MRO posting on IP and copyright, copyleft
I commented on:
Copybot comes to the Music Industry
as follows:
Thanks Prokofy for standing up (over a period of years now) for intellectual property rights. IP protection is the backbone of our economic system which keeps people fed, housed, etc. etc.
Just look at the results:
* Second Life ™ has become the most rapidly adopted and most profitable virtual world ever, creating income for thousands of residents and developer businesses. How? By creating a business based on IP protection and a closed, subscription based (hosting) model.
* iTunes has risen to become the #2 music retailer within 7 years. How? By creating a business based on IP protection inside a closed, limited use system.
* World of Warcraft has become by far the #1 MMOG, surpassing uncountable thousands of “free to play” games with essentially equivalent graphics and gameplay. How? It’s based on a closed, subscription model.
* Kindle is rapidly becoming the first successful ebook reader, with those ebooks now accounting for 6% (!) of Amazon’s book sales. How? With sales of IP protected digital books in a closed system.
Meanwhile the major music labels suffer year after year of declining sales of CD’s - disks of digital files lacking any copy protection whatsoever.
Meanwhile, the YouTube “stunt” remains the repository of all things infringed. It’s still under fire by Viacom – likely on the hook for over $1 billion USD to Viacom alone for “brazenly exploiting the infringing potential of digital technology”. Everybody knows what they did, it’s not even debatable.
Second Life ™ is one of the rare few places online where your IP can be created and reasonably protected. It’s a place where you can finally escape the awful plague of mindless and manipulative corporate content.
Isn’t that a good thing? Or is their some perverse power trip in the “rippers” and copylefters for some reason needing to threaten to drown everyone with “all the music from 1950″. Puh-leeze people, leave it alone!
No matter what they go on about, reality check: code is not law - law is law.
The real IP laws protect real writers, painters, and musicians and yes, even coders. The same laws protect you in the event of theft, even when the door can’t be locked.
Filed under: MR O SHOW
