Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Update on freeyourstuff.cc (content/user liberation)

[Tyler Romeo]

On Wed, May 11, 2016 at 5:42 AM, Alexander Berntsen <alexander@plaimi.net> wrote:

You are using language in which artists are deities, and have some
inherent "rights" that need "protection". I don't subscribe to that
world view, nor do I agree that freedoms for our cultural heritage
isn't as important as free software (although you personally go even
further and say that copy"right" should "protect" the "commercial
interests" of artists).

Now that's just delusional. Nowhere am I bowing down to the almighty artists and praising them for gracing us with their works of creation. I am implying (or rather, not even implying, but straight out stating) that artists are businesspeople. Maybe not all, but quite many of them hope to make a profit from their creations.

Unfortunately, whether you "subscribe" to the world view or not, the fact stands that authors, news outlets, etc. are all publishing their copyrighted creations in hopes of selling them to a large number of people. It has nothing to do with "freedoms for our cultural heritage", unless you plan on positing the false dichotomy that copyright protection can only be nonexistent or infinite.

In the end, I think you are confusing the term "copyright". Despite it's name, copyright is not a "right" of the artists. It is an economical mechanism (albeit an incorrectly executed one, in my opinion) to allow artists to more easily profit from their creations for a limited period of time, thus encouraging the actual creation of content. And I personally believe that the rights of an individual over information are not so extensive that the government should not be allowed to restrict the commercial use of it. Non-commercial use? Well that's a different story. As you say later, "Information wants to be free". But regulating business and profit is well within the authority of the government.

For what it's worth, your whole notion of how artists should be
prevented from reusing things is unreasonable nonsense. What if
someone had patented a C note and said that "I recorded this note
first, so you cannot include it in your music"? That's essentially
what's happening in the computer industry at the moment, but luckily
music pre-dates patents. (To take an example of a bigger work that's
just a plain retelling of something that already existed -- look to
about half of everything that Disney ever made. They are constantly
lobbying to ensure nobody else can benefit from the same stories they
benefited from, all in the name of their "intellectual property
rights" as "creators".) And what happens when someone *does* say "I
recorded this chord progression first, so you cannot use it in your
music", like The Hollies told Radiohead (for a song that The Hollies
ironically were just covering)? Nothing. The Radiohead song is still a
treasured hit.

It's 2016. Good luck making something (in *any* artistic field) that's
not derivative. Information wants to be free. Culture does too.

That is a vast oversimplification of the situation, and really does not make any sense at all with regards to my argument. Are you trying to say that because something as simple as the C note shouldn't be patentable (a completely different concept than copyright), that an author shouldn't be able to profit from their original creation for a brief period of time?

If you're trying to point out the fact that the concept of "derivative works" is a very large gray area, troubled with hundreds of years of case law, and that nobody is really sure where to draw the line between a derivative work and an original creation, then I observe your point. Even the free software movement has had its moments where authors were not sure whether, under the letter of the law, if something qualified as "derivative" and thus was subject to the terms of the GPL. But just because one area of the law is gray does not mean that the entire concept of copyright is useless and should be disposed of.

-- 

Tyler Romeo

Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2016

Major in Computer Science