Re: nettime WSJ: Can Copyright Be Saved?
Carl, you snipped away the part on the price. On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Carl Guderian wrote: Books present more of a problem, but maybe Homeland Security, during Bush's second term of course, can hire firemen like in Fahrenheit 451. Books only cause trouble and take up way too much space anyway. They're only holding us back. Thats why we should hate DRM. There is a long quote by Axel Horn in http://intra.b.lab.net/~uzs106/bla/wipodmcaetc.doc (in german) that describes exactly those dangers. But on the other hand, lets be realistic, a movie is a movie, we see it just once in the Cinema, we dont copy it, we just watch it. And when people are so stupid to prefer their home video over real cinema - many do, not only readers of the Bild Zeitung - and the price is ok? It is just one option of many, the future is open, maybe the price of the movie is a bad creterium, but I dont know better one yet, best, H. Just saw Carls remarks, DRM is allways a topic Heiko Recktenwald wrote: Well, to correct myself, things are complicated ;-) As much as I hate DRM, yesterday, I saw something in the german Bild Zeitung, well, thats what many people read, an interesting piece of shit or literature, something to read, food for the eyes, not really a newspaper, something else, and they announced a pay per view solution of cinema, developped by german telecom. Why not? I asked myself. There is no privat copying possible, but if you go into a cinema, you would not copy the movie too. You have no right to do so too. ... # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime WSJ: Can Copyright Be Saved?
Wired would have loved this: Say Goodbye to Write-Once, Read Many Media Had e-books been allowed to flower as a technology instead of being cruelly cut down by market apathy, they might have gone this way, like William Gibson's Agrippa: The Book of the Dead, a limited-edition e-book that could only be played once. It was a technology only an art dealer could love, but my Japanese virtual popstar girlfriend and I agree Gibson was on to something, so don't write it off yet. But why stop with electronic media such as CDs, DVDs, and (remaining) e-books? Vinyl junkies can benefit from the grand pay-per-view scheme too, with new smart turntables that acoustically fingerprint records and refuse to play them more than once unless paid; it's a home jukebox with a direct line to the RIAA and marketers. You could even devote memory to push technology and your turntable would download radio-style commercials and run them into your stereo. Books present more of a problem, but maybe Homeland Security, during Bush's second term of course, can hire firemen like in Fahrenheit 451. Books only cause trouble and take up way too much space anyway. They're only holding us back. Sorry about the tone, but I'm sick of businesses that invoke the free market when someone derides a corporate strategy, then invoke the government when the free market rejects it as well. Ramming it down our collective throats isn't marketing, it's megalomania (see Tails, dogs wagging). Sometimes people want to have stuff and other times they only want to use it; dictating when they can do either (for free or not) is a stupid idea, no matter how many interested people, like stockholders, believe in it. Carl I actually do like william Gibson's later novels Heiko Recktenwald wrote: Well, to correct myself, things are complicated ;-) As much as I hate DRM, yesterday, I saw something in the german Bild Zeitung, well, thats what many people read, an interesting piece of shit or literature, something to read, food for the eyes, not really a newspaper, something else, and they announced a pay per view solution of cinema, developped by german telecom. Why not? I asked myself. There is no privat copying possible, but if you go into a cinema, you would not copy the movie too. You have no right to do so too. ... -- Games are very educational. Scrabble teaches us vocabulary, Monopoly teaches us cash-flow management, and DD teaches us to loot the bodies. -- Steve Jackson # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime WSJ: Can Copyright Be Saved?
Well, to correct myself, things are complicated ;-) As much as I hate DRM, yesterday, I saw something in the german Bild Zeitung, well, thats what many people read, an interesting piece of shit or literature, something to read, food for the eyes, not really a newspaper, something else, and they announced a pay per view solution of cinema, developped by german telecom. Why not? I asked myself. There is no privat copying possible, but if you go into a cinema, you would not copy the movie too. You have no right to do so too. The DRM problem has many sides, maybe the price is something that solves things. DVDs should be copyed, well, thats a thing, a truc, like a record, but it is more expensiv than pay per view. H. Copyright nd DRM are two completely different things anyway. Copyright is something human, a social something, DRM is technic. Copyright has exeptions and an end, DRM not. DRM kills copyright as a social thing, DRM is just tyranny. The main point is: You cannot obey the law if you cant break it, if you cant break it, thats DRM, the law just disappears. It is a strange optic to say the digital times kill copyright. They have made copying just easier. A lot of people used Napster etc, but not all. And so on. Nothing against creative commons, it is just another use of copyright. H. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: nettime WSJ: Can Copyright Be Saved?
The subject reminds me to my slogan: Save copyright, fight DRM. Copyright nd DRM are two completely different things anyway. Copyright is something human, a social something, DRM is technic. Copyright has exeptions and an end, DRM not. DRM kills copyright as a social thing, DRM is just tyranny. The main point is: You cannot obey the law if you cant break it, if you cant break it, thats DRM, the law just disappears. It is a strange optic to say the digital times kill copyright. They have made copying just easier. A lot of people used Napster etc, but not all. And so on. Nothing against creative commons, it is just another use of copyright. H. # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and info nettime-l in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
nettime WSJ: Can Copyright Be Saved?
[It's quite amazing, not too long ago, an outfit like the WSJ would have any questioning of the absolute enforcement of copyrights slandered the way Forbes slandered the FSF recently. Now, suddenly, even the WSJ admits that things are up for grabs and that there are valid several options. Now, you might not agree with their portraying of DRM as middle of the road solution, but just putting it out as one of several options, including a tax!, rather than the only one, is quite a significant change in itself. Felix] Can Copyright Be Saved? New ideas to make intellectual property work in the digital age By ETHAN SMITH Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL October 20, 2003 For some people, the future of copyright law is here, and it looks a lot like Gilberto Gil. The Brazilian singer-songwriter plans to release a groundbreaking CD this winter, which will include three of his biggest hits from the 1970s. It isn't the content of the disc that makes it so novel, though -- it's the copyright notice that will accompany it. Instead of the standard all rights reserved, the notice will explicitly allow users of the CD to work the music into their own material. You are free ... to make derivative works, the notice will state in part. That's a significant departure from the standard copyright notice, which forbids such use of creative material and requires a legal agreement to be worked out for any exceptions. Is this the future of copyright? Perhaps. But a better way to think of it is that it's one of the possible futures of copyright. Because right now, it's all pretty much up for grabs. Blame it all on the Digital Age. As any digital downloader can tell you, technology and the Internet have made it simple for almost anyone to make virtually unlimited copies of music, videos and other creative works. With so many people doing just that, artists and entertainment companies sometimes appear helpless to prevent illegal copying, and their halting legal efforts so far have antagonized customers while hardly putting a dent in piracy. The challenge is finding a way out of this mess. Efforts fall broadly into two camps. On one side, generally speaking, are those who revel in the freedom that technology has brought to the distribution of creative material, and who believe that copyright law should reflect this newfound freedom. On the other side are those who believe that the digital age hasn't changed anything in terms of the rights of artists and entertainment companies to control the distribution of their creations and to be paid for them -- the essence of copyright law. For them, the answer is to leave copyright law intact, and to use technology to make it harder for people to make digital copies. Here's a closer look at some of the competing visions. IN THIS TOGETHER The copyright notice for Mr. Gil's coming CD is being crafted by Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that seeks to redraw the copyright landscape. Believing traditional copyrights are too restrictive, it aims to create plain-language copyright notices that explicitly offer a greater degree of freedom to those who would reshape or redistribute the copyrighted material. Traditional copyright law gives owners of creative material -- and them alone -- the right to copy or distribute their works. Although they can waive all or part of those rights, the process isn't easy and usually occurs in response to a particular request. Those hurdles, critics say, can hinder the open and freewheeling sharing of material the digital age makes possible. Creative Commons seeks to make the system more flexible by spelling out which rights the copyright holder wishes to reserve and which are being waived without waiting for a request. Artists can mix and match from among four basic licensing agreements: They can decide whether they simply want attribution anytime their work is used by someone else; whether they want to deny others use of the work for profit without permission; whether they want to prevent others from altering the material; and whether they want to permit the use of material only if the new work is offered to the public under the same terms. An underlying layer of digital code enforces the rights laid out by the owner, telling computers how a given work can be used. A Creative Commons license isn't for everyone. It might appeal to independent artists for whom free samples, distributed online, might represent an attractive marketing option, or for someone like Mr. Gil, who believes that making it easier to share and reshape his music can be an important part of the creative process. But it's unlikely to appeal to the big media companies, for which copyrighted material is what they sell. Still, Mr. Gil, who is also Brazil's culture minister, sees Creative Commons as a way to unlock the creative potential of digital technology. I'm doing it as an artist, he says. But our ministry has been following the process and getting interested in
