Would it be considered piracy...

[geoschmo]

So at what point DO you have the right to tell me that what I make is no longer mine to control? Why is 40 years to long? You are free to write your own song are you not? I am not restricting your freedom. You are taking away the freedom of the artist to determine what is best for his art.

Because something is popular does not make it right. You cannot change the laws to fit a mob mentality. That is anarchy.

Geoschmo

[Baron Munchausen]

So at what point DO you let go of something you've been pushing on the public for decades? (Not something YOU created, either.) If you keep pushing it on people and it becomes part of everyday life you then have the right to charge them in perpetuity for part of their culture? If some corporation had been around to claim ownership of Shakespeare's works when he wrote them would we still be paying some company for the right to stage his plays? Sorry, that's not how it works.

This is not some radical new idea invented by 'leftists' or 'anarchists'. The definition of copyright in the constitution says copyright is limited. They did not recognize 'Intellectual Property', only an incentive to let people benefit from having added something new to the public sphere. (The same goes for patents, btw.) I wonder if the framers of the Constitution would have even rcognized 'art' as copyrightable. They were thinking of useful information like maps. If I'm never gonna see something leave copyright protection in my lifetime, is that 'limited'? Corporate lobbyists have had copyright extended and extended and extended throughout the past century, and it looks like they intend to keep extending it. The corporations plainly want to create a new Feudalism where they get paid forever for material that they DID NOT EVEN CREATE. The artists create it, then sign it away for the 'benefit' of distrubtion and marketting. Then the suits get the majority of the money. They have even tried to shut the artists out completely with this 'work for hire' trick. I don't doubt they intend to pursue that also.

You are falling for a shell-game when you think this is about artists rights. They are hiding behind the artists, exploiting them yet again. There was a hilarious lawsuit by Courtney Love for 'her share' of the damages recovered from Napster, you know. The company lawyers huffed-n-puffed and stiff-armed her. She didn't get a cent of the 'damages' recovered for the unfair exploitation of 'her' music, and neither did anyone else. It all went into the suits' stock options. This is about corporations attempting to create a new feudalism. When honest limits are accepted for copyright again we can worry about enforcement.

[ June 27, 2002, 16:37: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Well, I would agree that limited copyrights are not a totally bad thing. I was saying that extreme example for effect. If the original artist sells his right to a coporation, that corporation shuld not have the complete strength of the copyright protection as the artist. And I think we both can agree that the "Suits" as you call them get too much of the gains from the work.

But Napster didn't distinguish between a recording that was 15 years old, and one that was 15 days old. For all their potificating about improving access to music unavailable by other means, that wasn't their bread and butter and they new it. They were being just as disingenuos as the industry, and you are naieve if you don't see that. If that's all it was about then the lawsuit would have never happend and Napster would be plugging along to this day sharing old songs.

Geo

[geoschmo]

Baron, you ever notice how we always seem to start out on opposite sides of any discussion, and then over time our stongly held beliefs and compelling debate techniques draw us closer to a middle ground that is emminently resonable and practical?

What say you and I appoint ourselves Co-Emporers of the Earth. I think between the two of us we could do a pretty damn good job of running things.

Geo

[Suicide Junkie]

I'm curious as to how much "bread & butter" Napster actually made.
They certainly didn't charge people to get the program or even use it, and I don't recall anything about ad sponsoring either.

[Baron Munchausen]

Yes, people can abuse freedoms to do Bad Things. Lots of universities still print 'resource booklets' for their courses by photocopying chapters out of copyrighted textbooks and binding them together. Publishers have been trying to stop this, or extract a fee, for decades. It's not working. Should we put all photocopy machines under lock & key and have lawyers watch what everyone is copying to prevent this? Don't they have other important uses that make our open and productive society what it is?

Yes, people trade brand new songs in MP3s as well as older songs. In some cases it leads to new CD sales. In many cases the new songs are deleted because they aren't interesting enough. In a few cases people keep them. The odds are good that those people would not have bought the CD anyway.

What the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do is equivalent to locking up all photocopy machines to stop a fraction of the population from accessing a fraction of their 'intellectual property' with an unknown and unknowable effect on their revenues. Remember, the justification for legal action is loss of revenue. Can they prove that MP3 trading is not increasing their revenue through wider exposure? No.

Can it be proven that absolute copyright has had bad effects on the economy in general? Yes. Copyright is costing ALL OF US now. Time to reform it.

An article about the Limits of Copyright by Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law Professoer and an author of the petition:
http://www.thestandard.com/article/d...,16071,00.html

The 'home' site of the Eldred v. Ashcroft petition:
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/openlaw/e...legaldocs.html

LOOK at the list of co-signers! This is not a ground-swell of kids who want to copy music. This is rebellion from the established academic and scientific world.

[ June 27, 2002, 17:25: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
I'm curious as to how much "bread & butter" Napster actually made.
They certainly didn't charge people to get the program or even use it, and I don't recall anything about ad sponsoring either.

Well, no. I don't think they did ever pull it off to the extent he wanted to. But that was the "business plan" and the idea that he was pushing. I think the lawsuit pretty much brought it to a halt before his dream was realized. You don't think he was just doing it for the fun of it do you? Napster was a corporation at one point, and had some assets. I don't know what the source of the revenues were. Possibly investors looking towards possible future returns? If he had won the suit and had retained the right to do what he wanted, it would not have been long before you started seeing "subscription fees" and ads. In fact that is likely to be the end result of the idea anyway. But the issue over whether the content providor deserves any compenastion was the foundation of the whole disagreement.

Geo