[pp.int.general] copyright vs. "droit d'auteur"

[Hans Häggström]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 11:06 PM, Richard M Stallman <rms at gnu.org> wrote:
> My proposal to the Pirate Party is to require proprietary software
> source code to be put in escrow when the binaries are released.  The
> escrowed source code would then be released in the public domain after
> 5 years.

I see some problems with this.

1. It restricts the basic freedom of expression and information
transfer - if you release a binary file without putting sources in
escrow, you are suddenly guilty of a crime.  You should also have the
right to sell the binary (if somebody wants to buy it).

2. Revealing the sources would make it easier to construct attacks
towards the software and would eliminate any security by obscurity -
of course, relying on security by obscurity is a bad practice, but
it's common and the people who would take the damage from this would
be ordinary users.

3. This removes 'keeping secrets' as a way for businesses to protect
their algorithms and domain knowledge, increasing the pressure of them
to use the faulty patent system for it instead.

4. In general, all databases leak sooner or later - if companies
started putting source code in escrow for all their programs, some of
them would leak before the end of the copyright period (of course, the
source can leak from the company too, but adding an enforced escrow
procedure increases this chance)

5. This complicates software development - especially smaller
companies would be at an disadvantage because of the added complexity
and cost of releasing software.


Instead, I'd lean towards different length copyrights for different
types of work.  Using different length copyrights for different types
of work gives a tool to the society to adjust the amount of incitement
it gives to different types of work.

It may make sense to give longer copyright times for free software and
open source programs (to stimulate adaption of this licensing model
which is beneficial for society at large), as well as for example
books (which tend to sell for a longer period with lower volume and
take a long time to make), and shorter copyrights for music (as it
mostly doesn't take that long time to make, and might have a sharper
falloff on the sales over time graph).

Of course, the length of copyrights would be based on independent data
from the area, and the publics interest in promoting a particular type
of creative work.  No copyrights should be excessively long though,
and there should be some more or less hard upper limits to prevent
slow pushing of the copyright times upwards.  To make it easier to
understand the laws, the different categories of copyright length
should be minimized (maybe just two - short and long copyright, for
example 5 and 10 years).

-- 
Hans Häggström (zzorn)
Pirate Party of Finland