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Comment by forgotpwtomain | Hacker News Reader

> Five lawyers billed the "vast majority" of the hours, charging rates that varied between $395 per hour and $820 per hour. The most work was done by Randall Newman, who billed 2,193 hours at $640 per hour. King found the rates were all reasonable given "the cases cited, the National Law Journal survey, and our own experience."

Surely the contribution of these people to civilization is well correlated with the economic benefits reaped. Which is encouraging because we want to inspire future generations to such awesome achievements!

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> Surely the contribution of these people to civilization is well correlated with the economic benefits reaped.

I'm not sure whether you're being sarcastic or not.

But I actually do agree that the lawyers in this case have provided significant economic benefit to the public. "Happy Birthday to You" is almost universally known in the English speaking world, even by children, and it's frequently performed in public. Up until now, restaurants and youth organizations have have often discouraged their staff from singing this song, and of course, people who did sing it publicly were at risk of getting letters from lawyers.

Now several hundred million people can just sing the song without worrying about copyright issues. I have no problem with the lawyers getting paid well.

It was a rather tongue in cheek comment. The assessment of value changes depending on where you begin your inquiry; if you look only at the immediate situation than effectively yes, these lawyers have provided a tangible public service.

On the other-hand the entire branch of law in this case is providing no-benefit to civilization and it's only acts as a funnel for the transfer of wealth between entities (lawyers facilitate this transfer and benefit from it's continued practice which is definitionally parasitic since nothing of value is being created in the process).

Copyright creates enormous wealth. You can't have markets if you can't have transactions, and you can't have transactions in software if you don't have copyright protection. You're limited to this impoverished world where the software creator has to lock it behind a services API in order to monetize it. The world benefits enormously from just being able to sell software, movies, etc. as you would a physical product.

A world without copyright is not one in which studios still make the AAA movies people want and just distribute them into the public domain. It's one where you can only watch movies in theaters, or stream them onto locked down devices like Apple TVs instead of general purpose computers.

> You can't have markets if you can't have transactions, and you can't have transactions in software if you don't have copyright protection.

I'm not convinced that copyrighted software is, indeed, a good thing. The FSF's philosophical documents are pretty persuasive.

> The world benefits enormously from just being able to sell software, movies, etc. as you would a physical product.

Does it though? I've found that the best, most pleasant, most powerful, most flexible software I use is free.

> It's one where you can only watch movies in theaters, or stream them onto locked down devices like Apple TVs instead of general purpose computers.

Try streaming movies on FreeBSD, Linux desktops or anything which is not macOS, iOS, Windows or Android!

> The FSF's philosophical documents are pretty persuasive.

The GPL, at the core of the FSF mission, explicitly and deliberately relies on copyright law for its legal effects.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.en....

The FSF is not opposed to copyright as a concept. You can argue over duration, but copyleft would not be possible if everything were in the public domain.

> The FSF is not opposed to copyright as a concept. You can argue over duration, but copyleft would not be possible if everything were in the public domain.

Without copyright, arguably copyleft would be unnecessary, since the whole purpose of copyleft is to prevent non-Free code from being built on Free code, and without copyright, everything would be Free.

(OTOH, given the GPLv3, maybe that's not correct in the FSFs view, since the GPLv3 implies that "Free" has a broader and industry-dependent definition that merely eliminating copyright-based limitations wouldn't satisfy, so maybe the FSF does need to be copyright maximalists to advance their idea of Freedom-compelled-by-copyleft-license.)

GPLv3 mainly added new clauses to deal with other "intellectual property" laws that people started using to "protect" their source code such as patents, TIVO-ization tricks, and DRM. GPLv2 was written back when copyright was the only thing people were using to prevent sharing of their code.

> without copyright, everything would be Free

Or no commercial entity would publish source.

But there would be no basis for outlawing reverse engineering either.

Reverse engineering isn't outlawed.

> The FSF is not opposed to copyright as a concept.

I'm not sure you're knowledgeable enough on the subject to make that claim.

> You can argue over duration, but copyleft would not be possible if everything were in the public domain.

Copyleft wouldn't be necessary if everything were in the public domain.

> Copyleft wouldn't be necessary if everything were in the public domain.

If everything were in the public domain, nothing would stop you from forking an open-source project and distributing only binaries of your modifications. The precise difference between the GPL and say the MIT/BSD licenses is that the GPL precludes that. Copyright is the only hook you can use to compel creators of derivative works to distribute user-readable source.

That's true, but for sufficiently large organizations, it would only be a matter of time before the code associated with the binaries was leaked, and without copyright, you would simply be able to use that leaked code.

Under MIT/BSD you can't, for example, use and distribute the changes to the Mac OS source code which were made after they forked from BSD.

There's still a bit of difference between GPL and just having everything public domain, I agree, but the difference isn't nearly as important as you're thinking it is.

Working within the copyright system that exists and affects us all should not be misinterpreted as agreeing with copyright.

Copyrighting software is terrible for society. But given that copyrighting software exists and can't easily be gotten rid of, what can we do to minimize the damage and keep software free (as in freedom)? I think the GPL is a good answer to that question.

This is silly. The software FSF is most opposed to is protected not as much by copyright as by simple trade secrecy. It's not from honoring copyrights that DRM systems derive their power; that would be tautological, since the point of DRM systems is to thwart people who ignore copyright.

In a world without copyright, large corporations would have free rein to slurp up all the world's public software, extend it however they like, create whatever remaining functionality they needed, and publish none of it. None of what the GPL's copyleft attempts to accomplish would be possible.

> In a world without copyright, large corporations would have free rein to slurp up all the world's public software, extend it however they like, create whatever remaining functionality they needed, and publish none of it. None of what the GPL's copyleft attempts to accomplish would be possible.

That's only true of a world without copyright where no other system of rules around software existed. It's trivial to propose a set of rules that requires code sharing without copyright. In fact, such a set of rules would probably be much simpler than the GPL. Copyleft is really a convoluted hack on top of copyright.

That's only one way to get there. Product regulations could require that source code be available in all cases, separate from any copyright or licensing factors.

I'm not convinced that exclusivity is the only way to generate money for software development and other creative works. What about getting paid in order to perform work, instead of for having performed work?

All that does is empower capital and disempower labor (because other forms of capital remain). Why is that a good thing for us as laborers?

That copyright can allow labor to create capital is one of its more important aspects.

> Copyright creates enormous wealth. You can't have markets if you can't have transactions, and you can't have transactions in software if you don't have copyright protection. You're limited to this impoverished world where the software creator has to lock it behind a services API in order to monetize it. The world benefits enormously from just being able to sell software, movies, etc. as you would a physical product.

It's not a black or white thing, although I guess that's what supporters of endless copyright extensions would like to convince you to think. I concur with the conception of copyright which dictates that it should protect or make worthwhile the upfront risk and investment to produce something of value.

Would having a much more limited span or at least capped to the life-time of the creator versus 120 year copyright have prevented happy-birthday or mickey-mouse from being created? I think the answer is unequivocally no.

Neither is it true that you can't have transactions in software without copyright protection (Redhat, Mozilla is proof enough of this). Meanwhile larger companies with all the benefits of copy-right protection are making most of their money from Cloud Apps and Web services anyways (Facebook, Google) even Microsoft the traditional major player in the 'for-sale' software business is moving away from it towards cloud offerings.

> A world without copyright is not one in which studios still make the AAA movies people want and just distribute them into the public domain.

What is the term ( in length of years) across which Studios calculate the gross revenue vs. expenses from their production? I don't have a graph in front of me but surely they calculate that revenue must top expenses within the release year to justify expenses and it's a highly diminishing slope after that. Netflix is already effectively locked down (and clearly the future), - I don't see how copyright is preserving any kind of liberties here.

You said "the entire branch of law in this case is providing no-benefit to civilization."

I think the net-effect given the current state of law is probably a negative, yes.

Then you should probably stop arguing against the entire concept of copyright law, as that gives the wrong impression.

I can assure you that if you receive the entire say Microsoft codebase, you will make very little or no money for example.

That is because you could not build it :)

I am sure you could make money off looking for exploits that could be sold to black hats.

this impoverished world where the software creator has to lock it behind a services API in order to monetize it. [..] A world without copyright is [..] one where you can only watch movies in theaters, or stream them onto locked down devices

So... it's exactly like the coming future anyway?

Meanwhile... Let's all celebrate when the next x for y startup gets tens of millions in funding!

The fee also has to incorporate the possibility of losing the case, since it was taken on contingency.

> "Happy Birthday to You" is almost universally known in the English speaking world, even by children

It's almost universally known in the non-English speaking world also. They lyrics change, but the music remains the same.

>"Happy Birthday to You" is almost universally known in the English speaking world

Happy Birthday To You has been translated to pretty much every language, it's been appropriated by so many nations and cultures that you would even be hearing it in ISIS controlled parts of Syria these days.

Except guess what ain't free yet? All the filings and work these lawyers performed in the public domain for the case. That'll cost you from PACER despite evidence that court filings don't cost as much as the government says they do and then the surplus goes to other efforts. Hopefully some lawyer get PAID to change that.

Funny, even for my own case, I had to use Pacer and pay for access. A fucking racket is what it is.

Is it a racket for the DMV to charge you fees for title and registration?

If a law said they were only legally allowed to charge for the cost of supplying the paper/ink and labor involved yet they charged a flat fee that in the aggregate that was magnitudes larger than what it cost...yes. That's the analogous scenario here.

edit: and now I'm confused b/c you're an appellate lawyer...

edit2: btw, there's a reasonable scenario where free is the most they could legally charge, in case you were focusing on the fact that a fee is charged at all

Is it a "racket"? No. Are the fees "just"? Well, I honestly don't know. It probably varies on a state-by-state basis but here in Florida the title fee is likely outdated and unnecessary considering that it is all handled electronically and the cost to transfer and store such information is likely fractions of a percentage of a penny. The original cost of the title fee stems from what I can only assume is the cost of paying people to file and retrieve such paperwork.

I view the registration fee as just another tax. In fact, the state of Florida requires that you pay Florida sales tax for vehicles purchased outside the state (if purchased/registered within a year I think) and it takes that tax as part of the vehicle registration fee.

Is the copyright system "just"? No. Hell no. We're so far removed from that point that some people view copyright violation as a form of justice. A lot of that likely stems from the length of terms for copyright and the fact that everything is copyrighted by default. Go back to mandatory registration (with a registration fee =) and somewhere between 5-25 year terms depending on the work and that'd be a good start towards copyright justice.

The taxes you are paying for out of state purchases in Florida are just basic sales taxes like you pay on almost anything else.

> the state of Florida requires that you pay Florida sales tax for vehicles purchased outside the state (if purchased/registered within a year I think)

I believe most states require this (if you purchased the vehicle less than one prior to the date you are registering it in the new state).

Please make sure to use RECAP when you use Pacer: the docs you access are dumped into the Internet Archive, and if the docs already exist in the Internet Archive, they can be retrieved from there instead (to reduce PACER costs).

We'll get every doc out of PACER one day and reform their stance on charges for access, until then RECAP will have to do.

https://free.law/recap/

EDIT: If you work in the PACER IT department and want to send me a hard drive, that'd be fine too ;)

Only on HN can folks getting paid $200k/yr to build iPhone apps and websites decry lawyers getting paid too much.

Agreed. We should be paid much more for building these apps that transfer so much wealth to investors. As far as I can tell the folks who do the actual work of making software companies money receive far too small a share of the proceeds.

Make it happen, captain.

If it's that easy why aren't you already doing it? Unless it turns out it's not that easy...

Warner Music thought so, which is why they paid it.

Here in the US we wage battles of virtues and get paid for it, not manufacture some stupid cheap memory modules or phone system boards that power everything.

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