Someone asked me about me giving away my torrent of my CD:
Do you have a copyright or copyleft on your albums? copyleft being http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons which allows varying rights..my main point is that i don’t think you can allow torrents under a copyright…..I don’t even know why I brought this up. I guess I just wanted to show off my knowledge of creative commons.
Well, your knowledge of Creative Commons and copyright is quite wrong. This is untrue: “i don’t think you can allow torrents under a copyright…..”
To be fair, a lot of people do not understand Creative Commons and copyright (and patents and trademarks, and often confuse all four.) If you own the copyright on something (which I do on this music), you can do whatever the heck you want to do with it. You can give it away, sell it, or both.
I’ve studied the fuck out of this, and actually came up with something quite like Creative Commons before Creative Commons existed:
http://www.stinkfight.com/2007/11/11/how-i-invented-creative-commons/
With my DIY or DIE: How to Survive as an Independent Artist film, I released it in October 2002 (six weeks before CC was announced), with the instructions that “it’s illegal to make commercial copies, but anyone may make ten copies and give them to friends.” I wanted it to catch on like Creative Commons eventually did, but I did not have the backing of the law community, and a state University (Stanford) like CC’s creator, Lawrence Lessig, Esq. did.
But I did get a lot of press for doing it, and it actually sold more copies, not less, than if I’d used the limitations of a traditional copyright: http://www.stinkfight.com/2009/01/25/how-to-give-away-your-project-and-make-money/.
The DIY or DIE DVD was the first instance of a commercial media product being released under copyright but giving users express permission to make non-commercial copies. The DVD was also released with no copy protection, and no region encoding.
Later, I put it all on YouTube, and it was the first instance of a commercially available DVD being given away in its entirety by the film’s creator. I also gave it away on BitTorrent. I thought it was the first instance of a commercially available DVD being given away in its entirety by the film’s creator, but realized Jason Scott did the same thing with his BBS documentary a few months earlier. Though he allowed someone else to put it on BitTorrent, I put it on BitTorrent myself.
By the way, something many people do not know about Creative Commons: it is not a replacement for copyright. It works within standard copyright, but lifts some of the restrictions on a copyright, but is still built on top of copyright.
And the term “copyleft” has no legal meaning (unlike Creative Commons, which is strictly defined). Many consider CC and GNU licenses to be “copyleft”, but some people just use a backwards copyright symbol, call it “copyleft”, and that actually has no defined legal parameters. A “copyleft” symbol (which kind of looks like it’s derived from an anarchy symbol) basically says “I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t give a fuck what happens to this work.” In fact, people often put a copyleft symbol on work they did not make and do not own, and upload pirated versions of it. It’s a socialist symbol that more or less means “Copyright is theft, property is theft, and I’m taking your shit because I want to.”
Regarding Creative Commons: I think it’s a good idea, but I think it’s gone too far. Many people have a socialist idea that copyright is “stealing”, and many places will not even look at your work if it’s not released Creative Commons, under a license that permits remixing.
I work hard to make my work exactly as it is, and do not usually WANT remixing. I don’t want some armchair “DJ” with a copy of Sony Acid making something unlistenable out of my stuff. (But if a band wanted to cover one of my songs, and asked me, I’d probably let them, but that’s different.)
For instance: I’ve had a few things blogged by BoingBoing.net, which is an honor and leads to a lot of downloads (but usually no sales). I’ve approached them later to blog other things, and they said they’d only do it if I changed the license to Creative Commons, attribution and share-alike license 3.0 (Cc-by-sa) license, which allows remixing.
Furthermore, a lot of people are so socialist that they hate copyright. When I was showing DIY or DIE in Europe, at punk rock squats, almost every night during the Q&A I’d have some guy on the dole who eats out of a dumpster raise his hand and in broken English tell me that I am a hypocrite for having a copyright notice at the end of my film.
I’d explain that while I”m open to having people make free copies of the film, the copyright notice would help me go after anyone who makes 5000 copies and sells them, or uses footage from the film without permission in a beer commercial.
They usually still didn’t “get” it.
I like the idea of Creative Commons. But I hate the socialist idea that you should have to do it, and a lot of socialist leftists who have never produced anything worthwhile, and only want to take other people’s media, think you should.
MWD
Creative Commons is a great concept, but when forced, I would rather not contribute. It’s great if someone is willing to share the fruits of their labor, but demanding they share is theft.
Agree with JWest. Applies to charity as well.
as a token liberal, I must chime in and say “what about having a choice?!?”
I’m fine with choice. I’ve used CC, and I’ve used Copyright.
But a lot of places and people shove the idea down your throat that “copyright is stealing.” I have a problem with that.
MW D
How can copyright be stealing when it’s designed to prevent someone else from profiting from your work without consent or compensation?
:::scratches his bald head:::
I personally love the people who scream “copyright is stealing”, yet they run their torrent software constantly and wonder why artists dont want to share their work when they cant make a reasonable living at it…
I dont know any more..I think its tim to go back and hide in the hole again…
Artcurmudgeon, I couldn’t agree more.
There are plenty of people that don’t realize the time, labor and money that go into creating music or film. It would be a dark day if everyone involved in artistic creation had to focus on working a 9-5 job and were only able to focus on their endeavors in their spare time. Without copyrights, we would see a sharp decrease in quantity and quality.
With everyone ignoring copyrights, we HAVE seen a sharp decrease in quantity and quality.
MWD
“artcurmudgeon says:
I personally love the people who scream “copyright is stealing”, yet they run their torrent software constantly and wonder why artists dont want to share their work when they cant make a reasonable living at it…”
If you’re talking about me, and you probably are, I’m torrenting MY work, not other people’s work.
So there!
MWD
No sir, I am not talking about you, far from it.
In fact I seed most of your works that you have on pirate bay.
MY complaint is about individuals that want to protest copyrights and their form of protest is to seed other peoples works via torrent.
Personal philosophy:
Rule 0: I reserve all legal intellectual property rights.
Rule 1: Distribute my work as much as you’d like.
Rule 2: But don’t do it for money.
Rule 3: Give credit where credit is due.
Keep life simple.
I hope your mind is open enough to consider that copy right is a statist creation. To realize this all one needs to do is realize that the “years until expiration” is arbitrary and does not exist naturally. It requires time and effort to “create a copy” and the creation of a “copy” in no way reduces the value of the original. The whole of copy right is the use of government coercion to enforce a monopoly.
Property rights only apply to things that two people cannot control at the same time.
Patents and copyright cause industry to stagnate because it limits the opportunity for others to IMPROVE upon other ideas.
The “need” for patents is based upon a widely held misunderstanding of economics and the misplaced belief in “public goods” and the “free rider problem”.
If it *requires* a government *define* then it *requires* coercion and is not a natural right. Your only options are to support indefinite “copy right and patents” or NO copy right and patents. Almost everyone agrees that indefinite patents / copyright would stifle growth and prevent the progress of development. So that leaves you with ONE option as a libertarian punk, no copyright or patents.
[...] by Michael W Dean, Libertarian Punk [...]
I was going to point out that you don’t have to be socialist to believe that copyright and patents are evil, but Galt did a good job. Two works that convinced me that patents and copyright are evil are:
“Against Intellectual Property” by Stephan Kinsella, which makes a Natural Law case against patents and copyright (which boils down to this: granting either gives a person control over everyone else’s property).
“Against Intellectual Monopoly” by Boldrin and Levine, which makes an economic case against patents and copyright (which boils down to this: first-mover advantage is enough to encourage innovation; imitation is important for progress).
Most recently, I have come to realize that ideas are earned by labor as well: if you put in effort to understand an idea, that idea should be yours, to do as you see fit, whether it be calculus, or a reverse-engineered machine part, or a song that you practiced over and over again. Copying isn’t as easy as it may seem, and unless an improvement can be made to the design (to make it cheaper, or to make it work better, etc.), there’s incentive to purchase the original as well.
Absence of patents and copyright provides no guarantee that an innovator can make money, but then, neither do copyrights or patents; in fact, these tools can be used to great detriment against innovators as well!
Stop pretending that copyright is anything but a government-endorsed monopoly. Hell, it exists for a socialist reason, check it out:
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
Sounds like manipulation of the “Free Market” to me.
(three other things btw: 1. “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” How socialist can you get? In other words, for the greater good, we must limit the /natural rights/ of people to spread culture and ideas as they wish! 2. limited times. property shouldn’t expire via government-determined times 3. authors and inventors. Current law ignores this, and allows one to transfer copyright, and even grants it to non-inventive artificial entities like limited liability corporations and even foreign governments.)
Now, if you think copyright and patents can be “owned” by anyone, not only does your thinking copyright with the highest law in our land, but some dude once said you’re wrong:
“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.”
-Thomas Jefferson.
That’s right, you can’t “own” an idea. Allowing one to own an idea would not only violate the US Constitution, it would violate the laws of nature.
I love that the above comment was posted by an e-mail called
gofuckyourself@imnottelling.com
Posting angry comments anonymously gives them a lot less weight, in my opinion.
Michael Dean