Authors of letter to Medvedev found new enemies of copyright holders

^{Yes, I now know about another post on this topic, but my post is fundamentally different from it. That post about how journalists again did not understand anything (for them “nationalization” and “ expiration of copyright ” is the same thing) is devoted to the analysis of the article in “Kommersant” - “water” that does not interest me. I am interested in the essence of the issue without the views of mediating journalists. I turned to the source, to the original of the response letter. My article is about ideas for putting into practice the January initiatives .}

Today, a topic that is important for all of us, for all ordinary people. This time, supporters of Wikipedia, all licenses like the GNU GPL and CC (% username%, if you like OO.o and Firefox, Mikhalkov already signed you up as pirates! =)) And other criminals are declared enemies of the copyright holders instead of the farther Deep Purple to us. hiding behind “modernization” and the counterfeit concept of “copyleft”. Even the director of the Russian State Library fell under the distribution. All these terrible people want to steal money from copyright holders.
However, the truth is that the people who have called pirates , really want to give money to copyright holders. This article is about how it could be implemented in practice and how everyone would benefit from it.

March 4than article was published on the Kommersant newspaper’s website (also in Kompyulent and Lente.ru , with comments on specletter.com and the Voice of Russia ) about an angry letter from creative union leaders dissatisfied with the completely harmless and logical initiatives that were proposed in early January another open letter addressed to the State Duma. The letter was dedicated to minor copyright upgrades, as I believe, in the direction of rejecting obvious idiocy, similar to a ban on photographing Red Square (Medvedev called it stupid). The text of the letter, whose authors were almost declared pirates, can be found on the website webpublishers.ru .

Indignant Nikita Mikhalkov, Konstantin Ernst, Karen Shakhnazarov, chairman of the Moscow Journalists Union and editor-in-chief of the Moscow Komsomolets Pavel Gusev, head of the Union of Writers Valery Ganichev, chairman of the Union of Architects Andrei Bokov, head of the Union of Artists Valentin Sidorov, chairman of the Union of Journalists of Russia Vsevolod Bogdanov and others - only 11 people - believe that "the implementation of proposals will have devastating consequences in science, culture, cinematography, television " and "the result may be unlimited the opportunity for the commercial use of other people's results of intellectual activity . "

Dear sirs, for some reason, they thought that someone was going to forcibly deprive them of their rights, allow piracy and take away money from RAOcreative people. This is not true! The one who told them this simply said a lie. It was proposed not to take money, but to give money! I can’t believe that the text of the letter was compiled by a person who read webpublishers.ru - it is clear that none of the 11 signatories at all read the letter with which they are all so outraged. Surely, someone else wrote this letter, because the degree of inadequacy is just going through the roof.

The letter also concluded that it was unacceptable to accept ALL 8 amendments on the basis of the harmfulness of only 3 theses. But damn it, the proposed initiatives need not be implemented together. Why stigmatize the entire document almost as a call to piracy!

So, below are three quotes from the response letter, the implementation of which was announced anti-people today. Of particular interest is the fact that in the first letter they were formulated differently.

Disclamer: this is exclusively my interpretation of the implementation of the January initiatives.

1) give libraries the right to digitize their publications.

This is true. Such a proposal is described in paragraph 6 of the letter webpublishers.ru . I personally do not see and cannot imagine the reason why this could threaten the authors.

Indeed, now in the libraries you can make photocopies of the pages of books, you can take photos of the book yourself. In the end, libraries can deliver books in their hands and the reader can do anything with the book. This is an existing practice for decades (and centuries?). What significantly changes digitization? Why are they so afraid of the word? I do not understand where this fear came from in this particular case. Does “digitization” physically kill a writer? And giving books home is killing? Advanced optical recognition technologyallow each person in 10 minutes to receive a digital copy of any book. I mean not just a photo of the text, but the creation of text that is editable. Already, there is no difference whether digitized text is available or not. One can exaggerate a little and say that when they give out a book in their hands, libraries already actually issue a digital copy.

2) the right to post digitized materials in networks without the consent of the copyright holders and to provide them to any persons.

I did not find anything like this in the original. No one was going to force libraries to put books on the Internet or local networks.

It seems to me that talking about the fact that the reader of the library should have a choice - a book or a flash drive with the text of the book, which then needs to be returned.
And do not be afraid of this. There isn’t even anything new here! As I wrote above, a machine-readable text can be extracted from any book in 10 minutes, but don’t prohibit the delivery of books to your home!
In my opinion, we are talking about the same scheme by which it was possible to rent films. Nobody gives home televisions with a wired movie, they temporarily give out DVD-, and earlier VHS-carriers to the house.

3) it is proposed to compulsorily transfer to the public domain all scientific, literary, musical, cinematic and other copyright works created in the USSR and Russia with state support.

This is just the culmination of lies! No coercion is offered!

We read the original. The second paragraph of the letter from webpublishers.ru says - "Organize a fair and consistent purchase of the rights to all works in Russian, members of the high school course ", in the third -" Consider the possibility of redemption and the subsequent transfer to the public domain other works of literature and film, created during the Soviet period, with government support . "
For all you don’t need to change the law at all, in fact, there’s no need for government intervention, either a businessman or a community of readers who can to collect the required amount of money (Wikipedia is $ 5 resets the whole world).

For example, it could be implemented as follows.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita” was first published in 1966-67 and copyright will expire only on January 1, 2037, despite the fact that Bulgakov himself died in 1940. Until 2037, the novel “The Master and Margarita” is completely protected by copyright and it is forbidden to copy it, like a fresh Hollywood film, and you can be held accountable for piracy. Will torrent tracker users be persecuted for distributing counterfeit copies of Bulgakov’s works? Generally speaking, they seem to have to, but this is nonsense, however, the law is the law. “Masters and Margarita” is forbidden to copy until at least 2037, and if you count from 1990, when the full uncensored version of the novel was published, then copying is prohibited until January 1, 2061.
And that’s all if the copyright term is not extended again. But, the law is the law! No disturbances!

However, it is possible to calculate how much money Bulgakov’s successor owners receive each year (for example, 10 amero =)) and the remaining number of years until the moment “Master and Margarita” inevitably goes into the public domain (for example, after 50 years) and offer twice the amount money (for example, 2 x 50 x 10 = 1000 amero) immediately in exchange for a waiver of property (= "NON-exclusive") copyrights ( Nobody is going to take away non- property rights , and it’s impossible to take away Bulgakov’s right to always be indicated as the author, " the right to the name "dei tvuet forever) to "Master and Margarita" and the transfer of novelpublic domain . Naturally, Bulgakov's heirs may not agree - in an open letter and there was no talk of forcibly taking property. Therefore, there can be no talk of robbing the authors, as they say in the response letter. In addition, copyright holders will also receive money! Perhaps even as much as they would have received through annual deductions for a lifetime!

Therefore, I do not understand how the proposals of the authors of the letter from webpublishers.ru will have devastating consequences.
Therefore, I do not understand what illegal and unlimited possibilities for the commercial use of the results of intellectual activity are mentioned in the letter.

Now a general comment about state support.

Probably, we should talk only about the product (film, newspaper, website, etc.), completely, 100% made to order and on budget, that is, our money with you. And the results of the work of the employees of the Russian federal bodies should be in the public domain. A hypothetical future law should not have retroactive force, i.e. for Soviet works only voluntary ransom and no violence.

Let me give you an example from the USA, where a work created by an employee of the US Federal Government (naturally with the money of taxpayers) is not protected by copyright. So, the NASA organization (which is part of the Federal Government), which launches Shuttles into space and works with taxpayers' money, cannot copyright any photographs taken by astronauts on the ISS, nor photographs taken on Mars or the Moon, nor photographs of the Earth’s surface, nor texts, nor videos, so that US citizens have free access to what is done with their own money! Another example, the CIA publishes a guide annually, which is also not protected by copyright and is immediately in the public domain. Also with the state radio station Voice of America, all of whose materials are not protected by copyright. Well, of course, the site of the US president cannot be protected by copyright either.

And what about Russia? Is it possible to do the same as in the USA? Pictures of the moon 40 years ago are forbidden! Fresh images from the ISS by Maxim Suraev are prohibited! It is forbidden to freely copy materials from the website of the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation!
This could be understood if Roscosmos and the Government of the Russian Federation were private commercial companies. But these are state institutions that work with taxpayer money! Why does an organization working with our money protect copyright from us, from taxpayers, the results of its work? Moreover, many more also explain this by the fact that we must move to Western standards of respect for copyright!

What did all this lead to? Right! We naturally study history from American materials, because in Russia the national treasure, the public domain is so well protected that it is inaccessible even to the public! I don’t know what we would do without the Americans.

PS:
I am against piracy (in its classical definition, that is, stupid copying without changes, stamping disks in the Moscow Region and selling them on the market with the permission of the police ).
I believe that the law should be respected and that pirates (we are not talking about the so-called pirate parties, which, on the contrary, oppose hanging this label on the country's full population) violate copyrights.
Exactly because the Laws must be in force and strictly observed, I believe that if a law is bad, then you do not have to use the optionality of its implementation, but change the law, and while the old, but bad law is in force, it is possible to comply with it.
The 70-year term of copyright protection cannot be canceled - we will be realistic, but you can not return to copyright what was already in the public domain (for example, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and “Master and Margarita” - in the USA they would remain in OD).
I remind you that organizations such as Creative Commons or the Free Software Foundation do not advocate for piracy, but for strict observance of copyright. Contents of Wikipedia, Linux and Firefox, contrary to a common misconception, are protected by copyright (but in a different way).
I also remind those who may not yet know that “fighting for copyleft against copyright” is impossible, since copyleft is based on compliance with copyright and its potential cancellation will destroy copyleft.
Please refrain from comments like “What radishes they are!” Or “Now I'm definitely for the pirates!”.

You ask, what methods of struggle do we have? Democracy in Russia (now deceased), GNU / Linux, Firefox, Wikipedia, Jamendo, Creative Commons licenses, advanced Google search, our tenacity and the will of authors who do not like standard copyright! And torrents.ru (I am outraged by the termination of domain delegation and sympathize with the resource), classical piracy and infuriating copyright holders are not methods, they only provoke a mutual escalation of the conflict.

Note:
Knowledge, as you know, is power. Armed with knowledge - you can reasonably defend torrents.ru to fight against the illegal requirements of "copywriters". While we will think that copyright (% username%, you have not forgotten that under the law your posts on Habré are automatically protected by copyright, whether you want it or not) or the implementation of copyright does not concern us, they will try to mislead and impose illegal restrictions like copyright on news facts.

^{The paragraph was general in nature and did not apply to the persons mentioned in this article.} This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license .



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