #2

If copyright law actually respected a balance between creators and the public, anything under digital restriction technology would be ineligible for it, since there's clearly no intention of adding to the public domain after the period is up. Of course we know it doesn't. Anyone with half a brain knew the DMCA was a bad idea when it was being "debated". Now it's accepted because we've grown accustomed to workarounds.…

> If copyright law actually respected a balance between creators and the public

Even talking about a "balance" suggests that we should acknowledge some inherent right of copyright holders for its own sake, rather than just as a means to an end. We shouldn't. We simply have a tradeoff between two desires of the public: getting more works produced, and getting those works into the public domain (to allow reuse/remixing/etc).

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.htm...

The difference between a life+70 year copyright versus a lifetime copyright seems unlikely to lead to the creation of any additional works. The difference between a lifetime copyright and, say, a 30-year copyright, might result in some additional creation of works, but probably not as many as the works suppressed by the inability to reuse/remix 30-year-old works. So if we want to use copyright as an incentive, why do we increase it without bound, without thinking about how many more works we'll get?

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#158

Post by thescriptkiddie »

ck2 wrote: post #88

I'm curious why freedom-to-tinker is not considered free-expression in the USA, clear and simple. I mean we pride ourselves on it. As long as the item is purchased (owned) and it is for personal use and warranties are clearly voided, what business is it otherwise to the manufacturer after they make the sale. Of course they can get around this by never actually selling the tractor and only leasing it to farmers, then…

Our government does not take pride in it. People who can fix things or build things themselves are a danger to corporate interests, so hackers are considered to be dangerous criminals. Nobody gives a fuck if that means we're destroying our own future, because that's our children's problem.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#159

Post by Avenger42 »

Hmmm...

> By the time we got an exemption to repair tractors, the Copyright Office said that only the farmer, and not her mechanic, could tinker with the software.

So this part of the issue is that you can only tinker with machines you own yourself? Then how about this:

1) Farmer sells tractor to mechanic for $1.

2) Mechanic repairs tractor.

3) Mechanic sells tractor to farmer for $1 + cost of repairs.

Re: Before I Can Fix This Tractor, We Have to Fix Copyright Law

#160

Post by zanny »

mindslight wrote: post #55
zanny wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 years ago when IP had volume costs associated with it, where there was no way for creator to interact with consumer, they were useful. Flawed, but served their purpose. Today, the purpose is lost, and the use is exploitative.

The original purpose was to incentivize creative works, and the desirability of that hasn't really gone away. For example, Free software would be a lot further along if there could be a lucrative business model behind it. Enforcement is just utterly at odds with physics and at this point, the idea of "owning" control of bits in someone else's possession is incompatible with a free society.

There are plenty of lucrative business models behind free software - look at anything from Red Hat, who uses support contracts to fund development, to Krita, which uses crowdfunding each year to fund full time development. And within that spectrum you have projects like Qt, which offers proprietary licensing to appease lawyers to fund development of what will soon be a fully open source toolkit. Gitlab is doing fine despite their platform being open source, too.

At that, I agree that when you are offered a government enforced monopoly on information, that will be much easier to extort revenue from users with than trying to use one of these alternative means of funding development and profiting from information creative work. But like you said, its wholly imaginary and artificial.

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