“Piracy Is Not Theft” graphic by Patri Friedman

Permalink: http://questioncopyright.org/piracy_is_not_theft
Posted by kfogel | Posted in: Syndicated Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

Thanks to Jessica Ferris for sending in this great image by Patri Friedman. How much more simply can one say it? Copying leaves the original untouched, therefore copying is not theft.

It's interesting to read some of the commentary on Friedman's post. For example: "This seems like semantic hair-splitting. If I go to some sort of practitioner of whatever and walk out without paying, I haven't stolen anything tangible, just their time. Is it meaningfully different than if I'd reached into their wallet and removed $60 or whatever? I doubt they'd be any less cheesed off if I told them "actually what just happened wasn't technically theft, it was something else." [1]

Friedman's response is terrific:

It is not semantic hair-splitting. It is a simple, genuine, important difference. Your example indicates that you don't understand it, which I find weird:

"If I go to some sort of practitioner of whatever and walk out without paying, I haven't stolen anything tangible, just their time."

But their time is not a copy. It is irreplaceable. They will never get those moments back. Therefore what you have done is theft. If you used the public record to create an AI simulacrum of the practitioner, and consult the simulacrum instead of the practitioner, that is analogous to pirating the time of the practitioner. (You may be stealing the time of the simulacrum, but that is a separate issue).

The question is not tangibility. The question is whether, after I do ____, someone else then has less of something than they did before. If I "go to someone for their services, and don't pay them", they have less time than before. If I ask Google what I was going to ask the professional and so don't need their services, they haven't lost anything.

Of course, there's the inevitable confusion of copyright with trademark, and the equally inevitable received theory argument, which says that without monopolies people won't be motivated to innovate. We really need to start countering that one with the point that a monopoly in a given field tends to suppress innovation in that field. And anyway, where's the evidence? If these monopolies are so necessary for innovation, then why is there no shortage of innovation where monopolies are not given (the fashion industry, say, or cooking).

But all these words don't match the eloquence of Patri Friedman's graphic. It's simple, memorable, and irrefutable.

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British Government Considers Tenfold Increase to Copyright Penalty

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/105
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

Out-Law is reporting that the British government is planning to increase the maximum fine that can be awarded for online copyright infringement tenfold. "The Government and the Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) are consulting on the plans, which would allow Magistrates’ Courts in England and Wales to issue summary fines of £50,000 for online copyright infringement. The larger fine is proposed for commercial scale infringements, where the person involved profits from the infringement. The plan would implement another of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the 2006 report by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers which has been the foundation of intellectual property policy since its publication."

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RIAA Pays Tanya Andersen $107,951

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/103
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

"Well, Phase I of the RIAA’s misguided pursuit of an innocent, disabled Oregon woman, Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms. Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest. But as some have pointed out, reimbursement for legal fees doesn’t compensate Ms. Andersen for the other damages she’s sustained. And that’s where Phase II comes in, Andersen v. Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution. Should be interesting."

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RIAA Pays $107,951 to Alleged Filesharer

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/101
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

It has been something of a David and Goliath battle, but the first skirmishes in the war on file sharing are over. While the RIAA jubilantly claimed success last year, it is another case that has has now silenced the RIAA, as it avoids drawing attention to the case it never had.

Source: Torrent Freak

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Sharing 2999 Songs, 199 Movies Becomes ‘Safe’ in Germany

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/97
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

Prosecutors in a German state have announced they will refuse to entertain the majority of file-sharing lawsuits in future. It appears that only commercial-scale copyright infringers will be pursued, with those sharing under 3000 music tracks and 200 movies dropping under the prosecution radar.

Source: Torrent Freak

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Strong Court Ruling Upholds the Artistic License

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/95
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

"The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (an authoritative court that normally deals with patent law), has issued a strong ruling (PDF) upholding the Artistic License in a copyright dispute between the developers of the Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI), and Kamind, a company that used portions of DecoderPro to develop a competing product. The product at issue was DecoderPro, an open source project released on SourceForge under the Artistic License, for interfacing with model railroad control chips. Kamind used a number of DecoderPro files in developing its product, Decoder Commander. However, Kamind did not comply with the Artistic License in a number of respects, including attribution, copyright notices, tracked changes or availability of the underlying standard version."

Source: Slashdot

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Wal-Mart Bans Old Photo Scans, Claims Copyright is ‘Forever’

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/93
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

Someone visited Wal-Mart tried to duplicate some 100 year old photos at Wal-Mart and they were informed that since the photo was taken by a studio, it was "copyrighted" which "meant it was not allowed to be copied" by anyone, at any time. These old photos were unmarked and all of the copyright holders are unknown or quite possibly dead.

Source: BoingBoing

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RIAA damages too high in innocent infringement case

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/89
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

A judge has ruled that a teenage girl who admitted to downloading music over KaZaA will only have to pay damages of $200 per song, instead of the $750-30,000 normally allowed under the Copyright Act (and the $750 per song sought by the RIAA). The reason for the cap comes from Whitney Harper’s "innocent infringement" defense, in which she argues that she did not knowingly infringe the record labels’ copyright.

Harper’s father was sued by the labels in January 2007, but after it was discovered that his then-16-year-old daughter Whitney was responsible for the KaZaA share discovered by MediaSentry back in June 2004, he was dropped from the lawsuit and his daughter substituted. Whitney admitted to using KaZaA as well as downloading and sharing music over the P2P network, but said she didn’t realize what she was doing was wrong. Her technological illiteracy and age made her incapable of intentionally infringing the record labels’ copyrights, she argued.

Source: ArsTechnica

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Intellectual Property Is Costing Me My Life By Rudi Cilibrasi

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/82
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

Mon Jul 04, 2005

In an unbelievable twist of fate, a combination of terrible drug laws, intellectual property laws, and misguided patents and copyrights have come together to prevent me from receiving lifesaving medecine. I need your help to publicize this issue, take it to the mainstream, and let it start the ball rolling to take out this immoral copyright system. The story of the death of my family and my current life-threatening illness, caused in no small part by IP law, is a perfect starting point to bring this into the next level of public discourse. Let’s expose the copyright barons for what they are. It’s not just me; 200 million others are also infected, and 95% don’t know the problem, yet. It could even be you. Let’s become lifesavers.

I am a lifelong computer programmer and open source author. I have contributed to the Linux kernel. I have also worked at Microsoft for a few months. You can see some of the software I am now writing at complearn.org which allows you to do advanced data-mining for free.

I am writing this now to address what I consider to be a very serious matter. It is relevant to the moral basis upon which Intellectual Property is founded. As a scientist and programmer, I am a very technical person and tend to get very involved in my own health decisions. It happens that I was born prematurely in 1974, and received a blood transfusion from my mother who was infected with Hepatitis C (HCV). For those that are not aware, this causes a lifelong degenerative liver disease. Both of my parents have already died young due to its effects, and I am HCV+ as well and have been slowly suffering liver degeneration my entire life as a result.

This concerns IP because some years ago I did some research online about my possible treatment options. In the year 2000 the possibilities were "old, normal" interferon or pegylated interferon, taken in both cases in combination with ribavirin. These are chemotherapeutic type drugs, with very harsh side effects, and you must take them for a year in order to have a decent chance of curing yourself of HCV+. The problem is, with my genotype, 1b, the chances of success using the old medicine were only about 30%. The new medicine had about a 60% chance. But the FDA did not approve the new medicine until years after Europe did, for reasons which are not entirely clear, given the solid research findings in its favor. So I flew to Europe, got the new pegylated medicines for about $25,000 (US) of my own carefully saved money, and flew back to USA.

I spent about 3 months treating myself with this medicine that was not yet approved in USA and then checked my viral counts to find great news: I had lowered my viral count to undetectable levels, suggesting that if I just continued with the yearlong course of treatment, I would probably be permanently cured. What great news!

Imagine my dismay, then, when I received a note from the customs office saying they had blocked shipment of the second half of my pegylated interferon + ribavirin. The reason, apparently, was that there was a patent or IP law problem restricting the European branch of the pharmaceutical industry from selling these drugs to Americans, even if I bought them in Europe with my own money for personal use. I figured it would not be a big deal — I would just explain to the customs officers that this was a life-threatening illness, and they would help me find some way to appeal the block before it was too late.

The big problem is that if you skip your medicine for more than a week or two before the full year, you may as well stop entirely because the virus will almost certainly come back in full force.

So, having explained this to the customs official over the phone, I was shocked to find that it seemed there were no provisions in place to handle the case where an IP restriction is in direct conflict with human life. My life. I am still HCV positive now.

It’s now several years later. My parents have since died and my liver has gotten worse. I would enjoy being around to continue to contribute for free (because I love programming) and would enjoy talking more with all of you about many things. But this will not be possible unless we reframe the IP debate in terms of human-centric goals. It should not be the case that a creative scientist and programmer with a lifelong history of giving away his technological creations for free would be denied the resources he needs to satisfy one of the simplest and most basic human needs — to have his illness treated in the most effective way possible — because of a mere Intellectual Property dispute. It should not be the case that the FDA is allowed to prevent life-saving medicine that is not abusable from being used in the USA. This is a travesty and must be corrected. Because of a rule that contains no exceptions for the protection of life and health, I lost tens of thousands of dollars and have that much less useful time left to earn. Because of this travesty, I am still HCV+.

Want to help? Please see my website hcvaction.org

This whole disaster also begs the question of how should we handle the more general issue of conflicts between intellectual property and basic human rights. More information will be posted on this subject soon. Sometimes it seems like the only people willing to help are those on the "fringe" like Noam Chomsky. Why is Chiron allowed to copyright all the lifesaving medical science relating to HCV? And to lock up development with patents restricting research to the privileged few? I need help publicizing it, and am wondering if Slashdot or Kuro5hin can help save my life here. Patrick Volkerding seemed to have some good luck… What I need is publicity. And there are 200 million other people walking around right now with HCV. 95% of them don’t even know it. Can you help me?

As a postcript, I would like to address a few common questions in advance. Surely the most common reaction is "Why didn’t you move to Europe?"

I did.

This is not the point now, however. As a very privileged young man, I was able to create a job for myself overseas in the Netherlands. I now work as a research scientist. But I feel sorry for the vast majority of people who have already died because they couldn’t do what I did. And those that live outside the USA or EU have even fewer options. Unfortunately, this disease affects the poor far more than the rich worldwide. So even in the richer countries like USA, there is still not much hope for most sufferers.

Another crucial point to realize is that research has been slowed by the copyright-locked HCV research journals. Worldwide, Chiron holds practically all copyrights and has only recently granted licenses for a limitted number of other companies in the world to do any research at all. They have such a massive patent portfolio that it is essentially a virtual monopoly on the world’s most common bloodborne illness. This wouldn’t be bad, except for the profiteering at the cost of human lives. What we need is government intervention to balance business interests against the other shared values of our society. The US government is happy to spend hundreds of times more money on HIV/AIDS than HCV, despite the similarity in US mortality per year. This is unconscionable, and as awareness grows, and people realize what’s going on, it will change.

The most important reason I need your help to publicize this now is because there is one free and simple thing that any HCV+ person can do to extend their own life trivially: just don’t drink alcohol. Think for a moment about this reality: 3% of the world is HCV+, and 95% of these people don’t know it. Let’s assume half drink. Each time they drink, they damage their liver up to four times worse than an uninfected person. And their liver is probably already compromised and running out, but most people simply cannot notice the feeling of a scarified liver until it is too late to do much good. It’s a pity, a tragedy, and utterly preventible. Please, help me get the word out. 10% of HCV+ people have zero risk factors. So if you’re feeling tired, this might even be you.

Many people ask why I haven’t yet taken the year of treatment with pegylated interferon and ribavirin. This is because my genotype, HCV 1b, is resistant to this treatment. Genotype 1 is the most popular in the US. The cure rate for my genotype is about half what it is for others, and the duration of treatment is twice as long. Thus, I would suffer perhaps twice the toxic effects, for half the cost. These toxic effects are not trivial; people suffer permanent joint problems, bone problems, mental problems, and other difficult side effects that are still coming out. Some people have gone completely nuts while trying to do this dangerous treatment. This is sad, considering that right now there are at least two new drugs which seem to cure HCV in mice models and are fairly non-toxic.

We need to realize that the incentive structure we have set up with the IP system and the patents that Chiron holds is in direct contradiction to the higher goal of curing a pandemic disease. Have a look at this epidemic.org website by a US Surgeon General to get another opinion on this pandemic disease. Chiron is not to blame; it has a responsibility to its shareholders. We are to blame, for failing to upgrade our IP system to better serve our needs. As one human being to another, I am asking you: please help the 200 million HCV sufferers by publicizing this.

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Economic Gridlock – the Invisible Cost of IP Law

Permalink: http://www.CopyrightReform.us/archives/80
Posted by Bryan Andrews | Posted in: External Articles | Comments(0) August 2008

"This week’s New Yorker magazine has a financial article, ‘The Permission Problem,’ discussing the hidden cost of patent, trademark and copyright laws. It’s a subject anyone here already knows well, but he brings up two interesting points: 1) He uses the term ‘tragedy of the anticommons.’ Instead of depletion of a shared resource, this describes under-use of hoarded resources: areas that can’t be explored because they’re encumbered by patent/copyright issues. As he points out, the result of this is an invisible loss: drugs not made, software not written. The loss is impossible to quantify and difficult to see. I like the term ‘tragedy of the anticommons’ because it encapsulates a long-winded explanation into a pithy, memorable phrase that will stick with people unfamiliar with the topic. 2) He also cites a study by Ben Depoorter and Sven Vanneste that discusses why anticommons effects are seen, beyond mere competition. Individual right holders value their contribution to the overall project as a significant fraction of the project value, so if there are more than three or four right holders, their perceived value can far exceed the total value of the project, making it uneconomical."

Source: Slashdot

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