Posts by Mark Harris
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And when people talk about copyright as a "natural right", I think we can look across the grand sweep of time, in which copyright can be seen as an anomaly ;-)
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AH, but does quantity equal quality?
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Geek is as geek does...
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But "gargling with venom" is an inspired phrase nonetheless.. :)
Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week
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Dear Tim
Piss off
Stronger letter followsRegards
Mark -
Further, copyright is a legal concept. It only exists because a law enables and defines it. It has no other standing. Also, the world lasted quite well without it for several thousand years - books got written, music got composed, pictures were painted.
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Your position does not accord with the law as it stands.
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lessig says copyright is an incentive to writers to writer more works, like giving a pet a snacky treat to get them to do tricks.
The opening para of the Statute of Anne (or the Copyright Act 1709) reads:
An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned."
and the third para reads
For Preventing therefore such Practices for the future, and for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books;
This is the very basis of copyright law in countries that inherited the English Common Law (e.g. us and the US), to incentivize creators to produce more work.
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Quite a lot, so perhaps you could get the fangs out of my damn throat.
Stop gargling with venom and that might happen. Seriously, you really need to dial it back - you're looking more like an escapee from Kiwiblog as each day passes.
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I'd have asked to sniff his breath, but I guess you'd need to be a little more diplomatic. I'm as hard-arsed as anyone when it comes to intellectual property and copyright law (considering what I do for a living, it's entirely in my own self-interest to be so), but how about framing the debate in proportion?
I liked the way the official went puce when I started questioning his evidence and he finally said "Well, you can't prove it one way or the other" which kind of made my case, really.
I'm probably a little more jaded than Don as to the disappointment - I spent too many years fronting the same sort of "workshops" to be too surprised at what the officials were saying. I was surprised at how blunt they were being, but it was generally a sympathetic audience of "rights holders" and/or their representatives. The officials reiterated that ACTA is about large scale commercial piracy, not what's on your iPod, which says that all the countries are singing from the same songbook, in as much as any of them are opening their mouths. But let's see what's in the text.
The most interesting point was a general belief that the agreement won't be be completed before mid-2009 at the most optimistic, unless the US pull a swifty next month and produce a finished draft so that they can get it signed before Bush leaves office (that's my take, not MED's BTW) and the official said he wouldn't be surprised if they were still talking about it this time next year.
Hopefully, I'll have time to blog about it this weekend.