Review of the Copyright Act 1994

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#2133446 24-Nov-2018 17:19

TwoSeven: 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.

EXCEPT if someone asks you to make something... in that case it is a "commissioned work" and THEY own the copyright.

frankv

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#2133448 24-Nov-2018 17:25

solutionz:

howdystranger:

I think it's fair enough that, for example, if you write a book you have some protection against people ripping it off. That said, I think our copyright term is way too long currently and should be something much shorter like 20-30 years

As processing, storage and machine learning advance it's not a stretch to imagine neural networks with the ability to efficiently pump out copious amounts of "novel" art.

Apropos of this, recently "the first AI-generated painting" sold for $420,000 (IIRC). Not sure who owns the copyright; presumably the Paris art collective that trained it. Probably the price was inflated due to it being the "first".

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#2133903 25-Nov-2018 18:26

frankv:

EXCEPT if someone asks you to make something... in that case it is a "commissioned work" and THEY own the copyright.

Not necessarily. Thats governed by the agreements between the parties. Typically photographers retain their rights, and only license our their photographs for certain use.

Upworthy has a good article on photography rights and licenses

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MikeAqua

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#2134170 26-Nov-2018 09:42

allan:

MikeAqua:

Oh boy ... here we go!

Where is @PeterReader when you really need him to say that?

Out buying tinfoil for making hats.

Mike

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#2134177 26-Nov-2018 09:52

MikeAqua:

allan:

MikeAqua:

Oh boy ... here we go!

Where is @PeterReader when you really need him to say that?

Out buying tinfoil for making hats.

Uh oh... Busted!

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MikeAqua

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#2134206 26-Nov-2018 10:14

The importance of copyright (n other IP protection) IMO is that it creates a commercial incentive to create.

There can be other incentives for creating that don't require copyright in which case copyright can be relinquished. If your objective is to share an idea as widely as possible, then you might choose to relinquish copyright.

Open source is great, but it can be inaccessible to many people, because it requires technical skills to work with. Most people aren't programmers and don't want to learn to be. They just want stuff that works out of the box.

An example is R. Among other uses, you can graph things in R and undertake sophisticated statistical analysis. It's much more powerful than excel if you can write code. However ..... many, many, many people pay to use excel for graphing and basic statistical analysis while a much smaller number of people use R which is free.

Why? Because excel works for >90% of use and the coding has been done, so you don't have to write or find code for a simple bar-graph. That ease of use exists because someone was able to get paid for it. They were able to get paid because they were able to protect their work both technically and legally.

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#2134227 26-Nov-2018 10:31

MikeAqua:
The importance of copyright (n other IP protection) IMO is that it creates a commercial incentive to create.

There can be other incentives for creating that don't require copyright in which case copyright can be relinquished. If your objective is to share an idea as widely as possible, then you might choose to relinquish copyright.

Open source is great, but it can be inaccessible to many people, because it requires technical skills to work with. Most people aren't programmers and don't want to learn to be. They just want stuff that works out of the box.

An example is R. Among other uses, you can graph things in R and undertake sophisticated statistical analysis. It's much more powerful than excel if you can write code. However ..... many, many, many people pay to use excel for graphing and basic statistical analysis while a much smaller number of people use R which is free.

Why? Because excel works for >90% of use and the coding has been done, so you don't have to write or find code for a simple bar-graph. That ease of use exists because someone was able to get paid for it. They were able to get paid because they were able to protect their work both technically and legally.

But why Excel? Because they don't know about LibreOffice (free) or Google sheets (free, but encumbered).

However, comparing R with Excel doesn't really make sense. Just as using Excel for something that should be done programmatically also doesn't make sense.

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#2134232 26-Nov-2018 10:39

irongarment:

But why Excel? Because they don't know about LibreOffice (free) or Google sheets (free, but encumbered).

However, comparing R with Excel doesn't really make sense. Just as using Excel for something that should be done programmatically also doesn't make sense.

How does LibreOffice stay alive? Does everyone contribute to maintaining it and marketing it for free?

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#2134236 26-Nov-2018 10:49

MikeAqua:

Open source is great, but it can be inaccessible to many people, because it requires technical skills to work with.

Did you post that from an Android phone? Or an iPhone? Or a Mac? Or Windows? On Chrome? Or Mozilla? If you answered 'Yes' to any of those questions, you're using Open Source without any special technical skills required to work with it.

Android's kernel is Linux.

The iOS base is Darwin, an open source port of BSD, as is MacOS.

Safari is based on the open source WebKit framework.

Windows' TCP/IP stack was originally based on the Berkley licensed BSD reference stack.

Chrome is a superset of the open source Chromium, and of course Mozilla has been an open source project forever.

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#2134243 26-Nov-2018 10:52

irongarment:

But why Excel? Because they don't know about LibreOffice (free) or Google sheets (free, but encumbered).

However, comparing R with Excel doesn't really make sense. Just as using Excel for something that should be done programmatically also doesn't make sense.

Personally I use MS Office because I've tried free office products before and been disappointed. They just aren't as easy or nice to use. MS Office just works and it has dozens of little features that save me time every day that are absent in free versions.

The question also has to be asked would those products exist if commercial products hadn't been developed? Would Kodi have existed without the X-Box?

Discard my particular example if you like but the point is people use proprietary products because they just work (usually). People are willing to pay for convenience, rather than invest to use technically more demanding free products.

Open source products are often less convenient - Linux is a classic example of just that.

Mike

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#2134249 26-Nov-2018 10:59

SaltyNZ:

MikeAqua:

Open source is great, but it can be inaccessible to many people, because it requires technical skills to work with.

Did you post that from an Android phone? Or an iPhone? Or a Mac? Or Windows? On Chrome? Or Mozilla? If you answered 'Yes' to any of those questions, you're using Open Source without any special technical skills required to work with it.

Android's kernel is Linux.

The iOS base is Darwin, an open source port of BSD, as is MacOS.

Safari is based on the open source WebKit framework.

Windows' TCP/IP stack was originally based on the Berkley licensed BSD reference stack.

Chrome is a superset of the open source Chromium, and of course Mozilla has been an open source project forever.

You have just outlined a whole bunch of the kind of technical details most people couldn't care less about and don't want to engage with. It's the proprietary hardware and software environment that makes those open source components usable for everyday people. Remove everything proprietary fro your device and what do you have left?

How many people have a linux OS on their machines compared to mac?

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#2134268 26-Nov-2018 11:09

MikeAqua:

It's the proprietary hardware and software environment that makes those open source components usable for everyday people. Remove everything proprietary fro your device and what do you have left?

But it's the open source foundation that lets the proprietary hardware and software work at all. And that software is available because of protection from copyright, not in spite of it. Licenses like the Apache Open Source License or the GPL only work because of copyright. Without them, Apple, Google or Microsoft would be free to appropriate the hard work of the relevant communities and never give anything back.

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irongarment

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#2134354 26-Nov-2018 12:20

MikeAqua:
irongarment:

But why Excel? Because they don't know about LibreOffice (free) or Google sheets (free, but encumbered).

However, comparing R with Excel doesn't really make sense. Just as using Excel for something that should be done programmatically also doesn't make sense.

Personally I use MS Office because I've tried free office products before and been disappointed. They just aren't as easy or nice to use. MS Office just works and it has dozens of little features that save me time every day that are absent in free versions.

The question also has to be asked would those products exist if commercial products hadn't been developed? Would Kodi have existed without the X-Box?

Discard my particular example if you like but the point is people use proprietary products because they just work (usually). People are willing to pay for convenience, rather than invest to use technically more demanding free products.

Open source products are often less convenient - Linux is a classic example of just that.

No. Your simple example was making a bar graph. That's trivial for LibreOffice or Google sheets. You don't get to make things more complicated and then claim that open source software doesn't cut it.

Name one feature present in MS Office that is not present in LibreOffice that saves you time every day.

I also don't understand what you mean by "less convenient", and how Linux represents a classic example.

MikeAqua

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#2134362 26-Nov-2018 12:26

SaltyNZ:

MikeAqua:

It's the proprietary hardware and software environment that makes those open source components usable for everyday people. Remove everything proprietary fro your device and what do you have left?

But it's the open source foundation that lets the proprietary hardware and software work at all. And that software is available because of protection from copyright, not in spite of it. Licenses like the Apache Open Source License or the GPL only work because of copyright. Without them, Apple, Google or Microsoft would be free to appropriate the hard work of the relevant communities and never give anything back.

It's a chicken-egg argument. Take all the proprietary hardware and software out of play and what would we have? Do the same with open source and ...

I'm in favour of copyright. As I said in my earlier post I think it allows an incentive to create and I acknowledged that commercial incentives might not be the only incentives. I agree with what you are saying about copyright protecting open source creations (if that's what its creators want).

Mike

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#2134367 26-Nov-2018 12:29

irongarment:

I also don't understand what you mean by "less convenient", and how Linux represents a classic example.

It's harder to use, therefore less convenient.

Mike

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