[pp.int.general] Commercial use of functional works

[Edison Carter]

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Reinier Bakels <r.bakels at planet.nl> wrote:

> The pirate party is a collection of individuals, so not all of us will
>> agree to any point of view on any issue. My view is that artistic and
>> functional works should be treated exactly the same; a short (5 or 10 year)
>> copyright that applies only to 'distribution in exchange for money'
>> commercial publishing.
>>
>
> You miss the point. The issue is that traditionally in copyright (or "droit
> d'auteur"), *publication* and *multiplication* are reserved acts, but *use*
> is not. Software copyright in that respect is an exception: the copyright
> owner can restrict the use of software (for instance to one processor, or to
> a processor with a certain capacity, or to a standalone system only, not a
> server). In contrast, if you buy a book, you can read it as often as you
> want: the copyright owner can't say: enough is enough, if you start reading
> the book a fourth time, I want more money.
>

Yes, I think I did miss the point a little.


>
> But - as I explained eralier - copyright owners are trying to implement
> some sort of "use" right also for other works than software, by contractual
> means. As I explained earlier, "price differentiation" depending on use is
> very attractive for profit maximisation purposes. While publishers in the
> past had a social rol to help spreading information, now their main activity
> is to onstruct the spreading of information in the interest of their
> shareholders (and health care in lesser developed countries, via the Bill &
> Melinda Gates foundation).
>
> Everybody is entitled to have his own opinion, but I guess that every true
> pirate is opposed agains an *extenstion* of the *content* (not the term!) of
> copyright by a right that is non-existant today! (except for software).
>

On this we agree. The right to make use of a work (functional or otherwise)
where there is no distribution of copies to anyone else should be no
business at all of 'copyright'. Private copying, transcoding, media
shifting, media servers and playing content over a LAN or WAN, making
backups and 'throwaway copies' etc should all be completely unrestricted.
And I don't believe there should be any distinction in this between an
artistic work such as a movie, or a 'useful' work such as a dictionary,
howto guide, or a piece of software.

Just for the record, the AGPL also offends me in this regard. Making use of
a piece of software to offer a service to others (without actually
distributing the software itself in any way) should not be a copyright
issue. I can understand the reasoning behind it, but I don't agree with it.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pirateweb.net/pipermail/pp.international.general/attachments/20091204/16aca948/attachment.htm>