American Censorship Day


But there is so much

good music that was produced before the year 2000 I shall never need to care*!

B)

There was a lot of crap produced before the year 2000 too.  You're seeing culture through the eyes of history, and your memory is cloudy.  There's nothing wrong with that, it's perfectly normal, and is exactly why there are people who make it their job to study even recent history.
People always comment things like "oh, these great hits from the 70s, they don't write 'em like that anymore" but they forget that for every song that gets replayed on the "classic hits" stations there were dozens or hundreds of garbage songs, some even making it to #1 on the charts, we've simply filtered out just the best.  And that's a good thing, something that we want to encourage, we want people to produce crap, we want people to spew out their music and their novels and their shitty videos because every once in a while they produce something amazing and the day people stop producing new culture is the day we stop evolving as a society.
The world you sound like you would be happy to live in, where nothing changes and we continue to consume the same material over and over, nothing new ever being created, is the anti-thesis of my perfect world and if you think abolishing copyright is the first step to accomplishing it then I will fight with everything I have to make sure that doesn't happen.  I hate modern copyright but I am absolutely terrified of a modern world where it doesn't exist at all.
Twilight and 50 Shades are demonstrable garbage, absolutely causing more harm than good, but they are a reflection of society and I would hate to live in a world where their existence is impossible.
 
Haraldur, you are missing the point.  As has been said, not everyone is on the internet, some people still enjoy going out to theatres to watch movies, some people like being able hold a physical book or a shelf full of movies.  Beyond the physical there are large numbers of people that happily pay for things that they can get for free because they are willing to contribute to something they enjoy.
Despite what the media would try to tell you, piracy is not a problem.  If copyright vanished there may be a slight uptick in downloads but it is my honest opinion that people would still buy DVDs, they would still go to movie theatres, they would still get their music from iTunes.
If piracy were abolished there is nothing currently in our society that would suggest we would see some kind of second renaissance.  You would solve the one way producer-consumer problem but it's naive to think that the world would naturally become a communication utopia: with one problem gone you would introduce several others.
I'm not going to waste time giving examples, I tried to give a general example and you blew it off with a specific solution; that's not how general examples work, we'd be back and forth for weeks.  Instead I will encourage you to think for yourself: if you cannot come up with a single instance where a complete lack of copyright results in a bad scenario for the general public that would necessitate further legislation to fix then we absolutely cannot continue this discussion because you lack the imagination necessary to appreciate it.
A cinema can torrent a file as well as anyone else so, given that most of the money is made from the food anyway (though, now, they would not need to pay for licences to the film companies), they will survive quite well if and only if demand holds. If demand does not hold, then, well, fuck'em. (I like capitalism when it agrees with me... sort of (ugh!)).

Book binders will still exist for a while -- at least as long as PhD students are required to generate a hard-copy of their thesis -- so one can always bind a book oneself. Besides, with DRMed ebooks, publishers themselves are trying to move away from hardcopy, so... I do not care.

I am neutral about whether or not piracy damages the industries. I win either way. I just assume that the wretches are right about the damage when they try to justify censorship, perhaps as a handicap, but also because it allows more fundamental discussion than saying "piracy really has no effect" blah blah blah. As far as I am concerned, if piracy is not a problem, then none of the annoyances of the last ten years -- DRM, DNS-blocking etc. -- are justified. If it is a problem, then one can argue that copyright is undermined beyond repair and should be allowed to collapse, as the the alternative is too oppressive.

There is no perfect system, no perfect situation. I am unaware of significant (a wonderfully vague word) downsides (aside from Richard Stallman's notion that it would be bad for free software that, say, the Linux kernel could be modified without redistributed source if copyright was abolished too soon -- for that I have a lot of sympathy, which is why I mentioned 15-year copyright terms in my first post). Of course, I am currently of the opinion that, even if there were significant downsides, it would be good on balance.

I would like to address one thing you said directly, though.

Besides, even if I am wrong, then perhaps people will be deterred from creating new novels? Would that be so bad? There are already more novels (in English even!) than any one person will read, and that any film company will adapt. No loss, for the consumer. There is no social need for more novels as we have plenty already.

Yes, yes it would be bad. It would be very, very bad.  Society is arguably as much a living thing as anything else, metaphysically speaking: it lives, it consumes, it reproduces, it changes.  Changes in society are reflected in the media we create and in turn the media we consume alters our society.  You may never read every novel, watch every movie, play every video game, or listen to every song but every piece of work created is influenced by and has influence on the world around it.  Even the things that never get published, someone had an idea for a story and they started writing it and even if it never gets finished simply thinking about it, their characters the the experiences they would have changed that persons behavior ever so slightly, or perhaps not so slightly: this is how our brains work, manifold ideas all layered up leading to behavior.
If there's a chance that abolishing copyright would lead to a world where production came to a trickle, where only big names could crowdfund movies and novels and a young woman chooses to stop writing because she knows there's no way she'd get the recognition for it then I will fight you on it with every breath I have.  That is not a world I want to risk living in.
Abolishing copyright doesn't fix the world, it changes the playing field and creates new problems.
Would it be better if I said "would it be so bad if no one ever published new novels"? Plenty of people make things for themselves that are never given to the world, and plenty of people even do give things to the world. I do not believe that pretty much anything* will stop people producing fiction** -- there is a lot of original fiction on the internet, including, I believe, large Usenet archives. Granted, a lot of it is pornographic, but, well, people write about what they care about -- what is wrong with that?

*So copyright abolition is fine!
**I do, without publishing, though most of it is in the form of computer game design documents -- ha! Have I ever entertained the idea of publishing? Well, yes, but always as FOSS, so money never really featured.

All change produces new problems. One of my pet phrases is "change is jarring". This is why people are (too?) conservative. Sometimes it is beneficial (like in this case  :p ) and sometimes is it necessary (probably not yet, unfortunately, in this case, though I would benefit greatly -- I imagine game engine reimplimentations, and similar projects, would be more common if people needn't consider the possibility of legal interference).

As a bonus, I suspect the losers from this change would mostly be rich and powerful people (which is also why it would be difficult to change).
 
I am neutral about whether or not piracy damages the industries. I win either way.
And that is the point of me telling you you miss the point: it is naive and blatantly wrong.  You as a low-key consumer benefit in the short term, that problem is solved, but it does nothing to address the problems that it will create.
 
Would it be better if I said "would it be so bad if no one ever published new novels"? Plenty of people make things for themselves that are never given to the world, and plenty of people even 

do give things to the world. I do not believe that pretty much anything* will stop people producing fiction** -- there is a lot of original fiction on the internet, including, I believe, large Usenet archives. Granted, a lot of it is pornographic, but, well, people write about what they care about -- what is wrong with that?

No, it wouldn't be better, because it is fundamentally the same thing.  If we stop producing new media then we stop evolving.  The music of today is different from the music of the 80s which is different from the music of the 20s and the music of the 1500s.  20 years from now the music will be different still; same goes for our television and books and games.  The art created is a reflection of society and in turn has an effect on society, and you've said it is your opinion that it would be ok if all of this just stopped, if we as a society just kept consuming the same material over and over, and that is a sentiment that I am vehemently opposed to: you are wrong about that, undeniably incorrect, it would be one of the worst things in the world.
 
It's sad to see, that some people here are tending to the extremes again.
No copyright law at all is just as bad (hurting creative people) as draconic copyright law which in the end only serves big companies or people who's job is being an heir and everyone with some common sense sees this in a second, imho.
 
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We haven't yet actually discussed the 'no copyright' case, (mostly) only the 'would it be bad if creativity would stop' one. I'm with Wizardstan on the latter, but the relation to the question of copyright hasn't been established yet. Given that nobody outside western civilization ever thought of copyright, that various cultural advances even in western civilization have been created without copyright, and that the fathers of the US constitution were IIUC thinking of it as an optional feature, I'm inclined to think there is no such connection.
 
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Without copyright, nobody would be able to license their code as GPL (or any other license for that matter).  Taking a position against copyright is also a position against open source, just as much as it takes against big copyright holders.
 
How about a different copyright term for corporate entities and companies?
e.g. If an invididual human creates something, then it stays in copyright for 25 years, but if a corporation creates something, it stays in copyright for 10 years. If an individual transfers control of the content to a corporation, the term would drop to ten years from its creation, perhaps, in turn, knocking it into the public domain.

Alternatively, what if ceasing publication (and distribution to the general public at a fair market price) automatically made material public domain?
That wouldn't seriously effect profits (because if its a valuable piece of work, you'd keep it in print) but would stop publishers sitting on content. Copyright holders who refuse to distrubute copies of a work have to be bad to cultural development.
 
How about a different copyright term for corporate entities and companies?
e.g. If an invididual human creates something, then it stays in copyright for 25 years, but if a corporation creates something, it stays in copyright for 10 years. If an individual transfers control of the content to a corporation, the term would drop to ten years from its creation, perhaps, in turn, knocking it into the public domain.

That's an interesting idea.  It would certainly encourage publishers to leave copyright with the creator, even though that subsequently allows them to relicense that to another publisher, should they wish.
 
I feel with that model it would benefacial for people to license out the works to be published then. it would give the creator a bit more push if they have more rights then the corporations. Haraldur's idea of a society which strikes me a lot like the book entitled the Giver published in 1993 so there's a chance Haraldur may be aware of its existence.



We need creation in order to be human. Its what keeps us advanced. If production stopped then you'd may as well end up in what happened in Idiocracy a movie made in 2006 with a very.... real premise. I read many books, and I collect old books the moment I can find them. However I am biased towards the old world doesn't mean I don't just want it all to stop. I'm hoping that we will progress back out of this social bickering hump. I can imagine else where in the world is suffering from the same thing the states are when it comes to the general public.

I'm going to hold my tongue since alot of this is sliding into the area where I start to get passionate and highly opinionated.
 
the relation to the question of copyright hasn't been established yet. 

It's impossible to prove a relationship on something as variable as human behavior, all we can do is make guesses.
It could be that removing copyright does see an explosion of media, where people consume everything for free and "do the right thing" by contributing willingly to creators in a "pay what you feel like" model.  Or maybe an equilibrium is established where new media is produced only after funding has been raised via crowdfunding.  Or maybe, without the guarantee of protection, everyone just stops producing (at least the so-called "good" producers) because they realize they can't make a living off of other's generosity.
These are all valid outcomes that could happen, and many more that I probably can't even imagine; the point is that saying "abolish copyright and all our problems are solved" is naive because regardless of which scenario actually happens there will be new problems created as a result.  You can't just get rid of something that has influenced society for so long and expect everything turn out alright; like killing off all the wolves and thinking the deer will be fine because there's no more predation, there will be consequences.
 
I agree that there will be consequences to any change of copyright, but since all known examples of human cultures with or without copyright are known to have significant creativity, claiming a stop of creativity as equally likely to some (smaller) change in either direction requires justification. I'm mostly just curious to know whether models exist that actually predict a stop or even a significant reduction of creativity under some circumstances.
 
Depends on the type of creativity I guess.  I don't know of many authors I can think of who wrote their very first book purely as a money-making exercise.  Maybe a few travel writers saw it as a way to pay for future travels, but I can't think of many authors of fiction who were particularly motivated by financial gain.  I guess to a certain degree, it depends on the type of books you read though - if 'Ed Reardon's Week' has anything to say about that industry, it suggests a lot is written just to pay the rent.  I'm not sure how much that particular oeuvre boosts the country's cultural levels though.

In second books it's a lot more common, to try to replicate the magic by writing a similar book, to make money, and in music the tale of a talentless youngster wanting to get famous and rich by becoming a pop star is common enough to probably have some degree of truth to it.  Again, I could probably live without those things though.

I suspect design work done for advertising probably wouldn't change much, as apart from certain brand identity elements, that stuff's on such a tight rotation that there's no point anyone copying it.

I'm honestly not sure how it would affect the design work done for UIs and casings for phones and other electronic gadgets.  ED seems to think that facilitating others who want to copy your work isn't a significant impediment to the Pyra project, but I'm not sure how true that is in more mainstream electronics.

Edit: Note that there are many more uses of copyright than just the pursuit of money, of course.
 
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Not so much the writing but the publishing aspect.  Someone may keep a journal of their travels but what's the actual cost of publishing if there's a chance someone could legally lift your journal whole and sell it as their own?  Or just give it away for free?  It takes some monetary investment to publish a book, at least to hire an editor, and while you can't guarantee to make any money back at least with some form of copyright you have a bit of protection.
As far as models, I don't think anything exists right now.  We don't live in the same world as pre-copyright where production was limited by costs and time, so history is a poor indicator.  We live in a world where you can make a million copies of something in almost no time for very little cost.  Even printing physical books or mass pressing DVD is cheap and easy for anyone.
 
It's not that i disagree. Creators will most probably not look at rising royalties without copyright. Fred Fish (who died much too young) did stop creating Fish Disks because not enough people were buying them directly from him, but from copiers who bought from other copiers (allowed by the license). The PySol author abandoned his (GPLed) project because it was resold a lot without adequate donations to the project. A lot of motivation will be sacrificed, a lot of business models will become unprofitable. But still, neither the demand for books, songs, films etc. nor the desire to be famous, express oneself, market opinions etc. will go away.

edit: I'm not advocating abolishing copyright (and I don't think Haraldur did), but I think it is important to not overstate the value of copyright.
 
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But still, neither the demand for books, songs, films etc. nor the desire to be famous, express oneself, market opinions etc. will go away.

I agree entirely, I'm just saying that assuming it will be possible to realize such demands and desires post-copyright-abolishment is naive, it fails to even consider the possible ways the system can fail.
 
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