The Right Track
Notes on the Right Track
as presented
to the 22nd
Chaos Communication Congress (22C3), December 2005.
Today I want to present my 'Private Investigations' into
copyright and its future in the digital world. Is Copyright
on the Right Track?
Summary:
Copyright is part of
our Intellectual
Property regime that includes:
Movie - Copyright history
by Rick
Fulkerson:
Despite Rick's US perspective and his slightly pessimistic
view of copyright I believe that analogue copyright has
worked well for 200 years - See all the books in the world
that are distributing information and rewarding authors.[back
to slides]
DRM, inparticular Technical
Protection Measures (TPM), are seen by some as the only
way to protect copyrighted works in a digital environment.
At the other extreme there are those who follow Jefferson's
words to the letter and think all intellectual content is
and should be free of any restrictions.
I will argue that there is more to it than the above, that
authors and artists still need to be rewarded for their
work, that society activelly needs to protect the flow of
ideas and information, and so we should look closer at how
copyright can serve us in the future. [Back]
Lawrence
Lessig - Technology / copyright / laws:
-
"The balance of IP regimes is a function of the
technology of the time...... As the technology of copyright
has changed so to have the laws."
-
"The problem here is not the technology, not something
called copyright, the problem here is a law, a regime,
not fit to the technology."
(Library of Congress - The Digital Future - C-span)
[back to slides]
I'm with Lessig here - we need to consider how we can change
the regime to fit the technology. But before we consider this
I would like to put forward another factor that influences
our thinking in the area of copyright -
Intellectual Contributions:

When we think of books we think of physical property
- the physical book.
The name of the regime Intellectual Property (IP)
reinforces this thinking.
What happens if we started thinking of Intellectual Contributions
(IC)?

What happens if we start thinking of all the other works
and ideas that came be the book as contributions to the book?
Let's think IC.

An author writing a new book relies on all the books and
ideas that came before and these all contribute to her new
work. In the field of science contributing works are usually
cited. By the way, I am using books as the example here however
I believe the same is true for all media - music, films, ect.

And talking of citations, they can be considered as contributions
to the porceeding works even if after the fact.
Many scientists are judged by how often their work is cited.
Looking at more of these reverse contributions:

Taking the broadest view there are many contributions to
a work - Recommendations, reviews, quotations and, perhaps
most important, payments in money.
Now to take a more formal view of these contributions:


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