Flame Damnation

General Category => Debate Forum => Topic started by: caskur™ on December 10, 2010, 07:55:58 am



Title: What do you think about Copyright?
Post by: caskur™ on December 10, 2010, 07:55:58 am
Copyright might in essence, be illegal anyway… in my view.

Lets say the author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was written by someone [ Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (October 24, 1788 - April 30, 1879) actually ]…lets use her as an example for this argument…

She wrote that and gave it freely to the world, as many writers of quips, and sayings, and stories do…like we do when we write something in a post on the net. Once it is out there, its out there….. So say someone comes along and notes that no one owns the poem, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”  and then proceeds to copyright that so anytime its printed or versed publicly via the media they earn some money. To me, that is blatant theft and yet it’s legal? You couldn’t do that  with a famous painting, could you?…. You couldn’t go up to a Van Gogh and claim a copyright on it and then start charging people. Pictures are visual manifestations of words, are they not? Words are commonly grouped enough and there are only so many ways to rephrase something.

If you were to write something yourself and before it was made public, you claim ownership of it, then yes, it is your copyright privilege and you can copyright it, lawfully.


I have seen myself quoted on TV after I have written things on the net….. I know damn well I authored it first… I’ve seen two American women on the boards steal stories from elsewhere and caught them in the act. The first one wrote of her daughter and absolutely flat out lied because I just happened to have read a book, years before about an autistic girl who couldn’t speak until she saw “spirits” ….if I hadn’t read the book, 10 yrs earlier, I wouldn’t have known any different. I would not have known she plagiarised it. And I saw another one talk about finding her boyfriend dead after he OD’d on heroin after she came out of the shower….. only weeks before, I heard the exact same story on the TV.


We cannot really own anything….we can buy it and keep it for awhile but that thing you invent, or buy and keep for awhile is only really borrowed for a time.

If you have a good idea that benefits the planet in someway and then share it…the act that your will gets out there and matters and changes the planet for everyone’s benefit should be reward enough.

What do you think?


Title: Re: What do you think about Copyright?
Post by: Fat on December 10, 2010, 09:14:43 am
Copyright has in many ways lost it's power - not because ownership of original work is any different than ever it was but because it is so cheap now days to make perfect copies of copies of copies and so on ad infinitum. This applies to photographs, written work, music, video and the list grows daily.

Once the send button is pushed the first time then control is gone. (just ask those celebreties who have made questionable videos) but the same power of the internet to spread information is also a power against palaigerism (most universitiy assignments can be easily checked by popping a few phrases into google)

So the question becomes - do we spend our energy (and the frustration of our consumers) trying to foil copyists and/or tie them up in courts or do we release our work onto any/every mediaat such a low price that copying isn't worth the trouble or even for free so that every copy is a legitimate copy and then use our fame to make money.

As Bill gates said (trying to get the message through to an unheeding TELSTRA) "You make a lot more money by charging many people a little than by charging a few people a lot".

The electronic storage of material of all types (eg family history or the latest news) has a problem and that is the problem of it's inherent temporary nature - we have all experienced going back to a favourite site only to find it no longer there - perhaps the wide dissemination of material (such as wikileaks insurance downloads) may mean that someone somewhere will still have a copy when all the others have gone (or been silenced). We have already seen this with the preservation of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 on video after all official and unnoficial copies were destroyed by the communist regime (in a crackdown against 'pornography' tens of thousands of homes were raided and videos confiscated) but enough survived to allow the world to know what went on.


Title: Re: What do you think about Copyright?
Post by: flabio on December 11, 2010, 02:30:43 pm
The state of todays world is far from utopian. Hence, if somebody comes up with an idea that would aid in the betterment of humanity and the world in general, the best thing to do would be to share it ASAP.  What comes around goes around, but unfortunately greed seems to get the best of the majority.


Title: Re: What do you think about Copyright?
Post by: caskur™ on December 11, 2010, 11:00:50 pm
Definitely what goes around, comes around.... no truer words spoken...


Title: Re: What do you think about Copyright?
Post by: TheJudge on December 13, 2010, 11:51:58 pm
As someone who produces computer application software, I can tell you that copyrights have a place.

An example:  I spend 500 hours developing a piece of software for a company.  I do this for a living, so I need to be paid for that time and effort (or I simply would not do it).  That software needs to be copyrighted so it cannot be used by the competitors of my client; that would be unfair, since my client would have paid for the development and it would be an unfair advantage to their competitors if they were to receive it for free.  Normally there are non-distribution clauses in the contract to prevent the custom software from being distributed to any other company by either my client or my company, to protect both of our interests.


Title: Re: What do you think about Copyright?
Post by: caskur™ on December 14, 2010, 12:33:24 am
but once it is sold and you've been paid, isn't it off your hands?


Title: Re: What do you think about Copyright?
Post by: icy on December 25, 2010, 01:02:08 pm
Definitely what goes around, comes around.... no truer words spoken...

amen sistah...
that's why I don't worry bout a thang... :)