Review of the Copyright Act 1994

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#2132977 23-Nov-2018 21:53

jarledb:

If I create a work of music/art/programming and do not choose to give it away, and its copied and redistributed by others, thats not ok.

You don't have to give it away.. But once a single person has purchased it, I don't believe you should have the right to stop them from copying it, modifying it, making derivatives of it etc.

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#2132982 23-Nov-2018 22:13

irongarment:
Answer: it's not.
Counterpoint: a programmer produces a useful program, pays rent or mortgage and other living expenses during development, then gives it away for free. Is that fair? Is it unfair?

Good Grief! Are you serious!? Of course, it's fair, because the *author and creator* of the original content made the *choice*.

Breach of copyright is taking away that choice.

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#2132992 23-Nov-2018 22:30

networkn:
irongarment:
Answer: it's not.
Counterpoint: a programmer produces a useful program, pays rent or mortgage and other living expenses during development, then gives it away for free. Is that fair? Is it unfair?

Good Grief! Are you serious!? Of course, it's fair, because the *author and creator* of the original content made the *choice*.

Breach of copyright is taking away that choice.

Actually my point is that people can choose to make something and give it away. We shouldn't get blinkerered into thinking that every artist (or programmer) needs to get a multi-million dollar contract enforced by government every time.

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#2132993 23-Nov-2018 22:32

blakamin:
solutionz:
irongarment: Counterpoint: a programmer produces a useful program, pays rent or mortgage and other living expenses during development, then gives it away for free. Is that fair? Is it unfair?

Again look at open source business models.

There's an oxymoron....

Have you seen Red Hat's share price lately? Plenty of money to be made in open source.

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#2132995 23-Nov-2018 22:35

irongarment:
Actually my point is that people can choose to make something and give it away. We shouldn't get blinkerered into thinking that every artist (or programmer) needs to get a multi-million dollar contract enforced by government every time.

Without legislation it would be impossible for a developer/creator to enforce the choice

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#2133012 23-Nov-2018 23:31

Lias:

You don't have to give it away.. But once a single person has purchased it, I don't believe you should have the right to stop them from copying it, modifying it, making derivatives of it etc.

So if you create a program that takes you hundres of hours of work, and I buy 1 copy of you. (Which would be 1 minute of work for me), I should be allowed to sell copies of your work and undercut your price?

Because, lets face it. My sunk cost in this situation is going to be a mere fraction of your sunk cost for the same software.

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#2133018 24-Nov-2018 00:11

jarledb:
Lias:

You don't have to give it away.. But once a single person has purchased it, I don't believe you should have the right to stop them from copying it, modifying it, making derivatives of it etc.

So if you create a program that takes you hundres of hours of work, and I buy 1 copy of you. (Which would be 1 minute of work for me), I should be allowed to sell copies of your work and undercut your price?

Sure if you choose not to impliment any copy protection, SaaS or offer any value added business model surrounding the product.

It's like spending hundreds on hours building a grand structure within view of a public place and saying "don't look at it without paying me, you're stealing from me!!". You make information available to the public domain you have no moral right to force others to deal with that information in the way you want them to.

And (to loosely continue the analogy) why should another developer who has put equal hours into software equally influenced by the same prior art (i.e. some new enabling technology) to independently arrive at a similar results be penalised because you happened to gain copyright/patent protection slightly earlier unbeknownst to them?

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#2133036 24-Nov-2018 02:40

solutionz:

Sure if you choose not to impliment any copy protection,

Thats the same as saying that if I don't bar up my windows, everything inside my house is free to take.

It's like spending hundreds on hours building a grand structure within view of a public place and saying "don't look at it without paying me, you're stealing from me!!". You make information available to the public domain you have no moral right to force others to deal with that information in the way you want them to.

Except its not.

You watching it is one thing. You taking it and using it without my approval is something completely different.

And (to loosely continue the analogy) why should another developer who has put equal hours into software equally influenced by the same prior art (i.e. some new enabling technology) to independently arrive at a similar results be penalised because you happened to gain copyright/patent protection slightly earlier unbeknownst to them?

But you are conflating copyright with patents. I think a lot of us can agree that (especially) the American patent system is broken. You can probably patent things that are impossible to make today, and go after someone when the technology gets to where its possible to make. Which is insane and is stopping people from trying to develop those technologies. You also have patents like the "One click" patent that Amazon holds that are patent on completely obvious web technologies, which also shouldn't be patentable.

Its not the same thing to make software to do something that my software does (in the terms of copyright) thats completely based on your own code, and buying/stealing my code and selling it without my permission.

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#2133054 24-Nov-2018 07:11

solutionz: It's symantics to argue whether IP is abstract or not - as take a song for example you would currently own the ability to perform, distribute, licence etc not just any physical representation (pretty abstract).

Stealing a cow is in no way similar to "copying" how someone milks their cow (including the song they sing) as it does not deprive the owner of their physical property or in any ultimate tangible interest (i.e. company shares).

You keep comparing the abstract (a song) to a physical product. Therefore stealing a cow is not the same as copying a song. It is the same. You keep avoiding the fact that the issue is protecting an investment, such as a cow or a song. The protection is required to protect the investment (of time, cost, innovation, creativity ) that can provide an income.

If someone creates a specific product, say an OS, that is copyright. If they choose to make it open source, it is still copyrighted, its just that they have given a copyright condition that allows anyone to use it.

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#2133056 24-Nov-2018 07:14

irongarment:
Counterpoint: a programmer produces a useful program, pays rent or mortgage and other living expenses during development, then gives it away for free. Is that fair? Is it unfair?

That is fair, for such an obvious reason that there is no need to give that obvious reason.

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#2133057 24-Nov-2018 07:23

solutionz:
freitasm: Lost for words.

Put it this way it's not copyright that's stopping people from ripping your site. It's a combination of you securing the source code on your server but mostly value added by your constant maintenance and the community which you can't just copy and paste.

Honestly without the corporate welfare protection of ideas/IP that (if worthwhile) would have been created by someone at some point anyway there would be more resource to commit to pursuits more useful to mankind. Kind of how Eric Ries talks about the epic waste of human talent he observed leading to The Lean Startup. Maybe we'll end up with more programmers and less pop stars??

For the umpteenth time, copyright law does NOT include ideas. You keep saying that to make your point more profound.

So, you support copyright, in the form that I have to work hard to secure my song/product, protect it, encrypt it, secure it, put barbed wire on my fence to keep people from taking it, and so on. Easier to have a law of ownership that does exactly that.

Im not sure what useful pursuits for mankind you mean, as you want a society that does not protect pursuits that cost money to create and earn an income, to not be protected. As its then impossible to protect that income, I can only assume you want a world where everything is provided or accessible, and given that there is no incentive for people to create things, we leave it to the Govt to provide everything, including our means of support, as its difficult to earn our income as our exploits are taken by others.

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#2133058 24-Nov-2018 07:26

MikeB4:

solutionz:
MikeB4:

solutionz:
freitasm: Lost for words.

Put it this way it's not copyright that's stopping people from ripping your site. It's a combination of you securing the source code on your server but mostly value added by your constant maintenance and the community which you can't just copy and paste.

Honestly without the corporate welfare protection of ideas/IP that (if worthwhile) would have been created by someone at some point anyway there would be more resource to commit to pursuits more useful to mankind. Kind of how Eric Ries talks about the epic waste of human talent he observed leading to The Lean Startup. Maybe we'll end up with more programmers and less pop stars??

A developer can choose to release their work as open source or proprietary , YOU do not have the right to make that decision for them.

No one is arguing otherwise.

Really then what is this comment …… "Anyone should be free to copy it, share it, redistribute it, modify it, or use it any way they see fit"

He means that anyone can access, copy and earn money from your item, its up to you to protect your item from theft. I think the world has moved on a few millennia from that position.

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#2133059 24-Nov-2018 07:33

jarledb:

solutionz:

Sure if you choose not to impliment any copy protection,

Thats the same as saying that if I don't bar up my windows, everything inside my house is free to take.

That is exactly his position.

Maybe a few thousand years ago, that was the norm

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#2133103 24-Nov-2018 09:18

Just my two cents worth.

This is just my understanding of things.

When one begins creating a piece of work - be it a piece of software, a photo, some text - one has automatic copyright on it. I think many people forget the right is automatic.

I understand that Copyright is a form of Intellectual property (IP) - I think there are a number of common misconceptions. First of all, when a work is created the person that creates or commissions the work owns ALL of the rights. The second is that there are more than ONE right involved - i.e. not just copying.

In short, IP is there to protect the ‘expression of ones idea’ in the work that one creates.

As I understand things, when one chooses to distribute something that one owns, one is not giving away ownership (generally), one is only granting a specific right to the other party to perform the appropriate action - whether to display the work, use the work (as in software), listen to the work (as in music) etc,.

In terms of complex works where multiple people are involved, lots and lots of rights (and IP) are involved. For example, in a piece of music on a CD the production rights, performance rights, distribution rights, design rights may all involve different people,

As having been a software engineer for some decades, I would suggest that when one pays for a piece of software - one is often paying for a right to use, not for ownership. Often the right to use is tied to a specific form of distribution such as digital or CD. It may also be tied to a specific source (which have different usage rights) such as retail or developer. Not having been granted the right of ownership affects whether one can make a copy of it (I would suggest one needs to be granted the right to make a copy by the owner).

Personally, I think one of the issues these days is there appears to be a lack of clear ownership and re-enforcement of that ownership - especially in the digital domain. I sometimes see poor understanding of the term ‘fair use’ - as I understand things, if one is likely to profit (monitarily or by other means) then it is likely not fair use.

I would also point out that the EU is also reviewing its regulations as part of creating a digital single market. Some of the issues they are dealing with are cross-border rights, data mining and research, preservation of cultural heritage and fair remuneration.

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#2133424 24-Nov-2018 16:15

Copyright or something like it is necessary in today’s world. Intellectual property is not the same as physical property and it cannot be protected in the same way. Examples usually trotted out are things like novels or songs. There has to be some kind of mechanism to ensure that content creators are properly compensated for their efforts. I do not disagree with that.

I do believe that the concepts of copyright and intellectual property have been taken over by commercial vested interests that abuse them to squeeze maximum profit from their operations. I think this is a long way from protecting the labours of struggling writers and musicians. Copyright mainly exists to serve the interests of corporate rights holders, particularly in the areas of streaming music and video content. It does little to serve the interests of consumers.

Professional pirates can be difficult to pursue if they employ sophisticated techniques to obscure their true identity. So rights owners (more correctly, those who make money from enforcement) have gone after soft targets like individual downloaders, hitting them with absurd penalties to serve as examples. They send agents around to small shops to see if anyone is playing music on a radio. They send out infringement notices to libraries and universities. This kind of obsessive petty enforcement has little to do with starving artists. It is excessive and unnecessary.

A certain pay TV provider, whose name I will avoid mentioning, wants the right to decide which overseas sites private individuals are allowed to access. No doubt they want to protect innocent children from paedophiles. Oh wait. Isn’t that a government responsibility? Maybe they just want to protect their creaking business model. This kind of thing is a serious abuse of process. No commercial entity has any business in a democracy assuming censorship or enforcement powers. We do not privatise our police.

I do not support piracy. Content has to be paid for. But vested interests go out of their way to obfuscate the real issues in an attempt to grab as much as they can rake in. Pirate sites are an easy target to justify IP blocking. But once a commercial entity has acquired that power, the door is open to further abuse. An example is geo-unblocking. This is not illegal and it should not be. Overseas sites are either commercial, FTA, or public service. Commercial sites should be paid for and they are if they are being directly accessed. There is no reason to geo-block them.

FTA and public service sites have also been paid for, either through advertising or donations and subsidies. They are freely available within their regions. Unblocking them does not deprive anyone of income. There is no good reason to block them in the first place. The only explanation for this is that the pay TV provider’s content is so crappy that it can’t compete with any overseas content, regardless of what it is. No wonder they want special protection.

The current situation regarding geographical content distribution greatly disadvantages small regions like New Zealand. A large region like the United States doesn’t care about this. US consumers have an enormous range of choice. NZ consumers are much more limited. The content legally available to us is dictated by the commercial considerations of our limited local providers. This means mainly things like blockbuster films and other high ratings products. Quality cultural or educational or other minority content from overseas is practically unavailable. How is this fair to us as consumers?

Unfortunately we are limited in our ability to influence the rest of the world, especially that part of it driven by corporate greed. But we can do some things to create a more equitable playing field for NZ consumers. Specifically legalising geo-unblocking to get rid of any uncertainty about it would be a good step. So would be measures to prevent petty copyright enforcement, as in the case of shops playing radios. There should be no sanctions against private individuals who stream or download from any site, but there should be severe sanctions against anyone who sells or redistributes protected content. A lot like the direction drug laws are going. Hammer the dealers, not the users. Set up or join international organisations, both private and government, to tackle piracy at the source, as is already being done overseas, but leave private individuals alone. Make it legal to view any legal content from any source that is not being provided by an NZ source, unless an announcement of intention to provide it (with a time frame) has been published. These are just idea sketches but this post is already too long.

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