Great Falkvinge post:

They would cut up large blocks of ice from the frozen lakes in the winter, store them on sawdust in huge barns, then cut the blocks into smaller chunks and sell them in the streets. People would buy the ice and keep it with food in special cupboards, so the food would be in cold storage.

(This is why some senior citizens still refer to refrigerators as “ice boxes“.)

COLUMN REPOST
This column has previously been published on TorrentFreak. It has been updated here to reflect recent developments.

When households in Stockholm were electrified in the first half of the last century, these distributors of cold were made obsolete. After all, what they distributed was the ability to keep food cold, and everybody could suddenly do that themselves.

This was a fairly rapid process in the cities. With the availability of the refrigerator from circa 1920, most households had their own refrigerator by the end of the 1930s. One of the city’s largest employers – distributors of cold – had been made totally obsolete by technical development.

There were many personal tragedies in this era as the icemen lost their breadwinning capacity and needed to retrain to get new jobs in a completely new field. The iceman profession had often been tough to begin with, and seeing your industry disintegrate in real-time didn’t make it any easier.

But here are a few things that didn’t happen as the ice distribution industry became obsolete:

• No refrigerator owner was sued for making their own cold and ignoring the existing corporate cold distribution chains.
• No laws were proposed that would make electricity companies liable in court if the electricity they provided was used in a way that destroyed icemen’s jobs.
• Nobody demanded a monthly refrigerator fee from refrigerator owners that would go to the Icemen’s Union.
• No lavishly expensive expert panels were held in total consensus about how necessary icemen were for the entire economy.

Rather, the distribution monopoly became obsolete, was ignored, and the economy as a whole benefited by the resulting decentralization.

We’re now seeing a repeat of this scenario, but where the distribution industry – the copyright industry – has the audacity to stand up and demand special laws and say that the economy will collapse without their unnecessary services. But we learn from history, every time, that it is good when an industry becomes obsolete. That means we have learned something important – to do things in a more efficient way. New skills and trades always appear in its wake.

The copyright industry tells us, again and again and again, that if they can’t have their obsolete distribution monopoly enshrined into law with ever-increasing penalties for ignoring it, that no culture will be produced at all. As we have seen, equally time and again, this is hogwash.

What might be true is that the copyright industry can’t produce music to the tune of one million US dollars per track. But you can’t motivate monopoly legislation based on your costs, when others are doing the same thing for much less – practically zero. There has never been as much music available as now, just because all of us love to create. It’s not something we do because of money, it’s because of who we are. We have always created, ever since we learned to put red paint on the inside of cave walls.

What about movies, then? Hundred-million productions? There are examples of garage-produced movies (and one even has beat Casablanca to become the most-seen movie of all time in its native country). But it may appear true that the argument is somewhat stronger with the blockbuster-type cinema productions.

A recent article of mine dispels this, too; blockbusters can make double  their investment back before a digital copy can even exist in the wild, so it will not be an issue. Investments will  happen.

But I’m going go out on a limb here and say, that even if it is true that movies can’t be made the same way with the Internet and our civil liberties both in existence, then maybe it’s just the natural progression of culture.

I spend quite a bit of time with teenagers through my work with the Pirate Party. One thing that strikes me is that they don’t watch movies, at least nowhere near the quantity I did when I was a teenager. Just like I threw out my TV set 15 years ago, maybe this is just the natural progression of culture. Nobody would be surprised if we moved from monologue-style culture to dialogue- and conversation-type culture at this point in history. Immersive gaming stands out as an excellent candidate to replace movies.

After all, we have previously had operettes, ballets, and concerts as the high points of culture in the past. Even radio theaters (and famous ones). Nobody is particularly concerned that those expressions have had their peak and that society has moved on to new expressions of culture. There is no inherent value in writing today’s forms of culture into law and preventing the changes we’ve always had.

Everywhere I look, I see that the copyright monopolies need to be cut down to allow society to move on from today’s stranglehold on culture and knowledge. Teenagers today typically don’t even see the problem – they take sharing in the connected world so totally for granted, that they discard any signals to the contrary as “old-world nonsense”.

And they certainly don’t ask for a refrigerator fee.

From Falkvinge.net:

Planned Post-ACTA Repression In European Union: The Documents

Repression: Documents have leaked from the European Commission that gives a glimpse of the planned crackdown on online freedoms of speech post-ACTA. We’re seeing entirely new mechanisms and means of squelching dissent, mechanisms and means against pretty much anything online. A European Commissioner responsible for the…

Read more>>

This is a truly amazing talk about copyright. And waaaay back in 2006! Truly amazing. From Karl Fogel at QuestionCopyright.org. What is truly impressive is how prescient Fogel is, and how he comes at this not from a libertarian angle but still gets it right on every major theme, and without being anti-free market.

[See also Fogel’s article The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World.]

See also other interviews, videos, and talks on QuestionCopyright’s Speakers Bureau page, including:

“Brian Lehrer Live (NYC) interviews Nina Paley and Karl Fogel” In May 2010, QCO’s Executive Director, Karl Fogel, and artist-in-residence, Nina Paley appeared on the CUNY TV show presented by renowned WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer.

“We Are Creators Too” Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge Interviews QCO Artist-In-Residence Nina Paley

“The Public Perception of Copyright” To document the public perception of copyright today, we went around Chicago with a video camera over two days…

“History of Copyright and Information Ownership” Talk by Karl Fogel at the Stanford University Library; about 90 minutes, with Q&A.

Haha. The USPTO says it’s “fair use” for patent attorneys to submit copies of copyrighted articles as “prior art.” If it was not, then it would undermine the patent lawyer and patent applicant’s ethical and legal obligation to submit all material prior art to the PTO when filing a patent office. If only the Copyright Office and Patent Office could have a big fight, each one knocking out the other with a killing blow, that would be sooo sweet.

From Glyn Moody at Techdirt:

USPTO Says Copies Of Academic Articles Submitted As Prior Art Are Covered By Fair Use

from the wanna-fight? dept

With all the heat that publishers are starting to feel from the academic community, you might have thought that they’d avoid upsetting anyone else. But it seems that some publishers have decided to go after lawyers who make patent applications that include copies of academic articles as prior art. As the PatentlyO blog explains:

A number of scientific journals have begun to threaten law firms and their clients for submitting copies of journal articles to the USPTO. The typical cease & desist letter that I’ve seen says something like the following:

“We’ve been trolling through USPTO records and found that you submitted a copy of one of our articles articles to the USPTO and we suspect that you maintained other copies in your files and distributed additional copies within your organization. These actions constitute copyright infringement and are not fair use. We will sue you unless you come into compliance with our CCC licensing scheme.”

In a way, that’s strange: you would think that academic publishers would want to encourage this kind of use, since it establishes their titles as a kind of “gold standard” for prior art. Obviously the prospect of making some easy money proved irresistible.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the USPTO has waded in to this squabble and offered its opinion in a statement (pdf):

Patent applicants or their attorneys sometimes make copies of copyrighted NPL [non-patent literature] and submit those copies to the USPTO, pursuant to the USPTO’s disclosure requirements. The USPTO considers this copying to be protected by the doctrine of fair use.

In the rest of its eight-page document, the USPTO goes on to explain the legal reasoning that led it to come to that conclusion.

It’s rather remarkable to see the main US body responsible for promoting one kind of intellectual monopoly — patents — asserting that another — copyright — doesn’t apply. And it will be interesting to see whether publishers want to raise the stakes by taking on the USPTO as well as lawyers, inventors and angry academics.

However, since the USPTO says that it takes “no position on whether additional copies of NPL made during the course of patent prosecution (e.g. for the client, for other attorneys, for the inventors, or for the law firm’s future reference) qualify as fair use”, publishers would probably do better to concentrate on pursuing licensing fees for that instead.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

The Public’s Perception of Copyright — Video Interviews with Randomly-Selected People in Chicago

In order to document the public perception of copyright today, we went around Chicago with a video camera over two days in the summer of 2006, asking strangers what they think copyright is for, how it got started, how they feel about filesharing, and for any other thoughts they have on copyright. We didn’t tell the interviewees about this website or the nature of our project until after each interview was over.

1. Most people felt that copyright is mainly about credit, that is, about preventing plagiarism.
2. Everyone was on the artist’s side — everyone wants to feel that they’re treating the artists right. Over and over again, we heard the sentiment that when someone goes to a concert they’ll buy the CD “to support the band”, even if they already have all those songs on their computer already.
3. Many people felt that copyright was about giving creators the means to make a living, but that in recent times it’s been abused and corrupted by corporate interests.
4. No one — not even the interviewee who had just read a book on copyright — knew where copyright comes from. Most people had the feeling it had been around for a while, though estimates varied widely on how long. One interviewee knew of the Constitutional clause that is the legal basis for copyright in the United States, but wasn’t familiar with the history leading up to that clause.
5. People were ambivalent about filesharing. They don’t feel like it hurts anyone, except perhaps the music distributors, but they still feel some residual guilt about it anyway.

You can view the video at the Internet Archive. It is also available at Google Video and YouTube.

The video is in the public domain; all participants signed a release form permitting their footage to be used. Many thanks to Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick for their help filming, and to Ben for huge amounts of help with editing.

From Jason Hensley at Policymic:

Facebook Success Shows Why Intellectual Property Laws Are Stifling

Last week, social media site Facebook finally filed its IPO in a bid to raise $5 billion and begin selling stocks later this spring. Facebook’s success has been based on fulfilling a consumer demand by providing a social networking site that is user friendly and has a generally broad appeal to both younger and older audiences. Freedom to use and expand upon other older ideas is what has helped launch Facebook to a status never seen by Friendster, Myspace, or many other social networks that existed before it.

All of the site’s success comes despite current intellectual property law, and the site is a shining example of why we should be against intellectual property (IP) laws. IP laws stifle the market by giving monopoly privilege to the “owner” of the idea(s) for an arbitrary number of years and distorting real property ownership.

IP laws are designed to ensure some individual would be the sole financial profiteer of his or her “own” idea; otherwise, we would prosecute every time someone used another’s protected idea. (Ex: Every time you hum your favorite tune, you would be fined.) I would argue that Facebook, the entertainment industry, and companies alike would still be successful without IP protections from the government. In the case of Facebook, people chose it over the other options. Facebook was a better product; it built better upon ideas and provided what consumers wanted in a higher quantity than did any competitor. If the real story is anything like the movie, The Social Network, then Mark Zuckerberg made a better product than the Winklevoss twins — even if it was “their idea” first.

As one IP expert Stephan Kinsella says, “First, even if a given policy could increase ‘net’ wealth by redistributing property from A to B, that does not justify the policy. The goal of law is justice, not wealth maximization. B may be helped ‘more’ than A is harmed by redistribution, but how does this justify the harm done to A?”

As Kinsella says, the goal of law is justice and not wealth maximization to certain individuals.  An objector may say that the goal of law is to protect property. I agree. However, IP laws distort property ownership. IP laws give someone the power to dictate what I can or cannot do with my own real world property.

It is with the case of some IP laws that since someone owns the concept, no one else can therefore use it. Why not? Are they at any loss if I organize my property in the same way they did? If I own a piece of wood, paint brushes, and the paint, why could I not paint the pattern I wish into it? If I really own my property, I should do with it as I please so long as it harms no one, and there is no harm done by my painting a pattern on my piece of wood.

If IP laws are really so important and are, in fact, real property, then why do they last for arbitrary numbers of years? Some last for seven years, some for 99 years. Why not have real permanent ownership if someone really can own an idea?

With government using IP laws to severely restrict our liberties — especially on the internet (SOPA/PIPA/ACTA) — it is time the intellectual property debate is opened to the masses. The success of groups like Facebook building off older social network models, the desire for the liberty to sing a karaoke version of our favorite song on YouTube, and the protection of our property are all at stake. We need a free market of ideas because ideas are the only way to drive social and economic progress. To achieve this free market of ideas, we need to dismiss the very idea of intellectual property.

Photo Credit: adihrespati

My Libertarian Standard post SOPA is the Symptom, Copyright is the Disease: The SOPA wakeup call to ABOLISH COPYRIGHT has been translated into Romanian and posted financial weekly, finantistii.ro (SOPA este simptomul, boala este Copyright: apel pentru abolirea copyright-ului), and o Mises Institute Romania’s site here.

Great piece in Forbes:

You Will Never Kill Piracy, and Piracy Will Never Kill You

Now that the SOPA and PIPA fights have died down, and Hollywood prepares their next salvo against internet freedom with ACTA and PCIP, it’s worth pausing to consider how the war on piracy could actually be won.