Copyrights, intellectualy property and piracy

Posted by BigWhale on June 15th, 2009 in Software | 1 comment

Something has been bugging me for a long time now.

I am primarily GNU/Linux1 user, power user, zealot and advocate. I am also a developer and I developed software for various operating systems ranging from AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and Linux to Windows, software that was commercial and copyrighted and free software that was copylefted and released under GPL license. So I can objectively represent either side of the coin.

What has really irritated me is that there are numerous people that have absolutely no clue what are licenses, what is intellectual property, why is piracy bad and why copyrights can’t just go away, why we can’t have all-you-can-eat-forever-and-ever situation regarding intellectual property.

Read More if you think you are ready to grasp the whole wide idea of all those buzzwords. If you’re not sure or you don’t care about such things, better turn around now. ;)

First things first

Intellectual property, a term that many people consider wrong and inappropriate. Property refers to something with physical dimensions and proportions, something that is very well defined, something that you can in pure sense of the word, own. An intellectual work is not something that can physically exist.

This is a semantic problem or inconsistency at best that causes quite some trouble in many debates. Anyway, I will be using this phrase when I refer to creative works that can be subjects of copyright.

If I make a false claim or assumption somewhere in my post, please, do correct me. :)

The system now

Let’s take a look how the system works now. We have an author that created something. It can be a painting, music piece or a computer program in the end it doesn’t really matter that much. By publishing this work author is, by law, granted certain rights over his work. These laws vary around the world but they are similar enough. What happens when consumer decides to buy a DVD? With the purchase an author has granted them certain rights. Usually they are limited to unlimited number of viewing in some countries you are allowed make a backup copy of the work and there your rights usually end.

You are not allowed to make other copies of the work, you are not allowed for public screening in some cases you’re not even allowed to resell the work2.

This is one of the most important parts at understanding the copyrights. By buying a DVD you’re not buying content that is recorded on it.  You are buying a license which grants you some limited rights over the work and that is just about it.

Copyright is granted for a certain period of time. When copyrights were first introduced3 authors were granted of roughly 30 years of copyright for their work. Nowadays authors get 70 years of copyright and if copyright holder is a corporation they get 120 years after the work was created or 95 years after the work was published4. This latest change happened in 1998 and was known as Copyright Term Extension Act or Mickey Mouse Protection Act because heavy involvement of Walt Disney Company5. When time runs out the work becomes public domain.

The Problem

There are authors6 who have a wish to be compensated for their work and for others using their work. Then, there are users who wish to get as much as possible for as little as possible. A perfectly normal and expected behavior.  Copyrights (and patents) should be a way of balancing those two extremes.

The problem is that copyrights today take care mostly of authors which are protected better than arctic whales. 120 years for a copyright? Not being allowed to make a backup copy of your DVD? Bizarre activations and validity checks for playing computer games? All these measures that are taken most of the time just increase the biggest problem of them all. Piracy.

I don’t like piracy, I avoid it as much as I can. Do I freeload and use P2P networks? Sometimes I do. Just recently I downloaded computer game Grim Fandango, my old original CD was damaged and I was unable to install the game. What else? TV shows. There are shows that I would pay for but because of the publishers they are not available where I live. I could watch season 2 of whatever on TV, but there is a complete season 6 for download already available. Hard to decide, eh?

MP3 and music? I have none. Literally none. I never downloaded a single MP3 and all MP3 files I had came from my own CD’s that I decided to rip. All the music I need can be found on the internet and listened to without breaking any laws.

Apart from that Grim Fandango and a TV show here and there I’m clean and I am proud of that.

The Solution?

There is probably no perfect solution. Authors and publishers will always strive for maximum gain and profit and the only acceptable price for majority of users will always be 0 (zero) in whichever currency they prefer. I am sure that a reasonable compromise can be achieved.

First there is the author. Authors should always7 have the right to decide what to do with their work. Who can publish it, who can distribute it and under what terms and conditions. This is the basic right that author gets simply by creating the work. If we take this away, like illegal sharing over P2P networks is doing it now, authors will get really annoyed. Even if authors are already sitting on a pile of cash, bigger than you’ll ever get to see, it doesn’t give anyone the right to use their work like it wasn’t supposed to be used.

So, here is what I would do:

  • Limit copyrights to maximum of 25 years after the authors death or 25 years after the work was published if copyright holder is a company.
  • Computer software should be copyrighted for 10 years after it was published and will keep the copyright until software is properly maintained and supported. If there was no paches or security fixes for more than 5 years, copyright is terminated.
  • Moral rights are not transferable and are granted forever.

Let’s have a look on how this would work in practice. A book is written when author is 25 years old. Author dies at 85, copyrights are valid for another 25 years, so royalties (if any) are collected by author’s heirs. After 25 years the work would become public domain and with moral rights still being in place author will always get credited.

So a total of 85 (60 + 25 after death) years of milking one single cow. I am sure that this is enough for a single author. Why only 25 years for a company? Simply because they have more cows and if they want to milk one for a longer time, then can make a deal with author. This also, in a way, protects authors from being forced to transfer their copyrights to record companies.

A computer program from the above example would enjoy ten years of protection. After ten years the program is in most cases obsolete and sometimes it doesn’t even work anymore since changes in computer industry are quite rapid. A lot of DOS based games stopped working on Windows 95, when Windows XP was introduced in 2001 even more DOS games didn’t work. Try running Mech Commander, which is Windows 95 game on Windows XP. I did and failed.

So we would actually get abandon ware and old DOS games that people still like to play now and then could be downloaded from internet and abandon ware sites wouldn’t be hunted by publishers who still try to enforce certain copyrights after more than 15 years while product is no longer supported for years. Which brings us to the next idea of copyrights expiring when support for the product is canceled. If they don’t support the product then they obviously don’t care about it anymore, why should copyright still be valid? Software is not sold anymore, what do they have to lose?

The bigger picture

Record companies, software companies and publishing companies are in many cases giant dinosaurs, behemoths, that are hard to move, to turn around and to adopt to changes. Internet and peer-to-peer networks hit record companies hard in the nuts. Remember Napster? Record companies are threatened by internet because of their slow adaptation to new markets. CD’s and DVD’s for distributing music are so last century. Really, who on earth will carry around hundreds of CD’s just to be prepared for any kind of mood setting with certain music?

Record companies, adapt! Stop shoving bloody CD’s down our throats, we don’t like them. With today’s technology you could create a service which would charge the user each time they would listen to a song. Make it cheap, $0.05 for one time listening. I had to check with amazon what is the price for an album today. It seems that it is around $15. If you spent this $15 on pay to play system you can get 300 listenings and if the average song is three minutes in length, this gives 15 hours of music. How much music on a CD? 70 minutes? Most likely an hour. Watson, a clue!

So $15 or $1 for one hour of music. What would people pay? Oh and with this $1 you also get to pick which songs you can listen. With CD is just that CD. Go, team up with cell phone operators, make iTunes on drugs.

Fight the power

“But with piracy we’re fighting the evil corporations!”

Maybe, yes. On some other planet, here on earth, certainly not. Because of the piracy legitimate users have more and more problems. DRM, rootkits and so on and so on. I wonder how long will it take for people to realize that the only way of fighting against those dinosaurs is ignorance. Ignorance in the stores, ignorance in the media. No interest.

Imagine the surprise if nobody would talk about upcoming Coldplay album? Nobody would be there to buy it. Sales would be measured in couple of hundred sold copies. That would really hurt them. Piracy doesn’t. Piracy helps them in a way it provides free publicity and you’re being ripped off again.

That’s why piracy will always be bad, it never does anything good for the consumers on the global scale.

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Footnotes:
  1. In case, I talk with RMS again ;) [↩]
  2. Mostly happens with computer software. [↩]
  3. in late 18th century [↩]
  4. This is true for United States. European Union and other parts of the world have slightly different laws. [↩]
  5. And Mickey Mouse becoming public domain in the year 2000 [↩]
  6. I’ll use the term authors instead of ‘copyright holders’. [↩]
  7. Of course there is no absolute always [↩]


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