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From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2004-07-26:
"I don't agree with the copyright laws and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that," he said.
"I do well enough already and I made this film because I want the world, to change. The more people who see it the better, so I'm happy this is happening."
-- Michael Moore, director of Farenheit 9/11, quoted in a news story on illegal Internet downloading of the film.
(Submitted to the mailing list by Sid Sidner)
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I think we build a better race of humans the more we share ideas. There will always be takers whose only thought is profit in some form. (Michael Moore is now relatively well-off and famous, but still eschews obvious wealth, no? If it were there, I don't doubt the current administration would be on his ass like a rabid dog.)
And some just go about living a life that enhances the world, or at least tries to keep the unruly mess from getting worse. If they don't go mad first.
And then there are those insidious memes that have learned to make people want to reproduce them even 20yrs later. I can almost hear the "Mr. Bubble" theme. Oops. Make that 30 yrs later.
I keep thinking of a fantasy story I read where a widow who stood to profit mightily from a perpetual copyright did not support it because humans are finite in their ability to perceive and conceive of the world and ideas had to be found and refound in new ways for the world's minds to grow/
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OTOH, allowing works to eventually fall into the public domain does facilitate making "derivative works" -- works that are recognized as involving creativity but are not wholly original because they build upon someone else's previous work. There are a lot fewer hoops for me to jump through to publish my own swing arrangement of "Douce Dame Jolie" than of "Losing My Religion".
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But lets take a more real look at copyright laws. Lets say you make a product... a new invention that will greatly improve general life. Would it be fair for a less creative person to take all you work and time spent in making this new product and clam that THEY had made it and produce the product and clam all the wealth coming from it? While the real invent dies homeless and poor.
Copy right laws were design to deal more with product then with ideas. But like many laws their nature and function has expanded over time to include ideas and movies and such. While ideas get out over time and should over time, their should also be in place protections for those who first come up with the idea in question. Michael Moore has already made his wealth, so if he no longer wants to protect the source of it that is his choice. But I assure you that if someone had stolen his film before he made so much money over it and editted it so that it appeared the Moore had nothing to do with it... he would be screaming bloody murder.
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Note that patents do deal with ideas but copyrights explicitly do not. Copyright protects expression of an idea -- you can copyright a short story, a novel, a play, or a movie, but you can't copyright the plot, so if I think I can write it better I'm allowed to try. So you're already trying to argue against copyright reform by describing patent law. I'm afraid you have some homework to do. (I suggest starting with introductory layman-education materials from the U.S. government, then Google for "copyright myths", and round it out with Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity" (http://free-culture.org/) by Lawrence Lessig.
Note also that there is a significant gap between "go ahead and copy this" and endorsing plagiarism -- even now, if you were to file Moore's name off and replace it with your own, he'd still be pretty pissed, and since he has not given up his copyright he could land on you with lawyers paid for with that money he's already earned. (Important distinction: giving permission to make copies is one of the powers inherent in owning a copyright; exercising that right does not undo the copyright.)
Finally, there are several positions to be taken in favour of copyright reform that fall well short of wanting to do away with intellectual property altogether! A patent lasts what, seventeen years? A copyright used to last fourteen years and were extendable to another fourteen ... how long do they last now, and does the current term actually fit with your patent analogy? (Note also the pattern of changes to copyright law -- we currently have a finite term specified in the law, but the next time Mickey Mouse gets near his copyright expiration date, it'll be extended again, so unless someone does manage to rein things in, we'll essentially have perpetual copyright on anything created since the Mouse.
Anyhow, get clear on the concepts and definitions involved first, and then we can sit down to properly argue about htis stuff. If you're conflating plagiarism and copyright infringement or confusing patents and copyrights, your opinions are ill-informed and premature. It should take you a day or two to come up to speed on the basics (though it might take a bit more reading to get all the ramifications, and a Whole Lot Longer if you wanted to become an IP lawyer).
In any case, I strongly recommend Lessig's book for background (even if you wind up disagreeing with him). And the story
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I'm not an absolutist on this issue -- I find it hard to let go of the idea of having some protections, some notion of IP, but also see the value of sharing. I think returning to more reasonable durations for copyright and undoing some of the recent, bizarre, big-media-power-grab restrictions on what you can do with your single, legally purchased copy of a work, would go a long way toward fixing the system.
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