DISQUS

My pleasure Scott.

They may think we're morons bashing our heads against their brick wall, but actually we're sharpening our knives, improving our acuity... and their edifice will crumble soon anyway.

I just thought I'd check that there weren't actually any libertarians around here who'd mistaken TLF as the voice and bastion of enlightened revolutionaries.

No comrades, this is a whetstone for the mind.

If I wanted to citicise Solveig's paper I would have done so elsewhere. I certainly don't need to resort to ad hominems.

Solveig made an announcement.

I've taken this interstitial opportunity to make a tongue-in-cheek hypothesis concerning the apparent relationship between TLF, PFF, and IP Central, that's all.

I presume everyone knows that The Technology Liberation Front is intended as a honeypot to lure and uselessly expend the energy of those antagonistic to IP maximalism?

Key intended beneficiaries in this respect are PFF .org and IP Central .info, sucessfully remaining devoid of constructive criticism since inception.

However, the honey here don't half taste good.

Yum!

Copyright isn't a contract.

A contract is a VOLUNTARY AGREEMENT.

Abolish copyright law and we'll see just how many people will voluntarily prefer buying art from artists that require the signing of a contract that precludes, copying, public performance, or the production of derivative works.

To say that copyright law is a convenience for the benefit of the majority of people who would obviously prefer to make such contracts automatic is grievously disingenuous.

Published works are public property.

Retailed DVDs are the private property of their purchasers.

Domestic DVD players are the private property of their purchasers.

No public property is being damaged.
No private property is being damaged.

If anything, it's the public's property (public and private) that is being repaired.

Copyright law is based upon suspending the liberty of the public for the benefit of its commercial exploitation by publishers.

Are you suggesting that the public's liberty is more important than the economic viability of publishers???!

Plainly it isn't. The public must be manacled, gagged, and sedated so that the publishers can give the public what they truly want. If only they'd just stop struggling...

Seth, I've observed that confusion too. I think it helps demonstrate that copyright and DMCA constitute sophistry in the subconscious minds of the general public.

You buy something, it's yours.

You have a device that let's you copy it, you can.

Someone tells you the magic number that fixes the otherwise broken copy function on your device, why not use it? Why not tell it to your friends?

It's your property, your device, your option to copy...

"No, no! You can't do that. We all agreed three centuries ago that we wouldn't use the copy function on our devices."

"Eh?"

Kate Bush recently sang the first umpteen digits of Pi, so this is not without precedent...

“Because Our Children Are Watching.”
means "Because our society's neglected children are watching".

Puritans can prohibit TVs in their own homes, but they need the government to prohibit them from everyone else's.

These 'for the sake of the children' activists are simply armchair 'demagogues in waiting' who figure that if they are excited by violence on TV, that violence in society must be caused by a childhood diet of TV violence.

So, society can be reformed by indoctrinating the children (their parents are incorrigible) - by preventing them having access to depictions of violence.

Makes perfect sense, but have these simpletons never seen Logan's Run?

Perhaps they have...

The GPL facilitates a gift economy, but it doesn't mandate it. For the moment it enforces reciprocation is the moment gifts can no longer be given.

The 'free' in 'free software' is about restoring liberty to purchasers of GPL licensed works - to use, modify, study, share the software they've purchased - that is otherwise suspended by copyright and patent law.

This applies just as much to GPL licensed ASP software. If you buy a copy (or are given a copy) then your liberty is restored.

The 'ASP loophole' was and is a red herring.

Liberty is delimited by privacy. Permitting public use of private intellectual property is not the same as publication.

The GPL remains a liberty restoration license (nullification of copyright and patent).

The Affero license is to be used if you require compulsory reciprocation - by on-demand disclosure of private modifications (upon public exploitation).

The Affero license is ethically delinquent.

Music distribution might not need a business model, but music production could do with one.

Once a musician has an audience, there may be some musicians that would be tempted by the audience offerring to commission further production.

Of course, most musicians will prefer their creative energies to remain untainted by their fans' filthy lucre.

enigma_foundry,

As for the GPL not working without copyright, read my post again - where I say it evaporates in a puff of smoke.

The GPL requires licensees to ensure source can be made available to legitimate recipients of their published GPL software. This is all I was referring to in terms of subversion.

Apologies for not being sufficient precise, but it should be widely understood here that the GPL primarily governs the copying or modification of GPL code - it doesn't attempt to require that licensees forsake proprietary software development, or even abstain from its use.

The GPL doesn't create a special class of copyrighted material or software. It's simply a standardised license that people can provide with the software that they publish.

The GPL achieves two things:

1) It nullifies the suspension of the public's liberty by copyright and patent law.
2) It subverts the inclination of proprietary minded software developers to publish binaries without source code.

Essentially the GPL contrives a community that can behave TODAY as if copyright and patent law had already been abolished.

In other words if you abolish copyright and patent law:
0) the GPL evaporates in a puff of smoke
1) the public has its liberty restored
2) there is no longer an incentive to publish binaries without source code

Recognising 0 is easy.
Recognising 1 is only hard for the brainwashed.
Recognising 2 is difficult (for many).

Anyway, the GPL's requirement for source code to be published if binaries are published is only necessary whilst copyright law remains.

Once copyright is abolished, there is no need to create a new law to compel the publication of source code.

The GPL may not seem very libertarian to some, but then it has to be restrictive precisely in order to counter the highly unlibertarian copyright and patent law.

The shibboleth for libertarianism among the free software fraternity is to ask the advocate whether they are in favour of the abolition of copyright and patent law. If instead of abolition they favour retention in order to achieve the 'four freedoms', especially to compel surrender of source code, then they have lost sight of libertarianism in pursuit of dogmatism.

X. Trapnel, you at least additionally pointed out the fallacy of the public domain. :)

1) There is no public domain - it is not a legal concept.
2) Either works are protected by copyright, or they are not.
2b) It is very difficult for a work not to be protected by copyright.
3) It is the protection offered by copyright that is supposed to incentivise publication.
4) It is the publication that is supposed to progress the science and arts - not the expiry of copyright's protection (as some might understandably assume)
5) It's all a most unethical racket.

ULTIMATELY, copyright and patent law will be abolished.

Then things will be a little simpler.

People will then start wondering what morons ever decided to apply such legislation within the digital domain.

One might think that if the higher quality version is more valuable and requires greater protection against piracy and sharing that it would be the one to have DRM applied to it, with the lower quality version DRM free.

Sounds like more evidence that DRM removes value and is unacceptable on a premium product.

So, are the DRM-free versions watermarked? Do they come with draconian EULAs? E.g. "You accept that this copy is strictly for your own private use and should it be found in the wild you will compensate us to the tune of $1 per copy counted"

"What will finally happen on the web services issue, which was punted pending the revision of a license controlled by an outside party,..."

It's not really punted. The 3rd draft of GPLv3 permits LINKAGE with Affero v2 code. So, whether the latter license (when it arrives) requires sacrifice of your first born or not, users of the GPLv3 will be unaffected. The assumption is that although Affero is a distinct license it has a degree of affinity with the GPL that it should be permitted to at least link code.

It's a subtle but significant difference. The GPL permits and encourages a gift economy (in terms of publishing one's modifications), but doesn't oblige it (you don't have to publish your mods, and you can commercially exploit or sell them if you want).

The Affero makes the gift compulsory, by requiring the publication of one's modifications free of charge.

No-one has any right to help themselves to anyone else's intellectual property, nor to deny anyone else the ability to sell the product of their labour for any price they can get for it in a free market.

If I sell you my intellectual property, it's yours.

The difference is, those who believe it is right to suspend your liberty believe I should be able to deny you the right to enjoy your own intellectual property.

If you buy it, it's yours. You can use it. You can share it. You can modify it. You can sell it.

If you're not free to sell your labour in a free market you're a slave.

Freedom to restrict someone else's freedom?

All men should have the liberty to enslave their fellows?

Why is it so difficult to grok the fact that the GPL restores the liberty suspended by copyright and patent law?

How can anyone seriously believe their freedom is legitimately increased by having the 'freedom' to suspend the freedom of their fellow men?

The GPL is equivalent to an anti-slavery mechanism. If you would like to retain the unethical privilege of owning slaves then don't use the GPL.

The GPL is for those who find the idea of using copyright and patent to restrict others repugnant.

Quite happy restricting others? Don't use the GPL.

But, for hecks sake, at least attempt to understand why a license that nullifies your privilege of being able to suspend the liberty of the public, is actually FREER than one that gives you 'freedom' to bind the manacles of copyright and patent upon your fellow men.

GPL overly restrictive? Kettle calling pot black?

If it weren't for the Machiavellian deviousness of IP maximalists attempting to overly restrict the public's use of free software, the GPL wouldn't have to have so many clauses addressing each of these restrictions and NEUTRALISING them - with counter restrictions.

The GPL restores the public's liberty that is otherwise suspended by copyright and patent law - and preserves its restoration.

If you quite like the ability to suspend the public's liberty, then it is not surprising the GPL will appear overly restrictive to you.

A downloader is in receipt of:
1) A copy of a work no longer protected by copyright, OR
2) An authorised copy of a work manufactured by a publisher (web server), OR
3) An unauthorised copy manufactured by a pirate (large scale infringer).

Since when is being in receipt of an unauthorised copy a copyright infringement on the part of the recipient?

Your only hope to incriminate the downloader is to suggest that the recipient incited or commissioned the infringement...

The industry is trying to claim that 'making available' is an infringement. Can it also claim that 'taking what is made available' is also an infringement?

No doubt a new crime of 'being found in possession of an unauthorised copy' is on some senator's wish list, but it ain't law yet.

It depends upon whether you believe IP describes the creative work, or the transferable legal privileges that are granted to the work's creator.

In my book IP describes the work.

Copyright and patents are privileges conferred to IP producers that may be licensed, bought and sold.

IP itself may be retained (kept secret), restrictively circulated (shared under NDA), or published (shared without NDA).

Language is being refined in order to serve as a shibboleth between IP maximalists and libertarians.

You call your audience consumers and you betray your contempt for them.

You pretend that DRM manages your rights, and you betray your contempt for the rights of the public.

You pretend that you continue to own your intellectual property even after you've delivered it to the public, and you betray your contempt for the very concept of property itself.

By all means hold the public in contempt, as a passive cash cow to be exploited, but your language will betray you.

What one could do is create two Internets:

A) Regulated, copyright enforced, family-friendly, guaranteed network neutral
B) Unregulated, copyright agnostic, dangerous, free-for-all business models

OBVIOUSLY people would flock to Internet A in droves because it would have far greater value...

"The fundamental problem, then, is not patent trolls but bad patents."

Should read:

The fundamental problem, then, is not patent trolls but patents.

'good patent' is an oxymoron.