back to article CIOs should fear the IP police ... have your get-out-of-jail files ready

The powers that be in the copyright world continually push for ever-stricter copyright with longer terms. They seek to externalise the cost of enforcement onto society at large. Society at large, on the other hand, wants easier, quicker access to content with fewer restrictions. Regular businesses can easily be caught in the …

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  1. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Still living the dream

    > extending copyright terms beyond absurdity,

    The reason that vested interests keep pushing (and winning) ever longer copyright terms is that these old, ancient, "properties" are still very successful. A pertinent question would be: why?

    Surely in the past 20, 30, 50 even 80 years someone, somewhere - with all the technology, marketing and production techniques at their disposal - would have made Mickey Mouse (c) (tm) and friends obsolete. The sad fact that there is STILL so little material that can compare with its popularity speaks volumes for the lack of originality, imagination and willingness to try new things.

    We see popular music reinvent itself every 10-ish years (although the old stuff remains popular with the generations that grew up with it). But for children of today to still get fed the same saccharin-sweet, superficial culture that hasn't changed in 2 or 3 generations of childhood makes me think something is very wrong.

    Is it time for the cult of Disney to go through a "punk revolution"? Maybe bring back the original, unexpurgated versions of Grimm's Fairy Tales

    1. cyborg
      Boffin

      Re: Still living the dream

      > The sad fact that there is STILL so little material that can compare with its popularity speaks volumes for the lack of originality, imagination and willingness to try new things.

      Cause or effect?

      The fact is there's plenty of new stuff but creating new stuff requires risk. It is simply easier to resell your old stuff to people who haven't seen it yet: there is a never ending supply of children for whom the fact Mickey Mouse was created nearly a century ago is irrelevant - it's all new to them.

      1. Pete 2 Silver badge

        Re: Cause or effect?

        > The fact is there's plenty of new stuff but creating new stuff requires risk. It is simply easier to resell your old stuff to people who haven't seen it yet:

        Good point. And very long copyright terms rewards the endless promotion of non-risky old stuff over going out on a limb and creating something new. If copyright was limited to (say) a single generation - 20 or 30 years - then that would decrease the value of a product, but would incentivise people to create new ideas (or even to pick up the out-of-copyright "classics" in new ways). I reckon it would generate more new content, though the old stuff would still be available if people wanted it.

        1. Turtle

          Greshams's Law: Free Mickey Mouse tends to drive out non-Mickey Mouse

          "And very long copyright terms rewards the endless promotion of non-risky old stuff over going out on a limb and creating something new. If copyright was limited to (say) a single generation - 20 or 30 years - then that would decrease the value of a product, but would incentivise people to create new ideas (or even to pick up the out-of-copyright "classics" in new ways). I reckon it would generate more new content, though the old stuff would still be available if people wanted it."

          Well, no. If Mickey Mouse were to lose copyright protection, it would simply mean that more people would duplicate and then sell the old stuff that has been so popular. (I.e. "Duplicate" in the sense that you could buy a dvd with a given movie on it, that was produced and distributed by Disney itself, or you could buy the exact same film on a nearly identical dvd that was produced by, let's say, Nothing New Entertainment Inc.) If Mickey Mouse films and cartoons can be freely reproduced and broadcast, then they *will* be freely reproduced and broadcast, thereby making investment in new content an even less attractive risk than it might otherwise be.

          And if Nothing New Entertainment Inc sells that dvd for less than Disney does, then already existing Mickey Mouse production will yet more strongly tend to drive other products out of circulation. (Think of this as a variation on Gresham's Law: Free Mickey Mouse tends to drive out non-Mickey Mouse when Mickey Mouse is free by law.)

          I can see no other reason to expect any other outcome.

          Of course, people will attempt to use the Mickey Mouse character in new productions, but is there really any reason to think that these new Mickey Mouse based productions will have any greater audience appeal than if the production were to be done without Mickey Mouse?

          Why would anyone tolerate the risk and uncertainty of doing something new when using, in this case, characters, or complete existing works known to be popular would let them reduce both risk and uncertainty?

          To me, it is pretty obvious that copyright and other forms of IP not only encourage but *demand* innovation, as one is prohibited from simply re-using existing, characters, works, productions, methods, and so forth.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: Greshams's Law: Free Mickey Mouse tends to drive out non-Mickey Mouse

            Nice unicorn magic fairy world there. In the real world, those with established, successful properties devote significant time, effort and expense to raising as many barriers to entry for new ideas, concepts and “universes” as possible.

            You also make a huge assumption; that a work using novel characters and a novel universe will do just as well as a work taking place in a tried and true universe. Let me take a moment to call this blatant, utter bullshit.

            If your pixie dust view of copyright were true, why would Disney, (or for that matter Electronic Arts or Activision) bother with established characters and universes at all? Surely there is enough empirical evidence on hand to demonstrate the concept that sequels are a bit of a crapshoot. If your reasoning were sound, then a novel universe with novel characters would be a sound investment for established copyright houses.

            Instead, let’s look at the real world: those enterprises that succeed in the entertainment space tend to do so by creating and then fleshing out a given universe. Start Trek, Stargate, Transformers, Mickey Mouse/Donald Duck, and so forth. Even reviving an old franchise after a bit of a lay down can be obscenely profitable (Fallout.)

            Then there are the kinds of tropes that we can only get from building on the works that have gone before. Fantasy novels are heavily influenced by Tolkien; Tolkien embedded the now nearly universal conceptualization of common races; elves, dwarves and so forth. Terry Brooks’ works couldn’t have occurred without building upon Tolkien, nor the Dungeons and Dragons universe, Dragon Lance or hundreds of others.

            Indeed, were the copyright cartels to have their way, we could even lose the rights to things like parody, taking original works like Galaxy Quest and Robot Chicken off the table.

            Creativity does not occur in a vacuum. All of mankind’s endeavors build upon the creativity, intellect, insight, artistry and craftsmanship of our predecessors. From any angle you approach it, perpetual copyright is a gross detriment to society. It is a limitation economically, creatively and morally.

            So what then? How do we bridge the gap?

            A man should be rewarded for his capability and his efforts; if his capability and effort is greater than that of his peers, he should be more generously rewarded. A man should be able to ensure the wellbeing of his family and his heirs.

            But the works of a man belong to mankind, be those works the works of his hands or the works of his mind. There must be a balance between the good of the group (in this case all of mankind) and rewarding the individual.

            So copyright abolishment is ludicrous. It provides no reward for the efforts and capabilities that go in to a man’s work. And yet perpetual copyright is equally ludicrous; society must benefit from the works of all its individuals. From the bricklayer to the academic, the policeman to the writer.

            A balance needs be struck. One that we – as a society, and as a collection of societies that form a global community – can live with. As creators, as consumers, as businesses and as individuals. This balance needs to be negotiated in an open fashion, and with the participation of all major stakeholders.

            More importantly, it needs to be something that we can set in stone. It is to be the foundation of all intellectual enterprise for the next several hundred years.

            It cannot be negotiated in back rooms. I cannot be negotiated under a veil of secrecy, a cone of silence or outside the boundaries of democracy. It cannot favor one special interest of another, it cannot pit creators against consumers, corporations against people.

            It must bring clarity to the copyright mess. It must bring finality; an end to the perpetual lobbying. Most importantly it must feel fair to the majority of society. People will resist and rebel against any law so important to the fabric of our economy which is fundamentally unfair.

            The extant copyright cartels – and the laws they are paying dearly to impose – are most certainly and unquestionably unfair.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Re: Still living the dream

      "... But for children of today to still get fed the same saccharin-sweet..."

      Have you seen Ben 10? Or any cartoons popular with kids today (and not the ones their parents want them to see)???

      Or, even going back a few years, Talespin?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Still living the dream

        I'm more concerned about the seemingly LSD-fuelled Tweenies, Teletubbies and other brightly coloured eyerape. Thomas the Tank Engine and Postman Pat (the original ones) ftw.

        1. Homer 1
          Happy

          Re: "LSD-fuelled" children's television

          You must have missed The Magic Roundabout, a veritable advertisement for prepubescent orb experiences.

          Then there's the equally psychedelic Chorlton and the Wheelies ("Eloh theah little ol' lady"), The Magic Ball (featuring Sam the Badly Drawn Boy), and of course the granddaddy of children's psychovision, Bill and Ben the (suspiciously inebriated) Flowerpot Men.

          An honourable mention should go to Mr. Ben, Pipkins, Rainbow, Trap Door, etc.

      2. Dave Bell

        Re: Still living the dream

        Talespin is pretty solidly locked down by copyright. but it's not dreadfully hard to find stuff on the web that riffs off of the same general theme of flying boats and Pacific Islands.

        It's arguable that 20th century entertainment media has seen some big shifts in the balance of costs. A book is still the work of one man for about a year, the author and the copy editors and so on, and that, not the printing, is most of the cost. But the more recent media, music recordings and movies, are the work of a lot of people. The cost of making the copies has dropped a lot but, just like books, it can be a surprisingly small part of the total. These twentieth century media look insanely expensive to make.

        If you want the new and exciting, go back to books.

        There is no Frigate like a Book

        To take us Lands away,

        Nor any Coursers like a Page

        Of prancing Poetry –

        This Traverse may the poorest take

        Without oppress of Toll –

        How frugal is the Chariot

        That bears a Human soul.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No Winners

    I'm surprised how virtually any business gets done at all! The only section of the economy that will grow is IP litigation.

  3. Sir Runcible Spoon

    Sir

    The more complicated and cumbersome the requirements, the less likely people are to adhere to them.

    I am so drowning in paperwork that it has crossed my mind to just buy a cheap banger and not tax/insure it. I wouldn't do that, but it has crossed my mind just to avoid a small mountain of paperwork - and that's just for cars!

    Make it simpler and people will honor it. Make it complicated and people will just get fatigued and finally say 'fuck that for a game of soldiers - I'm off down the pub'

    1. Arrrggghh-otron

      Re: Sir

      I'm glad it's not just me that feels this way... it's all getting a bit much, it makes my head hurt.

    2. Vic

      Re: Sir

      > Make it complicated and people will just get fatigued

      It's worse than that.

      The first time you break the law, it's a big deal. Huge.

      The second time, it's that little bit easier.

      The eleventy-fifth time, it barely registers.

      So it is that by forcing consumers to circumvent the law on a regular basis, we actively train those consumers to flout the law.

      The Big Content providers are their own worst enemy. But they keep getting legislation passed :-(

      Vic.

    3. David Black
      Big Brother

      Re: Sir

      So true, in my youth I was involved with a group not disimilar to Irving Welsh's train spotters. Always a good upstanding kid, my eyes were opened wide to a world where the law and social norms were ignored and jesus when I actually saw how thin our veneer of lawfulness was, it was scary. And worse still, there's not really a path back into legality once you punch through.

      Criminalising routine activity without the active support of the citizens and pro-actively acting against their interests will not end well for our legal and political representatives.

      Maybe one simple solution is to never have copyright transfer into the hands of a "rights holder"... the original creator is the only one who can determine what happens with their creation. Preserves the rights of the creator but disempowers the shambolic media monoliths.

      1. M Gale

        Re: never have copyright transfer

        I agree with you. However, you have to find an argument that will persuade the insane die-hard Randians that think it's perfectly okay for someone to be sold down the river.

        1. Graham Dawson Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: never have copyright transfer

          Die-hard randians and objectivists tend toward the idea that copyright terms should either not exist or be very short - they're a creation of the state and a state-sponsored monopoly, which runs counter to the objectivist and more generally libertarian ideal of the smallest possible state with the fewest possible laws. They prefer to handle things with contract law rather than issue-based legislation as contract law is more consensus-based and handled through arbitration, whilst legislation is often the result of someone trying to inflect their personal opinions on everyone else. Very different fields of endeavour.

          Of course there are always crazies. However I think it's safe to say that, if you meet someone who calls himself an objectivist but insists that the government MUST DO SOMETHING, they're probably not very familiar with the ideas they claim to espouse. And also likely to be no true scotsman. :D

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sir

      "Make it simpler and people will honor it. Make it complicated and people will just get fatigued and finally say 'fuck that for a game of soldiers - I'm off down the pub'"

      How hard you're being screwed is directly proportional to the complexity of the regulations.

  4. Suricou Raven

    Copyright nightmare.

    If you want to see some real noncompliance, try a school.

    Students and teachers alike make extensive use of google image search. Search, copy, paste into powerpoint. Instant flare. Do they check copyright? Hell, no! They don't even bother to note where the image came from. Remember that teachers are ridiculously overworked - they don't have time to sort out compliance with the materials they make for their lessons.

    Teachers copy, all the time, for simple convenience. This is a school - discs get lost, or scratched, or broken. On many occasions we've caught teachers (English dept being by far the worst) using films clearly taken from torrent. They have the DVDs, but it's just so much easier to use a file than to keep track of which department member was the last to borrow that Holes movie and where they might have left it.

    The legal side is an absolute nightmare of complexity. Yes, we do have some blanket licences... but just working out if they apply would need an expert lawyer. Some of them apply only to some copyright holders, or to content produced in the UK. I have on one occasion had to confiscate a teacher's video of MLK's 'I have a dream' speech because, in so far as I could determine, we had no license to even view it, much less to publicly play it for a class. In Performing Arts, they have licenses that cover playing music, but not photocopying it in sheet form - and in at least one case, they can copy it exactly once. In theory that would mean everyone clustering around their single sheet, in practice it means they defy the law and just run it through the photocopier anyway.

    Practically every day I have to delete another big collection of pirate music that has appeared in some student area. We don't punish them any more - we'd run out of detention space. I delete (I have a program I wrote for just this purpose, checks for music/games/porn nightly based on a hash-list of forbidden files), and they put it back on the next day.

    Then there is the copying-because-they-must issue. Science is running into this one right now: They have a big library of old VHS tapes and DVDs they use in lessons. But we have no more VHS players, and the DVDs have the same issue of loss/damage as English. From a technical perspective, a simple solution: We have a shiny new network media library system going in soon that is supposed to hold it all. And yet all that catalog of media, aquired over the years, is copyrighted - and in the case of the DVDs, largely copy-protected too. So our shiny new media library is useless, and Science is probably going to have to spend a few thousand pounds over the course of the next ten years replacing all of its educational media.

    And, for the final touch: We're moving to application virtualisation soon too. Is that compatible with all our licenses, including the obscure stuff like the datalogger interface software? We've got hundreds of EULAs that we should be going through to figure this out, but realisticaly... no matter how closely we look, the IT team are not lawyers.

    1. Vic

      Re: Copyright nightmare.

      > Teachers copy, all the time, for simple convenience.

      And they may well be permitted to do so.

      Section 32 of CDPA88 is quite permissive when it comes to schools. For example, 32(1) says :

      "Copyright in a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is not infringed by its being copied in the course of instruction or of preparation for instruction, provided the copying—

      (a)is done by a person giving or receiving instruction,

      (b)is not done by means of a reprographic process, and

      (c)is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement,

      and provided that the instruction is for a non-commercial purpose. "

      > I have on one occasion had to confiscate a teacher's video of MLK's 'I have a dream' speech

      You might not have had to do that at all...

      Vic.

      1. Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik

        Re: Copyright nightmare.

        > > I have on one occasion had to confiscate a teacher's video of MLK's 'I have a dream' speech

        > You might not have had to do that at all...

        Yeah if it was produced by the USA government then most likely not. Simply because iirc all of their stuff produced with public money is Public Domained.

        I could be wrong there but that's how I've read up a while ago.

        As for deleting stuff off of comon shares etc... A better approach... each tyke has a known username/password and each file has a known owner... If there is an issue with copyright said complaint is directed to them/their rightful guardians.

        That's how tho system should work.

        1. Suricou Raven

          Re: Copyright nightmare.

          "Yeah if it was produced by the USA government then most likely not."

          It wasn't produced by the US government though. King himself was the copyright holder, and upon his death the copyright was inherited. The current holder is rather possessive of it.

          1. M Gale

            Re: Copyright nightmare.

            Crikey, it's the WhiteRaven. Hi you.

            I understand you're in a somewhat awkward position but, if a teacher has the original DVD, then what is illegal about having the DVD rip somewhere? From what I understand, that's perfectly acceptable anywhere outside of DMCA insanity land.

            Didn't know that about the King speech though. That is rather sad.

      2. Suricou Raven

        Re: Copyright nightmare.

        I did look at that - but section 32(1)(b) says it applies only if copying is 'not done by means of a reprographic process,' whatever that means. It leaves sufficient ambiguity that I really don't know, and if I don't know then to avoid liability I go with 'not allowed' by default. I also note that section 32(1) only covers the copying, not the showing of a video, but fortunatly there is a seperate exception under 34(2).

        Allowed or not, the point is that even determining what we can do needs someone well-versed in copyright law. Just the face that we are debateing this shows the problem. Do you think that teachers, already struggling to keep up, need to spend their precious time becoming armchair lawyers? The point of the article remains valid: The field is just too complicated for non-specialists to handle.

        Oh, and none of this helps science department at all. Or english department. Because all their DVDs and quite a few of their tapes use copy-protection technology, and even if we are allowed to make the copies under the CDPA, the possession of the tools required to break those protections is still a criminal offense under Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 section 24. Maximum two years in prison for even possessing a program capable of the decryption, and no exceptions for education in there.

        All of which brings me back to the main point of the article. Can we use that video? Maybe, maybe not, but it doesn't matter if you need to hire a very expensive expert to get an answer. It isn't practical for every company to retain a copyright lawyer to check everything they do.

      3. Suricou Raven

        Re: Copyright nightmare.

        Ah, here we go:

        "“reprographic copy” and “reprographic copying” refer to copying by means of a reprographic process;

        “reprographic process” means a process—

        (a)for making facsimile copies, or

        (b)involving the use of an appliance for making multiple copies,

        and includes, in relation to a work held in electronic form, any copying by electronic means, but does not include the making of a film or sound recording;

        "

        Which means... we can copy it for educational purposes, yes, but only if we don't use the photocopier or computer.

        In other worse, section 32 is utterly useless.

        See? You're not an expert, so you missed that crucial detail. I'm not an expert, and I very nearly missed it myself, but that one tiny clause changes everything. So are companies expected to let unreliable non-experts make decisions that could expose the company to massive liability? Or to spent vast amounts of money getting a professional to check every decision?

    2. nexsphil

      Re: Copyright nightmare.

      I have a useful suggestion: "fuck it" and concern yourself with something that actually matters.

  5. JimC

    Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

    No company needs an IP lawyer in house: all they have to do is to create all their own content. Need a photo of people in the street - send someone out to take one. Need a sketch - find someone who can draw. Its not hard.

    This is just FUD and scaremongering. Maybe its by a shill for Big Advertising (an entity many sizes bigger than any content company), maybe its just what Lenin would call a useful idiot, but its little more than that.

    As for extension of copyright terms. Well hell, if the stuff is still saleable and still has value (if only by generating advertising income) why should the only people who *don't* get any income from its sale be the people who did the real work in the first place. What's needed most of all is some sort of registry where if you want to use orphaned works you pay a reasonable fee to the registry and you have a licence.

    Disclaimer: I don't work in any IP area myself at the moment, nor do I derive any significant income from IP. What little I have earned in recent years has gone to charity. But I have worked as a semi pro musican, and I have written for nationally published magazines. I am highly sympathetic to the basic proposition that creators should be paid in preference to the millionaire executives of Big Advertising.

    1. Eugene Crosser

      Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

      No company needs an IP lawyer in house: all they have to do is to create all their own content. Need a photo of people in the street - send someone out to take one. Need a sketch - find someone who can draw.

      Need MLK's speech - fetch him from the grave and ask him to speak at your school.

      Its not hard.

      1. JimC

        Re: Need MLKs speech.

        You'll have to explain to me why they *need* that film.

        Don't forget to distinguish "need" from "quite nice to have".

        As far as I can tell people still managed to get educated before the internet and photocopiers: indeed I understand there's a school of thought that suggests they were educated rather better in those days.

        For example I have a memory of a great english teacher wandering round the schoolroom declaiming extracts from Julius Caesar in overdone theatrical style, interspersed with comments in his own voice about what was going on. It made about ten times more impact than showing a pirated video of Kenneth Branagh or someone would have done...

        1. TeeCee Gold badge
          Meh

          Re: Need MLKs speech.

          Maybe "Julius Caeser" is not the best example here?

          I certainly recall being far more impressed at school by a recording of the Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven[1] than the version then played by the music master on a shonky upright piano.

          He was a bloody good pianist too. The point he was making and it came across very well, was that you cannot even begin to appreciate classical music until you hear it played as it was intended by the composer and by a decent orchestra at that.

          I'm not sure that the school had the option (or the budget) to wheel in a full concert orchestra of international quality. For a start, I doubt the acoustics in the gym would have done them justice.....

          [1] No, I'll bet he didn't have a bloody license to play it to us.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            WTF?

            Re: Need MLKs speech.

            I think that Beethoven's copyright has well and truly expired, so everything is most certainly in the public domain and has been for a long time. He died 185 years ago remember!

            1. Suricou Raven

              Re: Need MLKs speech.

              "I think that Beethoven's copyright has well and truly expired, so everything is most certainly in the public domain and has been for a long time."

              Not true. The music he wrote, yes - that has expired. So you can use the sheet music all you want. But each performance is, for copyright purposes, a new work with a new term. So in order to find a recording of the music being played, you'd need to either find an acceptable license for a performance or find a recording made so long ago the copyright has expired - which, under current European-standard copyright terms, probably means it'll be on shellac record. If you're in the US it'd be on wax cylinder, if any has survived that long at all. Or you could perform it yourself, but as another commenter pointed out this would require an entire orchestra of highly trained musicians, something rather cost-prohibitive.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Need MLKs speech.

                "So you can use the sheet music all you want"

                Photocopies (that you made yourself) of the Beethoven originals - absolutely. Your own hand-copied sheets - yes. Someone else's professionally-or-otherwise produced prints? No, because they own the copyrights to them.

    2. Naughtyhorse
      Facepalm

      Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

      "Need a photo of people in the street - send someone out to take one"

      Then when they haven returned in a few hours, it's off to the local constabulary to pay their bail, and on the way back to work, drop in at the companies solicitors to arrange legal resourse to be availiable when the writs start arriving from all the people whos privacy has been invaded...

      yup, nothing hard about that

    3. Anonymous Coward 101
      FAIL

      Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

      "As for extension of copyright terms. Well hell, if the stuff is still saleable and still has value (if only by generating advertising income) why should the only people who *don't* get any income from its sale be the people who did the real work in the first place."

      Because the people who did the work are long since dead, and it is their children and even grandchildren getting paid for doing fuck all?

      The reason copyright exists is give a financial incentive to a creator. However, every additional year of copyright is worth less to a creator; to a creator, forty years of copyright isn't worth double twenty years of copyright. Copyright extensions past a certain point are worthless to a creator but act lock up old content so it is effectively dead to new generations.

      1. Tom 35

        Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

        "Because the people who did the work are long since dead, and it is their children and even grandchildren getting paid for doing fuck all?"

        Or some corporation, maybe a bunch of lawyers.

        The Little Mermaid is clearly still worth something, who should Disney be paying?

      2. Mark 65

        Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

        "Because the people who did the work are long since dead, and it is their children and even grandchildren getting paid for doing fuck all?"

        Personally I blame Cliff Richard. It's because he's still going that the term of copyright is so damned long.

    4. Suricou Raven

      Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

      Create all content in-house? Well, that should only raise their expenditure by an order of magnitude or so.

    5. Thorne

      Re: Oh what sensationalist nonsense...

      "No company needs an IP lawyer in house: all they have to do is to create all their own content. Need a photo of people in the street - send someone out to take one. Need a sketch - find someone who can draw. Its not hard."

      Need Martin Luther King's speech? Film a black homeless guy rambling about his dreams cause thats as close as you'll get.

      It's not the artists or creators causing the problems but the rights holders. Even the song Happy Birthday is copywrited and you breech it every birthday. You breech it filming your two year dancing to some song their watching on TV. You breech it listening to the radio in a work vehicle. You breech it lending a DVD to a mate. You breech it copying a song from a CD you bought to an MP3 player.

      They need to bring in some fair use laws to protect users and simplfy the laws plus copywrite should end at the creator's death

  6. P. Lee
    Childcatcher

    Oh my!

    A well reasoned, non-politically-biased, hysteria-free, non-troll-bait article from elreg!

    I haven't seen that since the great y2k "don't panic" article of 2001!

    Sadly I suspect that there is no logical middle-ground between the copyright forever and zero copyright for me groups. Whatever happens, the internet will allow the transfer of bits & bytes. There is rather little that can be done to offer a carrot to the copyright holders to reduce their rather successful lobbying which don't involve voters anyway. I can't imagine people ever voted for the extended copyright at any point. It's all down to campaign funds.

    1. Anonymous Coward 101

      Re: Oh my!

      "A well reasoned, non-politically-biased, hysteria-free, non-troll-bait article from elreg!"

      Actually, there was an article about server backups in 2005 that had all the features you find desirable.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Childcatcher

      Re: Oh my!

      It's mostly well written. Found this gem tho'.

      "Attempts to bring clarity to intellectual property concerns on an international level have been horrible, and have been met with resistance from other nations."

      This is code for:-

      'Attempts to enforce the US view of copyright on an international level have been horrible, and have been met with resistance from other nations."

      1. Thorne

        Re: Oh my!

        'Attempts to enforce the US view of copyright on an international level have been horrible, and have been met with resistance from other nations."

        Except sheep nations like Australia who do what their American overlords tell them to.

        I for one welcome our new robot/zombie/jellyfish overlords cause they can't be worse than our American ones

      2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        @nicho

        Professional_curiosity; what's not well-written about that?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @nicho

          @Trevor_Pott It was factually incorrect <grin>.

          All attempts to harmonise international law around IP have focused on extending the US interpretation to other jurisdictions (eg the extension of copyright to protect Mickey Mouse). Now if IP law in the US was clear, you could say these were attempts to bring clarity but it isn't, as can be readily seen by all the frivolous lawsuits that abound.

          1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: @nicho

            I am forced to disagree with you. While that is certainly the reactionary - indeed the cynical - take on the matter...a deeper analysis shows otherwise. Or, if not “otherwise,” shows “things in addition to.”

            The French – as just one example – have had their own agenda to push for quite some time. They have been exporting their take on the matter for some time. Other nations have their own views (many of which have tempered the more aggressive stances pushed by the Americans.)

            It’s far more complicated than simply “exporting American copyright to the world.’ Certainly, as regards the copyright of entertainment, this is generally the case. But these negotiations occur in complex environments covering patents, trademarks and even the right (or lack thereof) to impose duties on various types of trade.

            Consider the French insistence on regional trademarks. (It’s not Champagne unless it’s from the Champagne region of France!) Consider also the requirement by many theocracies to outright ban (or at the very least impose import duties rendering items practically unavailable) various products that go against the dominant belief system.

            Beyond this, there are complex copyright negotiations that are occurring which simply don’t involve the united states. South America has it’s own burgeoning regional ecopolitical alliance, and “friendly to the United States” could never be used to describe it. They have their own take on copyright, and they are trying to harmonise that across their own region.

            Asia has at least two such entities, and the African Union is rapidly evolving to the point where many of its nations are going to have to start caring about exactly this. (Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa in particular have red-hot IT sectors; experiencing growth the likes of which the west can only dream. Of course, starting from next to nothing and trying to catch up to the west will do that…)

            The EU also has its own take on intellectual property. There have been numerous efforts at harmonisation within the regional borders of that entity, and they then go forth and work with other nations (and metanational entities) in an attempt to cause harmonisation.

            A great example is the CETA (Canadian-European Trade Agreement,) a NAFTA-like free trade agreement between Canada and the EU that is currently being negotiated. The big sticking point in passing it has been the ratification of various copyright reforms within Canada…something that has just recently taken place. (I expect CETA to proceed with alacrity.)

            That is a beautiful example of something that has the US quite up in arms; they view CETA as a danger to their dominance of NAFTA (which has screwed Canada time and again, with the Americans refusing repeatedly to abide by the terms of the treaty whenever it suits them.) It also formally ends Canada’s reliance on America for nearly everything, including the template for our intellectual property laws.

            Canada will be bound by treaty to harmonise its laws with the EU; a stipulation that NAFTA doesn’t have. So the US’s global bargaining power decreases in this instance; Canada lends its political and economic might to the EU bloc, fundamentally altering the US’s ability to project culture and legal imperialism throughout the western world.

            Indeed, there are far more interesting implications when you consider that CETA will provide for vastly increased and simplified trade between Canada and the EU. Canada’s unparalleled resource wealth will then practically overnight shift towards assisiting the EU recover from the economic crisis instead of the US.

            The basic reason is that American laws are batshit bananas and it costs a crazy amount of money to do business there. (Lawyers, insurance, etc.) The EU may actually be more financially stable than the US – even if half the thing implodes – and has a number of countries that are far easier to do business with than anything involving the US at all.

            So…US intellectual property imperialism? At first glance…yes. But it’s only a surface impression. International politics are complex and interwoven. Given how important “the knowledge economy” is to the west, intellectual property politics – and the economics that drive them – are anything but simple.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: @nicho

              @Trevor_Potts. Aha ! Rational debate. Goody. While I accept all your points (annd yes, I was focussing on SOPA, ACTA etc and forgot the appelation stuff), I maintain the position that none of these initiatives are attempts to inject clarity. They all represent attempts to push a parochial position (with varying degrees of success).

              1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

                Re: @nicho

                We partially agree. ACTA was not about clarity. The regional initiatives most certainly are. Lack of IP harmonisation is ruinous to the EU and similar entities. They know it. They are trying to fix it.

  7. Infernoz Bronze badge
    Meh

    A cull of decadent stupidity

    Too many business models are reliant on the continuation of a cult of debt funded decadence which caused a lot of pointless pro IP troll legislation and extension BS.... this cannot go on!

    Business has to get used to slower growth and even contraction, because there is still years of debt deflation in the pipeline, and QE is becoming less and less effective at holding this tide back.

    Most people have contracting spending power, so the backlash against on-line advertising will only grow and could cause even more physical fallout!

    I have been blocking adverts for years because it became frankly ridiculous and made pages too damned slow to load *; I can't even think of one thing I have ever bought because of an on-line advert or product placement, except at some retailer websites or when doing pre-purchase research.

    * A lot of advert, CRM, metrics and tracking web servers are frankly pitifully slow and serve

    way too bulky content; they are just begging to be blocked!

  8. Thorne

    I wonder

    Does my RAID drives mean I've broken the law because I have two installed copies of all my software?

    The fact someone can ask that question shows that the laws are stupid and complicated

    1. Wensleydale Cheese
      Unhappy

      Re: I wonder

      @Thorne

      ¨Does my RAID drives mean I've broken the law because I have two installed copies of all my software?¨

      Dunno to be honest. The one that makes me laugh with many software licenses is the bit about keeping only one copy for backup purposes.

      I´ve been doing some combination of daily / weekly / monthly / quarterly / yearly backups of full systems all my career. Where do my employers or customers stand with such licences? What about off-site backups? Or disaster recovery plans?

      And then we get on to Trevor´s overly complex link. That makes my brain hurt.

      ¨Can I use Windows 7 Professional like a "server" to host applications?

      No. The Windows desktop operating system cannot be used as a "server". Device connection is allowed only for certain purposes (such as File Services, Print Services, Internet Information Services, Internet Connection Sharing and Telephony Services). If you want to host applications and access them from multiple devices or for multiple users simultaneously, you need to license Server/CAL products¨

      Fine. At work I´ll get proper server licences. But at home?

      It quite makes me want to be done with it all and move to Linux and/or OS X.

      Watcha mean that I can´t host anything other than

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That is actually a really good article...

    It just sort of skims the almost bottomless ocean of fucking bullshit masquerading as the cold mollassas of copyright / DRM management.

    I don't agree with this bit:

    "The business driver for adblock adoption is the desire to eliminate lag. Your sexy fibre optic internet connection is worth little if the 30 or so analytics/advertising servers embedded in websites each need to time out in turn before your staff can get at the content they need.

    We need to work out an open, fast, stable, reliable advertisement and analytics system for the web. It must be a system that multiple advertisers – and brokers – can use; one which doesn't impact website load times, and prevents the distribution of malware through advertising networks."

    There are many sites that are run by complete and utter fuckwits.... that just shove a shit load of badly placed adds in your face and over the screen and they flash and follow you as you scroll down the pages....... fuck you know.

    And then add on all the fucking trackers and profiling and all this shit.....

    These fucking people....

    The advertisers and tracking companies and the arseholes that work in them and run these campaigns AGAINST the consumer... for instance, IF I wanted a car, I would go LOOKING for a car, and if I was to buy a car, I would usually get a good second hand one, and then sell it after 5 or 6 years... or when it broke down badly or got smashed....

    But fuck it, these idiots in the advertsing agencies, are so stupid they think that shoving 500 adds a day in my face for new cars that I don't want or need or have no intention of ever purchasing is their god given fucking right.

    And all these idiots play the "shove the all adds in your face we can to the max" routine.....

    Free to air TV in Australia is one example - it seems like there are like 10 minutes of adds, for every 3 minutes of movie, and the "just so excited family" scream at you, as your warming the oven, chopping the vegetables, cooking the whole meal for 5 people, in one add break, just as your about to make and pour the REAL gravey.... "Oh Oh the Add Show is almost over, time for the movie break.!!!"

    I tend to have stable systems that run for a LONG time and It's ONLY when I rebuild them and set up the browser and then blunder through a few favourite websites, that I go, "Fuck!" at all the adds and bullshit being shoved down the line.....

    Then I just throw in all the add blockers, the java script blockers, and now the tracking software blockers...

    My opinion is, if the site can't deliver content and SOME advertising on it's OWN fucking merrits, then they do not deserve the business.

    As a case in point, now that Google has taken over YouTube, without add blocking (add block plus and element hider) that site is completely fucked.... It's just ADD SATURATED bullshit.

    It's just OVER RUN with the satanic hordes, all screaming "Buy, Buy, Buy - Sell, Sell, Sell" adds....

    It's social engineering going into the perverse.............

    As far as the copyright / licensing / DRM bullshit - fuck them all.... I have just given up....

    My major gripe against advertsisers really started with some Canadian internet advertiser that stuck a file into your system that put up an add on your computer screen every so often, with NO agreement to take it, and NO way to get rid of it - unless you trolled some obscure forum somewhere for info on how to get rid of it and these fucking arseholes, if I could have gone to their offices and dragged them across their desks and punched their faces in, I would have done it..

    Nothing has changed, these fucking idiots in the advertising industry think that the free range unrestricted raping of your internet arse at every opportunity, through every means possible is their god given right.

    My answer to that is "NO it's not and NO you don't".

    Microsoft, they are getting the OS onto laptops without a system CD or DVD.... so when the Laptop breaks, your OS goes with it.... fucking arseholes.....

    Buy another OS and then go through the BS of registering it? Not likely.

    Kodak was another bunch of mongrels - register your ownership of a new camera and they then share your stuff with something like 80 or 800 other "affiliates" for targetted marketing campigns....

    I threw out my TV... and have not regretted it since.

    AND if I really want to see a MOVIE, I get a weekly rental for $2 and then invite all my friends over to see it and I make a point of lending it to all my neighbours as well - just to spite the movie companies and their DRM bullshit.

    Advertisers are near the top of my hate list of stupid and unethical people and companies to deal with.

    The people who think they ought to be employed run a close second.....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Pint

      Re: That is actually a really good article...

      Well done... I think you need that beer now...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: That is actually a really good article...

      I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

      We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

      We all know things are bad, worse than bad; they're crazy.

      It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

      Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

      I want you to get mad!

      I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

      All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

      You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

      So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

      "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jayzus, Orlowski must hate you.

    Anyway, just a minor point:

    "You may not be allowed to take that copy of an application or operating system you bought and simply move it to another machine."

    In the UK at least, yes you bloody well are and the EULA can go blow goats. In the case of Windows (which I assume you mean by 'operating system'), a quick BIOS hack means WGA is rendered more impotent than a 25 stone castrata waving a jelly around in the middle of a battlefield. Just as it should be.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Jayzus, Orlowski must hate you.

      In Canada I certainly can't move an OEM copy of Windows! Can I put OSX on a non-Mac anywhere? It's hard enough to write a globally applicable article on copyright. Give country-by-country detail and it moves from "article" into "novel."

      As to A.O...he has his patch of sand to preach from. The beauty of El Reg is that it isn't Fox news. We can all call it like we see it. If A.O. felt so inclined, he has the wherewithal to write a truly epic rebuttal. He is a capable and accomplished writer after all; with an order of magnitude more experience than I.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        OSX on a non-Mac

        You most certainly can install OS X on a non-Mac. Apple are not obliged to support you, but it's not illegal.

        Well, unless you're in DMCA-land.

        Microsoft can try to enforce that OEM thing, but I doubt they will have much luck outside of, again, not supporting you in your efforts.

        As I've personally never phoned Microsoft support except for when their stupid DRM screws up because a friend thought upgrading their graphics card would be nice, I don't see the disadvantage here. Admittedly, I'm sure they could find interesting ways to screw you if you're a large business. Small businesses and home users though? Yeah, good luck with that.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: OSX on a non-Mac

          Canada is not subject to the DMCA, however we can neither run OSX on a non-Apple PC nor can we transfer OEM licenses. In fact, this holds true for most of the commonwealth, most of Europe (even those countries outside the EU,) and a significant chunk of Asia.

          The technical ability to do something does not confer the legal right to do something. More to the point, there is in fact established case law in most jurisdictions supporting the right of software companies to impose and enforce such copyright restrictions.

          ACTA isn’t needed for Microsoft, Apple, the RIAA, MPAA or your local whomever-you-are-photocopying to take the majority of the world’s internet-connected businesses to the cleaners.

          Copyright law in most countries is pretty restrictive already, and its only going to get worse.

    2. Andrew Orlowski (Written by Reg staff)

      Not at all

      Far from it.

      Trevor doesn't share the same view, of copyright as an individual property right.

      Mine just happens to be the correct one, as it's recognised in international treaty and convention, local law, and supported by almost all democratic governments.

      That's all.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

        Re: Not at all

        Just for the record; my beliefs are slightly more nuanced than that. I believe that intellectual property is a form of property.

        What I don't believe is that Intellectual Property is Property in the same sense as a tangible good. The biggest reason for this is the implicit assumption that comes with tangible property of perpetuity.

        When you deprive me of tangible property you deprive me of its use, forever. When you infringe copyright, you aren’t depriving me of use of that good. You are merely depriving me of potential revenues.

        I believe that intellectual property is a separate and distinct form of property from tangible property. I believe that intellectual property belongs to society as a whole, but that we grant creators a temporary monopoly on the economic uses of that property so that they may see economic benefit from their works.

        I believe that this arrangement is necessary for the continued creation of various types of works, and for the continued growth of western economies. I also believe – quite fiercely – that this arrangement absolutely must come with a strict limitation to copyright length for this system to work.

        In this manner I both believe that copyright is a form of property – one that requires enforcement and the efforts of society to protect – and that it is not at all like tangible property; “ownership” should not be perpetual, as part of the bargain all sides make to ensure the economic viability of creative endeavours.

        And I also believe I am correct in my take on this; this is the basis of social acceptance of copyright, as well as something that most countries maintain to be true in current laws and enforcement implementations. (Indeed, it forms the basis of a few of the aforementioned treaties.)

        Intellectual copyright is quite simply treated as something different than tangible property, even in international treaties. Less so in the past few years…but it still holds true today. It is property…but different. Therein lies the basis of a great deal of disagreement, strife, angst and uncertainty.

        I believe strongly in enforcement of intellectual property rights. But I do not support the attachment of these rights to the lengthening of copyright terms or the increasing restriction (or elimination!) of fair use.

        I believe that for copyright to be accepted – for the general public and the businesses they run to choose voluntarily to put effort into complying with copyright a sense of balance and fairness must exist.

        The needs of society to be able to use works without burden, the need of creators to be compensated, the need of creators to be able to extend the works of their predecessors…all has to find a balance.

        I do not believe that balance will be achieved by extending copyright to perpetuity, eliminating fair use nor by increasing complexity and uncertainty. I do believe that if we can find the right balance of complexity, fair use and term length then society will support far more extensive enforcement, and even participate actively and willingly in ensuring that enforcement occurs.

        In my opinion, that balance has yet to be achieved.

  11. M Gale

    "It hurts anyone who relies on advertising revenue to survive, The Register included."

    As I'm sure a few people here have pointed out: If the adverts didn't pop up, pop under, move around and animate everywhere, then I wouldn't be adblocking The Reg.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The obvious solution

    Most of these people in government are overlooking the most simple yet effective way of dealing with this problem, make not-for-profit filesharing legal. Only go after people who are obviously counterfeiting them or making a profit from putting the files online, jobs a good un.

  13. silent_count

    Tis either funny or sad

    The government supposed to be, "of the people and for the people". Somewhere that's gotten lost amongst extending copyright terms towards infinity and allowing 'big media' to write IP law. (Would anyone care to argue that 'the people' DO benefit from eternal copyright on say, Mickey Mouse?)

    It's ok though because the only logical endgame is that the people making the laws will eventually tax themselves into oblivion to pay for keeping *everyone* else in jail. And big media will starve because the only free people left spend all their income on jails for the naughty, copyright infringers.

    1. JimC

      @anyone care to argue that the people do benefit from eternal copyright on Mickey Mouse

      As is always said: follow the money.

      At the moment we have Big Media attempting to enhance creators rights, and Even Bigger Advertising attempting to destroy them. Forget the stuff about individual freedoms and stuff, that's just to confuse the issue. Just follow the money.

      If Big Media win then at least some of the money will filter down to creators, and we'll get more content, because what a Big media Exec really wants to do (apart from get rich) is to build and empire with more and more creative stuff, making him look better and better compared to other Big Media Execs

      If Even Bigger Advertising wins, then we can look forward to a future in which creators hardly get paid at all, and we drown in endless mediocre home made junk plastered with endless advertising, because even bigger advertising Execs just want to get rich and build an empire by flogging more and more advertising on cheaper and cheaper content.

      Neither view looks especially wonderful, but for Big Advertising to win looks a damn sight worse to me. I was never remotely in favour of so called big media companies who pay creators as little as they can get away with until it became clear that the alternative seems to be even bigger advertising, who want to pay them nothing at all.

      1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge
        Pint

        Re: @anyone care to argue that the people do benefit from eternal copyright on Mickey Mouse

        Well, that’s two bullshit-o-meters that need replacing thanks to this thread alone. You guys are making this article unprofitable. Do you know how much science I have to read to reset that thing?

        Okay, listen, let me break this all down for you. Let’s have an honest discussion here: man to piranha.

        I consider myself to be “a creator.” I have reached the point in my life where I am now reliant upon income from the articles I write, the advertising copy I edit and so forth to make ends meet. I am in the process of writing a science fiction trilogy; one I intend to self-publish on Kobo and I am sincerely hoping will sell enough copies at some low amount ($3.99 a book?) to pay for the creation of the next one.

        I have planned a significant % of my future around being a creative, reliant upon copyright as an exit from the world of systems administration. (The stress is literally killing me.) So I believe that I have a right to weigh in on this topic from the standpoint of someone other than “just an observer.”

        At the end of the day, Big Content is bad – terrible – for people like me. They are quite frankly the enemy. They are not a vehicle for support, they are not a vehicle for reimbursement. They are a massive cabal of extremely well resources business dedicated to ensuring that I see as little money from my own efforts as possible.

        I am not talking here about simply taking the lion’s share of any works they publish whilst passing a bent pittance on to the actual creators. I am talking about their attempts to have all orphaned works slurped up and assigned to their incestuous little publishing cartels. I am talking about actively raising barriers to entry for creatives who are unaffiliated with them.

        I am talking about the outright economic warfare they perpetuate on the anyone who doesn’t work for them combined with the blatant treatment of those who do work for them as little more than indentured chattle.

        The extant copyright cartels – the copyright holders – are businesses I consider to be unbelievably damaging to the livelihoods of any creators. They lobby to restrict and remove rights from creators in order to assign it to “copyright holders.” They then lobby to have the bulk of those rights assigned to “collection societies” and other tentacles of the cartel, instead of individuals.

        They are a pestilence; a pox on society, the ruination of any and all (except the chosen few, ordained by the cartels themselves) who seek to create content at all. A pox on all their houses.

        But it makes perfect sense for Big Content to act this way.

        You see, Big Content is winning the war of perpetual copyright. That means they don’t need an injection of new material anymore. They have enough content in their grubby mitts to last the next two centuries. And new content will perpetually be assigned to them as “orphaned works” are brought within their grasp…not that of society at large.

        Now, consider Google. (Yes, I looked through the viel and saw who you were referring to.) Google wants to murder the copyright cartels in the face with a bag of angry, rocket-powered weasles. Hurray! I support this on general principle.

        Do they want to completely strip content creators of rights? No.

        But…but…Big Content tells us that they do! Well, bullshit. Google has no interest in stripping creators of their rights. They do have designs on that very same pool of “orphaned works” though. They want orphaned works released to society at large. (So that anyone, anywhere can benefit from it. But especially Google.)

        I am actually okay with this. Morally, ethically…pragmatically. If some of my works go missing, and they cannot find me or my heirs…I want those works available to the rest of society. I create not for the profit, but because I want my works to be consumed by people; that they may find some part of me in them and I may perhaps be remembered.

        What’s more; I continually find Google promoting rights for creators to the detriment of rights for copyright holding corporations. Google seems to like the idea of lots and lots of individual creators all creating new things and competing against eachother.

        This is likely because it reduces the ability of creators to collectively bargain, but again, I’m okay with that. We have 250 years of learning to deal with that problem; we can go it alone without having to surrender our works – indeed our futures – to the likes of Big Content.

        Big Content needs as little competition as possible. They must control all new works, or prevent them from being created. If they can’t prevent creation, they need to acquire control or at the very least prevent those new works from becoming popular. This is fundamental to their business model.

        Google doesn’t need to control content at all. Google needs to eliminate powerful copyright cartels that can drive up the cost of licensing to levels which it – and by extension consumers – cannot afford. What Google does need is as much new content – from as many diverse creators as possible – to advertise against.

        It needs new content because this is what the people demand. It needs content from diverse creators so it can keep prices low. And it needs to ensure that creators get paid so they keep churning out the new content.

        So neither side is really going to maximize the profits I receive from my creative endeavors if they win. But Google will ensure that I have a much better chance at retaining control of my own works while I am alive and getting paid for them than Big Content can provide me.

        More to the point; what I do get paid will probably be more under daddy Google than it will be under Big Content. Unless I am stupid enough to still believe in the fairy tale that Big Content will pick me to be the next superstar. (Bullshit.)

        Google needs me. Big Content doesn’t. Google wants my works to be made available for the benefit of society if at any point I cannot be found to assert my claims over my works. Big Content wants my works locked away from the world unless they control those works.

        Google is the future for creatives. They aren’t the greatest. They aren’t “in it for us.” But their vision of the world is far more closely aligned with mine than that of Big Content. And with Google at the helm, at least I stand a chance of getting paid.

        Now, I'm off to watch some Geek and Sundry; an Internet TV channel made possible by Google; check it out here: Geek and Sundry.

  14. SYNTAX__ERROR
    FAIL

    Trevor

    "...Even if you manage to do that, someone probably owns the patent on how it was done."

    No. One cannot patent a process. Only products or inventions can be patented.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Trevor

      In certain countries <ahem>, business methods and even math (software) can indeed be patented.

    2. Thorne

      Re: Trevor

      "No. One cannot patent a process. Only products or inventions can be patented."

      Back to the old Apple pantent "Slide to unlock"

      Anything can be patented, no matter how simple or obvious. Thats the whole problem

  15. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    Speaking of unicorn fairy land...

    On the whole, this is a thoughtful, informed, and interesting piece (and I'm largely sympathetic to it). But this bit:

    We need to work out an open, fast, stable, reliable advertisement and analytics system for the web. It must be a system that multiple advertisers – and brokers – can use; one which doesn't impact website load times, and prevents the distribution of malware through advertising networks.

    is pure fantasy. You can't exchange more information with more parties free of cost ("doesn't impact website load times"). The only ways anyone's come up with to "prevent the distribution of malware" are walled gardens and code signing; many people want no part of the former, and the latter is mired in PKI problems we're not even close to solving, and often other issues (eg restricting what users can do with their own equipment) which aren't inevitable but are too tempting to implementers.

    Then there are all the political difficulties of designing, implementing, and administering such an "open" system. Who's allowed to use it - anyone? Then how do we restrict the analytics to purposes that users agree to, for example? What does "open" mean in this context?

    A standard, "open" (in some unspecified sense) advertising-and-analytics system strikes me as a great way for sites to disclaim responsibility for violations of policy and law that stem from those ads and analytics. Oh, did we show an ad that was misleading, or that violated someone's trademark? Well, it was that darn open system. It's standard - we don't own it, so we can't be responsible for it. Did we participate in massive user tracking and profiling? That naughty open system again!

    Some of these issues might be technically solvable - but they're security problems, and attacks only ever get better. There's economic incentive to exploit such a system. Right now we have some (though not a lot of) legal and social pressures on entities that deploy web advertising and analytics, that can provide some mild sanctioning for bad behavior. Standardizing would be a great way to remove those.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Speaking of unicorn fairy land...

      You only assume this isn't possible. I honestly believe it is. It would require a formal standards process - probably a formal standards body - that described everything from the PKI to the interaction APIs to minimum performance limits for analytics/advertising CDNs.

      We live in a cloudy world. There are CDNs and public clouds and all such madness everywhere. This is an issue of standards and enforcement. Establish the standard. Get signatories from the main advertisement organisations and most of the big tech players. Then build your browsers to reject anything that isn't standards compliant.

      We need to accept that advertising underpins and drives the internet economy, and build these standards into our technology and infrastructure in the same manner as we do HTML. It needs to go in at the browser level, even the operating system level. It needs to have a know PKI infrastructure that is constantly under review, and a standards process that allows for change and adaptation to new threats.

      But it is doable. Big Tech does this sort of thing all the time. At issue is the fact that Big Content can’t organise their way out of a paper box, and so would probably refuse to take part in any advertising revenue security scheme they didn’t absolutely control from end to end.

  16. This post has been deleted by its author

  17. Kiwi
    Linux

    Why I turned off ads

    It wasn't primarily the lag (although with NZ providers back then, every byte of bandwidth was absolutely precious), wasn't the risk of tracking. It was simply the annoying animations.

    I'd happily allow El Reg to show me ads if you have a way to stop the animations on them.

    Tracking etc I can take care of myself.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why I turned off ads

      It's odd...I find an age-related gap on the animation thing. Younger folks (younger than 30, usually younger than 25) have no problem "tuning out" animations. They just don't see them.

      Us older folks though...when adblock gets turned off it is a "yikes! That's what the internet actually looks like?" I think people dislike IE not because it's a terrible browser...but because it rarely has adblock on it.

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