You really know many poets getting rich from their work? Composers of music, lyrics, authors of books that aren't at the top of the best seller lists for months? (most of us) We get a pittance when our copyright creations are sold legally, nothing when (use you imagination for suitable epithet) people like yourself steal them.

Any of us are free to make our work available to you gratis if that is what we want to do. The cost to "reproduce" isn't relevant to the matter. We are selling creative works, not reproduction services.

BTW -- I do some "free software". I also write some custom software for a pretty penny (though mostly retired these days, a few hundred thousand lines of code in my time). That's a CHOICE for me to make, to whom I will provide my services free and whom I would charge for them.

If you don't want people to have your work and share it with their friends you are perfectly free to keep it locked away at your home. THAT is your "choice".

Stopping us from copying bits of information around is NOT your choice, however. Once we have it you can keep your grubby mitts out of our business thank you very much.

There is nothing natural about copyright, it is a totally outdated restriction on what we can do with information in our possession.

And it's not "stealing" as you call it - stealing deprives the original owner of the possession. Copying information doesn't. If that makes your business unviable, tough shit. We don't want out freedoms restricted just for your benefit. Face it, they can't stop people copying information around. It's just an arms race, they cut off one outlet and another two spring up in its place that are more difficult to detect and stop.

"You really know many poets getting rich from their work? Composers of music, lyrics, authors of books that aren't at the top of the best seller lists for months? (most of us) We get a pittance when our copyright creations are sold legally, nothing when (use you imagination for suitable epithet) people like yourself steal them."

This being the case, it seems to me that the current system is not fit for purpose. As you say, you only get a pittance for the stuff you sell. The system does not support such valuable work that is not profitable in the narrow economistic sense. I think that a minimum standard of living for all people, even if they are not "economically productive" would support the valuable contribution that artists, musicians, home-workers, and volunteers etc. make to our society.

The fact that we have to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for our entire lives also prohibits lots of creative activity. The fortunate make money, and can make a career out of it. But as you say, most of you don't. A 3 day working week would free up a lot of free time to make poetry and art, without the need for

But on the topic of lesser known artists having their stuff nicked by torrenters - is that really the case? The vast majority of torrents are of popular mainstream software, music, and games. I'm sure i couldn't find a torrent of your poetry, even though it may be better than lots of popularly torrented stuff.

I support artists making a living, but I don't think copyright laws is the best way to do this. Perhaps it makes more sense to be angry at our economic system, rather than the torrenters, filesharers, and pirates.

TomM,

I have no problem removing the middlemen from the equation. I have no problem with the digital reproduction of intellectual property (yes, not the best phrase for it but one that is recognisable). My problem is not about the availability of intellectual property it is simply the difficult question: how am I to be rewarded?

Community respect is one thing. But how will my rent get paid? It is not a question of excessive reward - I only need sufficient to carry out a comfortable life that sustains my creative activities. How am I to be rewarded?

The existing system takes my intellectual property and alienates it from me. The existing sytem - in the example of music - then adds a whole load of plastic for the CD, packaging and distribution and so on and so forth. These are not essential to the intellectual property but they make the middleman able to articulate billions of pounds in "added value". I get paid a pittance (roughly fifteen pence, on average, per CD goes to a work creator - it can be more, but it is small in comparison to the total product price). Your proposal that information wants to be free is fine. But it sustains the existing system. It sustains the system where I get a pittance.

Unless there is an equitable, fair and enforceable system of rewarding creative activities - fuck off with "community respect" people need to eat - then the entrenched system that exploits creativity will continue. The Digital Britain policies are starting to annoy people like Google, Facebook and others that live off the creative efforts of others. Because there is a genuine chance that Content Creators will start asserting the need for the recognition and reward of their creative efforts.

Facebook makes billions from the creative efforts of others. All the gossip and so forth that creates "facebooks unique content" are, in fact, the creative efforts of others. Content Parasites life Facebook paste advertising onto your content and then you are charged by the people who pay the advertisers. This is the model that you propose by saying "information wants to be free" with no qualification and no concern for the creative efforts of others.

The "creative commons" is not being coralled by Digital Britain but by the commercial interests of US corporations such as Facebook and Google. Instead of bitching about how it would be nice to freely download the back catalogues of your favourite artists without having to reward them it would serve radical and community interests far more to actually articulate a model that does reward the creative efforts and not the middlemen. By choosing the wrong fight you are seeking to hand a coercive and restrictive victory to the middlemen who are the only ones who profit out of opposition to the Digital Britain Bill.

It is not a perfect bill. But unless you participate in the consultation it will be Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft who are consulted. Which means we all end up with three strikes and you are out - this will make the balance sheet look good - this lest us sell product xyz - style legislation. Along with the freedom of information comes the responsibility to care for the creators.

Your posting does not even approach a duty of care to the needs of intellectual property creators.

In response to the comment "Who gives permission to reproduce works":

In a society where people have little free time and are placed under considerable economic pressures (they are skint and must pay the rent), creative people are forced to seek monetary reward for their efforts. The effects of these empoverishing circumstances are felt by everyone who would enjoy the creative work of society: instead of the value of the work being fully realised to us by free exchange, we are forced to pay for it and thus it only reaches a few of us, those who can pay. Poverty for all, producer and consumer.

In societies where people have more free time and economic pressures are not as acute, creative people do not need monetary reward to support their efforts. Free software has certainly been supported by such conditions, although you might say that only the more privileged people can afford to spend their time coding stuff for free. For my part, I've done a lot of programming of free software while on the dole, which removes most of the economic pressures from me, although since I don't have any children I have more freedom to work for nothing.

So really, free exchange of cultural ideas is most readily realised in societies where people are not harassed by poverty. Supposing there is real progress and working hours fall and wages rise (which won't happen without struggle), this free exchange will come to dominate. Alternatively if we are staring at a neoliberal future of rising working hours, falling wages, rising rent, fuel and commodity prices, erosion of free healthcare and so on, then we will all be forced into a bitter struggle to make ends meet, which will stunt creativity and restrict access to culture.

However, the cat is out of the bag as far as copyright is concerned. The practicalities of the internet make free exchange of information the norm. In my own area there is no prospect of some sort of 'software artisan' economy; there is only the old, wage labour exploitation, and the new, free software. I predict this phenomenon will grow in other areas of creative output.

The vast majority of coders do so for software that is for companies' own use, and is kept "in-house". It is usually highly specific as well, so not really of use to anyone else.

Face it, software that is distributed for use by many people will be all free in the future. I have used only free software like Linux for the past ten years and it suits me fine.

You say: "Who gives permission to reproduce works", but why should we *need* permission to reproduce works? That is just an authoritarian infringement of our freedoms. Me taking a copy of something you create leaves you with exactly the same as you started with.

Opposition to the government's digital economy bill has increased sharply, with strong criticism in the House of Lords for its failure to offer "due judicial process" to people accused of illicit filesharing under the proposed "three strikes" rules of the bill. It is unclear whether it will ever succeed in passing through parliament, given the limited time left before the election, and the massive amount of opposition that it is attracting from groups inside and outside parliament.

TalkTalk, one of the three largest broadband providers in the UK, has criticised the bill on the basis that it assumes guilt, and is unworkable in practice.

The British Hospitality Association (BHA), which represents thousands of hotel, catering and leisure establishments, worries that the requirement in the bill for hotels to provide guest details to an internet service provider (ISP) where copyright infringement is alleged could be impossible in some cases, and that hotels might be disconnected if guests are persistently infringing copyright. Disconnection would endanger a hotel's business which the BHA said would be a "grossly unfair consequence" of a guest's action. "If it is passed in its present form, the difficulties of applying this bill to the hospitality industry, with its transient profile, appear not to have been considered," said Martin Couchman, deputy chief executive of the BHA.


Representatives from institutions such as the University of London, British Library and the Imperial War Museum, said: "Because public institutions often provide internet access to hundreds or thousands of individual users, the complexity of our position in relation to copyright infringements must be taken into consideration."
 http://www.ucisa.ac.uk/~/media/Files/members/consultations/2010/DEB_response_Puttnam pdf.ashx


Jim Killock, The Open Rights Group director: "The situation is exactly parallel for cafés, bars and hotels, as well as community centres: if you are involved in any of these you should make your views known to the front bench teams now."
 http://threestrikes.openrightsgroup.org
 http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/disconnection


The Lords' Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) notes in a report published on Friday that "at the moment the Bill defines a process of appeals with no presumption of innocence" and that "this process will be applied irrespective of the sanction or evidence." That, they say, goes against natural justice, which should start with the presumption of innocence and the onus on the prosecution to prove guilt. "In the particular case of disconnection, which is a severe punishment, the need for a prior hearing based on an innocence presumption is unquestionably essential,"
 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt200910/jtselect/jtrights/44/44.pdf


Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, pointed out that the bill, as currently set up, threatens the British Library with its public Wi-Fi access, with potentially swingeing fines:
"The British Library is not set up to be a forensic investigator; obliging it to act as one will be a fantastically resource intensive exercise for a public body providing a free service. There is also an issue of privacy and anonymity, something academic researchers are often touchy about. And again, if the BL refuse to comply - or more likely, simply says it can't - it is, at least in theory, subject to a fine up to £250,000."
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/30/open-wi-fi-digital-economy-bill-government