Copyrights Are Evil

''Looking at the CategoryEvil page, I saw there was a PatentsAreEvil page, and many others' but NONE take up the subject of discussing COPYRIGHTS. I therefore create this page in the hope there will be more light than smoke, few flames, and some intresting discussion about the subject of intellectual property rights.

Are copyrights evil? Should copyright be abolished? Is the notion of owning information you make available to the public a good idea? Or a bad one? That's the subject of discourse here, go for it, either side, or from left field, let's kick it around. -KirkBailey''

Originally copyrights were meant to be a "contract" between inventors and society. It is only lately that copyrights have come to mean "I own it, it won't be in the public domain for a century, and you'll like it" -- LayneThomas

actually, no. they were meant as a contract between content creators and society.

Evil Copyrights may have been an AmericanCulturalAssumption, but the regime has been getting pushed on all countries recently. . .

Of course, abusive copyright (or something like it) predates the existence of the UnitedStates--the British crown was infamous for granting monopolies on printing and the like to its friends; the "useful arts" clause in the Constitution (delimiting the powers of Congress to grant such monopolies) was intended to curb those abuses. Of course, Supreme Court held in EldridgeVsAshcroft? that Congress, in extending the copyright term, had not overstepped its bounds (the court did state that Congress' powers in this matter were not unlimited; just that they hadn't exceeded them...yet).

I think copyrights are very valuable; unlike patents (which are expensive to get), copyrights are available to all persons regardless of wealth. And unlike patents, copyrights are far more limited in scope. ''But much less limited in duration.''

The GnuGeneralPublicLicense depends entirely on copyright to function. Were copyrights to be abolished; the proprietary software vendors would doubtless find other legal machinery to protect their wares, machinery that would be unavailable to FreeSoftware.

Which isn't to say that they cannot be abused...

That is a major principle of CopyLeft - that the copyright system (which according to certain fundamentalist free software advocates) - which shouldn't necessarily exist, could be turned back upon itself to be used to keep things free

I rather view CopyLeft as using CopyRight for precisely what it was intended for: maintaining the author's rights.

You can get much of the effect of CopyRight with Non-Disclosure agreements, but the catch of doing that it that it doesn't bind third parties except through interference with contract laws, which means that only the person who initially released the item would be liable to be sued. That wouldn't really work for broadcast media (in particular radio and television), but it would be fine for software.

CategoryEvil