Posts by Mark Harris
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By the way, do you know what a gilt-edge is?
Enlighten me, Keir
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Sorry s/b "Says more about thee than me"
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you basically told a Booker prize winner that her audience was limited and she couldn't expect much return on her work. we're never going to let that one go.
Says more about than me
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That's not the point.
It's exactly the point, if you and others are going to continue to pick me up on telling Islander she'd chosen a "legendarily low paying profession".
The point is whether the successful ones were compensated adequately for their work, in a manner commensurate with the benefit to their society. which ought to be the gold standard for our rethinking of copyright laws, no?
I'm obviously missing your point because I agree with this. Except that I allow the market to rule on the level of benefit received by the individual creator.
We see a benefit, we seek to compensate it, at the same tmie as we protect the right of society to benefit from the work of its artists. The fact that there are creatives who are willing to work for free or don't mind poverty, as well as people who will always make art because that's how they're wired is utterly beside the point. I get the impression, and maybe is unfounded, that you're not always terribly attuned to this side of the debate.
Artists/creatives getting paid is a Good Thing(tm). Artists/creatives who expect to be paid just because they created something is not. The work must have enough merit in the eyes of the audience that they're willing to pay money to get a copy of it, or see a performance of it. Unfortunately, as with most endeavours in life, many will not succeed in this regard as the audience will not perceive value in their work. We celebrate the ones who do succeed, even give them prizes, but they should not be the touchsone by which we make law, because they are the exceptions.
My point about this is that anybody who practices some form of creative expression, will be lucky if they make a living from it. Copyright law can't provide a living - it provides for the creator to have first and exclusive whack at any revenue that may be forthcoming, but it doesn't guarantee that revenue will be forthcoming.
The intention stated in copyright law (in the Statute of Anne, resulting Common Law, and also the US Constitution) is to provide incentive for creation of new material. That should be the gold standard.
Yes, he was playing devil's advocate, and it hasn't been the overall thrust of his argument at all as I've understood it.
Then you haven't understood it, sorry. Rob has argued that copyright means property and that intellectual property is the same as physical property, and I didn't think he was playing devil's advocate when he wrote that.
BEsides that, it's just like anything else: my father died, I inherited his business. Had he been a poet, I would have inherited his books and rights thereof. It seems to me that artists ought to be allowed to provide for their families.
Had he been an independent IT consultant, what would have been inherited? Maybe a patent (fixed term anyway) or two, perhaps the odd copyrighted work, but the business per se dies with the consultant, because the business is the consultant. It's what he can do that makes it so valuable, what's in his head.
How is a poet different? What you might inherit is not a poetry business, but the results of a poetry business.
If you inherit your father's banking business, or factory, what are you getting? A functioning company with employees who do the work, some plant and a building or two. It can exists, for a time, without the original business person, and can continue to grow.
A creative enterprise starts to stagnate as soon as the creator departs from it, whether by death or simple withdrawal. The remains have some value, for a limited time, but it can't grow. Brian Herbert is finding this out with his continuation of the Dune series. He's selling some books, but not as well as his father did (simple reason - they ain't up to scratch, IMHO - he's not a good enough writer).
But it's a difficult issue. What happens if a musician dies prematurely and leaves behind a young family? Should the source of income of the family cease just like that?
I've said before, I'm in favour of fixed terms. I don't want to encourage the assassination of creatives just to free up their copyrights.
That said, your example is a case of waving the emotional flag, and that always leads to bad law.
I thought the whole point was that 'copyright must change', and that therefore we are trying to rethink how it ought to work.
My point has always been that the fact of copyright is a good thing, but the process of copyright, as it has developed in the last 40 years, is corrupt and does nothing to enhance society or the creative process.
Because as things stand, yes, of course Keri is protected, and she has been arguing that those protections matter a great deal to her. But going into a debate on reform from the position that we don't owe a living to your artists is, if only rhetorically, a little tone deaf in my opinion.
We don't owe a living to artists in the same way that we don't owe a living to surfers or designers or anybody, beyond subsistence level (I am a believer in the strength of the welfare state).
In case you missed it, Gio, I count myself as one of those artists. If I create work that people enjoy and desire to reward me for, great. I'll be really pleased. If no-one wants to buy my stuff, well, I'm obviously ahead of my time or out of sync with the market or just plain crap at it. So be it. Should I be paid just because I wield a paintbrush or sculpting tool or camera? Of course not.
Should my work be protected by copyright? Yes, it should and is. Should it be protected forever? No, it should not and is not, but the trend is to protect stuff for longer and longer periods. Eventually, someone (with something to gain) will say, "this extention thing is silly and wastes our lawmakers' time. Let's declare it in perpetuity and have done". And that's how enclosure of the commons works.
I want to reform the idea that "intellectual property" has the same nature as physical property and reinforce that every right has an obligation that goes with it. In copyright's case, it's an obligation to release the work from restriction after a defined period. I also want that period to be reasonable not only to the user, but to the creator/holder.
That clear?
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I have some sympathy for National because the mess that's the new copyright act was Tizard's. No doubt the act needed modernising, but that's no excuse for the bad law she came up with (and which National and Peter Dunne voted to pass).
I'd have to say that, although Tizard was fronting it as Minister, the MED officials are right in behind it and would have been the ones to write it. These are the same officials that conflate copyright infringement with terrorism, by the way.
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From my standpoint it is the artists who lose out first.
Too right, but some of them don't see it that way.
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it's mainly aimed at people who upload music videos and the likes to YouToob
As I said to the then Minister (Tizard) when Don Christie and I met with her and officials to discuss ACTA, it's the unintended consequences of such a law that I worry about.
Her response (correct me if I misremember, Don) was that there were no unintended consequences, which tells you a lot about the type of thinking that went into this law.
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See, that to me is a weak-arsed argument, and I think you're much better than that. There were times and places where the few artists around either had to seek the protection of an aristocrat who would pay them a retinue in exchange for endless dedications and general grovelling, or had to fight for scraps of food. Is that the brave new world you're envisaging?
Say what? I'm not envisaging anything of the sort. Rob made that proposal. But while we're there, do you think that there were really only a few creative people around, or are these just the ones who were successful?
Nobody is guaranteed a living, that much is true, but it doesn't seem to me that robbery is asking for a lifetime annuity simply because he's a musician.
Actually, if you go back to here he has asked for exactly that and beyond, albeit as a "devil's advocate" in his words.
Merely that the products of his efforts that people migth enjoy, in the same way I may enjoy a good meal down at the local restaurant, be fairly compensated, even though, unlike the food I eat at the restaurant, they are not physically diminished after each consumption.
This seems to assume that I don't think there should be any copyright and everything should be available to anybody as soon as it is created for no cost. I have never advocated that, either on PAS or anywhere else. I believe in the value of copyright to benefit a creator for their efforts and give them control of their work for a fixed period. I just don't believe it should exist in perpetuity, or is property, current terminology notwithstanding.
If you're going to take issue with me, Giovanni, take issue with something I've actually written, would you please?
He might also like to have a say on how these products of his efforts are repurposed - say, he might object to a song of his being used to advertise nazism.
Not arguing, while the period of copyright lasts. Once it's over, no I don't agree. At present, not an issue, because copyright extends beyond death.
Here's a f'rinstance: robbery writes a song, it is copyright, (we'll assume) he doesn't believe in nazism and forbids the National Front from using his song in a political campaign, even though they're prepared to pay. Absolutely his right. But, as we all will eventually, he dies and the copyright in the song forms part of his estate. His heir becomes a card-carrying member of the NF, and authorises use of the song by the NF, at cost. How have robbery's rights as a creator been protected?
Hypothetical strawman, I know, but I'm interested in your thoughts.
If you can't get your head around that, or are unwilling to see the merit of that most basic of arguments, I really have to wonder what you're doing in this debate.
See above. My head is around it very well.
I seem to recall you using this phrase with Keri, which boggles the mind if one thinks of the benefits (even from a narrow economic standpoint) that New Zealand has gained thanks to her work. So long as you're talking about people owing people stuff, you know.
And it was true with Islander as well. I stand by it - the world does not owe you a living merely because you created something. The something will stand and fall on it's own merits and, as long as you retain the copyrights, you will benefit from it on that basis. Lots of people do lots of clever things that benefit New Zealand culturally and financially. Why should a writer be a special case? Your mind appears easily boggled, which is a surprise to me.
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In terms of what people in IT can do as a protest, is not possible to refuse to do IP address lookups to ID people? or to 'break' that system so nobody else can? Obviously you would want to check the details of your employment contract first, perhaps couch it as a work to rule?
That kind of comes under the heading of "we had to break the Internet to save it"
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society could turn that all around by reverting to older times when artists were kept and paid for by society, (kings queens and other rich pricks) but we had to go all capitalist and fuck with that winning formula.
Not everybody was. But it didn't stop them creating. No-one is guaranteed a living, you know. Not then and not now.
and re the black squares protest. sheesh, what happened to getting off one's expanding ass and making a real life protest. I remember standing in line to be battoned for a principle,
As did I and many others, and it may come to that yet. But it's a changed world, what's at stake is different and the methods of protest have changed. All this harking back to the past, as if it was some golden era, is very odd. For all the poets and artists you remember, there were plenty you've never had the chance to know about because they weren't successful.