[ExI] intellectual property again

[Emlyn]

On 4 March 2010 15:38, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> On Mar 3, 2010, at 10:47 PM, Emlyn wrote:
>
>> I honestly don't see how any extropian or transhumanist who is looking
>> at the future with an honest eye can countenance a future like this.
>> The copyfight happening now is not a mundane economic squabble, it is
>> a political fight for our futures, and one whose importance I think is
>> very difficult to overstate. Don't accept it!
>
> So I should abandon any hope or expectation of being recompensed for my
> published writing, because otherwise I'm conniving with the Enemies of the
> Future. Didn't Stalin have similar opinions along these lines?

Comparing my position to Stalin doesn't quite give me a technical win, dammit.

I've not mentioned anything about people being paid for work. There
are lots of ways to be paid for work, only loosely related to IP laws
unless you are actually an IP lawyer. Do you think there is no viable
business model for writers that doesn't include inflicting massive
restrictions on your readers?

> In fact, I've just about given up any hope of making a living from my work;
> all my stuff is instantly pirated (not that this deprives me of much, I
> suppose),

This is key. Is piracy depriving you of income? ie: would those people
have bought your work otherwise? Conversely, are some people turned on
to your work by reading a pirated copy, who later buy a copy, but
never would have otherwise?

> the conglomerate hogs only want to publish shit "by" or about
> celebrities or mashups with ZOMBIES or VAMPIRES at the end of the title,
> etc.

Well this sounds more like it; your industry is doing something shit.
But is that caused somehow by problems with our intellectual property
regime? I've been reading stuff from Cory Doctorow, whose contention
is that having his work freely available boosts his sales. He
describes paper books and free ebooks as highly complementary; people
who have one also want the other. OTOH, he might be selling well
because he's famous for his political views, so might be a bad
example, idk.

> Damned if I know what the answer is; I'd personally be happy if
> everyone in the world agreed to pay a tiny amount whenever they downloaded
> or borrowed something I created (and I would do the same in turn, of
> course), but that doesn't seem likely.

I'm starting to come around to that way of thinking; a general creator
tax mightn't be the worst thing in the world. After all, we all
benefit from creative work being available.

> Australia's Public Lending Right and
> Educational Lending Right is a device for paying the creators on a sort of
> rude statistical basis, and could be generalized,

I'm suspicious of that statistical approach, and I think it breaks
down online because you can't track who's copying what. Maybe we'd be
better off with a voting system (eg: hyperlink in your pdf which says
"vote for this work" and points back to a website run by the govt dept
in question)?

> but of course in that case
> Evil Gummints are involved. And while it's very wicked for governments to
> steal from honest workers, it's apparently virtuous for everyone to steal
> from me, for example. Because we have to prepare for Pie in the Sky By and
> By.
>
> Damien Broderick

Well, you'll hate this, but no one's stealing from you, because you
still have the thing. They may very well not be paying you, but that's
a separate matter, discussed above. As to Pie in the Sky By and By,
this shit is here and now. Liberal Democracies are introducing rules
that allow individuals to be entirely cut off the net for copying
stuff (with very little due process, so in fact its being cut of at
the whim of higher powers), to track & log individual's behaviour like
never before (in the name of protecting IP, or else to protect the
children), and are about to start mandatory "filtering" (ie:
censoring) of the internet for entire populations, again in the name
of the children although I suspect actually at the behest of the
content owners (this is a sore point for me because it's happening
here). Again, we're going to be dependent on this infrastructure, and
eventually it just will not be possible to opt out. I think the net is
the greatest tool for individual liberty ever to be devised, with the
proviso that handing total control of it to a massively powerful
minority can turn it into the greatest tool for oppression ever
devised, or in the best case simply break so that we lose all the
gains we've made and can make from what is, well, a
social/political/economic revolution unfolding.

I contend that this kind of restrictive control, and the increasingly
draconian intellectual copyright regime, are parts of the same puzzle.
The net lets everyday people richly interact with each other in a way
unmediated by powerful third parties. That's not cool if you're
invested in the status quo. The quest by goverment and large corporate
interests to lock down the net is about maintaining/returning control
over all our individual interactions back to those powers. Next time
you hear these people harp on about protecting writers and musicians,
think about when they've ever given a shit about you any other time.
These people would make you use the service entrance of their
mansions, don't kid yourself, they couldn't give a flying fuck about
hairy bohemians and their meagre incomes. This is about power, you're
just a pawn.

-- 
Emlyn

http://www.songsofmiseryanddespair.com - My show, Fringe 2010
http://point7.wordpress.com - My blog