A Tipping Point Against The Copyright Monopoly Is A Lot Closer Than You Think | Hacker News Reader

A Tipping Point Against The Copyright Monopoly Is A Lot Closer Than You Think

torrentfreak.com

131 pointsLightning49 comments

I favor reforming copyright, patents, and so on, but this article makes a horrible case for it, and is so full of errors and sillyness that it's really just bad propaganda, rather than a serious argument.

> failure of its industrial capacity in the mid-1970

Manufacturing continues to grow in the US. What has declined are the number of people employed in that sector, just as the number of farmers once declined.

> United States can have effective trade sanctions against Cuba

40+ years of trade sanctions and who is still in power? I would not call that effective.

And then the main part of the article, that if the Pirate Party gets 5% in Germany, they're going to "start dismantling the atrocious copyright and patent monopolies, worldwide."

I don't think so: Germans invent a lot of stuff too, write books, software, compose music, make movies, and so on, and are not going to throw out Intellectual Property as a means of promoting those activities, lock, stock, and barrel.

Hopefully some reform of the system is possible, but to be effective, this area of law is always going to be something of a messy compromise.

> Manufacturing continues to grow in the US. What has declined are the number of people employed in that sector, just as the number of farmers once declined.

You equate one type of growth with success. Given that we are living through a period of relatively high unemployment and social inequity in the US and Europe the onus is on you to explain why you equate growth with success. Maybe this type of growth isn't politically/economically/environmentally stable?

> 40+ years of trade sanctions and who is still in power? I would not call that effective.

Again, what is your measure? You seem to be measuring the wrong thing.For example, with the current sanctions against Iran[1] the Office of Foreign Assets Control[2] aims to do what? You claim it would be to effect political change in Iran. Regime change. In what other context have we heard this expression used? The Military overthrow of Saddam in Iraq. With this view economic sanctions are used in lieu of military force. These sanctions seem to hurt the average man, woman and child on the street however causing hardship and misery. Saddam was still in power when we rolled in. Mugabe is. The Ayatollahs in Iran are still going strong. Fidel appears to be handing power over to Raúl. So by your reckoning they have been effective nowhere. So why still use them? To me they look a lot like collective punishment.

> I don't think so: Germans invent a lot of stuff too, write books, software, compose music, make movies, and so on, and are not going to throw out Intellectual Property as a means of promoting those activities, lock, stock, and barrel.

Dismantle is perhaps too strong, too rhetorically strident. Reform would be better, yes - you use the term yourself. Remember copyright has only been around to a serious extent† since the Queen Anne statute[3] of 1710. Patents are younger still. The tide has flowed one way so far, maybe it's time to flow the other. The current state of affairs seems to favour the few of the multitude.

> bad propaganda

These guys were elected to European Parliament, I know we all have a rather dim view of politicians but somebody seems to be buying their PR. :)

---

† Excluding a judgment in the 6th century in Celtic Brehon law enunciated thus, “As to every Cow its Calf, so to every Book its Copy"

[1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/D...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Foreign_Assets_Contro...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

Before Queen Anne's statute of 1710, but after the printing press had been introduced into England in the mid 1500's, printers in the country were licensed by the Crown. So restrictions on copying have existed literally for as long as it has been feasible to copy on a mass scale.

To add to what rayiner writes...

This mentions a "brevetto", or patent, being issued by the Republic of Venice in 1474:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brevetto

The English version mentions that too:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent

Also, from this book:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XKA8/?tag=dedasys-20

Talking about one of the first practical guides/manuals on how to do double-entry accounting.

"Pacioli was given a ten-year copyright on the initial publication and in 1508 he petitioned the Venetian Senate for a twenty-year copyright on any reprint of the original 1494 edition, which he was granted. This made him one of the first writers to be granted literary copyright."

Highly interesting read, by the way, despite a dull sounding subject.

Thank you for those interesting links. I never thought to explore Renaissance Italy's dabblings in this area even though it was a commercial/financial powerhouse at the time. Thanks for the heads-up on "brevetti". Grazie mille.

Indeed. Copyright is ultimately an outgrowth of the privatization of government censorship in sixteenth-century England.

For those interested, a readable summary of the history of copyright can be found at: http://questioncopyright.org/promise

Falkvinge himself also has a multi-part history of copyright blog series, found at: http://falkvinge.net/2011/02/01/history-of-copyright-part-1-...

> Indeed. Copyright is ultimately an outgrowth of the privatization of government censorship in sixteenth-century England.

So when it appeared in 15th century Venice as a means to encourage authorship, we are to presume that it was Dr. Who who brought it there?

Your history of copyright source is - I'm guessing - likely to be a little bit biased.

Very true. Perhaps I should have said that prior to Queen Anne's statute of 1710 there was no robust national legislation? Would that be better. I did mention there was precedent :)

Really nice video on this _exciting_ topic btw

Video talk on Hyde’s book, Common as Air:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2011/hyde

Manufacturing: I was stating that his assertion was wrong, nothing more than that.

Trade sanctions: I'm having difficulty following your train of thought, but my point was that the Castros are still in power, so the sanctions have not worked, contrary to his assertion that they were 'effective'.

> The current state of affairs seems to favour the few of the multitude.

The number of people creating stuff is likely to always be lower than the number of those who consume. The whole point of the system is to encourage that production by giving the creators a means to extract some money from the consumers - thus ensuring a supply of things to consume. I agree that the balance is currently too far in favor of producers.

Ah, I did not see it was you I was replying to. Thanks for the clarification. Sometimes I have difficulty following my own train of thought :)

I meant to say 'favour the few over* the multitude' in case it was not clear from my typo.

Regarding production/consumption ratio: perhaps the new thing in the mix in the internet era is peer-to-peer technologies which break the hierarchical model. Hence Tor and Bittorrent come under legal scrutiny even though they are ethically neutral?

> Regarding production/consumption ratio: perhaps the new thing in the mix in the internet era is peer-to-peer technologies which break the hierarchical model.

How do they do that? To me, those are pretty much entirely distribution technologies.

Sure, it's easier then ever to produce more kinds of content and distribute it, but it still takes a lot of skill and effort to produce high quality content. To really get good at something, you'd need to treat it something like a full time job. And therefore, at a certain point, you'd want to be able to rely on it for an income...

> but to be effective, this area of law is always going to be something of a messy compromise.

I wouldn't call infinite copyright a compromise. When is the last time you saw copyright expire on a work of art?

Did you see the part where I wrote that it needs reforming?

That's exactly what I'm referring to.

This sums up my point of view pretty well:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/09/pat...

I think he meant effective economically, not necessarily politically.

It's difficult to tease out the effects of a failed economic system from the sanctions. The sanctions, politically, are probably one of the things that help prop up the Castros, as they can place all the blame for their problems on the sanctions, rather than a political and economic system that does not work.

Falkvinge must be a mainstream politician now. He's pandering to the base with ad hominems while foregoing the opportunity to make an intellectual case :)

I want to try and understand.

On the WTO

"having moved ahead from that failure with disguising lopsided rent-seeking schemes as “free trade agreements”. The first of these was the WTO"

He seems to think his audience will just know what this means. I admit I don't have WTO objections filed away in my (libertarian-leaning) subconscious under "obviously true, no need for explanation."

According to Wikipedia [1], objections include

"-Rich countries are able to maintain high import duties and quotas in certain products, blocking imports from developing countries (e.g. clothing);

-The increase in non-tariff barriers such as anti-dumping measures allowed against developing countries;

-The maintenance of high protection of agriculture in developed countries while developing ones are pressed to open their markets;

-Many developing countries do not have the capacity to follow the negotiations and participate actively in the Uruguay Round"

These actually seems like quite legitimate political gripes to me, and they fit with what I know.

There are also structural reasons people object to the neoliberal opening of markets, in a big bang release [Martin Khor, 2]

"The problem in trade liberalisation is that a country can control how fast to liberalise its imports (and thus increase the inflow of products) but cannot determine by itself how fast its exports grow. Export growth partly depends on the prices of the existing exported products (and developing countries have suffered from serious declines in their tenns of trade) and also on having or developing the infrastructure, human and enterprise capacity for new exports (which is a longterm process and not easily achieved)."

So that's at least an interesting and intelligible set of claims that one can debate with empirical evidence. I don't know what I conclude from them, but its too bad the rhetoric tends to be so substance-free given how important it is.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_World_Trade_Or...

[2] http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/davos2-cn.htm

Edit: formatting

What sticks in my craw is Falkvinge's continually disingenuous use of the word "monopoly." Owning and asserting a copyright does not make you a monopolist any more than owning a beach house on the Oregon coast makes you one. All property rights are monopolies. That does not mean owners of property rights are monopolists. Concretely: nobody is preventing someone from producing the next summer blockbuster and distributing it for free on BitTorrent, just as nobody is preventing you from building a beach house on the Oregon coast and letting anyone stay over.

I think there is zero potential for significantly eroding copyright rights, and a bunch of young people who don't produce anything themselves certainly won't be the impetus for change. At the most basic level, copyright strikes a cord with people: if I make something, I should own it and be able to control it. Young people are willing to play fast and loose with those property rights, as they always have (cutting through people's yards, etc) but that doesn't signal the impending downfall of property rights as a system.

> Owning and asserting a copyright does not make you a monopolist [...] All property rights are monopolies.

Copyright is not a property right, it is exactly a state-granted monopoly privilege, instituted on ostensibly utilitarian grounds. See http://stpeter.im/writings/essays/publicdomain.html

Cory Doctorow has elsewhere explained how IP used to be discussed in terms of a "creative monopoly" until the 1970s when the copyright industry began actively promoting the "intellectual property" moniker. The reason? It's a lot easier to go hat in hand to Congress to ask them to protect your "property rights" than to petition them to further extend your monopoly privileges. In much the same way, they'd like to now redefine copying as "theft". "You wouldn't steal a car." Don't fall for it.

The modern understanding of copyright is indeed a property right, both legally and and economically. And only in the US is it rooted in the idea of building a public domain. In Europe the basis is the idea of the moral rights of content creators. The Europeans have been a the forefront of extending copyright terms, because within their framework of thinking, there is no reason for copyrights to ever expire.

If your owning a beach house in Oregon prevents me from building one just like it in Hawaii, it's a monopoly too.

You're quite welcome to make a movie "just like" Transformers 3. But that's not what Falkvinge is advocating for. He's not advocating for your right to "create" or "build". He's advocating "copying", "appropriating", "using" the work of others without compensating them.

Copying is creation. It's certainly a lot less work than the creation of the first copy was, but after a copy operation, there is indeed another movie just like the first.

What the building of the first copy of Transformers 3 accomplished, and building of the second copy does not, is delimiting of the type. This confusion in the context of copyright between an item and its type is the source of a lot of bendy arguments.

That navel-gazing definition of "creation" that is practically useless. It's indistinguishable from "use" in the digital context.

> young people who don't produce anything themselves

That's not a worthy characterization. Plenty of opensource contributors are on board with rolling back copyright restrictions to less extreme levels. There are also writers like Cory Doctorow, and a growing number of artists in a variety of fields, along with various economists and law professors.

The vast majority of people who peddle Falkvinge's particular view are teenagers who just want free stuff. There are lots of people who support less aggressive enforcement, shorter terms, etc, but not so many credible ones who attack the very idea that content creators should have rights to control their creations.

E.g. Lots of people strongly oppose SOPA, on the grounds that it makes enforcement of copyright other people's problem in a way that isn't the case for other property rights, without agreeing with Falkvinge that there is some moral right to copy.

The underestimation of political change in the US is one of the bigger errors. There is shallow but bipartisan support for this - but the interesting dynamic is that it's actually the 'hardcore activists' in both parties for an end to IP in general.

Important political figures, too, have opined on the matter, for example Richard Posner, a conservative/libertarian judge sitting fairly high on the federal bench.

Posner has not called for an end to IP, mind you. He's called for reducing patent terms and narrowing the scope of patentability.

he has openly speculated if IP is necessary at all (except for pharmaceuticals)

Hopefully a tipping point against Falkvinge's endless rhetoric is closer than I think.

It's a bit disingenuous to pretend that the EU acts as a whole and thus can be considered a single economy. A Cyprus Euro is not a German Euro. If Estonia decides to throw away the Berne Convention and legally allow wholesale piracy, the Germans ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H EU will happily throw them under the bus. Happy fun time with America is worth a lot more than indulging some minor political party's crazy sauce in some inconsequential EU state.

Which is presumably why his article is talking about what it will take to achieve majority support within the EU, and focusing on Germany as way of increasing support on EU Commission level, rather than talking about "indulging some minor political party's crazy sauce in some inconsequential EU state".

The thing is, Germany doesn't just manufacture things, they design them as well. It seems unlikely to me that they would adopt a stance on IP that ran counter to their own interests. Honestly, it's hard for me to read TorrentFreak articles, because they always seem to come from the assumed standpoint that normal people want IP to go away and that only oppressive corporations with outdated and unfair business models want to keep it. This is far from the truth.

Well, there is currently zero chance of the Pirate Party winning seats in the fall election in Germany and even less (yes I know) chance to become king-maker.

I wouldn't say that it is impossible. I'm witnessing a large advertising campaign promoting the Piratenpartei in my part of Germany.

However, I do believe that Falkvinge is naive. Although his theory (I believe) seems sound, his tipping point is way further away than he thinks.

The reality is that the tipping point lies with the younger generation. The older generation are (in the main), a completely lost cause. They don't get it and they don't want to. They have other concerns; support for their children, jobs, health, pensions and social services.

The Piratenpartei need to have a multi-faceted offering to encourage more older people to vote for them.

In the long term, the younger generation who have a concern and understanding of privacy concerns are the key.

However, (and this is a really important point), the next generation AFTER them won't get it. They will have grown up in a society where (for example) privacy is not an natural right. They will be ingrained into a habit of downloading via iTunes, Amazon and Google. They won't know any different. They are embedded in their world of Facebook and iPhones. They only know a narrow internet world, that is controlled by a few large corporations.

Therefore the Piratenpartei have a narrow window of time in which to lodge a foot in the Bundestag. They need to gain enough popular support from the generation who grew up in a world where (briefly) the pay walls didn't exist, and things were free. The latter generation are quite possibly a lost cause.

> They need to gain enough popular support from the generation who grew up in a world where (briefly) the pay walls didn't exist, and things were free

You do understand that Facebook and Google ARE free, and they are because they can show targeted ads?

> They are embedded in their world of Facebook and iPhones. They only know a narrow internet world, that is controlled by a few large corporations.

They seem to prefer this world to BBSes and Geocities. Who am I to tell them what kind of internet they should use?

Who is to say they prefer it? I strongly doubt many of today's teenagers have ever seen a BBS or Geocities site.

I don't remember them being outlawed. As far as I can tell, they aren't as popular because the alternatives became more attractive.

I'd even take a bet on that.

PP self-destructed when they lost focus on geek topics and instead vacuumed up all the feminist, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist, anti-anything scum that came to dominate the party.

Now they are a lost cause and they will go under after the election.

I saw the same happen with the brazillian one (it died infighting before even managing to finish the party registration process)

This has two issues:

One, it shows a younger generation that has a "fix everything" syndrome, they see lots of problems, and try to fix them all at once... It is obvious that at least in politics, this does not work.

The second, is that feminism, and other socialist ideologies, need a high amount of state control, while IP laws need less, and thus when you mix the two ideologies on your party you end with lots of infighting, hardcore feminists won't want to reform IP anymore, and hardcore IP reformers are most likely lean to the libertarian or anarchist side of things and are against feminist policies.

>The second, is that feminism, and other socialist ideologies, need a high amount of state control, while IP laws need less

Thanks, that's an interesting observation I have not yet come across - I think you are on to something here.

The anti-copyright activists in Europe had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a dent, and they blew it. They wont get a second chance to give copyright problems a wide attention as they had 2009-2010, because loads of other problems are now shattering the EU and copyright pales in comparison.

The German Pirate Party essentially lost focus and self-destructed. After being founded by a bunch of physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, mostly males focused on copyright and surveillance, after the few first electional successes they forgot to screen who is joining the increasingly popular party. Because of that, they were mass-infiltrated by more tenacious leftists, humanists, feminists, genderists and other fringe political parasites, who increasingly drove out the well-intentioned but invertebrate STEM guys who founded the party in the first place.

The German Pirate Party of today is an unelectable, goalless, anarchist mess resembling the Pirate Party of 4-5 years ago only in the name.

I wish the turning point were close but I don't think it is. As other comments note he doesn't make a good case for his claim.

I am surprised how little other countries have cared how easily the USA State Department and Trade representatives have been able to dictate terms to their politicians.

It seems to me for a tipping point to occur other countries have to punish politicians for being toadies to the USA's dictates. Until that happens I don't hold out much hope. I would love it for the USA to turn against the copyright monopolists but I think they have bought a significant majority of our politicians and we have shown no interest in throwing out the politicians doing favors for those that have paid them well.

"Therefore, the United States cannot execute trade sanctions against Europe without getting hurt more itself."

I kind of wish this argument were plausible, sadly it's not even remotely accurate (as another post noted).

First, the US would apply leverage on an individual basis, rather than against the whole of Europe or EU, and end up accomplishing the desired outcome by fracturing unity.

Second, the US has the global reserve currency. It's a huge economic influence multiplier while it lasts.

Third, the US depends a lot more on Mexico, Canada, Japan and China than it does the European Union, across the board economically. The poor assumption being made is that somehow the US and the EU trade with each other equally (such that a sanction war would be based on total GDP), but that's not even remotely true. China is the EU's biggest trading partner.

The US is still the world's largest manufacturer (not the largest exporter of course). The US also can be completely independent in regards to natural resources, which is something the European Union can't do any time soon (requiring for example Russia's natural gas and oil).

Europe has no singular political command or currency. As such it's not difficult for the US to separate it into pieces leverage wise. Germany is the only major power in the EU that can afford to stand against the US financially. If the Fed wants to it can tip France or Italy into recessions at any time by applying pressure on their bonds, and the UK simply isn't going to go against the US. Germany would have to take a risky balls on the table stand and hope a lot of other nations joined them.

Worth a repost here:

http://thetrichordist.com/2012/04/15/meet-the-new-boss-worse...

So far I haven't heard a good answer as to how artists, musicians, and other creators will get paid in this new world.

Usually people just toss out buzzwords like "micropayments," which are "magic happens here" answers, or are ignorant of the economics of the industry. That talk explains it well.

The answer is "as badly as they were before". Most musicians never got paid, ever; Lowery's articles are nostalgia of a no-longer privileged class for their place in the old Stalinism.

I think his point is that in the past, most musicians never got paid. Now no musicians ever get paid. We've traded a horrible, unequal, corrupt system for compensating artists for no system for compensating artists.

"Compensate" always seems like an odd word to use for paying someone to do what they presumably enjoy. To me "compensate" primarily means giving someone money/something in exchange for loss or inconvenience you've caused them. Is that not the meaning you're using?

Personally, I suggest "pay", as in "no system for paying artists".

He's probably wrong, but I hope he's not.

I'm really tired of a warez organization using this site as its news broadcast point, to be honest.

It's always nonsense, and we should be better than to humor this. We're the people they steal from.

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