[A2k] Re: [Upd-discuss] Christian Engstrom on Copyright Law and Online Freedom

[Michael S. Hart]

How To Argue Against Copyright


by Michael S. Hart
Founder
Project Gutenberg,
Inventor of eBooks


When it comes to copyright, there are some truly worldwide answers
to the questions concerning "Who pays for copyright" and "who will
be limited by copyright."

"Everyone," is the answer.

"Ask not for whom the bell tolls,"
when it comes to paying copyright,
"it tolls for thee. . . ."


Everyone pays for copyright, either in cash or ignorance, or both.

Billions of of people pay. . .while the numbers of people who live
off copyright royalties are few and far between.


The result is that, either way, the public has no public domain.

There is no way for the billions to have access to information and
knowledge that is kept so secret by so few, away from so many.


We all pay for copyright.

Who gains?

Robert James Waller, The Duke of Madison County.

"The Bridges of Madison County" is a best seller.

Here is a book that could have been written in a single day, week,
or month, that's how short it is.

Yes, for the rest of history, at least as it appears under current
United States Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Waller, and his heirs, and
then their heirs, and then their heirs, are entitled to millions &
millions & millions of dollars. . .actually Mr. Waller has already
received millions & millions & millions of dollars. . .but a point
to understand here is that copyright in The Information Age should
be understood to be creating a "Landed Information Age Gentry."

There is only one job in the world that entitles the worker to pay
for the rest of one's life.

The creation of copyrighted material.

A government sponsored monopoly.

I won't go into government sponsored monopolies here, that is done
over and over by far more articulate defenders of Capitalism.

Copyright is the only job that can pay forever for one item.

Everyone else, even the mostly highly paid sports heros, must show
up next year and do it all over again, if they want to get paid.

When it comes to a permanent income:

There is only one. . . .


I Leave It To YOU To Choose Your Favorite Arguments, Remove Those
You Dislike To Create Your Own List Of Arguments From The Below:


Who gains from copyright?

Who loses from copyright?


These two questions, without much in the way of assistance from an
army of other arguments that follow, are enough to convince anyone
who has an even remotely open mind that copyright must be limited,
and limited to a very short term when compare to human lifetimes.

The out and out fact is that billions of people pay for copyright,
and pay and pay and pay, thousands of times per year mostly likely
in cash for the 3.4 billion in the upper crust, and these will see
they're joined by the 3.4 billion in the lower crust when it comes
down to missing out on information that would be public domain.

Even if you are the richest person in the world, both in cash, and
in information flow, there are things you will miss because limits
have been placed on distribution, you just will never hear of them
because their distribution is intentionally too narrow.

We've heard horror stories about the loss of millions of dollars &
pounds & francs, etc. worth of information, simply because it will
have been proven this information was held too tightly, so tightly
it now does not survive, any more than dinosaurs, we have only the
few relics left behind, but the major corpus has passed away.

In the very same sense, when we look at publication of information
as the preservation of civilization, then we must beware of how to
stop the loss of civilization in such a manner, as when books were
designed to be out of print in six weeks, newspaper were saved for
limited periods, movies were allowed to rot in their cans, etc.

Any movie buff can tell you how Jack Valenti, the man who compared
home video to The Boston Strangler, used to plead with billions on
the Academy Awards [Oscars] show to look under their bed, in their
garages and attics, etc., for lost movie reels so Hollywood, whose
attitude towards preservation was "only for best sellers." who now
is in the "business" of trying to recapture was was truly left for
the rats and mice. . . .

These works, if found and handed over to Hollywood, would never be
part of the public domain, for Hollywood would insist THEY owned a
100% interest in the recovered films, even if they had trown those
films away earlier.

The result is that, either way, the public has no public domain.

There is no way for the billions to have access to information and
knowledge that is kept so secret by so few, away from so many.

"The Information Age?"

"For whom?"

It is the very nature of The Internet that anything ever digitzed,
in any publicly readable format, could literally go to everyone in
the rest of history.

This is what the new copyright laws are trying to stop.

Copyright was invented solely for one reason, and only one reason,
as a reactionary political move against The Gutenberg Press.

Before The Gutenberg Press there was a monopoly on publication for
the scribes, they pretty much controlled who could read what; then
in those days that was easier than it is today, for only 1 percent
of the population could read, and, other than the nobility, no one
cared who read what, mostly because only the nobility, and scribes
of course, were likely to be able to read.

Copying anything was legal, simply because when it came down to it
only the rulers and the churchmen knew how to copy anything.

It was pretty much a private insider deal all around.

Johannes Gutenberg made it a public deal with mass production.

For the first time books appeared in the public marketplace.

Not only that, but the price fell from that of an average family's
farm to a fraction of a percent of previous prices.

Literally overnight major portions of the public began to read.

The church was literally up in arms about this and began burning a
whole blacklist of books, sometimes piling them up around authors,
and carrying out the entire enterprise in the public squares.

For years the church denied such a list even existed.

In addition, the church wanted to regain its monopoly on The Bible
and other holy scriptures, references, commentaries, etc., so they
could [mis]interpret them at will to manipulate the public.

Unless you are familiar with how much of The Bible was [mis]quoted
as political times changed and the church wanted to sway public or
private opinion one way or another, this may not have the impact I
feel when I read these reports.

When the first attempts at copyright were made, they were made for
ONLY the benefit of "The Stationers Guild" and this was obvious to
all concerned, so the lobbying for a copyright "patent" failed and
failed and failed and failed and failed and failed and failed, for
a period of ~250 years from Gutenberg to Queen Anne.

The reason it failed was because their was never an alliance among
The Stationers, The Church, and the nobility, and also because The
Stationers wanted so very much:  they wanted all rights to all the
publications of all history, with no rights to the authors.

How silly, eh?  Not quite so silly. . .they almost got it!!!!!!!

All of the reigning monarchs, even through The Interregnum and The
Restoration, from the last three Henrys through Elizabeth and then
William and Mary, even through such a troubled ~250 years history,
the Kings and Queens of Britain refused The Stationers requests to
make public publication illegal.

The Stationers failed, and failed, and failed again.

But they never stopped trying.

could you blame them???

I can!!!

What they wanted was a return of their historic monopoly over book
publication, in fact over all publication, even posters or flyers.

However, as stated, they never stopped trying, and finally after a
dozen and a half monarchies, they got a monarch weak enough to say
yes to their offer of censorship, restriction and monopoly, along,
just barely, with a small concession to the authors.

Copyright owners like to pretend that this offer to the author was
something great on the part of The Stationers, but in reality it's
mostly just an illusion, as were nearly all author's right even to
my own lifetime.

The publishers decided what would get printed.

The authors had no rights until after 14 years.

The vast majority publications was out of print in 14 years, still
is today, for that matter.

However, after ~250 years of having failed, and failed, and failed
yet again, The Stationers finally got their copyright and the book
total dropped from 6,000 to 600 literally overnight when that law,
known as "The Statute of Anne," became a reality.

We have been stuck with it ever since.

And more.

And more.

And more.

The 14 year copyright was effectively only 14 years for most as it
was, and is, unlikely for anything to still be in print afterward.

Let's just add one year to the average for those and say copyright
averaged 15 years.

This copyright term was pretty much adopted by everyone during the
revolutions of the 1700s, including the United States and France.

*



Written July 4, 2009, starting the 39th year of Project Gutenberg.