Well there is no point in being a writer in your future then, Crosbie. No one would pay the cost of buying the manuscript if all copies to be reproduced from it should be free. This is patently absurd.
Just because you can help yourself to something, doesn’t mean you should or that it is morally right to do so.
People have the right to share and build upon their own culture, upon the works of mankind.
It is the unjust privilege of the copyright holder to sue those who do so against their wishes.
If their is no labour involved in making a copy, indeed, if it is so easy that a machine can do it, then how can anyone expect to be paid for doing so?
The labour for which people would pay is that labour that only the artist can perform, the act of creating their art.
The artists sells the labour involved in making their art.
The copier sells the labour involved in making copies.
In a free market, the art is expensive, the copies are made for nothing.
In a market in which everyone can make copies for nothing, trying to preserve an 18th century monopoly on the making of copies is like asking Canute to preserve the low tide.
Unfortunately, all attempts to preserve, reinforce, and extend copyright will be made.
It will be futile, and it won't be pleasant.
The power of immortal publishing corporations vs the liberty of the people.
Books are not baskets. Sites that offer my book as a free download have no right to do so. Why should they be able to give away my work? They have created nothing. They’ve mechanically copied in seconds something that took many many hours and a lot of resources to produce. Is that ok? Of course not.
To present a copy as the original is a falsehood, and thus dishonest.
To present a copy as a true copy is a truth, and thus honest.
To present an alteration or bowdlerisation as the original or a true copy thereof is a falsehood, and thus dishonest.
To present another's work as one's own, or to otherwise misrepresent authorship is dishonest.
None of these things require a reproduction monopoly.
This is why there is a distinction between moral rights and privileges.
One can only profit from illicit copying in an environment in which copies are prohibited by copyright. End the monopoly and you end profits from illicit trade.
State granted monopolies are unjust.
Natural monopolies, such as authorship (only the author can claim authorship of their own work), or privacy (only the owner of the original has the original) are just.
Trademark has long since left its path as a mere registry for disambiguation purposes, and has now become yet another state granted monopoly.
One more thing... Do you believe copyright, trademark, and registration laws for commercial products is acceptable?
"To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men"
Copyright is a privilege that annuls the right to copy in the majority, to leave it, by exclusion, in the hands of a few (hence 'copyright holders'). Before 1709 people could enjoy their liberty to make copies. After 1709, the privilege we know as copyright was instituted to annul this right (and 1790 in the US).
So, just as laws can secure our liberty, so they can be written to abridge it. Such is corruption.
If a basket maker sells a basket to someone, how will they feel, if that person then makes and sells copies of that basket?
Monopolies are seductive, and those in receipt of them will do anything to kid themselves that they are god given rights (not abridgements of liberty).
No...copyright only protects my particular image. An artist may build upon my ideas, use the same medium, etc. but they cannot copy my image exactly. As I was told in art school, all artists stand upon the shoulders of the artists who came before them. And when an artist has "published" a painting...which means exhibiting it anywhere, not just online...the artist still doesn't want others to copy their work directly to profit from it. A direct copy of a painting is called a forgery. In the past, when people didn't have access to high tech cameras, computers and software, it wasn't as easy to appropriate an artists' work to make posters, t-shirts, etc. You stated that no one has the right to lie about what they created. The people who use my work without permission and do not even mention that I was the artist, are claiming that they are the creator. So, what would you do then?
Copyright is not an instrument of injustice. We have laws to protect our rights because without them we are even more badly abused.
There’s nothing to stop you distributing your own creations, without granting copyright to anyone but retaining it yourself. But if you sell your work to someone, how will you feel if in turn they sell it on to many other people and you get nothing at all?
If you don't want to release your work into the hands of the public, then don't publish it. You have a natural right to privacy - to keep private that which you do not want released.
However, it is copyright that corrupts artists into believing that they should have the power to prevent other artists building upon the work they publish.
No-one has the right to lie, to claim that they wrote Macbeth (if they didn't), but all have the right and liberty to adapt, abridge, or arrange it as they fancy. This applies to any published work of art.
"No it isn't"? What? Copyright isn't an 'instrument of injustice'?
As Thomas Paine observed:
"It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few... They... consequently are instruments of injustice ... "
Aside from copyright's injustice, I am not arguing as to whether you may find the wages of a publishing corporation more lucrative than a fair exchange between those who want you to write enough to pay you something to do so.
Marketing in a new, more equitable, more liberated world, is still work - just as it has always been for artisans who cannot sell a monopoly to those corporations who'd pay for it.
Those who would retain monopolies granted by queens or other potentates are in conflict with those who would enjoy their cultural liberty endowed in them by nature.
I would like to chime in about copyright. I am a professional visual artist with many friends in the field of art. We spend a considerable amount of money on materials. My pastels average 2.70 to 3.64 euros per stick and some are more expensive than that. We spend many hours honing our skills. There is also the expense of art school, should one choose to attend one. When I create a painting that takes weeks to complete, I do not want people to freely use my work without my permission and being compensated. There are also people who alter the artists' images which effectively changes the artists' expression of their ideas and intent. Artists are not valued and copyright law is one of the few things that gives them some control over their work after it leaves their studio...or post it on the Internet. The reason artists post their work on the Internet...despite the inherent dangers of people copying and using their work...is due to the fact that sales of art online is growing rapidly. Since I earn my living selling my art, someone who steals the images I make is basically taking away my ability to provide myself with the necessities of life. No one should be able to use my work...the work that I put my heart into...for their own profit. You wouldn't want someone to steal your car and sell it to make money...and that is a mass produced object that you merely bought.
No it isn’t - I speak as someone who has ventured into the new world of publishing without a traditional publisher. My experience (not a single penny for my book so far) is not a happy one. Do I wish I had taken the paltry advance offered by a reputable publishing house, despite the fact that it was less than I got 25 yrs ago? Hell, yes, I would be several grand better off. With no huge readership, whispering into the void doesn’t get you noticed. You need the corporations’ publicity machine, you need print reviews. I tweet, I pin, I Facebook. All these things I do for free. It’s a hopeless business model unless you hit a particular lucky streak, like 50 Shades
Big corporations cannot exploit copyright if copyright doesn't exist.
This is primarily why it is corporations that are the most desperate to reinforce copyright. If they don't have the monopoly they've become optimised for, their monopoly exploitation services evaporate (where they invariably keep the lion's share and give a tiny fraction to the original author/artist in whose work the monopoly arises).
The claim that authors with large readerships are unable to accept commissions from those readerships is due to a failure of imagination.
Online facilities to re-enable the ancient exchange for public/published works, once termed 'subscription' (not the term we are familiar with), are being developed and becoming well used even now. See Kickstarter for example.
Liberty is a natural right. It is immoral to abridge it.
Just because the legislative means to abridge it may exist, it doesn't follow that it should be used to do so - however lucrative it might be to publishing corporations desirous of a monopoly.
Copyright is an instrument of injustice.
As a former hack who has seen how big companies exploit your work I can only agree 100% with you Sarah!
But Crosbie writing a blurb for a website to someone’s brief is not the same as having an idea for a book and spending a year or 10 researching and writing it. No one will pay you immediately a reasonable one off fee for that work. If people want it and buy it over a period of years you can earn back something for what you put in. Having a freeforall where the big corporations are allowed to exploit/copy anyone’s work and make money without paying the creator is not reasonable. Just because the means to copy exist, it doesn’t follow that it is morally right to do so
If copyright didn't prohibit it, I could copy & paste the writing on the wall here for your enlightenment, so you'll just have to go out and read it for yourself.
Copyright was a monopoly created for the benefit of publishing corporations (and the state's interest in thereby retaining effective control over all publishing).
What might have once seemed workable (in an age when reproduction machinery was few and far between), and tolerable (annulling the individual's right to copy to leave it by exclusion in the hands of a few - 'copyright holders'), is no longer either.
For all non-monopoly protected forms of craftsmanship, craftsmen exchange their labour (for money).
This means of compensation is also available to writers, photographers, and even sculptors (whose work can now be 3D scanned & 3D printed) - as it has always been. It's just that writers have grown used to the idea of selling the copyright arising in their work to publishing corporations geared up to exploit it, instead of just their writing.
However, it is quite possible to commission a writer, e.g. "Write me some blurb for my website and I'll pay you €100". Copyright doesn't need to come into it.
Such an exchange is paying someone for their work.
Purchasing a copyright is paying the holder of a state granted privilege in order to exploit its abridgement of the people's cultural liberty.
Would you like to buy the copyright arising in my above words? Do you think anyone would like to buy it? Perhaps I can make money by suing anyone who makes illicit copies of them? Or perhaps, I should find one or more people interested in commissioning me to write something for them?
If you want to pay an author to write new children's stories, do so.
If you want to make a copy of a Harry Potter eBook so your friend can read it on their tablet, do so.
Liberty pre-empts crown privileges such as copyright, and, unless you are an immortal publishing corporation, you should look to your liberty before you look to unjust laws that abridge it (Statute of Queen Anne, 1709).
Say what, Crosbie? You’d have a copiers/rip off free for all, worse than it is now? And what about creators? They would invent, create and then anyone could make money from their labours without paying them??? Seems to be going that way with Pirate Bay et al offering downloads of our books. Is that right? No of course not. If you want my work, you should pay for it, unless I have offered it to you free.
The best thing that everyone can do is to ignore copyright.
It's an anachronistic 18th century privilege that should never have been legislated, and should have been abolished long ago.
Unfortunately, corrupt legislation begets further corruption, so things will get worse...
While the UK has a freedom of panorama law France doesn't.
France, Belgium, Greece and Italy, have no Freedom of Panorama and so images including famous landmarks must not be posted online. For instance, photographs of the Atomium in Brussels appear blacked out on Wikipedia because of the restrictions.
If the EU law is passed them Wikipedia entries on famous UK buildings, for example, could not include a photo.
Of course French bureacracy kicks in too - when the legal affairs committee sat on this subject French MEP Jean-Marie Cavada tabled an amendment that stated that the use of photographs, video footage and other images of works which are permanently located in physical public places should always be subject to prior authorisation from the authors or any proxy acting for them.
Bye bye iconic photos/postcards et al of famous landmarks ?
Alyn said:
I Have heard some daft and stupid laws in the past but this really takes the biscuit as the most stupid. It was not long ago everyone was screaming about “freedom of speech” surely this is an extension of this.i will continue to take pics and post as I see fit. The rest of Europe should also ignore this stupidity.
BUT I do like the comment about speed cameras wonder how that would St and up