The authors of the 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 “ copyright expiration ” are the same) was devoted to the analysis of an article in “Kommersant” - “water”, which does not interest me. I am interested in the essence of the issue without the opinions of intermediary journalists. I turned to the source, to the original reply letter. My article is about ideas for putting into practice the January initiatives .}

Today, the topic is important for all of us, for all ordinary people. This time, instead of the more distant Deep Purple, we have declared the enemies of copyright holders of Wikipedia, all licenses like the GNU GPL and CC (%% username, if you like OO.o and Firefox, Mikhalkov has already written you into pirates! =)) And other criminals, hiding behind the "modernization" and counterfeit concept of "copyleft". Under the distribution got even the director of the Russian State Library. All these terrible people want to take away money from copyright holders.
However, the truth is that people who have been called pirates actually want to give money to copyright holders. This article is about how this could be implemented in practice and how everyone would benefit from it.

On March 4, an article was published on the website of the newspaper Kommersant (also in Kompyulent and Lente.ru , with comments on specletter.com and the Voice of Russia ) about the angry letter of the leaders of creative unions dissatisfied with completely harmless and logical initiatives that in early January were proposed in 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, like a ban on photographing Red Square (Medvedev called it stupid). The text of the letter, the authors of which were almost declared pirates, can be found on the webpublishers.ru website.
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Outraged Nikita Mikhalkov, Konstantin Ernst, Karen Shakhnazarov, Chairman of the Moscow Union of Journalists and Editor-in-Chief of the Moscow Komsomol Member Pavel Gusev , head of the Writers' Union 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 the proposals will have devastating consequences in science, culture, television "and" the result may be the unrestricted possibility of commercial use of someone else's intellectual property . "

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 RAO creative people. This is not true! The one who told it to them - just told a lie. It was suggested not to take money, but to give money! I can not believe that the text of the letter was compiled by a person who read webpublishers.ru - it is absolutely clear that none of the 11 signatories read the letter that they are all so outraged at all. Surely, someone else wrote this letter, because the degree of its inadequacy just goes off scale.

Also, the letter concluded that it was inadmissible to adopt ALL 8 amendments on the basis of the harm 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 declared anti-popular today. Particularly interesting 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) to give libraries the right to digitize their publications

It's true. Such a proposal is described in paragraph 6 of the letter webpublishers.ru . I personally do not see and can not provide a reason for which this may threaten the authors.

After all, now in libraries you can make photocopies of the pages of books, you can make photos of the book yourself. In the end, libraries can give out books in their hands and the reader can do anything with a book. This is an existing practice for decades (and centuries?). What essentially changes the digitization? Why so afraid of the word? I do not understand where this fear came from in this particular case. "Digitization" physically kill the writer? And the issuance of books at home kills? Modern optical recognition technology allows each person to get a digital copy of any book in 10 minutes. I mean not just a photo of the text, but the creation of text that is available for editing. Already, there is no difference whether the text is available in digitized form or not. It is possible to exaggerate a little and say that by giving out a book in their hands, libraries already actually issue a digital copy.

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

I have not found anything in the original. No one was going to force libraries to upload books to the Internet or local networks.

It seems to me that it’s about the fact that the library reader should have a choice - a book or a flash drive with the text of the book, which must then be returned.
And this is not necessary fear. There is nothing new here! As I wrote above, from any book you can extract machine-readable text in 10 minutes, but not to prohibit the issuance of books to your home!
In my opinion, it’s about the same scheme by which you could rent movies. Nobody gives home TVs with a wired film; DVDs and VHS carriers are temporarily issued to the house.

3) it is proposed to carry out the compulsory transfer into the public domain of all scientific, literary, musical, cinematographic and other author's 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. In the second paragraph of the letter with webpublishers.ru it is said - " To organize a fair and consistent redemption of rights to all works in Russian included in the secondary school course ", in the third - " Consider the possibility of redemption and subsequent transfer to the public domain of other works of literature and cinema, created during the Soviet period with state support . "
For all this, there is no need to change the law at all. In fact, this is not necessarily government intervention. The ransom of rights could be carried out by any businessman, and the community of readers, which is able to collect the required amount of money (we throw off the world at $ 5 for Wikipedia).

For example, this could be implemented as follows.

The novel “The Master and Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov was first published in 1966-67 and its copyright expires only on January 1, 2037, despite the fact that Bulgakov himself died in 1940. Until 2037, the novel “The Master and Margarita” is fully protected by copyright and it is forbidden to copy it as well as a fresh Hollywood film, and you can be prosecuted for piracy. Will distribution of counterfeit copies of Bulgakov’s works be followed by users of torrent trackers? Generally speaking, they seem to be supposed to, but this is nonsense, however, the law is the law. "Masters and Margarita" is forbidden to copy at least until 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 all this if the term of protection of copyright will not be extended again. But the law is the law! No disturbances!

However, it is possible to calculate how much money Bulgakov’s successors-owners receive each year (for example, 10 Amero =)) and the remaining number of years until the moment when Master and Margarita will inevitably go into public domain (for example, 50 years) and offer a double amount money (for example, 2 x 50 x 10 = 1000 Amero) immediately in exchange for the waiver of property (= "Non-exclusive") copyrights ( non-property rights are not going to be taken away, and it is impossible to take away Bulgakov's right to always be mentioned as the author, " the right to the name "dei tvuet forever) to "Master and Margarita" and the transfer of the novel in the public domain . Naturally, Bulgakov’s heirs may not agree - in an open letter there was no talk of forcible taking of property. Therefore, there can be no talk about robbing authors as it is stated in the response letter. In addition, owners and more money will receive! Perhaps even as much as they would not have received through annual deductions for a lifetime!

Therefore, I do not understand how the proposals of the authors of the letter with webpublishers.ru will have devastating consequences.
Therefore, I do not understand what kind of illegal and unrestricted possibility of commercial use of the results of intellectual activity is mentioned in the letter.

Now a general comment on 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 employees of the Russian federal bodies should be in the public domain. A hypothetical future law naturally should not have retroactive effect, i.e. for Soviet works only voluntary redemption and no violence.

Let me give you an example from the United States, where a work created by an employee of the US Federal Government (of course with taxpayers' money) is not protected by copyright . For example, the NASA organization (part of the Federal Government), which launches Space Shuttles into space and works for taxpayers' money, cannot copyright any photos taken by astronauts on the ISS, photos taken on Mars or the Moon, nor pictures of the Earth’s surface, nor texts, no videos, so that US citizens have free access to what has been done with their own money! Another example, the CIA publishes a handbook every year that is also not copyrighted and is immediately in the public domain. Also with the state radio station "Voice of America", all materials of which are not protected by copyright. And of course, the website of the US President cannot be protected by copyright either.

And what about Russia? Can you do the same thing in the US? Pictures of the moon 40 years ago are forbidden! Fresh pictures from the ISS from Maxim Suraev are forbidden! Freely copy materials from the site of the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation is prohibited!
This could be understood if Roskosmos and the Government of the Russian Federation were private commercial companies. But after all, these are government agencies that work for taxpayers' money! Why does an organization working for our money copyright protect the results of our work from us, from taxpayers? Moreover, many people still explain this by the fact that we must move towards Western norms of respect for copyright!

What did all this lead to? Right! We naturally study history based on American materials, because in Russia the national wealth, the wealth of the public is so well protected that even the public itself is not available! I really do not know what we would do without the Americans.

PS:
I am against piracy (in its classical definition, that is, in stupid copying without changes, stamping discs in the Moscow region and selling them on the market with the permission of the police ).
I believe that the Law must be respected and that pirates (it’s not about so-called pirate parties, which, on the contrary, oppose hanging this label to the full population of the country) violate copyright.
Exactly because the Laws must act and be strictly observed, I believe that if the law is bad, then you should not use the optional implementation of it, but change the law, and as long as the old but bad law is in effect, it is as much as possible to comply with it.
It is impossible to cancel the 70-year term of copyright protection - we will be realistic, but you can not return under copyright what was already in the public domain (for example, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and Master and Margarita - they would remain in the USA in the USA).
I remind you that organizations such as the Creative Commons or the Free Software Foundation are not in favor of piracy, but in strict adherence to copyright. Wikipedia content, Linux and Firefox, contrary to common misconceptions, are protected by copyright (but differently).
I also remind those who may not yet know that “fighting for copyleft against copyright” is impossible, since copyleft is based on respect for copyright and its potential cancellation will destroy copyleft.
Please refrain from comments such as “What a radish they are!” Or “Now I’m definitely in favor of 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 persistence and the will of authors who do not like the standard copyright! And torrents.ru (I am outraged by the termination of domain delegation and sympathize with the resource), classic piracy and rabies holders are not methods, they only provoke mutual escalation of the conflict.

Note:
Knowledge, as we know, is power. Armed with knowledge - you can defend torrents.ru with arguments to fight the illegal demands of "copywriting." As long as we think that copyrights (%% username%, you have not forgotten that by law your posts on Habré are automatically protected by copyright, whether you like it or not) or the exercise of copyright doesn’t concern us, they will try to mislead and impose illegal restrictions like copyright on news facts.

^{The paragraph was of a general nature and does not apply to the persons referred to in this article.}


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