Talk:Copyright

I think it's questionable to suggest that copyright is meant to "protect the artists". I was under the impression that it was meant to encourage the expansion of the public domain. The only reason for offering artists any protection is to encourage them to continue to produce works to fuel the public domain. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RevHealey (talk • contribs). 17:43, 5 January 2006 (MST)

While that was the view of the founding fathers, it is no longer the popular view, unfortunately. These days, only geeks and librarians even know that the public domain exists, let alone that it's valuable, and worthy of our protection. FYI, I am a musician, and I support filesharing. Dilvie 04:53, 7 January 2006 (MST)

Idea?

What about a "Public Domain" symbol/dedication entirely symmetrical to the "Copyright" (C) one? If put into use in say, Federal publications which are automatically in the public domain, it would likely get to be very well known and used very quickly. Possibly also a site "publicdomain dot gov" (Compare copyright dot gov) with PD goodies (I know it sounds a little much, but the Senate's site has had less useful stuff on it in the past) such as Edison's old movies, currently on the LoC site ( international . loc . gov / ammem / edhtml / edmvalpha . html , including the famous "Great Train Robbery"). Suggestion for the symbol below:

         ||
         ||
||=====  ||
||    || ||
||   /|| ||
|| ||/   ||
|| ||    ||
||  =====||
||
||

(It's a lowercase P and D run together).

All generall suggestions, use them if you can ;D! 68.39.174.238 22:19, 4 March 2006 (MST)

PS. I'm going to be out of touch, so if you do reply I wont get it for about a week. Thanx again, it's nice to get the feeling you're actually talking to a politician ;D! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.39.174.238 (talk • contribs). 22:19, 4 March 2006 (MST)

Great Idea!!

I really love some of the ideas i've been reading and your general stance seems to run decently in line with the open-source world. GPL...Free as in Freedom! I know that this is not entirely GPL that you would be referring to but reversing the DMCA would be a great step forward for enabling GNU/Linux and other alternative operating systems to have availability to work for the General Public. Great symbol idea for the pd idea too!

-Shawn T Thompson

Mandatory Open Source

I am not in favor of mandatory open source software--something you seem to support in the last paragraph of the article. If a business can encode their programs in such a way that people can't inspect them, that's fine with me. I don't want that right taken from me, either... but if a clever person decodes and inspects my program, that's ALSO their right. I want that right too. Reverse engineering by itself does not seem like a criminal act, and neither does using technology to deter reverse engineering.

I disagree with your assertion that programmers cannot learn from software released without source code. The DMCA makes it illegal to reverse engineer, and therefore illegal (but not impossible) to learn from software released without source code. Maybe that's what you meant. If so, I'd like to see that clarified.

--Wthrower 19:29, 18 July 2006 (MDT)

Clean Flicks Et Al.

Take advantage of the local dissatisfaction with the recent law preventing services like Clean Flicks. People who buy movies should be allowed to have them altered for their own private use. This is a differentiating issue in current news. --Wthrower 19:36, 18 July 2006 (MDT)

I agree with this. The fact that Clean Flicks purchased originals for every item they sold indicates that they were simply selling an editing service. Although I think technology can do better than this, like downloading cut lists to a network connected DVD player, the MPAA is fighting that too.--pashdown 09:38, 19 July 2006 (MDT)

Closed Source Copyright Reform

Patent law is also badly in need of reform, but in at least one way, I prefer it to Copyright law. An innovative idea can be protected with a patent, but only for a limited period... and in exchange for the protection, the inventor fully discloses the protected innovations to the public. Researchers are free to experiment with and extend the invention, and when the patent expires, it becomes public domain.

Some creative interpretation/translation to Copyright can produce at least a few interesting options:

• Public domain software can be closed source, but source code for Copyright software must be published.

The above option probably extremely controversial and at least somewhat impractical. --Wthrower 20:03, 18 July 2006 (MDT)

I don't agree with it. The author should have the ability to determine what happens to their creation. Where I have a problem is where that creation is locked up by default far past its usefulness.--pashdown 09:40, 19 July 2006 (MDT)

OK, that makes me more comfortable with your position. Mandatory source code publication unjustifiably takes away individual rights. --Wthrower 19:38, 21 July 2006 (MDT)

• Source code for software must be released in escrow, and becomes public domain when the Copyright expires.

Initially this seems less controversial than the previous option, but software changes all the time, and keeping the escrow source code up to date could be expensive. Placing that additional burden on Copyright holders could severely harm businesses. Making taxpayers pay for the escrow also seems undesirable. --Wthrower 20:03, 18 July 2006 (MDT)

• Software (whether open source or closed source) becomes public domain upon Copyright expiration, but there is no mandatory change in source code availability.

This option is actually the current Copyright law, but the duration of a software Copyright is so great that by the time the software becomes public domain, the hardware does not exist. Software lifecycles are shorter than those of music and literature. Reform the law to reflect that. (Ditto for Patent law.) --Wthrower 20:03, 18 July 2006 (MDT)

--Wthrower 19:53, 18 July 2006 (MDT)