Comments on: [avignon] President Sarkozy

By: HADOPI Wants To Research File Downloads: Shouldn’t It Have Done That First? « waweru.net

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:31:27 +0000

[...] is presumably a consequence of Nicolas Sarkozy's announcement at the recent Forum d'Avignon that "we have to tackle the streaming web sites." It's certainly welcome that HADOPI is doing some research before it draws up its proposals in this [...]

By: Sarkozy Worried About The Internet ‘Stealing Audience Share’ From ‘Regulated’ TV Services « waweru.net

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 07:38:18 +0000

[...] His speech was a classic compilation of his greatest hits in this respect, as captured in the impressive live-blogging of the English translation by David Weinberger. Early on, Sarkozy states one of his chief concerns about culture in the age of the Internet: all [...]

By: Sarkozy Worried About The Internet ‘Stealing Audience Share’ From ‘Regulated’ TV Services | Greediocracy

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 03:50:33 +0000

[...] Of course, Kroes was not the only speaker there. Another participant was the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who used the occasion to present his by-now familiar tirade against the “lawless” Internet and its dire effects on creativity. His speech was a classic compilation of his greatest hits in this respect, as captured in the impressive live-blogging of the English translation by David Weinberger. [...]

By: Frank Wilhoit

Frank Wilhoit — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:32:02 +0000

“I have always believed that there would be no form of creation if there were no longer to be respect for upholding and respect for copyright and author’s rights. ”

This is of course utterly and diametrically wrong. Creativity is an emotional compulsion — really, a form of benign insanity — and is completely inelastic to economic conditions. The proof is that the concept of intellectual property — especially, of its codification into law — is a very recent development compared with the known history of human creativity (the unknown history extends back further still).

As M. Sarkozy presents himself as a student of French culture, I would like to ask him what legal protections were enjoyed by Marcabru, or by Machaut, Josquin, Lully, Rameau, Berlioz, or any of their contemporaries prior to the emergence of IP law in the 19th century?

Rather, in my view, a creativity-friendly environment depends upon an extremely robust concept of the public domain. If anything has changed in the past generation or two, it is the creeping enclosure of the public domain, to the point where some observers believe that under the present legal regime, nothing will ever enter the public domain again: it already contains everything it will ever contain. Can that stand?