[Gllug] Re: Anti-DRM event

[Christopher Currie]

-On 
 Mon, 2 Oct 2006 12:51:57 +0100
 David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

> On Monday, 2 Oct 2006, t.clarke wrote:
> >Seems to me the argument that copyright (as it exists with a ludicrously
> > long protection period) is somewhat bogus.  Lack of huge royalty fees for
> > ever and a day didnt stop the likes of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven etc it
> > would seem !
>
> That's pretty close. It seemed like a useful compromise when it came
> in (or, more accurately, when the original laws intended to maintain
> publishing monopolies got bent into a new shape); that doesn't make it
> a fundamental right or necessarily the most useful compromise - in
> particular the damage done to the public domain is much more when
> anyone can distribute music essentially for free than (say) in 1850
> where only people with printing presses can distribute books anyway.
>
> In particular one of the things society _ought_ to say is that if
> people want the legal right to restrict distribution of their works
> they cannot also employ technological restrictions.

Moreover given that the great majority of copyright works are created by 
authors working for employers, it is clearly not true that authors need the 
incentive of lifetime plus 90 years' protection. All they need is the 
incentive of a salary secure for whatever the minimum period most authors' 
salaries are secure for; and clearly the employer doesn't need life plus 90 
years' security to provide them with that salary.

Copyright has simply become a form of rent for the rich, and distorts 
incentives for both producers and  even investors (it encourages investors to 
think they can invest in such rent-seeking rather than in productive 
enterprises).  It guarantees the eventual decline of Western society, even if 
we survive global warming, IMHO.

It is in practice extraordinarily difficult for an ordinary individual or a 
small institution to enforce copyright, even if all you want is 
acknowledgement. 

Christopher Currie
-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug