Copywrite laws are they to vague?

[PvK]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"Also, more reason why corporations should be forced to work for beneficial purposes, and not just for maximizing their own profits."

Define how Shrapnel Games benifits mankind.

I won't define it. However it obviously entertains many people, and games like SE4 get people to think, be creative, develop skills, and communicate with each other. It also supports and distributes the work of independent game developers. I'd say SE4 does some very unique and valuable things in the art of interactive entertainment.

PvK

[PvK]

Jack Simth, sorry for not quoting, but it's too tedious.

For corporate charters, I was thinking of more recent US situations rather than British crown charters. In the 19th century, for example, corporations were formed to establish large companies for things like interstate railroad construction. They had to be approved by government to ensure they were doing something for the common good, and not forming an evil for-greed only monster like we have dominating today's economies. No doubt there was still plenty of corruption, but at least the power was theoretically in the hands of the public to deny the existence of large powerful organizations whose purpose is solely to maximize its own profit margin and power.

You suggested "a significant slip up would cause, not a fine, but a total cease and desist order with frozen assets for five or ten years." for corporations - sounds good to me.

"It isn't always corperations that have problems with others duplicating their work - I have read a fair number of Online rants from independant authors that were having the same problem, especially in cases where an upright character was put in compormising positions."
- You mean, taking someone else's fictional character, and creating fiction about it where it does perverse things or gets killed or whatever? That's an interesting question for society to decide if it wants to legislate against. I'd say it's pretty mean and insensitive to do so, but I'm not sure I'd want a law prohibiting it.

I agree there is an issue with people pretending other people's work is theirs. I just think the patent and copyright laws are unsatisfactory, and are abused by many lawyers and corporations. It's a tough question with a lot of grey areas, it seems to me. In the absence of a fair system, I'd rather freedom prevailed rather than unjust enforcement.

Regarding Alice's comic example, you wrote:

That only works out so cleanly if the comic is long-term gold, rather than the short-term fad variety that is surprisingly common. For a long-term gold comic, it helps if the image gets out there; for the short-term variety, money needs to be harvested quickly, as there won't be more coming in after a short time. Meanwhile, Bruce's work that increases SEIV's sales is taking money out of Alice's pockets. Shouldn't it be up to Alice to decide which she gambles on?

It seems to me you are trying to enforce a certain unnatural market situation. It's up to Alice and her publisher to exploit her own commercial success. If Bruce's SE4 mod makes a lot of money for SE4, that's an unrelated market, and a natural success due to SE4's wonderful mod-ability, which it fully deserves, and is a natural product of the gaming market. It would be a real shame to say that generic modable game engines need to be outlawed, in order to protect an unnatural monopoly on the right of private citizens to generate free fan shipsets or mods for a generic game engine!

It's very similar to what Intel, Microsoft, and media megacorps are trying to foist onto the computer and media recorder industries! Humans have developed technology which could allow everyone to quickly and freely share all digital media, but these corporations are trying to criminalize, monitor, and prevent the simple act of copying digital information. Microprocessors that are hard-wired to check every data copy for "digital rights", etc. It's an amazing power grab, but I don't think it can Last forever.

You asked:
"So how do you propose to change human nature away from the herd mentality?"

Through good education that teaches people to think for themselves and question trends rather than follow them.

Individually, by pointing stupid herd behavior out to the more intelligent and receptive members of the species, and resisting stupid herd behavior wherever possible.

You wrote:

Besides, the United States of America is in the top five nations for per-capita creature comforts for the average person; part of that is due to the corporations' greed: they need to sell stuff better than their competiters, and to do that, they need to: Have a better product, make their advertising more entertaining, or make their product cheaper - any one of which can increase the creature comforts of the population (better product -> easier/faster/more effective -> more comfortable life; more entertaining advertising -> people are more entertained -> slightly better lives; cheaper product -> can spend more recources on other things -> slightly better lives).

How often are you entertained by American advertizing? How often is it mind-wrenching, moronic, inane, insulting, illiterate, vice-promoting, annoying-as-hell garbage? Hmm, how about software corps like Microslop and Harborg securing monopolies on their markets by tactics such as buying up creative smaller companies and then laying off their staff and making crap Versions of their products? How about McDonald's? How about corporate media? All vile crimes against goodness, if you ask me.

PvK

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by PvK:
Jack Simth, sorry for not quoting, but it's too tedious.

It's okay - I usually remove quotes of me anyway when I am replying.

Originally posted by PvK:

For corporate charters, I was thinking of more recent US situations rather than British crown charters. In the 19th century, for example, corporations were formed to establish large companies for things like interstate railroad construction. They had to be approved by government to ensure they were doing something for the common good, and not forming an evil for-greed only monster like we have dominating today's economies. No doubt there was still plenty of corruption, but at least the power was theoretically in the hands of the public to deny the existence of large powerful organizations whose purpose is solely to maximize its own profit margin and power.

That's just government contracting, which the railroads needed to get the land to build the tracks on. If they'd had the money for it (and the land was for sale) they could have bought all the land they were building the tracks on and done it without a charter of any kind, which is why I figured that you meant the old European system. And actually, many types of buisness do require charters - in the form of licenses.

Originally posted by PvK:
You suggested "a significant slip up would cause, not a fine, but a total cease and desist order with frozen assets for five or ten years." for corporations - sounds good to me.

Which was exactly my point - if you make corporations count as people, then you need to adjust things slightly so that they are treated like people; a total cease and desist is very similar to a prison sentence; freezing their assests just prevents it from being a death sentence; apparently you just hadn't thought the implications of corps counting the same as private citizens through.

Originally posted by PvK:

"It isn't always corperations that have problems with others duplicating their work - I have read a fair number of Online rants from independant authors that were having the same problem, especially in cases where an upright character was put in compormising positions."
- You mean, taking someone else's fictional character, and creating fiction about it where it does perverse things or gets killed or whatever? That's an interesting question for society to decide if it wants to legislate against. I'd say it's pretty mean and insensitive to do so, but I'm not sure I'd want a law prohibiting it.

I agree there is an issue with people pretending other people's work is theirs. I just think the patent and copyright laws are unsatisfactory, and are abused by many lawyers and corporations. It's a tough question with a lot of grey areas, it seems to me. In the absence of a fair system, I'd rather freedom prevailed rather than unjust enforcement.

The modern copyright and patent system wouldn't be nearly as bad if there was a decent time cap on them. Of course, the only problem with "fair" or "decent" is that everyone has different definitions of them when it comes down to specific implementation.

Originally posted by PvK:

Regarding Alice's comic example,
...
It seems to me you are trying to enforce a certain unnatural market situation. It's up to Alice and her publisher to exploit her own commercial success. If Bruce's SE4 mod makes a lot of money for SE4, that's an unrelated market, and a natural success due to SE4's wonderful mod-ability, which it fully deserves, and is a natural product of the gaming market. It would be a real shame to say that generic modable game engines need to be outlawed, in order to protect an unnatural monopoly on the right of private citizens to generate free fan shipsets or mods for a generic game engine!

I didn't say anything about outlawing SEIV; present law and rulings dictate that an object is leagal, not if it has no illeagal purpose, but if it has some leagal purpose, except for those things which are expressly outlawed (like crack). This is a small portion of the reason it is leagal to have butcher-knives in your kitchen. I was just trying to point out how Bruce could unintentionally hurt Alice by using her characters without her permission, which you had seemed to be denying was possible.

Originally posted by PvK:

It's very similar to what Intel, Microsoft, and media megacorps are trying to foist onto the computer and media recorder industries! Humans have developed technology which could allow everyone to quickly and freely share all digital media, but these corporations are trying to criminalize, monitor, and prevent the simple act of copying digital information. Microprocessors that are hard-wired to check every data copy for "digital rights", etc. It's an amazing power grab, but I don't think it can Last forever.

No, that's someting different - they are trying very hard to reverse the above law+rulings on what makes an object leagal, changing it to "It must have no illegal purpose." Very different, and yes, an amazing power grab. It is actually quite leagle to make a backup copy of stuff you have a license to - you just aren't allowed to distribute them, modified or not, free or not, without totally transferring the license and all copies to a single recipient (many licenses prohibit trasfer).

Originally posted by PvK:
Through good education that teaches people to think for themselves and question trends rather than follow them.

Individually, by pointing stupid herd behavior out to the more intelligent and receptive members of the species, and resisting stupid herd behavior wherever possible.

There have been a lot of people trying to design an education system that will do that for a long time; so far, they have had only very limited success with individuals that would likely have no problems with that in the first place. The other problem is that such attempts usually require a surprisingly small class size, which isn't going to happen until the school system gets considerably more funding.

Originally posted by PvK:

How often are you entertained by American advertizing? How often is it mind-wrenching, moronic, inane, insulting, illiterate, vice-promoting, annoying-as-hell garbage?

I find it depends on which shows I'm watching, which channel I am watching them on, and what time of day it is. Try it during a good documentary (and note: I said good documentary).

Originally posted by PvK:
Hmm, how about software corps like Microslop and Harborg securing monopolies on their markets by tactics such as buying up creative smaller companies and then laying off their staff and making crap Versions of their products?

That's what anti-trust laws are for; unfortunately, they aren't always enforced as diligently as they need to be.

Originally posted by PvK:
How about McDonald's? How about corporate media? All vile crimes against goodness, if you ask me.

The problem with corporate media is more a problem of a glut of channels; when there were only two or three channels available for any given area, there were only a few good show ideas a year, and so the bad ones tended to get thrown out. Now, you can pipe a few hundred channels into a household, but there are still only a few good show ideas a year. Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult to sort a good idea out from a bad idea beforehand, so the good ideas don't get the relative budget they desreve, and seldom get prime time. As for McDonalds, if people stop buying their food, they will eventually go away.

Originally posted by PvK:

PvK

Am I correct in assuming that we both agree that cutting down on the amount of time patents and copyrights Last would help (though still not be perfect)?

[Pax]

Originally posted by PvK:
No, I was talking about fan art, not piracy. Do you think fan art (i.e. mods and shipsets) are hurting SE4?

Even amateur movies modelled after existing commercial films mainly tend to promote and prolong interest in the commercial product - they don't reduce the sales of the product or its sequels.

PvK

The thing is, fan art or no, SE4 or Star Wars ... it's all one thing: IP.

You cannot remove protections of intellectual property for "the Big Guys", wihtout similarly stripping those protectiosn form the LITTLE guys.

If you removed the concept of copyright, then what would stop someone else from changing one bloody color in the SE4 UI, then handing out copies for free ... taking away from Aaron's ability to make a living producing the game ... ?

And, knowing that could be done, why in the nine hells would anyone MAKE such a game, and devote so much of their lives to improving it ... ?

[PvK]

Originally posted by Pax:

quote:

---

Originally posted by PvK:
No, I was talking about fan art, not piracy. Do you think fan art (i.e. mods and shipsets) are hurting SE4?

Even amateur movies modelled after existing commercial films mainly tend to promote and prolong interest in the commercial product - they don't reduce the sales of the product or its sequels.

PvK

The thing is, fan art or no, SE4 or Star Wars ... it's all one thing: IP.

You cannot remove protections of intellectual property for "the Big Guys", wihtout similarly stripping those protectiosn form the LITTLE guys.

If you removed the concept of copyright, then what would stop someone else from changing one bloody color in the SE4 UI, then handing out copies for free ... taking away from Aaron's ability to make a living producing the game ... ?

And, knowing that could be done, why in the nine hells would anyone MAKE such a game, and devote so much of their lives to improving it ... ?

---

I never suggested removing the concept of copyright and not having anything to serve its good purposes.

What I do suggest though are that:

* Fan art shouldn't be a copyright violation nor any concern of any lawyers, to include Marvel characters in Dungeon Odyssey mods, or Star Trek ships in SE4 mods.

* The existing patent and copyright systems are flawed.

* Ideally and eventually, the existing systems will be replaced by something very different, because it's fundamentally silly and wasteful to not use computers and networks to do what they do with great and natural ease - duplicate and distribute data which, once we get over our ancient and corrupt economic and legal institutions, will allow us to use it to share all data with everyone freely. All that's required is a replacement for the corporate-dominated system of employment and intellectual property ownership, so that creative people can earn a reasonable wage by virtue of how much people appreciate their work, without a corporate monster devouring most of the profit and dictating what everyone creates.

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:

quote:

---

Originally posted by PvK:
You suggested "a significant slip up would cause, not a fine, but a total cease and desist order with frozen assets for five or ten years." for corporations - sounds good to me.

Which was exactly my point - if you make corporations count as people, then you need to adjust things slightly so that they are treated like people; a total cease and desist is very similar to a prison sentence; freezing their assests just prevents it from being a death sentence; apparently you just hadn't thought the implications of corps counting the same as private citizens through.

---

What I meant was that corporations should not have the same rights as people, for instance:

* No right to sponsor candidates for government or petition government as if a private citizen. All attempts to influence government should be highly suspect.

* No right to freedom of speech. Corporate speech should be controllable by legislation.

* No "freedom to innovate" abusive predatory business practices.

* No perpetuating patents or copyrights by acting like an immortal person with insane wealth.

etc.

I never meant to say that they should be free from any of the obligations that people have.

Supposedly the USA is a government "for the people", not "for the megacorps" - organizations whose declared purpose is to maximize the corp's bottom line don't help any people except accidentally, or where it serves the corp's own needs. That's not good - corps should only exist where they help people and don't do harm.

...I was just trying to point out how Bruce could unintentionally hurt Alice by using her characters without her permission, which you had seemed to be denying was possible.

I'm not sure it's not possible. I think society needs to decide what level of bad behavior to tolerate, as in your "pervo-fan fiction" example.

As far as Alice goes, as I explained, I don't think your example would count as damage, because the modder didn't get anything, the product was in a different market from Alice, and SE4 sales were benefiting from a unique and valuable feature of SE4 (the ability to use player-made mods of any setting). I don't believe Alice has any claim to a share of SE4 sales because someone makes a mod based on her work.

Ideally, I'd hope to see a reward system where consumers can give approval to content providers, which results in them getting credit for the work that people like, but with distribution of the work being unrestricted. So Alice, Shrapnel, and even fan sites and modders could all get something to allow them to do what they do best, as long as enough people like it enough to register their approval.

No, that's someting different - they are trying very hard to reverse the above law+rulings on what makes an object leagal, changing it to "It must have no illegal purpose." Very different, and yes, an amazing power grab. It is actually quite leagle to make a backup copy of stuff you have a license to - you just aren't allowed to distribute them, modified or not, free or not, without totally transferring the license and all copies to a single recipient (many licenses prohibit trasfer).

Yes, that too. Similar to the moronic and vile attempt to outlaw encryption software, and the sniffing of all computer traffic for anything Big Brother might be interested in. It's not that evil schemers are fictional; it's that real evil schemers tend not to be as visible as they are in fiction.

There have been a lot of people trying to design an education system that will do that for a long time; so far, they have had only very limited success with individuals that would likely have no problems with that in the first place. The other problem is that such attempts usually require a surprisingly small class size, which isn't going to happen until the school system gets considerably more funding.

Well, the megacorps are dominating the economic system... if our civilization were more focussed on doing good than corporate commercialism, adding teachers and paying them enough would not be very hard at all.

...
The problem with corporate media is more a problem of a glut of channels; when there were only two or three channels available for any given area, there were only a few good show ideas a year, and so the bad ones tended to get thrown out. Now, you can pipe a few hundred channels into a household, but there are still only a few good show ideas a year. Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult to sort a good idea out from a bad idea beforehand, so the good ideas don't get the relative budget they desreve, and seldom get prime time. As for McDonalds, if people stop buying their food, they will eventually go away.

I'm more concerned about the level of control, and the motives behind the people with that control, than the quality level. Once again, it's controlled by organizations whose purpose is greed. Reporting standards are only valued as much as their perceived value as a commercial product, and to a slight degree, the amount to reduce fines and bribes to deflect ineffective government controls.

Am I correct in assuming that we both agree that cutting down on the amount of time patents and copyrights Last would help (though still not be perfect)?

Yes, absolutely!

I think we actually agree in principle on most things - we're mainly just bonking on specifics because you're talking more about the realities of the existing system, while I'm talking as an idealist about what I'd like to see happen.

PvK

[ June 21, 2003, 09:17: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Pax]

Originally posted by PvK:I never suggested removing the concept of copyright and not having anything to serve its good purposes.

Yet, to make fan art and otehr derivative works no longer protected by copyright (and, as an aside, trademark) laws ... you would have to do that very thing.

What I do suggest though are that:

* Fan art shouldn't be a copyright violation nor any concern of any lawyers, to include Marvel characters in Dungeon Odyssey mods, or Star Trek ships in SE4 mods.

Define "fan art" in such a way that it does not permit, by any reasonable means, person X to profit off the creativity of person Y, without Y receiving their fair share ... ? Assuming Y does not give X permission from teh get-go, of course.

* The existing patent and copyright systems are flawed.

The only flaw is that the period of protection has been extended indefinitely. Had we stuck to the original terms, the situation would be much better.

* Ideally and eventually, the existing systems will be replaced by something very different, because it's fundamentally silly and wasteful to not use computers and networks to do what they do with great and natural ease - duplicate and distribute data which, once we get over our ancient and corrupt economic and legal institutions,

PvK, no offense, but your repeated cries against how corrupt, monolithically-conspiratorial "megacorporations" controlling this, that, and the other ... leaves me with nothing so much as the impression that you are, in a word ... a crackpot.

I'm serious. The copyright law itself is not what is flawed ... it is the additions and modifications to it that are the problem. And specifically, the interminable extensions of protected status.

will allow us to use it to share all data with everyone freely. All that's required is a replacement for the corporate-dominated system of employment and intellectual property ownership, so that creative people can earn a reasonable wage by virtue of how much people appreciate their work, without a corporate monster devouring most of the profit and dictating what everyone creates.

Except, by the things you've described, there would be no way to guarantee that the most "appreciated" creative work would ever generate one thin dime for the author!

It's a little something I've heard called "the ******* factor" (pardon the language); you, PvK, might want to think there are enough good and honest people in the world that some sort of "honor system" would work ...

... but you'd be wrong; you'd be vastly overestimating humanity. And, perhaps more to the point, grossly UNDER-estimating man's capacity to be *******s to their fellow man.

People steal. It's that simple; theft has been with us from before we achieved sentience, and won't be going away anytime soon.

And when people steal, you need laws to PROTECT those who are stolen FROM.

It is not the fault of those laws, that they have been ABUSED by various corporate (and other) concerns.