Anthony Su- Week 14 Blog Post
First, I would like to discuss the distinction between a society based on raw material and one based on information. A society based on raw material kind of resembles a farm or a society that does not value education highly. On the other hand, a society based on information is highly intellectual, with technology and many ideas that should not be freely distributed. I think that copyright is certainly more applicable to a society based on information. For example, people can replicate music or movies more readily than something that is not intellectual. It is highly unlikely for someone to replicate a potato or a solid, physical material from a market and sell it. It is possible for someone to copy a farming method, but I don't see that as bad as breaking copyright law. The one who tries to copy the farming method does have to put in the work to produce a product. On the other hand, copying intellectual material is way worse because it is so easy to say, copy a song, without putting in much work. The person who initially came up with a song or work put in all the work or human labor already. Copyright is so much more of an issue in societies based on information. That is a reason why copyright isn't a big issue in the past; many societies were not intellectual or based on information.
Secondly, I think that Copyright is very important. People do have a right own their information. I totally agree with the humanitarian origin of copyright. To take someone's new, original idea away from that person is analogous to taking a part of that person's brain away. People do need the credit they deserve for a work. The time and effort someone spends on an intellectual work should be recognized. It is not right to break copyright laws. It is like plagiarism, which is highly not tolerated in many institutions of education these days. In this sense, patents should be supported and it is not wrong for someone to want to get rich off an innovative idea. That being said, the more steps needed in order for a work to be published, the worse the situation becomes. Publishers, or other people who authors/composers need to see before making their work final and out to the public, should not be legitimate working men. I am sure that publishers have to sign agreements before they look at an author's work, but it is still an unnecessary step in the process of making intellectual property and distributing it to the public. The extra step of handing a work to a publisher to have it printed takes extra time, and the author could publish his or her own work. This idea may be radical and against the law, but it is a suggestion I have. It would be nice to simplify society and lower the number of steps required to publish and distribute intellectual work. Without the publishers, the work of an author may be more pure and the probability of breaking Copyright laws can be reduced.
I would also like to discuss sausage factories. I liked comparing this to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle earlier today to show the horrific nature of producing meat. They are disgusting, but I find that there should be one reason why we should take pity on some members of society and respect the work they do. Even though the quality of labor may not be good, as seen by occasional fingers sticking out of meat loaves and hair in dishes, due to the unsanitary conditions of the factory, I feel that the producers are doing the best they can given the conditions of the working place. I feel that overall, our society should give more respect to people like these, even though this situation is less common in the world today. Without them, our world would be much different. It is just like we need material imported from China, our world would be much different without this trading partner we have. We cannot produce some material that China can produce. Even though the quality of some work is not good, we should still respect it for what it is. Same thing goes with copyright, we should respect authors and composers for working hard on their intellectual works.
Finally, I do agree with what's been said earlier about fear deterring certain people from coming up with very innovative ideas.
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Well Anthony, I understand your idea of wanting to give authors the direct means to publish their own works, but it is not that simple, unfortunately. Due to the way that our society works, copyright law has become this horrific monster of a thing that many people cringe at the thought of. If authors were to start trying to publish their own works, then they would have to be extremely well versed in copyright law. And since people have to dedicate their careers to these type of things, it is somewhat impractical, no matter how ideal the idea may be.
ReplyDeleteAnd your other point regarding the sausage factory analogy. Yes, we should appreciate what people do as far doing the "dirty work." But the way they are doing things now is not helping people. They are not creating delicious sausages made from disgusting things for our consumption; they are stripping everything of it's meat and feeding us the bone. Instead of thinking about the rights of the author and how their work may be defaced in some way or another, they concern themselves with their own personal gains. So yeah...pretty harsh stuff that I do not show much respect for.
I have some difficulty agreeing with the claim that societies based on raw materials do not value education highly. I can see where a society based on information would require a higher level of intellect in order for someone to truly thrive in it. However, societies based on raw materials require a deep understanding of economics and business. Individuals in societies based on raw materials are true entrepreneurs. These individuals must have a solid business foundation in order to survive and become successful once their products are on the market. In response to your example about farmers being individuals found in raw material based societies, I feel that there are some serious misconceptions about them. Farmers are some of the most educated individuals due the increasing competition in the industry. For example, a farmer who grows corn must be able to cut the cost of growing corn as well as making a profit. To be successful in the corn industry, the farmer must look for other alternatives to create a profit. The labor that goes with growing corn is simple but the true challenge is manipulating the economy and industry to make a significant profit. Societies based on raw materials value education and intellect just as much as an information-based societies because individuals in raw material societies must be entrepreneurs in respect to marketing, distributing, and manipulating the economy.
ReplyDeleteAs for other countries importing their materials to our country, I feel this is only devaluing and weakening our own economy. True, we should respect these countries for what they provide us, however, why should we settle for poor quality work? Why can’t we invest in making our own industries so that we do not need to depend on the importation of countries such as China. If we had more American manufacturers, our economy would thrive because of the multiple jobs they would create. We would no longer have to depend on other countries and our production costs would significantly decrease because all our products would be manufactured in the United States.
It seems that I am respecting people too much, even those people who do not create high quality products, as seen by the two comments above.
ReplyDeleteI try to take an optimistic view of points, but I see how it may be improbable here. I also do respect the fact that farmers need skill to do their work. Especially during the earlier times in history, farming was considered a highly regarded profession. But I do find that today's societies don't really respect the farming profession enough. I hear too many people say "Wow! You're a surgeon. I want to be a surgeon" or "Wow! You're a lawyer. I want to be a lawyer". However, even to this day, people rely heavily on farming. We need the farmers to create crops, or else we would not get adequate nutrition. We should respect their knowledge too, because not many ordinary people could do crop rotations or use agricultural concepts as well as they can.
Yes, I did find the idea of making authors publish their own work a bit iffy (that's why I questioned if it would be against the law or out of the rules of society). I do find that it is a logical way to help authors and composers though. In order to decrease the fear of copyright violations, I find that these mediums should be taken out though. That also raises another question, could the publishers find another task that is suitable for them? I think that in order for society to respect copyright laws more, small steps do need to be taken gradually. Change is not going to happen overnight. No radical idea of removing professions is going to be accomplished rapidly. It is just like the revolutions in history, they take time. I am not saying there should be a revolution though, society is ok the way it is. It may not be worth the effort to change everyone's modern mindset.
I completely understand where you are coming from, when stating your thoughts about copyright, however I too feel that they are a bit idealistic. Ideally copyright laws are magnificent everyone is given credit for their work and that’s that, but it’s just not that simple anymore. It kind of reminds me of Communism, ideally it seems like a good system, but in the real world it doesn’t work as beautifully as intended. There are tons of loopholes and clauses in copyright laws that I feel really take away from trying to protect intellectual material. For example books that were published before 1923 are now “public domain,” which basically means their copyright expired. For this reason you can find entire text copies of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on the Internet, for FREE. (I wish I would have known that in high school, to save myself the few bucks on buying the book.) The reason I have a problem with this is that I don’t understand how people can determine how much time is required before something changes from intellectual material to public domain. It is still someone’s own thoughts, but it is being produced openly. Also there certain types of vinyl records that also aren’t copyrighted, which enables DJs to mix music from such records and not have to worry about getting sued. I do feel that there is a need to protect people’s own work; however I feel that our current system is flawed and highly idealistic.
ReplyDeleteAnthony et al.: Great conversation about copyright, though the extended sausage-making metaphor borrowed from Doctorow makes me laugh.
ReplyDeleteAs you're trying to wrap your heads around copyright, don't forget "copyleft": http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
And the Free Software Foundation: http://www.fsf.org/.
I think that both sides of the copyright debate are kind of well put forth, so instead, I would like to talk about what Quetzal wrote:
ReplyDelete"I have some difficulty agreeing with the claim that societies based on raw materials do not value education highly".
Quetzal, I agree with you superficially, in the sense that why would any society not value education? Education after all is one of the best ways any society has to improve itself in an infinite amount of ways. Through the scientific method, philosophical argumentation, anthropological field studies and mathematical reasoning all ideals further understood and spread through education we can basically solve most if not all (I would argue all but that's for another post) the problems. Why then why would a society not value education?
The problem is the practice. In practice countries with raw materials economies do not have enough resources to establish well developed and socially integrative education systems. Now consider what something like this does potentially. No really good educational systems causes only a small minority to get educated in the first place. The few people who get educated either nationally (which is probably extremely selective) or internationally, either emigrate to places where they can find jobs for their qualifications or become a very very small minority in their home country holding jobs requiring higher qualifications. The fact that they were able to get educated probably means they are coming from a high economic class and after education they continue living in their upper class. Everyone else however who doesn't have access to these institutions or to these people - they are concerned first by putting the food on the table and then everything else. In the everything else, I include, church, sex, the local gossip and other such things which humans in general tend to concern themselves (even during their most stressful periods of life - like finals for us). I argue that by the time this person is able to put the bread on the table and play the role of a decent citizen in their country - education does not come to their mind - and why would it?
Every society has its share of people who differ in their life practice and their beliefs. Americans, for instance, love coffee. Stickers like: "good friends don't let their friends get Starbucks" are everywhere. Does that mean everyone here drinks coffee? No, off course not, but proportionately, there are more coffee drinkers here than in many other societies. Applying this idea to the situation we had clarifies I think my point. If a specific society has a high enough ratio of people which do not concern themselves with education then we can effectively say that that society does not place a high emphasis on education.
Desafortunadamente, these societies do exist. The problem with raw food economies (coming from an MCB and CogSci major) is that the prices of raw food fluctuate a lot, and most economies are not able to produce an array of raw materials - generally it’s one or two or a few things - this is known as the cash crop. Once the cash crop goes down, Cuba and sugar for example, the economy crashes. Therefore, these are generally poorer countries.
In light of distant history this makes sense. The Greeks, the Romans, the Arabics and the Moors are all empires, cultures and civilizations which were has societies focused on education - they were also wealthy societies.
Hopefully, I have made some type of logic.
I agree with Anthony that people's works should be protected, but there should be a limit to how much a person's artistic output is actually "protected" and how much it is "utilized." The two biggest points that I always think of when I think "copyright" are these: the works of a dead author being under "copyright" and the works being copyrighted after an author has "sold" his "rights" for his work to a company. In some way, it is illogical, because "rights" aren't something you exactly "own." Selling your rights can be, in a way, similar to selling your soul to the Devil, in the classical example of Faust. However, here, instead of the end sufferer being Faust, the "sufferer" is the whole of the people who read the books.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the artists's control of their "rights" often get into questions that aren't either "just" or practical. Many of the lawsuits that come from "breach of copyright" such as when one downloads music from the Internet, tend to overwhelm and delay the judicial system, which could be spending its time and resources on deciding and quelling more critical cases of actual crime, that actually hurts people.
Aslo, on the sausages and laws example. The quote is usually attributed to Otto von Bismarck, but is actually stated for the first time in 1869, but a John Saxe. The quote and the example in this case, I think, apply more to the effects of the law rather than the actual law. While copyright law creation was a hectic business, as all new laws are, the greatest effect, the greatest chaos came from the implementation of the law, and its interpretation. This is especially true because many times the "people" who are protected are in fact, the companies. This was a very important problem in American Law, first dealt with very strongly by Roosevelt and Taft, who brought down many monopolies. However, in the modern political circles, there are very few who would try to brind down the Movie and Music industry monopolies, and thus, the problem will likely continue for many years into the future.