[DMCA-Activists] Re: [DMCA_Discuss] Zittrain: Call Off the Copyright War

[William Abernathy]

Jean-Michel Smith wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 November 2002 11:54 am, William Abernathy wrote:
>
> > There is a lot more to writing than late-night coding, Project
> > Gutenberg, and bad sci-fi. It's work. 
>  
> Yes, it is work.  Learning to drive, to fly an airplane, to write software is 
> work.  It is all work.  That doesn't mean one expects a government 
> entitlement to make it easy, or even possible, to earn a living doing said 
> work, and while some pilots make a living flying aircraft, most of us do not.  
> We do it for other benefits, not least among them pleasure.  Simply because 
> something is work doesn't mean it isn't pleasurable, or that one MUST be paid 
> for it, or that one has a right to be able to do it as a fulltime job.
This is a poor example. Amateur flying is an end in itself. Commercial flying is 
a means to some other end. While most of the commercial pilots I've met enjoy 
their work, they do not like it so much more than staying at home with their 
families that they would do it day in and day out without someone charging 
passengers to get from point A to point B and paying them for their work. Should 
bus drivers and subway operators adopt this reasoning as well? I enjoy bicycling 
and motorcycling, and have ridden messenger bikes of both kinds. If you wanted 
me to deliver your packages because bikes are fun, I'd tell you to deliver your 
own damned package. Is this point somehow recondite?
> > I used to write for newspapers. In
> > order to get a newspaper article onto the page, I needed to make long
> > distance phone calls and burn gasoline in order to interview witnesses and
> > sources, and I had to be able to head down to County Records during regular
> > business hours, during which time I could not hold down another day job. To
> > do these things required that I got paid, and no matter how much I loved my
> > work, there was no way I could do it without either being independently
> > wealthy or receiving some consideration for my services.
>
> That is fine.  If what you provide the paper has value, they can pay you for 
> the work.  Would it really be that debilitating to be paid for the expenses, 
> for the work, as part of a commission, rather than OWNING a government 
> entitlement to a monopoly on the expression, and locking it up for the next 
> century or so?

Paid a commission out of what?

When I was an employee of newspapers, I was paid on a work-for-hire basis, which 
meant the newspaper owned the copyright, in exchange for having me as an 
employee, and all the slim privileges thereunto appertaining. As a freelance, I 
was paid (a "commission", if you will) for first North American serial rights 
per article, retaining my copyrights for reprints after the article ran in the 
paper. I agree that owning a monopoly and locking my expression up for the next 
hundred years is stupid. Seventeen years, renewable to twenty-eight works for me 
just fine.

I've heard Stallman argue for a copyright system, sharply limited and different 
in many ways from our current one, but at its core, a system of limited monopoly 
grants. Zittrain is pro-(limited) copyrights, Lessig is pro-(limited) 
copyrights, Stallman is pro-(limited) copyrights, as are all the trained legal 
minds in this movement. The problem is not copyright, but copyright taken to an 
extreme unforeseen by the founders and detrimental to the public good. This was 
Zittrain's point, grounded in a realistic understanding of how the world works. 
We do our cause a disservice advancing the notion that because software can be 
developed on a free creativity model, all intellectual endeavors can likewise be 
advanced.

> > Look, I agree. Copyright and patent laws are sucky legal albatrosses. Do
> > you propose a better alternative? 

> Yes, I do.  I have here, on this list, and elsewhere.  Look in the archives if 
> you are interested.  There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of alternatives to 
> granting monopolies if creating an economic climate that favors the work's 
> creator is what you are really interested in.

I am at a disadvantage here. I received your critique on a cross-post from one 
of six or seven different lists. And I apologize for the poor nettiquette of the 
massive cross-post, but that's how it hit me, and it's the only way I know to 
make it back to all players. Please direct me to your alternative vision, as I 
cannot tell which of these lists you're referring to. If your vision does not 
involve A) a monopoly grant, B) patronage, or C) creating alternate monopolies 
(i.e. giving away the record and charging for the concert and t-shirts), then 
you may have something new and different here, and I (and bunches of others) 
will be delighted to run with it.

> > This is the problem. I interviewed record
> > company executives in 1994 who were way clueful about what was coming down
> > the pike. Many very smart people have thought long and hard about this
> > problem, and none of them has yet figured out how to make A) the legal
> > fiction of intellectual property function in a world of global, high-speed
> > internetworking, and B) creators work for free.
>  
> They are looking for something that favors THEM, the publishers, and their 
> current business models, NOT something that favors the artists.
>
> And you know what?  They are as obsolete as buggy whip manufacturers, so it 
> should be no surprise that they could find no solution acceptable to them, 
> regardless of how smart they may be.

Having reported on the record business for a bunch of years, I believe that 
there's nobody who deserves a technological spanking more than record execs. But 
that is one relatively noisy camp of the copyright/information monopoly business 
that's a darling of our side because they're so shrill, so venal, and so 
vulgarly exploitative in their pursuit of a buck. And there are alternative 
models that work for musicians, as they perform live and have merchandise to 
sell. But novelists are positivvely dreary in concert, and cartographers and 
technical illustrators make lousy troubadors. How will they be compensated if 
their information is "freed?" It's not a simple problem, and we ought not to 
embrace simplistic solutions.

> > So your whole alternative to the legal edifice of copyright comes down to
> > airily waving your hands at "government entitlements of one sort or another
> > (tax breaks, etc.)?"

> > For all of Hollywood's and
> > New York's flaws (and they are legion), I trust the devils we know far more
> > than I am willing to entrust our aesthetic heritage to the Medicis on the
> > Potomac.
>
> "I fear change, therefor we should accept the problems and not change."
>
> You are entitled to that opinion, but you'll have to forgive me if I find I am 
> unable to respect it.

I really don't care whether you respect me or my opinions. As someone who is on 
your side in this debate, I'm merely hoping to remind you and the others reading 
to understand our opponents and not to be so fixated on the overreaching greed 
of the corporate copyright cartels that we cavalierly (and impractically) 
dismiss the ways in which the system works well to achieve valuable social ends.

> > But enough of this. I have to go write for money.
>
>
> Yes, you have a vested interest in the status quo, and it appears you will 
> fight any change you think threatens that, regardless of the cost to society.  
> Again, your perogative, but it isn't exactly a positive stance to take.

If you care to document protocol bridges, hardware controllers, and test 
environments on an open source model, be my guest. I am not harming society by 
doing this, nor am I fighting against change in order to shore up the vast sums 
I make from this activity. I have put in enough hours writing, advocating, and 
protesting for information freedom to know my motivations. It is the hallmark of 
the dogmatist (not to mention a cheap shot) to perceive any contrary opinion as 
being motivated by venal or malicious ends.


--William