Thanks for this, I heartily agree this is a good read.

As a summary for those that haven't read it, the majority of the essay discusses the theoretical/moral/philosophical justification for copyright, and I think it does a good job of getting down on paper (so to speak) the core ideals that drive the Pirate Party movement. It is perhaps a little more long-winded than necessary, but I think it's well worth the time.

The last part of the essay deals with suggestions for putting these ideals into practice. I like seeing some ideas here that match my own. That said, this feels like the weakest part of the essay because it tends to shy away from concrete assertions, although this might be forgiven because, as it seems to suggest, we can't be absolutely sure how things will work until we try.

This is due to a fundamental design flaw in current operating systems, where the monolithic kernal or microkernal requires frequent updates rather than going with a modern exokernal core.
I have a cloud exokernal OS project called CHAOS, which is currently designed to get around the need for code retargeting just to update commands and functions, in fact it will only require a Java base, like Android, to host the core and then load from dynamically updated files. In essence, the platform does very few things very well, and leaves all the rest to the external system.
This is not new technology, unless you are a system engineer, in which case, 1990 doesn't have to be the source of the most advanced technology anymore.

I'm aware of this--that digitising books is doable--I just wonder why we should have to bother with the unnecessary work (I guess it's not a huge issue though).

When mainstream operating systems address this issue, and previous legacy code is no longer required, this may be fine, but in the meantime I think this is still a serious issue.

Well, Linux has a monolithic kernel, OS X has a micro kernel and Windows is completely fubar in it's kernel.
OS X is basically the best so far, with late 80's technology at the core. Linux is based on early 80's core design.

By comparision, exokernel designs have only been around for a decade or so, and allow for system function updates outside the core.
This allows for system updates to happen without restarts, without having to recode applications to take advantage of new functions.

In theory, Linux could fork over to an exokernel design easily (within a year), as there is enough academic examples to draw from.
OS X would take longer, possibly selling it as OS XI, as they would have to transfer the GUI links to the new exocore.

For this project and a few others, I would be happy to disclose the source. For some others, I am not going to disclose source code.
This is due a issue of why should I research and invest money in new programs, if I have to allow other people to piggyback on my work without contributing to my effort at all?
Ultimately, I am happy with a 5 year commercial copyright term and any academic credit arising from my research.
What I can't afford is to have to stay on a minimum wage job just because every talentless script kiddie gets my code automatically.

Lastly, I have a computational chemistry program which I am doing for my own research.
If source disclosure is the legal requirement for copyright grants, then I have to share the code to a purely private research project.
This would mean my personal research in the field would be up for grabs by any university or company which wants the information without my compensation.
I believe that I should be in the loop when my research is used, although it seems I may have to discuss this with victoria university soon.

Much of the value of a computer program is in its source code. I think copyright is only justified on the basis of encouraging contribution to learning/progress/etc. And without the source code, we miss out on much of this, so why should copyright be granted? I'd be okay with a longer copyright term if the source code is disclosed, but I don't see any point in giving any copyright without the source code. It seems to me that requiring disclosure of source code would essentially put programmers in much the same position as authors as far as copyright protection goes, i.e. authors essentially disclose the source code of their writing in every copy, but are still able to make a living.

I don't think it would be wrong for people to piggyback on your work once the copyright expires. In fact I think this is precisely what copyright was originally intended for--encouraging contribution to progress. And until the copyright expires, your work is covered by copyright.

I am fine with people learning from my work once copyright expires, I would prefer that to be 5 years. I disagree with the suggestion that this should be in force for 10 years, as stated in the policy wiki.
From my family's video production company, we have found it's not worth the cost, effort or space keeping master records beyond 5 years as nobody bothers with requests for copies after then.
We have found this to be the case since the company was started in 1990, so it is safe to assume this holds true for commercial copyright regardless of the medium.

I have not been contacted by the university about their progress on my idea, which I find suspect given that I have a 3 year headstart on research in this field and more efficient algorithms.
I find it interesting that they require 3 PHd students to work on an information theory problem which I began solving with first year maths.
I believe that computing the project can be done efficiently on the obsolete computers I have, rather than let a committee design a program for a top 500 supercomputer
(@ least if the algorithms are elegant and efficient).
What I don't believe is that my personal research should be used without any academic credit being attributed at all.
If I at least had academic credit for research that has contributed to 3 victoria uni student's PHd.s then I would be happy to share my personal research,
and leave my source code for my personal program to run on the machines I own.

I don't believe I have to disclose code I developed for my personal use, at my personal expense, in my free time, for my machines, against my will.

In conclusion, I believe that there is a strong case (which I can clearly see as a moral right to academic credit for your ideas, rather than allowing plagiarism) for the retention of automatic copyright, for a term of 5 years.
I think that requiring people to disclose source code to gain copyright can be viewed as like requiring email to be unencrypted to be officially recognised,
or requiring all legal correspondence to be written on postcards.

P.S this is not the first time I've had issues with people plagiarising my research. That distinction goes to netlogic, who claimed they would hire me to write a website image drm system.
They're probably still wondering where the security flaw is in their version, I don't really care, except I note they built an ecommerce processing site off the flawed crypto system in the spec I supplied to them.
I don't care if anyone hacks their sites, they didn't employ me or pay me, so it's entirely their responsibility to secure any design fault I didn't mention.

Sorry I've taken so long to reply...

I'd readily accept that a 5 year copyright term is sufficient incentive for your area of work, and I expect this is the case for others too (I expect this would include at least entertainment and news). On the other hand though, I think a longer copyright term might be required to provide an incentive for creating some kinds of reference works (The Oxford Companion to English Literature, for instance, might not have been written without a copyright term longer than 5 years). There's nothing in Rufus Pollock's articles (from the Policy page of the wiki) that suggest to me that he's being less than earnest in his estimation that the current economically optimal term is slightly less than 15 years. Some people have suggested differing copyright terms for different types of works; this would cut both ways though, I can imagine copyright holders trying to wrangle reclassifying their works into categories that would allow them a longer term, there may be legitimate borderline cases, and in general I'm not keen for the extra complexity. Assuming a single fixed term, I don't think the world would fall apart with a 5 year term, but I am worried that the general public is so used to massive copyright terms that many would worry that a 5 year term would trigger an economic apocalypse.

In terms of the right to attribution, I don't think this needs to be tied to the exclusive right to copy, and I don't object to this extending to current copyright terms. The PPNZ wiki (as with other Pirate Party wikis) is licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence which, AFAIK, requires that author attribution be kept intact in copies for the duration of current copyright terms, which implies that many in the Pirate movement don't object to this. I certainly don't think you should have to disclose source code in order to have a right to attribution.

For private negotiations over a work that isn't published (i.e. not generally available), I don't think this requires copyright law, and I don't see a need for requiring source disclosure in these situations.

What I'm concerned about is the likes of MS Windows / MS Office, where I am sceptical that copyright as it is provides any overall benefit. I bought new boxed copies of OS/2 Warp 4 and Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2, then Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux, then Sun StarOffice, and I didn't mind this (I now use OpenOffice). My office suite needs have been met by these works, aside from the need for compatibility with MS Office. I feel somewhat ripped off that I have had to also buy a copy of MS Office (run on GNU/Linux with CodeWeavers CrossOver), since this is not due to any intrinsic worth of the work, but simply because other people are using it. I suspect current compatibility with other office suites would be better if source disclosure had been required, so I might not have needed to use MS Office. I suspect CodeWeavers CrossOver would have better compatibility with MS Windows too, so if I still had to use MS Office, it would run a little less unsmoothly.

Further, I suspect this whole situation would not have come about in the first place without copyright law. Projects like GNU/Linux obtain developers from their user base, so the existence of proprietary OSes like MS Windows (made possible by copyright law) draws away potential developers from GNU/Linux. Further, much GNU/Linux development effort goes into working on compatibility with proprietary software, or device driver compatibility (device manufacturers write for the OS with the largest user-base, which, because of copyright law, is the proprietary MS Windows), so without copyright law, there would be less wasted GNU/Linux developer time. I suspect the need for the GPL is essentially that of avoiding proprietary forks, which would not be possible without copyright law, so that without copyright law, the GPL, which would not be possible, would not be necessary anyway. Software might have taken longer to get started without copyright law, but I'm not convinced copyright law has helped software development in the long run (aside from games).

In wanting source disclosure, I don't want to push for a law that is unworkable, or fails to provide sufficient incentive for genuine creativity, so I'm open to suggestions.

Whoops, not quite right here. I assumed this from seeing a CC logo on the Australian PP wiki too, but the PPAU wiki is actually CC BY 3.0, not CC BY-SA 3.0, and some other Pirate Parties don't reserve copyright at all.

Thinking further on this, perhaps it might be better to put a high tax (>50%) on sales of copies of copyrighted programs for which source is not disclosed; that way an incentive would remain for disclosing source later on, even if it wasn't disclosed immediately for whatever reason, but those that don't provide source would still be less well rewarded than those that do (IMHO rightly, since their contribution to progress is less).

Could this suggestion be put to the vote at the next general election? Perhaps specifically:

A high tax (perhaps ~50%) be placed on profits from sales of copyrighted software for which source code is not made available.

The reasoning being that copyright is granted for the purpose of advancing the public good by promoting progress, and even if the copyright term is shortened, closed source software will still fail to promote progress as any other kind of work would (because derived works can not be made from it), so people who publish software without making the source available contribute significantly less to progress, and therefore deserve less reward.

How about this, source doesn't have to be disclosed during the term of the commercial copyright (5 years), but then it either: is disclosed, or is subject to 80% tax.


Alternatively, it could be argued that if source disclosure is required immediately, then there is little chance for the original programmer to profit before multinational software corporations plagiarise it and sell it without any compensation to the original programmer.
Say for example, I make a better search engine than google, (wouldn't be hard to do), if I had to disclose the source immediately, then you can be sure that google, microsoft, yahoo & apple would all rip off my source and put it in their search programs overnight without compensation.
That would defeat progress, as I would not be rewarded for my contribution to innovation. Where you would get progress in terms of feature bloat in corporate software, like ms office or itunes.
You would not see independent programmers contributing their innovation for profit, we'd see a drying up of innovation in favour of bloatware, and we all might as well be using windows.