Radical copyright law reform to boost Ireland’s digital economy? | Hacker News Reader

Radical copyright law reform to boost Ireland’s digital economy?

siliconrepublic.com

9 pointszoowar8 comments

Radical (and very interesting, and potentially immensely profitable for the countries that implement it) copyright reform would be to impose severe limits on copyright holders (such as setting a short - eg 14 years - time limit, or even abolishing copyrights completely).

Strengthening the copyright holders' rights is not radical in any way, nor will it do anything to boost any economy.

Well, someone gains by making money on someone else's work. I don't see how this can become a boost to regional economy unless it includes getting paid for material produced in other territories. There are pretty strong arguments to be made on getting rid of software patents (in case they have them in Ireland) but treating them the same as copyright comes across as incompetence IMO.

I'm not arguing that that is necessarily the best possible end-state for copyrights, but I do think that this sort of radical move in a western economy would have very interesting, and probably very positive, for that country, consequences.

For a start, a shedload of startups would spring up to monetise all the music and movies and books that are suddenly available. They would quickly iterate through business models before settling on whatever the customers actually want. Once the dust settles, then it would make sense for the government to step back in once again, and say, "ok, now we have a reasonably stable distribution system, let's see how we can enforce some kind of compulsory licence to ensure artists get a share of the pie too."

But the only way to get there is first to eliminate the current copyright holders, shove them out of the picture entirely.

Yeah but if company A spends x million in production budget, how is it fair for company B to sell the product without paying company A? Or perhaps A isn't a company but an author or software developer.

My point was that this isn't creating a boost in an economy because while B makes money, A loses money. How about these startups creating something of value them selves, that they can then sell?

You're seeing one point of view, I'm seeing another.

If art piece X is available for people to see and think about, why is artist Y not allowed to use it to create even better art? Why is company Z not allowed to figure out even better ways to monetise it?

You probably think the money lost by A is greater than the money gained by Y and Z. I think that's not true - a lot of great art is derivative, and a lot of interesting business models around art have not been explored because the incumbents (A) resist it.

You could also argue that A won't be incentivised to produce the art, but... actually, if only one country does this, that's not true.

PS: China doesn't count, yet, for two reasons: 1) it's not a western democracy with a long tradition of western-style art and copyright and a hunger to innovate on the art distribution models; 2) copyright theft is not actually legal there, it's still illegal, just loosely enforced; that prevents real legit businesses from emerging in that space.

Your first point is related to patents, not copyright, moreover patents doesn't exist in art. You can for example make a painting of a duck, which get's me inspired to make a painting of a duck with a hat, that is perfectly fine.

So you think that taking for example Microsoft Word, re-package it in a new box call it "Awsome word 2011" and re-sell it at half price should be ok? Without any cost associated with the production what so ever, that would be possible. You can still invent a new distribution plattform, look at amazon for example, you just have to pitch it to the owner whose products you are going to sell, and of course pay them, that is how all trade works. How can selling someone elses work, make a profit, and not paying them be morally justified?

Regarding China, the point is that the effect on foreign relations could be similar in regards to copyright.

For all intents and purposes all creation is incremental. In the sense that someone sees something, and says "Hey, that's a great idea, but it would be better if I changed it like this...".

Prove this to yourself: find out who invented television.

So, weaker copyrights would encourage incremental innovation, the kind that really takes place. Adding a "fair use" doctrine, which is "radical" reform in the article, almost certainly only helps the content creators in that it frees up other people to reference previous creations, driving interest in, and use of, those previous creations.

As far as radicalizing copyright into so-called "Digital Rights Management", remember: "DRM is about political and economic subjugation".

Well you are wrong, because you are arguing about patents on which we agree. Copyright is not related in any way, patents is the "protection of ideas" which is especially unfit in the field of software. Let me explain.

Let's say you are creating software project. You are then automatically protected by the copyright law, this means that you are the one who decides on how your work should be distributed and copied. Let's say you now decide to open source the project, as the copyright owner you can then license the software under the terms in for example GPL or BSD etc. Without this basic right that license would be worth nothing, and some one could simply take it, re-package it and take credit for it.

Related to this article, a weakened copyright law could just as well be harmful to local economy since foreign companies may just chose to not make business there, like some companies treat for example China.

Check this informative lecture by Richard Stallman on software patents, and the confusion with copyright and the so called IP. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmKy_LP6JPQ&feature=relat...

(it starts about 2 min in)

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