A Writer's Thoughts on Copyright

[airship]

A Writer's Thoughts on Copyright

The U.S. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has created a set of laws that essentially apply and extend copyright protection to any and all creative works. Said protection lasts now essentially until 'infinity plus one' years.

This is both selfish and stupid.

I am and have been a professional writer for almost 25 years. I have written hundreds of magazine articles and over 20 books. I'm also a very, very amateur programmer and have written a few bits of code here and there, including a very early commercial game for the Commodore 64. I have also been a partner in a magazine publishing company, and have owned my own software publishing company. So I also approach the problem of copyright from three perspectives: as a creator, as an owner, and as a user of copyrighted works.

There are many situations in which it makes sense for works to be freely distributed. A case in point is my own decade-old books on Netscape. While there is some information in them that might be of interest to the technically curious or to computer historians, they are for the most part out-of-date and practically worthless. Yet it remains illegal for them to be freely distributed, and the publisher retains copyrights on the material for "70 years after death of author, or if work of corporate authorship, the shorter of 95 years from publication, or 120 years from creation". ( Quoted from the Cornell University copyright information web site at: http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/training/Hirtle_Public_Domain.htm )

So it's clearly not LEGAL to distribute copyrighted works without the copyright owner's permission. Period.

But I think that from a personal, moral perspective, it makes more sense to look at a work's potential commercial value. Though I'm not the copyright owner of much of what I've written over my lifetime, even if I were I recognize the fact that most of it just isn't commercially viable anymore. So why not make it available for free?

For example, I retain the copyright on my only commercial game, "Collision". It's available on the web from a couple of pirate sites. (Frankly, it wasn't good enough to be widely pirated.) Am I worried about that? Have I sicced lawyers on anyone or mailed out nasty takedown notices. No. In fact, I link to one from my web site so people can download it and check it out if they want to. Why? Because it no longer has any commercial value. And my ego is stroked just thinking that it's still being looked at by anyone at all.

So should you copy and distribute software, manuals, and books?

The legal answer is clear. But I think the moral issue is fuzzier. Over time, I've developed the following guidelines for myself. I hope you'll find them of interest as you wrestle with this question yourself.

(1) If a work (book, manual, or software) is in the public domain or is distributed under a license like BSD, GPL, or Creative Commons, then there's no problem. Just follow the rules.
(2) If a work is covered under the current copyright law and is still being sold commercially as a new item, then it should not be copied and distributed. But if the only copies you can find are used, see (3) & (4).
(3) If a work is covered under the current copyright law, all efforts should be made to locate the current copyright holder and get permission to distribute it. If the copyright holder cannot be determined or found, and if the work clearly has little or no potential commercial value, then limited distribution (a single source if possible) may be morally okay with some soul-searching. However, if a takedown notice is received the work should be immediately removed. Then a priest should be sent to apply guilt to the copyright holder until he or she acquiesces and agrees to its free distribution, or until they decide if it's worth so doggone much then they should go ahead and republish it in some form at a reasonable price, even if it's just as a file-for-pay on the Intertubes*. If neither happens, see (4).
(4) If a work is covered under the current copyright law and it's obvious to everyone that it has absolutely no commercial value, and if the current copyright owner refuses to make it available and just sits on it, then spread it far and wide. If its owner complains in any way whatsoever, then stick out your tongue and say "neener! neener!" But if he sics lawyers on you, take it down so they don't sue you into oblivion, and trust the pirate sites in Scandinavia to distribute it for you.
(5) In all cases, pay no attention at all to what lawyers say (except insofar as your likelihood of getting sued goes). They will try to protect everything and sue whoever they can at the drop of a hat. They know nothing about a work's actual value. However, it can be fun to exchange email with said lawyers, pointing out their ignorance in various insightful ways, just to observe in detail how totally clueless they are. Most of the stuff they write is hilarious.

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*A great example of this comes from Bob Baker, who wrote occasionally for INFO. Bob has taken all of the old technical articles he wrote and has made them available, with executable code, as zipped PDF files in what he calls 'the Commodore 64 Programmer's Library". He only charges $4 for the whole works via PayPal. It's a great deal for users, it makes him a little pocket change, and it keeps this information in circulation. He's at http://home.comcast.net/~c64proglib/

[Guest]

But I think that from a personal, moral perspective, it makes more sense to look at a work's potential commercial value. Though I'm not the copyright owner of much of what I've written over my lifetime, even if I were I recognize the fact that most of it just isn't commercially viable anymore. So why not make it available for free?

Sorry, but I think this where you and I will have to disagree.  Think of the DTV, all of the games on that device have been cracked and pirated, and then considered abandonware for many years.  That's been the justification for redistributing those games in cracked form since the C64 was no longer being sold.  Those folks could not have been reasonably expected to know that a new C64 was going to come 10 years later, but IT DID.  The commercial value of any intellectual property is never fully understood by anyone, even the holder of the copyright.  This is essentially why I believe that all open source software should be made available using a permissive license.  It's not ethical to prevent a person from being able to figure out the value of a product and then capitalize on that value.  Permissive licenses allow people to say "If you can figure out how to make money from this, I'm happy with acknowledgment and you can keep the profits."  If you cannot live with that, then don't make your code open source!  The GPL basically states "If you can figure out how to make money from this, you must teach everyone how to make money with it too!"  That's called stealing in my book and is the lowest form of socialist bull-crap.

[airship]

Apparently Congress agrees with you, Payton. I don't like the current copyright law, and neither would the founding fathers. They wrote extensively on the subject of allowing intellectual property to be transitioned into the public domain after a REASONABLE time, to foster innovation and progress.

Remember, in this context we're talking about 20-year old technology. (I will admit that under their 14-year plus 14-year renewal law, this IP could still be protected for about 8 more years. But they didn't live in an age when technology changed so rapidly, so I think they'd be sympathetic.)

The DTV was a toy, not a computing system. It didn't inspire the sales of any new software or programming books. The only people who got any money were the rights holders to the C64 ROMs and the dozen games that came with it. Both were widely available on the Web and yet that didn't impact their commercial value for this project - the copyright holders to this intellectual property were paid. So how were they hurt by the fact you could get their IP for free on the net?

I agree wholeheartedly that I'd like to see the rights holders give permission - didn't I say that up there? But there's a lot of abandonware out there that would just rust if it weren't for the pirates.

Furthermore, there is research that shows the economy actually does better under less restrictive copyrights.

Of course, if rights holders want to be aggressive about protecting their rights for stuff they can't sell, that is the privilege that the current laws allow them.

References:

Our First Copyright Law:
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/firsts/copyright/

Modern Support for Original Copyright Protection:
http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyright/

O'Reilly Books Embraces Original Copyright Protection:
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1051908177.html

The Conservative View:
http://www.law.duke.edu/boylesite/Federalist.htm

An Economic Impact Analysis of Copyright:
http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/papers/optimal_copyright.pdf

[Douglas]

But I think that from a personal, moral perspective, it makes more sense to look at a work's potential commercial value. Though I'm not the copyright owner of much of what I've written over my lifetime, even if I were I recognize the fact that most of it just isn't commercially viable anymore. So why not make it available for free?

Sorry, but I think this where you and I will have to disagree.  Think of the DTV, all of the games on that device have been cracked and pirated, and then considered abandonware for many years.  That's been the justification for redistributing those games in cracked form since the C64 was no longer being sold.  Those folks could not have been reasonably expected to know that a new C64 was going to come 10 years later, but IT DID.  The commercial value of any intellectual property is never fully understood by anyone, even the holder of the copyright.  This is essentially why I believe that all open source software should be made available using a permissive license.  It's not ethical to prevent a person from being able to figure out the value of a product and then capitalize on that value.  Permissive licenses allow people to say "If you can figure out how to make money from this, I'm happy with acknowledgment and you can keep the profits."  If you cannot live with that, then don't make your code open source!  The GPL basically states "If you can figure out how to make money from this, you must teach everyone how to make money with it too!"  That's called stealing in my book and is the lowest form of socialist bull-crap.

Well if what you say is true then where is the innovation to come from if nothing is ever released into the public domain and a few "mega conglomerates" could potentially "buy up" all the rights to products and continually re-release a rehashed version of the same original item, or in some cases an exact copy of the original item endlessly?  How does this benefit our society?  Of course the ORIGINAL developer of the copywrited item should be able to reap the benefit of their work for a REASONABLE amount of time, but do you feel that sucessive GENERATIONS of UNRELATED corporate entities should be able to reap a benefit forever at the expense of the public domain?  Should Corporations with deep pockets be able to hold a copyright and if they decide to "lock it away" and do nothing with it, keep it in their vaults, and deprive the public of it's use? What if the corporation is a foreign conglomerate?  What then? How would you feel if all the "classic works of literature" were somehow "purchased" and then "taken off the market".  Our present works are the future "Classics" and this is what you propose?

How does this benefit anyone?

Wow.

Douglas

[airship]

The most hilarious example of what you're talking about, Douglas, comes from - who else? - Disney. They have been the prime movers behind getting copyright law extended to 'infinity plus one', yet much of their success lies in the animated films they created that were based on public domain works: Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, etc.

Can you say 'hypocrites'?

[nikoniko]

Can you say 'hypocrites'?

:oskyldig: Now it's time to say goodbye to the public domain.
H-Y-P.... See you in infinity+one years...
O-C-R... Why? Because we're greedy bastards.
I-T-EE-S...:oskyldig:

[airship]

LOL!!!  That's a classic, nikoniko!!  

 AIR PIRATES FOREVER !!

[Douglas]

The most hilarious example of what you're talking about, Douglas, comes from - who else? - Disney. They have been the prime movers behind getting copyright law extended to 'infinity plus one', yet much of their success lies in the animated films they created that were based on public domain works: Snow White, Pinocchio, Cinderella, etc.

Can you say 'hypocrites'?

You know another thing about this subject that really pisses me off...old time radio shows.  Most of them are supposed to be in the public domain, but there is a company out there (I forget the name at the moment) who sells old time radio shows and they try and shut down online sites that give the shows away for free stating that somehow they "own" the copyright for the shows...it's complete bull%!$@.

Douglas