More Piracy in the US.

You have the war on drugs, war on terror, and now the war on piracy. Seriously. Including a possible life sentence for hospital employees caught using pirate software.

Anyone else think we're going to see a massive shift towards open source software, and possibly the death of commercial software in the US?

Smart law that.

Homeland Security and the RIAA as partners? Priceless. You couldn't make this <expletive deleted> up.

Sounds like cobblers to me.

What's this supposed to mean?
So if I kosh someone over the head with a pirate copy of Vista, I'll be up on a software rap?

It's a pity America doesn't have a war on Scientology.

To quote Bill Hicks
"George Bush says 'we are losing the war on drugs'. Well you know what that implies? There's a war going on, and people on drugs are winning it! Well what does that tell you about drugs? Some smart, creative motherfuckers on that side."

It is ambiguous, but it means what it says in the article. If they use pirate software in a hospital and that software causes the death of a patient. I assume through viruses or other malware generally to be found among illegally downloaded software. Or the software being recognized as pirate and stopping working. I guess.

Although I gotta say, it seems unlikely that a hospital is going to get life or death software pirated... "Oooh got the latest version of Heart monitor off a torrent last night, going to install it and see how it goes with Mrs Jones"

: )

Any software could be life or death in a hospital. If a simple database application holds patient records and the records are not available or incorrect.. treatment is wrong because of this..

And what happens if someone dies while under the control of LEGAL hospital software? Who goes to jail then? Bill Gates?

Barney

Everyone knows it's Canada that's the problem, with our insanely loose IP laws.

We all love to bring our video cameras into the cinema with us, then film the latest blockbuster films, only to later upload them to the internet, thereby aiding the terrorists! Yarrrrr, eh?

What exactly qualifies as "attempted" copyright infringement anyway. Are you not allowed to read the newspaper over someone's shoulder anymore? Better not be caught hearing your neighbour's awful music at 3am on a Saturday morning...

Up to 10 years for non-profit copyright infringement? Time for you guys to have another civil war I think.

It should be clear to all by now that 9-11 was just a pretext for the government to do whatever the hell they want.

Terrorists hate us for our...funky grooves?

"Attempted" copyright infringement could be something as simple as searching for a a download link of a copyrighted work... e.g. typing the name of a commercial program or song or movie in a bittorrent search engine, regardless of whether you actually finish downloading the program in question. Which also makes it orders of magnitude easier for the RIAA/MPAA/BSA and such to go after people after they subpoenad access logs of a torrent site, without all that pesky having to prove that people *actually* pirated the item in question.

I believe that piracy and copyright infringement actually improves the living standards of people and ultimately leads to better quality commodities. The only people who it effects negatively are wealthy capitalists who can afford to take a hit on their surplus profits anyway.

I say, abolish copyright and IP laws.

The problem is people taking the piss and it being too easy to download stuff. I actually quite like what virgin media are doing where if you use masses of bandwidth then you get throttled.

I'm one of the few people who actually don't download illegal music, although I did download "Faithless Live" because I couldn't be arsed to rip the audio track off the dvd to put on my phone.

Anyway, I think this has gone crazy, it's a knee jerk reaction which will probably not go through but cause a lot of media frenzy, and like so many policies both in America and the rest of the world, it's used to divert attention from something else (generally more sinister) that they slip in at the same time without being noticed.

Regarding copyright and IP laws, I think they're a good thing. If you write something it's nice to have some protection.

It is nice. Too bad the people that tend to end up with the rights aren't the people who wrote it. This has been the case throughout history. Copyright law really only 'protects' big companies.. and even then only from ghosts. Small time people lack the funds to enforce their own copyrights.

^- the unforgotten words of a lost prophet :)

-imagine what he would say about the current george bush LOL!

From that one can only conclude that you're not hosting your website yourself, watching much HDTV, updating your windows installation or playing many on-line games.

For 70 years after you're dead? Why on earth would you want that?

I find that when you try to oppose something you make it more real and more prevalent. In trying to oppose it there is a strong desire to have it be even more real so that you have a reason why you're opposing it. You can't be in opposition to something that doesn't exist. If you're really determined to oppose you might as well be saying that you're determined to keep something as it is or that you even want to make more of it. That's the secret undercurrent of it. So all these makings of rules and wars and such does not work. It just creates a tighter problem.

There's gotta be at least some thinking done there. Excusing the fact about life+70 years in general being excessive, some things just don't make sense to have copyright protection for that long. A book is still readable after 50 years, but how about an Atari 2600 game? What about stuff that isn't for general sale anymore? Exactly what losses are incurred there?

Copyright was meant to be a courtesy from the general public to work as an enticement for people to create stuff, otherwise everything is just public domain by default.

People are not getting upset enough about the extension of copyright and the stupidity of these new laws. Big business is actively stealing OUR public domain from US, the public. Who's sueing them for that?

The copyright for life + 70 years is to allow children etc. to benefit from things their parents created.

So that your children can benefit from your product even after your gone? Just something I though about.

Couldnt you transfer copyrights to your children after you die so that you can keep the rights to your stuff?

..its sounds dirty...cool..

The copyright and IP issue is always being muddied with people asking what the loss is. Loss is not and should not be the issue. The issue is why should other people be making money from your work? Why should I be allowed to make money by using Mickey Mouse in a game? I didn't create him, I didn't do anything. Why should I get a free ride?

No.

Yes. It's called inheritance.

Regardless 99% of all copyrights are not owned by the person who created a work. They are owned by a corporate legal entity.

Because it's your right.

Copyright has been distorted into some kind of corporate welfare programme, and thanks to constant trash from corporations, most people seem to think it's some sort of right that you should forever be able to profit from something you made.

You have to remember that we as a society endorse copyright as an enticement for artists to create work. It's not for them to have a perpetual income source. People created stuff back before there was copyright, they created stuff when it was for a period much shorter than now. The trade off was made by us as a people to create an incentive. There's now really no need to create anything new (other than for even MORE cashola), because the old stuff never stops giving. That means copyright has gone too far.

It's hard to see these new laws as anything other than an attempt to keep that drip connected up. The idea is to make as many people as "guilty" as possible so they can keep the money coming in.

Actually the issue is "Who do you trust with your culture, businesses or people?" Granted that a lot of the IP churned out since 1976 is more "rubbish" than "culture", but still.

But I agree completely, why should "The Beatles" not be allowed to make money of their own work? Because the copyrights are not owned by The Beatles, they are owned by their record company. How many millions do you think Paul McCartney has had to pay unscrupulous, uncreative businessmen, to get back the rights to his own songs?

How much do you think it's going to cost Anthony Flack to get back the rights to Platypus?

Because the fundamental principle of Smithian Economics, is that free competition, and self-interest benefits society and consumers.

And it shows...

something else to remember: Originally copyright was a two-way street. the original copyright holder had exclusive rights to his/her creation *for a limited time*. the government would enforce this right be preventing others from infringing on the copyright, but only for a limited time. copyright would expire after a couple of years, and the work would enter the public domain where all of society could benefit from it. the protection clause would supposedly be an incentive for people to create stuff, because it was easier to make a living on it than if everyone could take your work and run with it.

Nowadays big Media still enjoys the protection, but the public no longer gets to enjoy their end of the original bargain which was the free use of the works in question after a couple of years went by.

The whole point was to give people/companies incentive to create new works and enrich society as a whole. In my opinion, the current model has greatly overshot that goal. Do you really think that disney would get out of the new content creation business if they didn't have sole ownership of everything for perpetuity?
the entire *meaning* of copyright has been twisted beyond the original intent, thanks to the lobbying efforts of a hand full of large corporations over the last century.

especially in the computer age, what is the point of essentially locking up software for a century at a time? As mentioned above: Atari 2600. There is absolutely no commercial viability left in a 2600 game by the company that originally made it. There is no incentive for them to still produce copies. they're gathering dust on a shelve, being essentially abandoned. but according to current copyright legislation, it's still illegal for others to make a copy -- which is pretty much the only way to get access to the item. How does that benefit society as a whole, as copyright was intended to work? Now it's just a government-enforced protection racket, without the content-creators having to live up to their end of the bargain...

So those of us who were wise/fortunate enough to keep our own IP should have our rights trampled on in order to redress the balanace against unscrupulous companies who seek to take advantage of others? There's no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. If unscrupulous companies are the issue here, then we need to give the original copyright holders more rights, not take them away.


There are two issues here though. The narrow issue, the game itself, I don't think anyone could argue against. The wider issue is that if the article had no copyright protection, I could write a brand new version of Lords of Magic ( or whatever ) and start pulling in the money based on someone else's work. I don't believe that stopping me from copying the Spectrum game achieves anything positive, but I do believe that the Gollops ( assuming it's their property still ) deserve the right to profit from a remake, should they choose to do so, because they put all the work in the first time around. If the brand/content is still worth something all these later then it stands to reason that the copyright holder ( since no one else has any ability to do so ) is the primary reason for that. In many cases that may even be because of the amount of work and money that has gone into sustaining that brand. If we take away people's rights, no one would have any incentive to put time and money into sustaining an existing work. I don't see how that benefits society either.

Without copyright law, you would have a situation like Russia or India. There are no major software companies in these countries. Instead, they just provide outsourcing to U.S. and European companies that enjoy copyright protection.

However, I do not think piracy is the terrorist plot Attorney General Pablo would have you believe.

I get a little tired of the corporation-bashing I hear all the time. Corporations are just a tool you use to protect yourself, gain better tax rates, and appear legitimate. The majority of U.S. corporations have no employees.

Without copywrite law, you would have a situation like in China - cheap software available to people who cannot afford the outrageous prices set by companies for their legitimate software. And I'm sorry, but anyone who believes that Corporations are tools to protect the individual is just naive.

Now who's being naive? If everywhere were permitted to behave like China there would be no cheap software and no expensive software because no one would bother writing it. All you would have is the free alternatives, which you could already be using if they weren't vastly inferior to their "outrageously priced" betters.

Which work specifically, the old one or the remake?

Sierra in theory losing their copyright to the original Lords of Magic doesn't mean they can't remake it and copyright the remake (they'd be the only ones with the Trademark too.) It would just mean theoretically, you could take assets from the old game and reuse them in some way.

I highly doubt you would profit from "remaking" a game many years later by taking all the assets and putting them into your own title, also while bearing in mind that game is now free for anyone else.

Take the idea of using the art and code from the original Atari 2600 game Adventure. Exactly who is going to buy a game now based on that? If someone were to rewrite it for example for cell-phones they wouldn't be using the 2600 code or art anyway and their new stuff would be protected. Just what is so bad about this?

Of course as content producers we want to work in our own interests, but ultimately you should produce because you want your stuff to be enjoyed by others. Those who produce only for profit make Match 3 clones.

Gabriel:

That's nonsense. You'd see better quality software, and less monopolies that actively stand in the way of innovation and healthy competition. You don't think China has any software developers?

You're not limited to only graphics, code and music assets. You've also got character designs, characters, plot, background, potentially an entire world. Those aren't going to date as graphics and sound assets are. Moreover, they are likely to attract the old audience. If I made a scifi game about aliens taking over the world it would be a heck of a lot more successful if I could have them all looking like characters from V, named after characters from V, running around in a world designed by Kenneth Johnson with background plots created by KJ.


Those who make Match3 clones also invest the least in their properties ( since they have no properties as such. ) Take away people's rights and Match 3 clones is probably all you'll have left.

I never said anything about abandoning IP protection wholesale, just moderating it to make it more realistic.

You're right though, Shakespeare's decendents should be kicking and screaming right now. Really though, JRR Tolkien's kids are the ones that should be mad about most videogames. Most popular plots for movies, books, and yes, even games are heavily based on existing older ideas.

Let's indulge you though, what happens when IP becomes free?

Disney has remade loads of old stories into movies for example. Those movies have added to our culture. The fact that stories like Snow White are free to be exploited have meant that a great movie was made. Ever seen another version of Snow White? The Disney version was better, right? Just the fact that others can exploit an idea does not mean that it's completely free. There's still work to be done in any production, and you'll still profit or lose based on what you put into it.

If Disney's Snow White ever goes out of Copyright, could you copy it wholesale and sell it? Yes, of course, but so could everyone else, meaning there'd be NOTHING to be gained from doing that kind of thing. That's why all those old literature books now go for $5 at your bookshop. Isn't it great how everyone in Australia can read The Great Gatsby on the cheap?

What would be so bad about a say 10 year copyright on video game software? If the originator of the property sees that there's profit in doing a remake, it's up to them to do it. If not, someone else can profit on it. They'll succeed based directly on how well they manage to imitate the originators to satisfy the fanbase. The originator still made their money from the original, right?

As for derivatives, loads of people have made loads of different versions and even derivatives of Dickens' A Christmas Carol for example. Has this diminished the value of his work or added to it? Have subsequent people profited from it?

My issue is that this current environment of IP means that no future generations will get their own Christmas Carol to build on. Even worse, they might not be able to enhance or improve medicines, industrial designs, etc. because that would violate someone's 50 year old IP. To get why this is bad, you have to look past your own wallet and look at what's good for society as a whole.

If you're worried about someone someday stealing your stuff and making their own derivatives of it, don't. Look up "fanfic" to see why. If your work is quality, it'll be remembered, and benefit generations to come.

I wasn't particularly convinced by the reference to Adam Smith's economic opinions, so you can probably imagine that schoolboy fantasy economics aren't going to impress me. You probably had a few teenage Linux fans running off to grab a box of kleenex though.


What does that have to do with anything? Are chinese software developers somehow prohibited from making money outside of China?


I don't think you specified one way or another, but if you weren't others ( well one other, at least ) were. It's pretty hard to judge from ambiguous comments, but since you clarified that with a suggestion of 10 years, I do at least have something to work from.


I think patronise is the word you were looking for. From ten years to four hundred is pretty much textbook definition of the sublime to the ridiculous.


I already explained why above. If you were talking about limiting this to explicit resources within the work ( art, code, sound, etc ) then it might be possible, but it would be seriously splitting some legal hairs to have a story and characters copyrighted for 70 years after death in a book and 10 years after creation in a videogame. Again, you're just going to drive talent out of the industry. No professional writer is going to work in videogames if their work is devalued to such an extent simply because it's presented via a particular medium. Not to mention how much fun lawyers would have with games and books that crossed over.

It's a tool. It can be used for good or bad purposes. I think I know a thing or two about corporate law, considering I own two, and one of my best friends has a degree in tax law.

If you have a sole propietership and you get sued, you can lose your car, your house, everything. If you have a corporation, only the corporation's assets can be taken. This is called the corporate veil, and it only is violated in cases of fraud.

Besides that, you can't really do business without a corporation, because no one will take you seriously. Most NDAs and other agreements I have seen are formatted so that they expect the signee to be a corp.

Like I said, the majority of U.S. corporations have 0 or 1 employees, so it isn't really fair to blame problems on "corporations" as a general thing. If you want to blame it on bloodsucking billionaires, that's fine, but blaming a corporation because they sit in their "corporate" buildings doing "corporationy" stuff is just silly.

10 years is not literally what I think it should be, but rather I'm trying to get someone to explain to me exactly why it should be life plus 70 years and not some other number. What exactly do you think is a reasonable time for someone to be allowed to exploit a work? Forever?

In your example, the writer has the option of publishing their work as a book, screenplay, or whatever they want, subject to their licence with the game publisher. Why would a cross-over licenced game from a movie have any impact on anything? You'd still not be able to create a new derivative of "House MD - The Game" if it would infringe on the other media. You could freely patch the code and take out all the House MD references though. But then it'd be 10 years old, and nobody would want/be able to play it.

As for worrying about "professional writers" in the games industry, the difference between a professional and an amateur is that the professional gets paid for it. Professional doesn't mean good. Few writers from outside of the games industry write for games.

Taking my example of Snow White, just because Snow White itself is public domain does not give you the right to exploit the Disney images of it. In terms of IP law, this splitting hairs you speak of already exists.

Going back to my previous example, is Warren Robbinett or even Atari/Infogrames/whoever they are now, still making money from Adventure, a 25+ year old game? (The Atari Flashback version is actually a remake of the original) Is there really a reason why it needs his lifetime plus 70 years protection then?

If we were to be fair, we'd have to go back in time, declare everything perpetually copyright and let no derivatives ever be made. What do you think will happen to our society?

The driving people out of an industry you point out, is really a balancing act. Copyright as it stands is not balanced right. Instead of creating an incentive to create new work, you can just create one thing, profit from it for the rest of your life, and for now at least one generation of your kids can too (probably more soon.) Society wants talented people creating as much as we can get them to. So how many years of profit is enough to motivate someone?

Oh and Snow White is ancient yes, but a Christmas Carol isn't, and neither is the Great Gatsby, which isn't even public domain in the USA. I'd give you younger examples, but I can't.

Sure. Since the powers that be, have determined that a company as a legal entity should be entitled to pertain rights that where intended for individuals, that's just the way it has to be. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Sure if you know a way to sell a product, that everyone else can get for free (since it's in the public domain), knock yourself out. But I maintain that in order to compete with the free version you have to provide at least an incremental improvement over the original. So how often do you want our collective culture to move forwards? Every 7 years (which was the original time a copyright was valid), 28 years (like it was between 1831 and 1976), life+50 (1976) or life+70 (1998)? Personally I'm in favor of adding to our collective culture as often as possible, if for nothing else, then because it'll mean the end of talentless hacks like Britney Spears.

Oh really? If it wasn't for piracy, there wouldn't even exist a copy of Lords of Magic today. Most certainly the copyright holders don't have a copy - they probably can't even remember making the game.

Starforce and ElcomSoft are both Russian software companies. I'm sure there are plenty more.

Which proves the point quite nicely I think.

Is my taxi here yet?

I think one way they could go that would keep Disney happy, and at the same time make the copyright law more free making people happy. Is to set copyright to something like 15 years from the last time it was made publicly available for purchase.

Basicallly if you wrtie a book and publish it, you keep the copyright for 15 years. If you do a reprint of it 14 years later, your copyright gets extended by 15 years from that date. That way Disney could keep Mickey, but would have to publish DVDs with their old cartoons such as Steamboat Willy every 15 years, making this material available to the public again (currently they are sitting on lots of old films...like the WWII propaganda films they made).

Of course, there are some problems with this approach. It favors big corporations with deep pockets. A single author, may not be able to get his book reprinted, so looses his copyright after 15 years (of course, there is always print on demand...that doesn't need to cost the author anything). There would also need to be some definition of what publicly available is. Burning a single DVD of it and selling it, just to extend the copyright shouldn't qualify, nor should charging unrealistic amounts of money for it. :P

Ragnar

Before 1964, it used to be that any copyrighted work automatically became public domain in 28 years, unless the owner filed for an extension.
That way any 'abandoned' items would automatically become freely available.

The more recent modifications to copyright law pretty much abandoned that in favor of the automatic life + 75 year rule.

What on earth was the rationale of getting rid of the filing for extension clause?

I think the whole industry needs a kick in the pants. Not just software but movies and music.

Put it this way. The media keep going on about how piracy is damaging the industries and in some cases it may be true. In other ways this is pure BS.
Take the music and film industry, the money involved is just stupid for a start.
The movie company / record label makes enough from the advertising, merchandise, cinema, airplay, tv showings, blah blah blah.

What is the problem, is that thanks to piracy people like julia roberts may need to get out of bed for a little less than 24 million dollars and puffy may need to settle for a $500 suit instead of an $10000+ one
and as for paris hiltons spoilt mutt, he will be reduced to eating pedigree chum with a leather collar like everyone else's dog (and dont get me started on bill's island).

What a shame.

The real victims of piracy are the small fish, not the big ones and this holds true in almost all industries. The bigger fish have fingers in many more pies, but dont like it when one of their fingers get sucked clean. If there is to be a "just war", let it be a "war on greed" not a war on those people who choose to take a few greedy monsters down a peg or two. To quote Korn "you all wanna single say fcuk that!"

However

As for actual basic copyright, i believe it should remain the property of the creator/inherited/legaly transfered. Ie. If you made it you own the creative rights.
The justice systems should do more to protect those that have more to loose (and i don't mean grossly huge profits) not just those with more legal clout (money).

@FlameOf course I'm not hosting a website off a 2mbit £9.99 per month connection, I think the upstream is 256k or something so hosting anything would be a terrible idea. If you're hosting a website you should pay for a decent connection and not arse up 'normal' internet users by using all of the available bandwidth. I personally pay for hosting to host my website (crazy as it might sound).

I use my tele to watch tele with. Again I refer the honorable gentleman to my 'normal' internet usage answer.

Windows updates when it needs to, the bandwidth usage here is minimal in the grand scheme of things

Don't play any online games, actually, don't play many games at all come to think of it.

So do I, but I get my TV feed over my Internet connection, same with my phone.

I wasn't aware how badly the UK is lagging behind technologically. Regardless if Virgin are selling you a 2mbit, then throttling it down when they think you've watched too many episodes of Ask A Ninja - that's bullshit. If they don't have the capacity to guarantee you a certain amount of bandwidth, they should just give you what they have, and not play the odds.

2MBit Thats appalling!!

I havent been living in the UK for a while but i thought it would be better than that by now. In sweden almost all apartments in reasonably sized towns have 100Mbit hardwired connections (ie, you have a RJ-45 port mounted in the hall) for about 20 odd quid a month, and if you want you can have all your digital TV and voip phone going through the same port for one package.
This is what im doing atm and they even supply the hub, digibox and voice gateway! (Had to buy my own wless router though :)

Yeah, well, the UK is pretty backward in many respects - it's a nation in wretched decline in terms of technology, culture, civility and class. Sorry, er, what were we talking about again?

Oh yeah: I use Virgin and I would prefer it if the service wasn't throttled at certain times, but I can't say that I mind it too much because I rarely download enough stuff during high usage time periods to trigger it.

Virgin Media do a 20mbit connection as their top spec I think. Probably about the same as the other ISPs. To be honest I have no idea why you'd much for speed for domestic use.

There's very little on tele worth watching and if there is something on that I may potentially miss it doesn't matter anyway because everything is repeated on various channels for the next fortnight. Infact the only thing I make a point of watching is Dr Who and Derren Brown. Which I generally miss and watch the repeats!

Dan: My house is over 100 years old so I don't think they had RJ45 connections back then... Think it's a BNC connector here :)