WIPO Creating New IP Rights Over Web Content 118
An anonymous reader writes "The WIPO is currently engaged in negotiating a new treaty on digital IP rights, but they're having trouble agreeing on the particulars. Though the world of YouTube and podcasts seems like a place that 'requires' laws, the WIPO seems confused about what to do about it. From the article: 'The proliferation of low cost video cameras and editing software, higher bandwidth cable, satellite and Internet connections, are creating a highly diverse and dynamic environment for creating, distributing, redistributing and remixing information. To this exciting world the UN's specialized agency for intellectual property wants to impose a new legal regime. The problem is, no one here has a clue what the legal regime should look like.' The U.S. is also pushing for reviving a 1962 treaty (never ratified) that would give the large cable distributors (like Discovery, Sci-fi, Spike, etc) ownership of even public domain content if they carry it. This would be in addition to any rights normally afforded the distributors. "
Real information rights!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only IP right that is real would be the right to copy. The right to copy and use ideas, information, and invention that comes our way freely without fraud or coercion. This right is just like the right to free religion, the right to free speech, or the right to choose our employers rather than to be slaves.
There are also dutys, like the duty to call copyrights and patents what they are: a fraud, a lie, and not a property right. Like the duty to call "piracy" what it is: the boarding of a ship and murdering people and not copying. Like the duty to call them controls rather than incentive or protection. Like the duty to bypass and defy people who try to control our liberties via controlling the information we have or via telling us how we must use it.
Finally, there are other things that are just human nature, like sharing music and information and ideas freely with the world around us.
Lets just face it, the WIPO are WhImPO's and are against free markets and property rights, not for them.
You Can't Own Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Better start paying Cesar royalties.
Wait, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm, no, regular copyright laws cover it quite well. Specialized laws are not required. Particularly, the US effort to revive a dead treaty which would allow big corporate entities to rope off bits of the public domain simply becaue they used it is not necessary (and, anyway, something the US could not Constitutionally adhere to since it exceeds, quite clearly, the Constitutional power of the US government as regards IP, since it would extend IP rights to someone who is not the creator of work, and that do not arise because of a relationship with the creator.)
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason is not any hate of foreign countries or trade, but rather that it's a code word for giving more power and money to the ultra rich and powerful by restricting the freedoms and rights (including property rights) of the working class (which includes the middle class).
It doesn't matter what kind of laws you make... (Score:3, Insightful)
People today are able to send incredible amounts of information to each other through ad hoc networks of various kinds, the only way to make any serious impact on that would be to create some sort of totalitarian central sharing system staffed with vast amounts of mpaa/riaa goons and real penalties for end users. Anything else... well, it looks good on paper but what would you do? Throw 60mio people in jail? Even with the rabid sentences in the US, I think it's only about 3%.. 20% would be beyond insane.
Re:Why does *anyone* have to own this stuff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Commercial distributors are very well aware of this fact; they've been profiting from it for decades.
The reason for introducing this new 'broadcast right' is so that they can continue to do so as they have been in the face of competition.
Sadly, this is not a new development - this activity has been ongoing for some years. See also: http://www.eff.org/IP/broadcastflag/ [eff.org]
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you look at the world without the modern day legal blinders on, yes, you do have a basic natural right to do exactly that. The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules that were designed to give an artificial legal and financial protection the inventor of said invention, idea, etc.
If people were driven to invent for the betterment of the human race rather than their personal financial gain, these artificial restrictions on a basic human right wouldn't exist.
You are making an assertion that it is moral to withhold a lifesaving cure for those who can't afford it. I find that disturbing. There is very little morality in modern IP laws. It's all about profit. I guess it could be moral to you if you are a Ferengi... But back to your "cure" example. It is simply amazing how much government funded (that means TAXPAYER funded) research ends up with privately patented drugs. This is the case with MOST government funded research by the way, such as with NASA, DOD, DOE, etc.
Re:Posession is 9/10s of the law. (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, where was the CPU in your computer made?
It's rather odd that anyone sees a need (Score:2, Insightful)
What has changed more recently is ease of copying. But video and audio data have been easily copyable for decades. Copyright law has presumably dealt with this adequately. We still have a large industry based on copyrighted works so we canpresume that this has been dealt with adequately.
So the only substantial change has been that it's now a lot easier to distribute information, and a lot easier to store it
I can send a movie file to hundreds of people with easily purchased consumer equipment. By my earlier arguments this is a good thing - "distribution of information is generally desirable". It's also a bad thing "giving creators control of their creation is generally desirable".
So what the law needs to do is find a balance. The law is already taking into account the control aspect. Everything that is likely to need to be protected already is. But there are a lot of restrictions on distribution and archiving. One might argue too many. Countless works have been lost because preserving a copy has been seen as not financially viable for the owners and illegal for others. Copyright holders are hoarding information that is no longer seen as saleable, and could be shared freely at no loss to anyone. Society would become richer as a result. The law needs to be changed to account for this. Screw your right to share Pirates of the Caribbean on bittorrent. That's not important. What is important is making more information available to the world.
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:1, Insightful)
A technically correct, but completely useless observation. Some people are driven to invent for the betterment of society, some are driven by the desire for profit, some are driven by the desire to do something cool, etc. Always has been, always will be.
The only thing taking that right away from you is modern legal rules that were designed to give an artificial legal and financial protection the inventor of said invention, idea, etc.
Absolutely. And it is attitudes like yours ("I have the right to any knowledge you create, you have no right to keep secrets from me") that make these protections necessary. The choices are not between MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion to develop a drug and you paying for it, or MegaChemCorp spending $1 billion and you getting the new drug for free. The choices are you paying for the drug, or the drug not existing. It goes back to motivations. Yes, it would be great if those who can afford to finance billion dollar research did so out the goodness of their hearts, and released the miracle cures to the world. But they won't, so we're stuck with figuring out how to convince them to A) do the research, and B) share their research so future researchers don't have to tread the same ground again. Profit guarantees have proven pretty effective at this.
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your assertion that you have some "right" to do whatever you want with someone else's ideas, information, or invention is just that - an assertion. It does not flow from any first principle. In other words, what moral or rational basis do you use to argue that if a company spends e.g. $1 billion dollars developing a cure for some disease that you have the "right" to just steal their formula and start cranking out cheap copies?
That's ok - copyright doesn't flow from any first principle either. It's just a reasonable deal with the ultimate purpose of enriching the public domain. Since that's not happening any more, why should we keep our end of the deal?
Re:Real information rights!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Except IP rights were originally not created as an innovation incentive, they were originally a intended to enrich the friends of the crown in exchange for their support (salt monopolies, stationers guild, etc); ie, an alternative taxation system.
Those monopolies were scaled back, but through propaganda campaigns (claiming how 'necessary' they were for 'innovation', or how 'authors' needed to be 'protected') the monopolists managed to at least partially retain their priviliges.
Creative people are driven to invent for the betterment of the human race. Merchants, on the other hand, tend to be driven to find ways to evade competition. Avoiding competition is what the whole IP is, and always has been, about.
Re:You Can't Own Public Domain (Score:3, Insightful)
Ultimately it's all 'we say it's so, and we're backing it up with physical force' - doesn't matter whether it's crazy or not.