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palfrey at 04:06pm on 26/02/2005
palfrey at 04:06pm on 26/02/2005I awoke, hungover (so would you if you'd drank the quantities I did last night), navigated my way out of Vilvoorde (I have a bad history of picking cheap hotels that are cheap because they're not actually in the same damn town.... next time I'm turning up and finding crash space, as I had several offers of such last night) and finally actually got to FOSDEM. The directions were luckily easy to follow, but I made the mistake of getting on a train going the wrong way to start with, and ended up missing the Wikipedia talk this morning. Got there in time to hear the infamous Richard Stallman speaking on various ideas re: reforming the copyright system. I actually recorded most of it, so if that turns out ok on my media player, then I may post it later. Actually got an opportunity to speak to him briefly afterwards (I had a question re: certain categories in his proposed new copyright system), which rocks somewhat.
Now, I've got some more talks to go to, and possibly locate some decent coffee. Photos are being taken, and will be placed up at some point!
Now, I've got some more talks to go to, and possibly locate some decent coffee. Photos are being taken, and will be placed up at some point!
(no subject)
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Short version of the talk: going back to the idea of copyright not as an inalienable right of authors/publishers, but as an economic concept, with limited-time monopolies on copying granted in order to persuade the creation of copyrightable work. In other words, viewing copyright laws as governments doing collective bargaining on our account to get the biggest number of new creative works for the minimum amount of restrictions on our freedom to copy/manipulate said works. As they're not really doing this right now, Stallman was referring to them as 'un-democratic'. He's being his usual self in other words...
Proposed system would give different restrictions for different categories of work (because in an economic model you don't pay the same amount for unequal goods).
1) Entertainment works would have 10-year copyright, with limited sampling allowed under fair-use style ideas, then anything goes.
2) "Pieces of opinion" including such things as academic papers (because they're of the form 'we did this') have the same 10-year copyright, but after that point would have longer (possibly unlimited) restrictions on modified works, as allowing modified works on those could easily be misrepresenting a person. Fair-use sampling allowed of course.
3) All "practical works" (software, textbooks, etc) should have a zero-year copyright (I have a certain level of agreement with this in the long-term, but short term it's a really bad idea).
It's got a few nice ideas (and an interesting anecdote about these ideas being presented on a panel next to an award-winninG author, and said author reckoned that 10 years was too long, and anything more than 5 was excessive), and as some long-term goals it's interesting, but Stallman is of the "keep yelling until they implement this yesterday, if not sooner" category...