Two things about SOPA/PIPA and then I'll shut up
plus.google.com
plus.google.com
* I don't think campaign financing is that big of a deal in Germany
* There are a lot of TV ads from politically extreme or plain weird parties during election time. There also is a satirical party that makes pretty funny ads.
* The politically extreme parties can refund their advertising costs if they are above a certain threshold of votes, which causes some controversy
Edit for clarity: of course every party can refund their expenses, but for politically extreme parties this is controversial
What I like about Joel's approach is that it doesn't limit speech, but instead expands it online. I have no idea if Google (et al) would go for such a thing, essentially giving away ad time for free / cheap, but it's a great idea. YouTube has already sponsored debates where candidates take questions from the public (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNN-YouTube_presidential_debate...) so it's not unthinkable.
All google has to do is 'give' x ad views before some videos on youtube, for each candidate. If someone tries to get Google to do otherwise, they're limiting GOOGLE'S freedom of speech.
That said, if Citizens United is any indication, Google could simply donate the money to buy the placements to a Super PAC, which could then buy the placements for each candidate back from Google. Sort of a silly workaround, but hey, it might be a fun way to subvert the outcome of Citizens United.
That's not true; there's no general "harming the public good" exception to the First Amendment. There are exceptions for lying (i.e., making false statements with knowledge that they are false (or with reckless disgard of whether they are false) and intent to deceive), and that's the actual reason why it is unprotected to falsely shout "fire" in a crowded theater.
How does it "harm the public good" to shout fire in a crowded theater when there actually is a fire?
What? Your public good rule is more complex? That's your plan to avoid the law of unintended consequences? (Of course, many of those so-called unintended consequences aren't actually unintended so much as things that one isn't willing to argue for.)
The German system does not place rules on independent spending; it only requires TV channels to provide ad space for political parties that run for office. The amount of space is tied to the relevance of the party, usually measured by the success in the previous election. The TV channel can charge the party 35% of the usual price, this is considered to be the cost price of the channel. [1]
Parties are, of course, allowded to buy additional space, but they would have to pay the usual price. In other words, the German law doesn't limit independent spending.
[1] http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Grundlagen_f%C3%BCr_Wahlwerbung...
How is this justified? Bigger parties are already popular enough, why should they get more media exposure than unknown parties? This is basically like giving the winner of one race a time advantage in the next race, making it even more difficult for other contestants to catch up.
Note that this didn't prevent new parties to become popular. In the last 25 years or so, Germany has seen the rise of the Green party, and the Left party. Today, the Pirate Party seem to be on the rise. It seems to be a rather stable yet permeable system.
Then amend the constitution to allow this particular limit on freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is not a sanctum that has to be protected at all cost, even if we can see how it leads to the whole system going down the toilet.
Enforcing copyright is a form of limiting freedom of speech and the constitution obviously has no problems with it. If I cant publicly repeat what somebody else said because the speech is copyrighted, this is limiting my freedom of speech. I dont see that freedom of speech can be freely limited here (not only limited, but life+70yrs limited, meaning from my finite-lifespan point of view prohibited forever) but but somehow cant be limited to fix the utterly broken political/election system.
And while technically speaking requiring that the LeafStorm News Network has to provide equal airtime for all political candidates might be more "fair," if I own the news network I should be able to accept or reject advertisers as I see fit, and if people don't think it's fair they can start their own news networks. Now if I voluntarily said, "I'm providing ten minutes of ad airtime each day for the candidates in this race free of charge, with no extra advertising permitted, and no PACs either," then that is well within my rights as a network owner, but it's not something we should require everyone to do.
"Start their own news networks" is easy to say and impossible to do for many groups. Not all interests are represented by money; there are valuable causes that could never motivate enough donations to compete.
Of course, a party with 50% of the vote will still get 50% of the money, which does favour incumbents.
> For each registered federal political party that received at least 2% of all valid votes the last general election or at least 5% of the valid votes in the electoral districts in which it had a candidate, the per-vote subsidy, also referred to as the "government allowance", gives the party an inflation-indexed subsidy each year of $2.04 per vote received in the last election.
Now, Wikipedia can be inaccurate, I know, but major changes like this do tend to get documented, and major pages like this tend to have a lot of people watching it, so I'm reasonably confident in this content.
If you have a citation which refutes this, however, please do share because I'd hate to walk around believing false facts.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in...
It has been eliminated after the next election
It seems to be a fair bit worse than you've stated, actually. One of the citations in that section leads to a Globe and Mail article[1] which states that the subsidy will be phased out over the next few years:
> The government said it will introduce legislation to gradually reduce the allowance of $2 a year per vote by increments of 51 cents starting on April 1 of next year until it is eliminated by 2015-16.
I'm assuming that means that the subsidy won't appear at all in the 2015-2016 budget, which means that it will actually be gone by the time the next election rolls around in October 2015. Hopefully the NDP will be able to get enough seats to bring it back after the election, preferably alone but possibly with the Liberals.
Incidentally, I was surprised to find that the subsidy has only existed since the beginning of 2004. I suppose that has a lot to do with my age, since I wasn't quite 19 then, and anything that happens before the first time you vote tends to be regarded as "the way it's always been."
Thanks for the clarification.
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/budget/news/pa...
If anything, this has encouraged a more 'grassroots' approach to fundraising, as it's more the number of people you can engage, rather than a particular (wealthy) demographic.
The main problem is that people just turn the TV off for that period, and the candidates battle for the other TV spots.
Maybe targeted online ads could help this. Imagine Google helping select candidates based on your profile, like they do with other advertisement.
That way it's a fair chance for every candidate, and people have less an incentive to turn off the TV - it's just one ad, after all.
Some of the most important changes introduced by the new system are:
- Inability to be a candidate, to people condemned for crimes against humanity (in our case, mainly former members of the dictatorial government from 1976-1983).
- A party needs to have at least 0.4% of the electoral roll as its members, to be able to participate in the electoral process.
- Only physical persons can donate to the campaign. Donations from companies are prohibited.
- The government will give money to the parties to develop their respective campaigns in this way: 50% of the total to be divided equally between all parties. The other 50% based on the amount of votes from the last election.
- Contracting advertisement in audiovisual media and radio by political groups is prohibited.
- Publicity in audiovisual media will be paid by the government, and the function of distributing spaces that can be up to 10 percent of broadcast time among all the contending groups in all media for the purpose of developing their political campaigns is assigned to the National Electoral Directorate; the NED will assign 50% equally between all parties. The other 50% based on the amount of votes from the last election.
The end result: Lots of ugly TV spots in the months previous to the election day. But everyone had the chance to speak in prime time TV spots and deliver their message. Some of the spots were really bad (mostly, the smaller parties... they lacked of the experience I guess).
I can't tell for sure, but I bet that corporations, being prohibited to donate money directly, stimulated their top management to donate (and their families), and then gave them bonuses (so, repaying the money). So, its all the same game. It's very hard to change how politics work.
That applies equally to other services from Apple, Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, Comcast, Time Warner, BSkyB, Virgin Media etc.
I bet the MPAA et al have used this tactic to their own advantage thus far. I'm aware of this concept from negotiation tactics and it's made me think of the current situation in a completely different way. Thanks Joel.
It's high time we began using it ourselves.
* Copyright reform would be great, but seems like a lot of it is international treaty.
* Real net neutrality
* More and better broadband.
* Support for net security (DNSSEC) and anonymity (e.g. Tor), maybe IPv6.
* In defense of the first-sale doctrine and promote compatibility - eliminate the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA
* Truth in labeling - all systems using DRM have to be fully described on the outside of the box and all advertising materials
Ideally we'd want regulations on the other guy more than on the yourself. But just because Hollywood doesn't want it doesn't mean it we would. For example Hollywood would fight tooth and nail against something like "Free trade for DVDs - End region locking" but it would probably only help them in the long run.
That said:
* Legal recognition of public domain donations.
* Legal recognition of public domain recursive work (in the vein of the GPL, where work from it must also be in the public domain.)
-> treaties where the USA is the driving force behind making them ever more onerous. The rest of the world would love it if the wish list came to pass, and it would make a whole lot of other things (e.g. Free trade agreements) a lot more palatable.
The GPL does have some extra requirements, in the form of source code sharing requirements for derivative works, but judging by how many people use more permissive open-source licenses, the difference here seems to be pretty slight in practice.
Anyway it's a pony suggestion, not a serious proposal for a law. What I'd actually like to see is reduction of copyright/patent terms, abolition of certain patent types, expansion of fair use boundaries, and explicit rules for determining fair use without going to court.
But these are all suggestions that should be coming from Congress and from lobbyists while they're negotiating the terms of the deal, so they feel like they've accomplished some level of "damage control." Meanwhile they've wasted a lot of energy inching away from the ideal/extremist proposal and towards the compromise we actually want.
I'd also be careful not to stir the hornets' nest that is the patents system. Depending on how you do it, you end up on the opposite side of companies like Apple and Microsoft, which you need on board for any push on copyright (easing copyright rules would make it easier for them to keep building tools for creatives; easing the patent system will just make life easier for their competitors). Patents, copyright and trademarks are not as closely intertwined as some people believe, they are actually very different concepts.
If they want to work, fine, but it's free. I bet they'd spend less time lobbying and more time working on noble pursuits.
In reality, why would a would-be corrupt politician forgo multiple tens of millions in exchange for only 1 million?
Of course, such lavish pensions would still create gravity for the self-serving types who just don't think as big.
Here's the problem: the Federal government has too much power. So long as it retains that power, people and corporations will figure out a way to influence the people who hold that power, through salaries, bribes, equity, favors, lobbying, or whatever.
The only real solution is to reign in Congress.
Your "genius" friend doesn't know much about the economics of congress.
For example, Nancy Pelosi's net worth while in Congress has been going up by far more than $1M/year.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum...
And, an old Joel Spolsky reading list on programming:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navlinks/fog0000000262.html
These are terrific lists, I've learned a ton from them and haven't yet gotten further than halfway through either.
But I submit that the politics of the United States of America are every bit as complicated as software. We have _one_ fundamental problem, and that related to the TV ads? Um, how likely is it that so broad and general a statement about software development would be true, never mind helpful?
We will not understand our country's politics until we give them the same attention we give our profession. We shouldn't be silent before we've checklisted some reading list -- but maybe we ought to speak as if perhaps this is a big and complicated system about which we have a lot to learn.
I'm not saying that this particular problem has a simple solution. I'm saying that we shouldn't throw out ideas because they seem too simple. And, of course, the more angles we have on the problem, the better.
I mean take the first example: elimination of software patents. This is great and I would like this to happen, too. A pretty significant problem, however, is that some of the most successful and most powerful American companies are built around these laws and prop up these laws, help write these laws, etc.
Does anyone believe our legal system is going to say: "Sorry, Microsoft (Apple, IBM, whoever), all the billions you spent on software patents and legal fees and all the money you earn from them is gone. We've decided software patents are unfair so that massive part of your business is now invalid."
We can sit around all day outlining what we think would be the most fair policies. It is all irrelevant if we can't define a path to get there.
The Apples and Microsofts of the world might be okay with that.
A lot of people still do not know why software patents are bad. Similar to sopa and pipa, except to a larger degree here, mostly software engineers and very internet savvy users are aware of the problem with software patents.
We need more anecdotes and evidence, then a way to deliver the message. Once the problem is defined, the solution will present itself. If it doesn't, we have failed at defining and convincing people of the problem.
"We don't have to get all this stuff. We merely have to tie them up fighting it, and re-center the "compromise" position."
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window, Richard Stallman
1) How are we going to prevent this powerful lobby group from betraying us (the smaller guys) in the laws they lobby for?
2) How are we going to determine who gets to participate in this equal share of air time on these YouTube/FaceBook spots? Do I get a spot if I want one? Who gets to decide? The same GOP/DNC? How do we prevent YouTube/Facebook from working deals with candidates for favors after they get elected? How do we guarantee candidate A has the same face time as candidate B? What if candidate B is campaigning on shutting down this technology lobby, will he still get face time?
I suppose all of his suggestions are better than the current situation, but I don't feel they are that much better. We are still going to have to become incredibly vigilant and anti-apathetic with these new powerful groups we form, and I just don't think that's realistic, given our current situation.
I am not 100% sure about this, but isn't the "Internet economy" much, much larger than the "Entertainment economy?"
I don't hold out much hope of curing the corruption in our political system but I do hope that we can continue shining a bright light at corruption so more people know what is happening. Unfortunately it is the threat of a bright light of public accountability that causes attacks on Internet freedoms.
If it would be possible to make a professional association like the ACM take a stronger and more visible stance, imo that'd be a better approach, because the tech industry's employees are often intelligent, but the tech industry's companies would imo be more likely to just lobby as a special interest, not in any sort of enlightened way. So it needs to be structured so the employees, not their employers, control the lobbying organization.
Google, Facebook, etc. could be the main contributors, but smaller companies would donate too (there might be a very significant long tail).
It could lobby for everything Joel talks about.
Patents stuff is too confusing for me, but the concept of ad space on popular websites to spread the voice of Joel/Internet would be awesome. I think Reddit will participate because they have been pretty devoted so far, definitely not Facebook though. I dont think they want any of this drama..... asusal.
Aside from a few people at the top of Google with a sense of restraint and fair play, if Google alone decided to ruin the movie industry, they could - quickly. Obviously an IIAA pays more respect to the current way of doing things, rather than just making a unilateral decree that the movie industry doesn't get to exist anymore if they won't extend the same courtesy to the tech industry.
Slightly less drastically, I wouldn't mind Google making a note in the SERPs about which members of Congress are in favor of censoring freedom of speech. A small note with that person's position on SOPA would be a handy tool to keep the public informed.
If playing the lobbying game works, then no reason not to play.
Google bends over backwards to make sure that their rankings are entirely algorithmic so that they can retain the moral high-ground and various legal protections. It would be insane for Google to jeopardize either of those things or to risk anti-competitive and anti-trust prosecution.
Google can keep its moral highground, and the delisting is "for the people, by the people" ;-)
Do you really think that algorithms are necessarily neutral? (Hint: they're not. Consider a "hate speech" detector. It's easy to implement bias using "neutral" algorithms with "reasonable" decisions.)
As the internet continues to accelerate our culture, that time is only going to grow shorter. Longer copyright terms may have made sense in the past when distribution was hard, but today's world moves much faster, and the law needs to catch up.
Now with a mouse click anyone can upload music and books to digital storefronts.
The law has caught up, directly in favor of those who own the majority of successful IP. As culture has accelerated our laws have only gotten more draconian.
I'm all for this fight, but don't doubt that it will be just that, a fight that the victors will write the history of.
Now--is that a good argument for such a long copyright period? I don't think so. I think the only time copyright should survive the author's death is if they have kids who are not yet adult.
Trademarks clearly should have much longer protection periods than copyright. In fact, a business should be able to operate infinitely under the same legally protected name as long as they remain an active business in good standing and the haven't lost their brand name to a word in common usage.
The intention of copyright is to promote the creation of works. Rewarding authors is the means, not the end. In the case of LOTR, Tolkien didn't write it to provide licensing revenue to his grandchildren; he wrote LOTR because the creation of fantasy languages and histories was his passion and he could make some money from it. A much shorter copyright would have sufficed to inspire the creation of LOTR. Furthermore, the creation of movie adaptations would be helped by LOTR coming out of copyright, not hindered. Disney's empire was built on adaptations of out-of-copyright stories. Shorter copyright would in many ways encourage the creation of more works.
I'm sure John Yoo could find something in the Constitution to allow it.
Now, extension of trademark, that I get to a limited degree. They can be the sole Mickey maker for a while. But why should they not have to make new material to generate new income from it?
Say you wrote an open source software package in 2004. Should Microsoft be able to take your work and incorporate it into a proprietary package, just because 7 years passed?
And I don't actually program anymore, so let's go with writing: should anyone have the ability to republish it without my consent after the copyright has ended? Yes. Even a big publisher.
Should anyone have the ability to take my created work and extend on it, using my creations outside of the created work? Yes, after the trademark ends.
No, you don't get to own an idea forever just because you thought of it first. The very concept of 'owning ideas' is silly, but even if it wasn't, the second you tell it to someone else, it becomes part of the collective society and culture. If you don't like the deal that copyright gives you, you have a choice: don't share the idea at all. And that's fine, and I'm sure that the world would have kept spinning if nobody ever drew up MickeyMouse.
The point of copyright is to get works into the public domain by allowing creators to recoup the costs of production and make a little bit of profit, the point is not to allow an endless revenue stream from something that is public domain.
If anything works that create more revenue should have their terms expire faster.
I also support continuously raising the price necessary to renew the copyright as you try to carry it longer and longer. And again, I'm not trying to hurt the mighty Disney corporation; sums they'd laugh at would still be sufficient to open the bulk of the content back up to us, and that's what I care about.
To make my point clear, this is entirely practical. In theory, should Steamboat Willie be public domain by now? Yeah, sure, there's no really good argument based on the public interest otherwise. But as a practical matter, if we could distinguish between Big Copyright's interests and the vastly larger "everything else", we'd be much more likely to come to a compromise that leaves everybody reasonably satisfied, if not ecstatic.
Regarding limiting copyright to 10 years, and since you brought up ponies, I feel that solves the wrong problem. The issue I see is that a few large greedy corporations effectively monopolize the copyrights for the vast majority of the nation/worlds creative output, that they then further exploit a corrupt political system to extend those copyrights indefinitely is almost secondary.
A thought experiment: make the sales/purchase of copyright ownership illegal. This would still allow an artist or creator to license the right to sell and distribute their work, but leave them unable to lose (legal) control of such distribution. This still allows a lot of room for the mega-corps to profit, but with less outright exploitation of artists than we currently see. Copyrights are held by the creator(s) for life, and works pass into the public domain after death, not the artists estates (or more often, the organization that owns the copyright). I feel this is simple to understand, fair to creators, and still provides business incentives to non-creators to invest time and money in the production and promotion of quality content.
I suppose you could legislate the general condition, but there will always be edge cases. Unfortunately, allowing for edge cases is going to result in abuse.
Ten years as a period for copyright? How about you go first.
Since the tech industry understands copyright so much better than everyone else it might be good for them to set an example and show all the 'old' dodo-like industries how it's done.
After ten years all code should be made open-source. Google has made plenty of money - and I think it's time that they release their algorithm so other innovative and disruptive companies can make better use of it. I mean, how many Google bikes can one ride behind?
Fogcreek has had a nice run too - surely some open-sourced FogBugz would be of great value in second and third world countries that have emergent tech sectors but can't possibly afford the cost of the real service? Certainly, even 10-year-old Fogbugz is going to help society a lot more than license-free copies of My Big Fat Greek Wedding [2002] or Stuart Little 2 [2002].
Anyway, since many of these places exchange rates means they could never purchase software in the first place, it's not like there would be any lost sales, right?
Oh another thing: very important:: a short term of copyright like a few years would be the biggest boon to Hollywood ever as they could simply sit and wait for works to drop into the public domain before turning around and producing them without paying the creators a penny. There would be tons of creators strung along via a studio option - just long enough till the work dropped into the public domain. It would harder than ever for individuals to profit from their creative work and easier than ever for Hollywood to make money off of it.
So - sorry to say - I'm a bit disappointed! But that's just my fault - assuming that people who knew so well the cure for the ills of the content industry would actually have an idea about how that world works. My bad.
There are existing legal frameworks in place (trade secret, trademark, service marks, etc.) that complement copyright and would enable software (and movies!) to remain viable enterprises even with drastically shorter copyright terms (or no copyright at all.)
Neither trade secret nor trademark nor service marks protect my creative work; only copyright. But my copyright is my business just as the source code is the foundation of Joel's business. So what Joel thinks is good for my business is surely acceptable for his own.
If anti-copyright folks are as concerned as they claim to be about adding value back into society - and as quickly as possible at that - it makes overwhelming sense that valuable services such as software should be scrutinized first, before mere entertainment. We should obviously be talking about limiting a term on trade secrets - not just copyright - people will still have trademarks and service marks to defend their reputation and authenticity.
That doesn't make any sense. Copyrights and trade secrets are two very different creatures. In order to benefit from a copyrighted work, the creator has to show the work, but this is not the case with trade secrets.
I honestly don't understand how one could even begin to compare the two. Copyrights and patents have to be revealed specifically in order to be granted protection, and you are certainly within your rights to keep your patented creations and copyrighted works to yourself.
If one likes that idea, it works even better in the case of 'trade secrets'. Abolishing trade secrets and instead substituting a time limit like that of a patent would REALLY let those benefits flow to society at large. We force pharmaceutical firms to come up with new ideas every patent cycle; why should software - after all, it's 'eating the world' and is a highly-maleable product - be exempt from that process of creative renewal?
Case in point: Microsoft used it's dominance gained from Windows to directly stifle competition, to the point where the law had to get involved.
Google was a disruptive force initially, but now they have begun to tweak their algorithm to fortify the walled-garden they wish to build - while also using the Microsoft model of buying up potentially disruptive companies.
Oh, and the 10-years copyright is extreme, of course, but current rules are also extreme and need to go. That is Joel's point: in order to get a sane compromise, we must ask for an insane target.
Though, I do thank you for taking the time to make an argument - I get down-votes for almost every unpopular viewpoint I take here on HN; 90% of the time the down votes are anonymous.
In order to get a sane compromise one first has to appear credible. The pro-copyright folks have no legitimacy around here because they demonstrably don't understand how the tech world works; clearly that disconnect extends to both sides.
Long digression. Which may not even be totally true, but close enough to make the point.
This isn't actually that far from the original intention of patents. It used to be that things were kept as trade secrets and hence lost to the ages, which is why no one knows how to make Damascus steel anymore. On the other hand, if someone leaked your trade secret, you could sue them for breach of contract or something, but once the secret itself was out, it was just free speech and free enterprise for people who didn't sign an NDA with you to go ahead and use it. So trade secrets were both ineffective for the secret-holder (unless they kept them very, very well) and bad for society as a whole (since none of us could use any of the secrets that didn't leak out.)
So the patent was invented. Now you had a choice: either your trade secret could remain secret or it could become a patent. If you patented, for instance, your revolutionary manufacturing process for steel, no one in the entire country could legally use that process themselves--at least not until the patent term was up. On the other hand, the process itself was published, and once your patent expired, everyone gained your knowledge.
Copyright enters the picture with software in a funny way. If you documented the process of, say, manufacturing steel, the document itself would be copyrighted. Anyone could read that document and then implement the process with no problem. The same is true for, say, the plans to some machine or appliance--the plans themselves would be copyrighted, but that wouldn't prevent you from assembling an actual device. Obviously with software this is different.
I actually think that with software, both traditional patents and the copyright process don't really work. Rather, I think software should be subject to the same kind of social contract patents successfully imposed on pre-software inventions: no copyright protection on source or executable code (copyright on documentation or string or graphic resources are acceptable), source and executable code can be "patented", which entails a limited-term (5-10 year) monopoly on the use of that source code, but after 5-10 years the code is effectively public domain, and published in perpetuity by the government.
Anyhow, to address your point: I would argue that the computer software field is light years ahead of any other enterprise in human history, in terms of free, open, and shared contributions toward the betterment of mankind. That's not to say that we're without flaws or total fuckups, but a lot of us have been practicing what we've been preaching for decades. Would you disagree? Given that the music and movie industries still operate like it's 1930, what's to say they would follow suit if we "went first"? Because I would argue that we already did, 30 years ago.
I would certainly agree that the people that make up the content side of the tech industry - programmers, devs, designers, etc . - really do take open and shared contribution seriously, to an impressive extent.
But that's true in Hollywood too - forget about the business structure - the real work happens across thousands of small disparate shops with groups of people working together on the things they love. This is true from development all the way to post-production. It's an open and creative environment.
I do see a clear way that copyright can be reformed to create a win-win scenario. It's a lengthy idea and if I can find the time to put it on paper, I'll happily post it here.
I think releasing 2002's Google open source would be far less revolutionary than you think. 2002 was, like, really long ago.
C++? C++ was still largely pre-Standard in practice. GCC 3.x (which was the first release line with good C++98 support) was still in its infancy, and most universities still had GCC 2.95 installed until 2004 or 2005. Java? Java 1.4 wasn't released until February 2002. Do you remember Java from those days? Casts. Two, three, four casts per line. Generics wouldn't be introduced until late 2004, at which point Java would become usable. Python 2.2 was all the rage in 2002. I don't know about you, but I cry every time I have to write a Python script which works with 2.4 because of a busted old server. Decorators weren't even a glint in Guido's eye back then. Source control meant CVS. CVS.
How about the Web? Well, IE6 was the new thing back in 2002, so there's that. Phoenix -- later renamed Firebird, later renamed Firefox -- was released late in 2002. Opera's leading feature was that it would reload your old tabs if you restarted it, which was great because it crashed every 15 minutes. Ajax was used by, like, two sites. Webmail meant Yahoo!. MySpace didn't even exist in 2002, let alone Facebook. People still used ICQ, although AIM was still more popular. KaZaA was still spelled with random capital letters in 2002, and people still used it. "Warcraft" meant the hot new game, Warcraft III.
Ten years is a really long time in internet time. I don't think Google or Fogcreek would be hurt in the least by releasing their 10-year-old codebases, because their 10-year-old codebases are damn near useless by modern standards.
What harm for Id Software was in open-sourcing Doom, Quake 1-3 ?
Several years ago Win2K code was leaked - what harm for Microsoft was in it? I suppose zero.
Expiring copyright is just that: you can copy the distributed result (binaries) as you want. It does not entail open sourcing any more than it would force the studios to release their raw footage and CGI files.
Oh another thing: very important:: a short term of copyright like a few years would be the biggest boon to Hollywood ever as they could simply sit and wait for works to drop into the public domain before turning around and producing them without paying the creators a penny. There would be tons of creators strung along via a studio option - just long enough till the work dropped into the public domain. It would harder than ever for individuals to profit from their creative work and easier than ever for Hollywood to make money off of it.
What creators, exactly, are you talking about? If you mean screenwriters, they could simply sign a simple contract ("You shall not produce a movie based on the work without authorization") before showing it to the studios. Why would they need copyright?
Open-sourcing code - though different from an expiring copyright - would create the same result in a business based on the ownership and public non-availability of that code.
Regarding the 'simple contract': contracts mean very little - leverage means everything. Granting very short-term copyrights removes all leverage from the owner of the work. His commercialization window grows very small and he is dependent on organized outside entities to 'make it happen' for him.
Patent coverage isn't even as short as a ten-year term mentioned in the OP. And patents are usually produced by it integrated firms that already have a huge commercialization apparatus running 24/7.
These are numbers that are pretty small compared to the value and salaries generated in either the entertainment or tech industries. The difference is that the entertainment industry has developed the culture and institutions to direct some of their value toward political activities. The tech industry largely has not.
Joel's idea of free political advertising on tech properties could be problematic because advertising, even if freely given, has an economic value. Corporations are expressly forbidden from donating money to federal political campaigns, so this whole idea might be squashed by the FEC.
If you created a PAC, then you could solicit donations from individuals and spend it on whatever candidates you, the PAC director, chose. But, PAC contributions and distributions are also pretty strictly limited: $5,000 per person, and $5,000 per candidate, respectively.
Political parties can spend a lot more money, but only on candidates who are members of the same party. So for instance if you started the Internet Party, you couldn't give much money to a politician who is a declared Democrat or Republican.
'In 2010, the landmark case filed by Citizens United changed the rules regarding corporate campaign expenditures. This ruling made it legal for corporations and unions to spend from their general treasuries to finance independent expenditures. Direct corporate and union contributions to federal campaigns, however are still prohibited.'
'The 2010 election marked the rise of a new political committee, dubbed "super PACs," and officially known as "independent-expenditure only committees," which can raise unlimited sums from corporations, unions and other groups, as well as individuals. [...] Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate directly with candidates or political parties since they are "independent".'
Giving ad time or ad space directly to candidates, as Joel proposes, would violate that rule--even if it was done by a Super PAC.
However nothing would stop a Super PAC, or even the tech companies themselves, from creating their own ads supporting candidates, and running them on their own sites. (as long as they are not coordinated with the campaign)
Pretty sure I covered that point.
> Giving ad time or ad space directly to candidates, as Joel proposes
He didn't actually say that. He said giving ad space to a 'political campaign'. Spolsky also, and quite rightly I think, steers clear of the idea of tech companies directly spruiking friendly candidates. But you could have a PAC whose sole function was to allocate ad inventory evenly between a disparate field of candidates, for example. Google could even run it algorithmically off their own system.
There are lots of ways to do it and, as demonstrated, no real regulatory barriers. The only thing missing is political commitment on the part of internet companies. I agree with Spolsky that there is huge untapped power in this idea. I'm just not sure that it would be beneficial to society over the long term to have it unleashed.
From the second sentence, it seemed to me that he was talking about companies directly giving advertising inventory directly to candidates. But now reading it again, it is a bit ambiguous.
The PAC intermediary you describe would work legally, but it wouldn't be able to allocate much ad inventory to each candidate, since the most a PAC can give to each candidate is $5,000 aggregate per election cycle.
You're looking at a simplistic measure of a single type of elected office. A broad measure isn't very interesting, because freshman house seats aren't very valuable. BIG money is spent to defend the seats of House members with seniority and key committee seats.
The reality is that Federal politicians are bought and paid for in many ways. Spouses, friends and family of congressmen can find themselves possessing an uncanny degree of luck. Spouses become partners in wealthy law firms, etc.
Then you have less shady practices. PACs and special interest groups will happen to run ads in your home district that happen to help you out. Most primaries for the general election happen in September... if you keep the teacher's union happy, lots of teachers will spend their summer vacations supporting your campaign.
The entertainment industry plays all of these cards. They use celebrities to attract people to paid fundraises. They have influence over unions that can bolster attendance at rallies or make lots of phone calls.
From http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Records-detail-FBI-s...
"A 26-page FBI affidavit indicates that prior to the 2008 raid, the investigation unearthed information that Sweeney may have received payoffs from Powers & Co., which was founded by Sweeney's longtime friend and mentor, William D. Powers, who was state GOP chairman from 1991 to 2001. The FBI's theory was that Sweeney may have received the undisclosed gifts through the salary, commissions and benefits paid to Sweeney's then-wife, Gaia, who was given a job at Powers' lobbying firm during the height of Sweeney's tenure in Congress.
Gaia "Gayle" Sweeney did little if any work for her income, the FBI said, yet the lobbying firm also paid her commissions from a contract the firm had with Siena College. The college received federal grants facilitated by Sweeney, who became a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee in 2001.
The FBI said Powers told agents that Gayle Sweeney was a full-time employee who did clerical work. But Gayle Sweeney told the FBI she worked part time, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays, and that she spent most of her time conducting campaign fundraising efforts for her husband."
I disagree with this one. How about this instead?
* Create a legal doctrine that linking is legally the equivalent of a citation in a printed publication
If something is protected free speech in a book or magazine or newspaper or flyer, it should be so on the internet. If something would not be protected free speech when published in a book, etc., then I don't see why merely being published on the internet should make a difference.
In other words, the internet is just another publication medium. In most areas it does not need different laws. The ones we have for other media are fine.
If by "illegal" we include civil liability, not just criminal liability, I could imagine that a book could contain libelous citations. For instance, if someone published a book called "Child Molesters Among Us!" that contained citations to a bunch of people in the community that are not in fact child molesters (basically people that the author simply didn't like) he'd be in for some serious lawsuits.
If he did the same thing on a web page, with the links being names that when clicked brought up the person's house on Google Maps I'd have no objection to him being in for the same lawsuits.
> A solution is for the Internet industry to start giving free advertising to political campaigns on our own new media assets...
A comment by daeken on the "Can we kill the music business too?" HN post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3493002) has some ideas that apply nicely here, too.
From that comment:
> While I think the author's heart is in the right place, I think he's fallen into the trap that nearly everyone in the music startup industry has fallen into: the content and distribution are the easy parts, getting people to give a damn is the hard part.
> The hard part in all this is getting it in front of users, and getting them to care about the music.
Similarly, the hard part of a political campaign is getting noticed. 100,000 people out there would be happy to run for president I'm sure; the vast majority of them are never noticed. Some few are. Fewer still are noticed a lot.
I would love to see a world in which money-buys-attention is not the primary rule that determines who gets the most powerful job there is. But turning on the firehose and flooding people with free ads from 100,000 presidential hopefuls, does not look to me like the way to make that happen.
How to make it happen, is worthy of some serious discussion.
Again, nice post. I think the first part is right on target.
I think calling Congress could be effective, but it'd be hard to get the volume required to make a difference, and there is no bill to explicitly support. Likewise, an IIAA might work, but it seems like Google, Facebook, and Twitter would have to be deeply involved to make a difference.
My only remaining thought is to use the tactics of the MPAA and RIAA: hire a lobbyist. The only thing I could think of would be a sort of Kickstarter project. Everyone pledges money, and once a target is reached, a lobbyist is hired to draft a bill on Issue X, and lobby Congress for its passage. There'd have to be a sympathetic member of Congress in order to introduce the bill, and I'm sure a serious amount of money would have to be raised, but this is the only way I can think of that the average joe on the Internet could do anything besides complain on HN. Thoughts?
I fully support a move away from TV-dominated campaigns to Internet-dominated campaigns, especially since the Internet is more interactive anyway.
I'm not sure what this fixes. I already get to see and hear campaign ads incessantly. What would be my desire to go watch more on YouTube? They've already become background noise to me because the messages originating from the candidates and super PACs range from heavily spun at best to plainly false. I don't learn anything from them.
Better would be to offer more compelling solutions than ads. Things like highly interactive, real-time Q/A and debating schemes would engage the electorate by allowing them to rapidly see who is for real and who is an empty, purchased, Presidential-looking shell.
I'll throw out one specific idea: during debates, let's have a Watson-like presence on stage that is, in real time, able to display the BS-factor of what's being uttered. Wouldn't that be fun?
On a side note, I personally see a Ron Paul ad every other Youtube video on the occasions when I have AdBlock disabled, which may be why he has such strong support among younger voters.
As soon as there is a cheap, or even free alternative to spending megabucks for tv slots, those channels will get filled up in addition to your traditional outlets. And the internet isn't free, nor is coordinating a massive internet campaign. The net result of number 2 is that we'll have more political advertising, and the person with the most money will still win.
Still, there is a democritizing influence to be had from shifting campaigns from traditional broadcast media to the internet. We're seeing that already and it's only going to grow. So, in essence, point 2 won't help, and it's already happening. This is a hard problem.
The problem is that the government is too powerful and it's worth so much to win an election. But that's even harder to fix.
"I believe in copyright. I benefit from it. I don’t want it to go away. I love that we have laws and people to enforce them. But if I had to give up one thing, if I had to choose between copyright and the wild west, semi-lawless, innovation-fest that is the internet? I’ll take the internet every time."
On the other hand copyright may not be enforceable much longer (it could be argued that it is already unenforceable) and I would prefer to give up copyrights before the internet.
Most importantly, we all need to participate in government.
I think a good case can be made that different durations are appropriate for these rights, and also that different durations are appropriate for different kinds of works.
Let's start with artistic works. In particular, let's consider the infamous Mickey Mouse copyrights.
The reproduction right should be fairly short. It's purpose is to allow the creator to get paid for their time and effort in creating the work. We maximize creating of new works if creators can get paid for creating. If creators cannot do so, and so have to turn to ancillary methods of making money, they have less time for creating. (This is why the argument that musicians can make their living touring is not persuasive to me. I'd much rather have great musicians creating new music than spending a lot of time playing their old songs over and over and over to make a living. How would we feel as programmers if employers did not pay us to program--they hired us to do tech support, and then told us that we should be writing programs on our down time so there would be something to provide tech support for?).
I think it is quite reasonable for the derivative works right, on the other hand, to have a very long term. That encourages other artists to come up with new characters to tell their stories. I think we'd have a lot less great cartoon characters if everyone who wants to make a cartoon could just make their own Mickey Mouse cartoon.
A long derivative works right also helps preserve our culture, by preserving the artistic integrity of bodies of work. A fictional character, such as a Mickey Mouse, or a Frodo, or a Harry Potter, or a Sherlock Holmes, has a personality, character, mannerisms, morals, etc., developed by the creator. They become in a sense real and part of our culture. If someone else comes along and starts producing fiction with those characters that does not fit in with how those characters should behave, it diminishes the value of the original to society. If you want to write stories about hot boy on boy wizard sex, make up your own wizards--leave Harry and Ron alone.
To summarize so far, for artistic works like films (including cartoons) and fictional books, I'd like to see a relatively short reproduction right combined with very long derivative works rights.
For utilitarian works, such as computer programs, it would not make sense to have a long derivative works right. Programs do not become beloved parts of our culture. (Characters introduced in programs sometimes do--Mario and Zelda are good examples, so I'd argue that while the game code for a Zelda game should have a short derivative work right because it is a program, if you make a game based on it you would have to come up with new characters).
I think the answer to that is that nobody cares about kids writing fan-fiction as long as they're not selling it. If copyright exists to "promote the progress of science and useful arts", I don't think you'll find an artist deciding not to write or publish their work because non-commercial derivative works might be made. Exclusive rights to commercial derivative works, on the other hand, might convince people to create new things.
The second point is that whether or not enforcement can be completely effective isn't really relevant. As long as it can be somewhat effective, and as long as people believe the law is just, people will believe that the law is worth keeping. Governments tend to believe that "the culture of digial sharing" is a moral evil, and that not going after it would be to abdicate their duty. "It's too hard to police" isn't a good enough excuse for pot or gambling or seatbelts, why should it be good enough for fan-fiction?
My rebuttal to your second point is to acknowledge that you have part of a point, but also to draw a comparison between the futility of policing digital sharing and the futility of policing fanwork. Since we're (sortof) making a 'in a perfect world' wishlist, I think we can do better than fall into the same traps that current law/lawmakers/our assorted predecessors fell into, criminalizing behavior that is entirely or mostly harmless and where enforcement has minimal benefits.
With your other examples, I think that there is a case to be made on both sides with regards to the dangers vs the benefits from enforcement. But with those cases, I can more clearly see the arguments that enforcement has benefits that are worth the difficulty (depending on how damaging you think pot, gambling, and car accidents are). So I could see where a person would argue that noncommercial fanwork is severely enough damaging to the creator/rights holder to make enforcement worth it, but I personally don't see it as such and would have a very hard time believing such arguments without strong proof. Car accidents where someone is not wearing a seatbelt, on the other hand, has pretty demonstrable damages.
(I'm not really going to get into pot or gambling, because I think ath this point, the arguments for and against pot criminalization are well-established, and starting to weight every-so-slightly toward decriminalization, and I personally find gambling distasteful and boring and don't have the energy to read up on the damages associated with gambling or the benefits associated with enforcement of anti-gambling laws.)
Its easy to kvetch on your favorite Internet forum, but if you get things started your Congressional reps will listen.
This is way easier than cold-calling a customer!
Edit: Downvotes aren't surprising but I'd love to hear the argument why rights to a creative work should be lost when it's still in development and rapidly growing with each day.