Copyright In the Digital Age I'm not a lawyer of course, but I have put a good deal of effort and attention into the issues of intellectual property protection over the years, particularly copyright laws. Copyright is still sensible and good, so long as you view it an appropriate manner in the context of the modern digital age. Its true intent is to protect ownership of a published work and to protect the reputation of the author; and that's the very best it can do in an environment where copying, publishing, and distribution can occur nearly instantaneously and effectively for free. Sadly big businesses acting as middle men in the stream between creator and consumer still want to grab more money than is often considered really their fair share. As a result of being successful at doing this they would now like to morph copyright and similar intellectual property laws to help them protect what they feel is their rightful profit, a profit derived not from being the creator of a work, but rather only from being a facilitator of some sort, be it good or bad. Indeed they have already been successful at changing copyright legislation to their advantage in several jurisdictions around the world. Are such middle men really needed as facilitators to create larger markets for intellectual (i.e. including artistic) works? The good news is that creators of intellectual property can now publish their works much more easily and successfully and with much less cost and without suffering the often huge gouging taken by those middle men -- at least in many fields of creative endeavour. I'm doing so right now with this essay. I didn't have to find a publisher willing to print it or put it on their web site -- I've put it out there on the Internet where literally anyone in the world can find it and read it. I'm not out to make any profit from my attempts to spread my ideas -- I'm happy enough just to find any readers for them. Funny thing here though is that there are so many forms of expression that could still make a healthy profit for those who create, perform, and distribute the original work; but if, and only if, the goal of attempting to make nearly infinite (i.e. ever ongoing) profit were to be given up. In fact at least in Canada I think existing copyright laws would still suffice to provide the necessary protection to enable such endeavours. First off let me point out that I don't really believe there can ever be any ultimately successful and truly secure form of digital copy protection. If you present a work on a digital media device, be it a display or sound reproduction device, etc., then ultimately it's not really all that hard to copy that data in at least the "resolution" of the presentation device and thus make a perfect copy that would be indistinguishable from the original for anyone using a similar or lower resolution device. However like I said that doesn't mean creators have to give up their right to control the presentation of their works. Take for example movies. What if you had to go to a movie theatre to see a movie -- i.e. it would never come out on DVD and it would never be shown on television, or the Internet or anywhere else. It would be tremendously easy for the producers to protect their work because any and all unauthorised copies would be clearly and totally illegal. If you wanted to see the movie again you would simply have to physically attend a licensed projection theatre and pay your entry fee in full again. Similar things would work for music too: go to the club and pay to listen to a live performance, or one broadcast privately and securely to that licensed venue, but don't expect to be able to buy, beg, borrow, or steal a recording of the music, because if you have any such recording you would have clearly violated the creator's rights. Maybe home-based pay-per-view could still work, but we would need significant improvements in the technology used to secure satellite and cable transmissions and of course the display devices themselves. The trick is to keep the expression of the work in such a form that it cannot be copied and distributed in any inexpensive (i.e. digital) form, AND at the very same time expect that if a work is made available in any way such that it can be easily converted to digital form in such a way that no significant quality of the production is lost then there can be no expectation of controlling or profiting from any further copying and distribution. Remember people still go in good numbers to see plays in theatres -- they don't, and simply cannot, copy them off the Internet. It is still simply impossible to reproduce the experience of live theatre in any digital form. Maybe a working holodeck would change all that, but that's still pure SF. Note that it's the middle men who profit most from releasing something like a movie in other formats and using other means of distribution. This all puts a big dent in the Internet, as well as more traditional broadcast media in some ways, but perhaps that's the "price" we have to pay if we want to truly protect the rights of creators to profit solely from their own works. The only thing I really don't have a good answer for is books, and perhaps periodicals which are expected to have some kind of shelf lifetime. The pat answer would be that writers and publishers really have to find some other way to recoup their costs and make a living instead of expecting to profit from sales of individual copies of their works. As much as I like books and periodicals I wish I could also have simultaneously a digital, search-able, archivable (copyable), high-resolution pristine and perfect copy too. Any digital copy though makes the original paper production superfluous for many folks and many purposes. It's already very cheap and easy for anyone to make a very good, if not perfect, digital image copy of any printed work too, with search-able text and images not that much more difficult or expensive. In some ways I think knowledge should be free, but at the same time I do NOT expect authors and creators to live in poverty -- in some ways I think they should be the most highly paid and respected members of our communities. I just haven't figured out how they can achieve such status in the digital network age. So, in my opinion, any _ideas_ worth publishing should probably be placed into the Public Domain. BTW, the words above are mine and mine alone, but please do feel free to copy and distribute them with attribution of my authorship! Note that in Canada at least the Copyright Act specifically addresses the right of the copyright owner to obtain a royalty on the retail selling price of every copy of a work published under a license. A copyright owner is also entitled to all remedies by way of injunction, damages, accounts, and otherwise that are or may be conferred by law for the infringement of a right. Even the right to publish implies the right to do so in return for compensation. See also this article by Rick Falkvinge, which basically argues that before the Internet publishing was far more expensive than authoring, but now it is effectively the other way around and authoring is somewhat more expensive than publishing, at least if one considers an Internet powered by advertising I suppose. I wouldn't go so far as to say "The Internet has completely reversed this assumption." and "the Internet has made publishing several orders of magnitude cheaper than authoring" as Falkvinge does, though in modern life authoring is indeed far more expensive than it used to be, but truly free publishing still requires at least hiring a dedicated hosting site: https://falkvinge.net/2017/01/17/modern-copyright-built-assumption-internet-reversed/ Copyright VS Copyleft I find the GPL (the de facto "copy-left" license) to be only slightly less draconian than traditional non-open copyright licenses. Despite the many assertions by GPL advocates, software released under the GPL does not guaranty freedom because it ultimately forces the users into yet another set of license-restricted conventions. Freedom implies having a choice, and the GPL leaves us with no room for choices. While I cannot discount or ignore all of the great things that the GPL has helped to bring to the world, I do not feel compelled to use it in my own source code. See also: http://www.actuallyfree.com/free-stuff/free-ip-public-domain-creative-commons-free-use-licenses/ My Attempt at an Open Source license: /* * This work is Copyright (c) by Greg A. Woods * * Years of publication: * * This work is licensed under the Creative Commons * Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. * * To view a copy of this license, visit: * * http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ * * or send a letter to: * * Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. * * This is a near-public-domain equivalent copyright license. The * primary intent of this license is to retain author ownership of * originals and derivatives, as well as moral rights for the author. * * The remainder of this license can be considered to be the terms of * attribution for the Creative Commons BY-SA license. * * TERMS: * * Redistribution of this software in both source and binary forms, with * or without modification, alone or as part of a collective work or as * a component in a new work, is permitted provided that all of the * following conditions are met: * * 1. Re-distributions of this software in its original source code * form, either alone or as part of a collective work, must retain * this entire copyright notice, and the following disclaimer, * without alteration, in each file that contains any part of this * software. * * 2. Re-distributions of this software in any binary form (or indeed in * any translation into any other language from the original source * code, either human or computer), either alone or as a part of a * collective work, or as a component in a new work, must reproduce * this entire copyright notice, and the following disclaimer, * without alteration, in either the documentation (as text files in * electronic media, or in printed matter), and/or any original * header files from this software as per the previous term, and/or * other materials provided as part of the distribution. * * 3. Other software including this software, or any derivative of this * software, as a component must grant this license in full for those * parts of the work which are made up of this software. I.e. anyone * granted license to the new work may extract this software * (including any derivative form of this software) from that work * and use this software under this license regardless of what * restrictions the license for the new work may impose or the rights * it may grant. * * 4. All collective works including this software or any derivative, * and all new works including this software or any derivative as a * component, must also include the following acknowledgement, either * alone or as part of this entire copyright license, in any printed * documentation accompanying a physical distribution (if there is * printed documentation), and in a plain text file separate from the * archive files (but perhaps along with other similar * acknowledgements) on any electronic, magnetic, optical, or other * data storage medium: * * This product includes software developed by Greg A. Woods. * * 5. The name of the author may NOT be used to endorse or promote * products derived from this software without specific prior written * permission. The use of the author's name strictly to meet the * requirements of the previous terms is not to be considered * promotion or endorsement under this term. * * 6. Altered versions (derivative works) must be plainly marked as * such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original * software. This copyright notice, and the following disclaimer, * must not be removed from any derivative work and must not be * changed in any way. * * All other rights are reserved. * * DISCLAIMER: * * THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY GREG A. WOODS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS * OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED * WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE * ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY * DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL * DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE * GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS * INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER * IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR * OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN * IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. */