The problem lies with believing that you're entitled to a successful, non-threatened business model. The problem lies with believing that the law should be changed primarily to protect your business model.
Sorry, but just because something is "your" content doesn't mean you should be guaranteed to make money off of it, or control every aspect of it.
For example, if I set up a stand on a street corner that creates an amazing aromas, it would not suddenly become my right to charge passersby for smelling these aromas, even though they are "mine". Rather than trying to get the law changed to guarantee I make money, I should instead modify my business model to one that doesn't suck.
> The problem lies with believing that you're entitled to a successful, non-threatened business model. The problem lies with believing that the law should be changed primarily to protect your business model.
Nobody is entitled to a non-threatened business model. At the same time, Congress is entitled to limit unfair competition and free-riding off peoples' work, and in this case it has seen fit to do so. That's the crucial distinction that anti-copyright folks ignore. This isn't just about protecting a business model from technological change. It's about protecting a business model against a different business model: profiting from selling content you didn't create and didn't pay for.
It would be one thing if nobody wanted to watch big-budget Hollywood movies anymore, and MPAA were lobbying for laws to shut down P2P and Youtube so indie content producers couldn't distribute the movies that people did want to watch. But that's not what's happening here. Demand for Hollywood movies has never been higher, and despite a total lack of legal roadblocks, indie content has not become popular hardly at all.
What's happening is that companies like Youtube and Aereo, etc, have figured out there is profit to be made by being middle-men between the big-budget Hollywood content people demand and the consumers. Ideally, for them, there would be no copyright so they could get content for free attract viewers to peddle their advertising to.
It's one thing to prop up your business model against technological obsolescence that eliminates demand for your product. It's another thing to protect your rights against people free-riding on your creations, creations for which demand is higher than ever.
> For example, if I set up a stand on a street corner that creates an amazing aromas, it would not suddenly become my right to charge passersby for smelling these aromas, even though they are "mine".
But could you sue someone for putting up a big fan to blow the aroma into the air and charging people to stand in front?
The purpose of copyright and patent law in the US (as stated by the Constitution) is to promote the progress of the arts and sciences by granting a temporary limited monopoly to creators. While I don't disagree with the sentiment, things have gotten wildly out of hand in the past few centuries.
I get it. People make content, and they want their rightful monopolies to be protected from people who would copy and sell it. That's fine. But attacking the rights of those who are not copying or profiting from your content simply because the new method they're using to access it doesn't line your pockets with money is going too far. At that point you're going after all competition, rather than unfair competition.
You have no guaranteed right to a lucrative business model. You have no guaranteed right the control any and all actions of those with access to your content. The only thing you should have is the limited monopoly you've been given, and if that isn't enough to protect your business against the the onslaught of new technologies then so be it. (I should point out that I think the length of the monopolies themselves has gone overboard, but that's an argument for another day.)
> But could you sue someone for putting up a big fan to blow the aroma into the air and charging people to stand in front?
No, I don't think I should be able to sue. It's my own horrible business decision to release my aromas into the public air where everyone can access them. If I were a more astute businessman, I would keep my aromas in a privately-owned enclosure where I could create the rules and charge admission to boot.
I don't see how it's the government's place to step in and create laws that curtail the public's right to use the air as it pleases for no other purpose than to ensure that my crappy business model is lucrative.
> The purpose of copyright and patent law in the US (as stated by the Constitution) is to promote the progress of the arts and sciences by granting a temporary limited monopoly to creators.
Just because that's what the constitution says, doesn't mean that that's the real purpose.
Well, but it does mean that judges can invalidate (or not apply) copyright laws if they diverge sufficiently from that 'official' purpose.
Even if both the industry and congress want and intend other purposes, the constitution allows copyrights to exist only if/while they (at least a bit) also try "to promote the progress of the arts and sciences".
Copyright is an state enforced monopoly, created in 18th century for 18th century society and their goals. Nowhere does it even try to justify such monopoly by wordings of government intervention to prevent unfair competition or free-riding. In the several hundred years since them, no change to the basic fundamentals of the law has had any change, nor has any justification been added.
Most anti-copyright folks such as you describe them would welcome stated goals. Preventing unfair competition by state intervention is a fine goal. Lets do that, but then lets also apply 21st century governmental procedure rather than 18th century ones. The steps are quite easy: First you do a cost-benefit analyses such as determining cost and benefit. You ask what the cost to society is. Then you ask questions like how much protections vs how much costs. Is 3 years enough to prevent 90% of the unfair competition? Would 2 more years make that number reach 99%? Maybe a whole 10 years for special products needing special state attention?
Cost-benefit analyses. A tool made in the 19th century, was the tool that made 20th century government, and the only two laws not still using it is copyright and patent law. There is nothing to justify such bad use of state power to intervene in the market.
You say to do the cost benefit analysis like its easy - but in reality its not. Nothing is so clear cut and dry.
How do you count "unfair competition"? how do you define "special products"? How do you even count the revenue of a hypothetical work before its even made?
This "entitlement to not be threatened" trope is based on the fallacy that all threats are the same.
The neighborhood coffee shop is not entitled to prevent Starbucks from opening across the street. It is entitled to protection from people throwing bricks through its windows.
Similarly: movie studios are not entitled to use their market power to prevent people from recruiting from the vast population of talented underutilized actors to make content under more consumer-friendly terms. But they are entitled to protection from other companies that would take the content they paid to generate to slap unauthorized advertising on it.
If I'm reading you right, I don't disagree with anything you're saying, but I don't think it refutes my point. Yes, there exist situations in which competition is unfair. This, however, is not one of them. This is a textbook case of fair competition being attacked simply because it's competition. It's an abuse of copyright law.
just because something is "your" content doesn't mean you should be guaranteed to make money off of it
So you'd be cool if someone ripped off your source code at siasto.com and started charging for the service? Good to know!
For example, if I set up a stand on a street corner that creates an amazing aromas, it would not suddenly become my right to charge passersby for smelling these aromas, even though they are "mine".
/facepalm
That's not how analogies work - you're supposed to invoke a prallel situation as I did above, not a completely different one. If you play your original music compositions on the street corner you can't just demand money for it even though pasers-by may be consuming and enjoying it. But if I copy your work and start charging people to listen to/inhale it, then you're infringing.
Rather than trying to get the law changed to guarantee I make money, I should instead modify my business model to one that doesn't suck.
> So you'd be cool if someone ripped off your source code at siasto.com and started charging for the service? Good to know!
Invalid analogy. Siasto does not sell or distribute its source code. Quite the opposite: our code is locked away on a privately-owned server. You'd have to illegally force your way into this server to access the code. What we sell is a service that happens to depend on this code.
And no, I would have no problem whatsoever if you cloned our service and attempted to sell it to others. In a general sense, we certainly aren't the only team collaboration software out there. And in a specific sense, we certainly didn't pioneer the vast majority of the visual interactions that define our service.
> But if I copy your work and start charging people to listen to/inhale it, then you're infringing.
Yes, but the company in question is not making copies. Hence the separate antennae and storage for each customer.
> What you actually need is one that doesn't blow.
Invalid analogy. Siasto does not sell or distribute its source code. Quite the opposite: our code is locked away on a privately-owned server.
Not at all. An employee of yours might decide to copy it, you might accidentally expose it in the future, or whatever. It seems you're making the argument that only what you can keep secret is yours.
But to align it more easily with reality, are you saying you'd be cool if I started copying your blog posts or the design of your site, which are published to the world?
I would have no problem whatsoever if you cloned our service and attempted to sell it to others
Assuming I wanted to do that, are you saying you'd be completely OK with it being copied down to the last degree? I find this hard to believe.
Yes, but the company in question is not making copies. Hence the separate antennae and storage for each customer.
I don't have a major issue with this particular legal decision. I'm just taking issue with your notion that being the originator of content provides you with few or no rights over it. I really don't see any similarity with your street-corner analogy.
> Not at all. An employee of yours might decide to copy it, you might accidentally expose it in the future, or whatever.
Employees (or anyone else for that matter) can be held liable for breaking contracts. And if my own negligence exposed my hidden code to the world, then so be it.
> It seems you're making the argument that only what you can keep secret is yours. But to align it more easily with reality, are you saying you'd be cool if I started copying your blog posts or the design of your site, which are published to the world?
Sure, if you're willing to do all that engineering yourself, go for it. I don't think it will pay off for you. (In tech it's better to differentiate.) Nor do I think will hurt my company. (Au contraire, it's likely an HNer will discover the copying and post about it, resulting in positive publicity for Siasto.)
I do not sell HTML, CSS, or JavaScript. I do not sell blog posts. I'm not in the content business, because I think it's a shitty business to be in.
> I don't have a major issue with this particular legal decision. I'm just taking issue with your notion that being the originator of content provides you with few or no rights over it. I really don't see any similarity with your street-corner analogy.
Being the originator of content provides you with a limited monopoly over it. It should not, however, make you all-powerful. As long as I'm not engaging in unfair competition (e.g. copying and selling your content en masse), you shouldn't get to tell me what I can and can't do with it. If I want to hold readings of your book in my home, or distribute free copies of your movies to my friends, then I should be able to do that. And if you don't like the fact that this makes your business less profitable, then get a better business model.
That's not too much to ask. Live performances make tons of money. So do movie theaters. And individual paintings by artists. Some forms of content production can be lucrative. I just don't like my rights as an individual being unduly curtailed simply to turn someone's poor business model into a good one.
I'm responding to you as an example of a certain line of thought that limits on copying are somehow infringing on your "right" to do as you wish with copyable content.
Where does this right come from? People have some intuition about stealing physical things, but many areas of law involve intangible entities. In your example of suing an employee for releasing source code in violation of an agreement, you are using law to effect an outcome that is every bit as abstracted as copyright law.
There is also an aspect of arbitrariness to most law that can be annoying but it serves a function.
Sorry, but just because something is "your" content doesn't mean you should be guaranteed to make money off of it, or control every aspect of it.
For example, if I set up a stand on a street corner that creates an amazing aromas, it would not suddenly become my right to charge passersby for smelling these aromas, even though they are "mine". Rather than trying to get the law changed to guarantee I make money, I should instead modify my business model to one that doesn't suck.