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Jake Van Der Kamp

Filbustering has detracted from the goal of putting our city on a par with international standards, notwithstanding the consensus that due copyright protection is the cornerstone of innovation and creativity for any economy.
Letters to the editor, January 26

The other day I went to see the latest Star Wars movie, and emerged from the cinema amazed. Here was that rare thing, a work of art without a single original idea to call its own.
Don’t get me wrong. I like seeing good movies again and I have always rated the original Star Wars highly. The remake had the additional benefit of 40 years of improvement in movie-making technology.
But creativity? Innovation? Sorry, the score on that count is nil, zip, zero, which is odd when you consider that it was a Disney production and Disney is one of the world’s loudest voices clamouring for copyright protection to promote innovation and creativity. The US Congress has even rewritten its copyright rules at Disney’s behest.
Consider also the one-time giant of the software industry, Microsoft. I think of it as a one client law firm with an exclusive focus on copyright law, vigilantly guarding its patch against anyone who would jump over its fence.
Yet I do not recall ever coming across an original piece of Microsoft software. Microsoft DOS, for instance, was something I recognised on first use as a program called CP/M and Windows was the brainchild of the Xerox Corporation’s research arm.
Then think of that musical genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose works were exhaustively pirated, sometimes reappearing on the street within a few days, marked “New and Improved.” Yet he went on to ever more masterpieces, composing his haunting Requiem mass on his deathbed.
It simply is not true that copyright protection is the cornerstone of innovation and creativity. Only rarely are people inspired to creative work by the prospect of financial reward. This is not the way the brain works.
Nor is it really the artists who are rewarded. Mostly they are bought out at an early stage or signed to salary contracts from the beginning. The corporate interests that bought them out then go on to make the truly big money from their work.
In fact copyright law and its associated patent law do as much to hinder as to promote creativity. The United States in particular is plagued by gangs of lawyers who pick up widely defined intellectual property rights and then squat on them to extort large sums from anyone whom they can threaten with IP breach.
Occasionally they are called out when their claims are too wide or too thinly based but it is a rare and costly process. Only recently, for instance, was Warner Music’s preposterous copyright claim to the nineteenth century song, Happy Birthday, thrown out of court. It took a big courtroom battle to do it.
But the nemesis of the corporate chokehold on intellectual property is growing by the day. The web will not be restricted. Every time the lawyer gangs think they have their victim tightly bound, three more spring out behind them. The world is moving towards a more open view of copyright.
We in Hong Kong, however, are still afflicted by the strangler’s grip. At the behest of various opaque but purportedly official international interests, we are further tightening our copyright laws. And when the latest amendment has been passed, another even tighter one is waiting in the wings.
Let’s remember that these copyright proposals never came from the people of Hong Kong but from grasping foreign interests, mostly European and American, who sap the energy of creative expression elsewhere in the world by claiming full rights to ideas with a much wider origin.
The new copyright provisions will be widely defied if they are enacted. A government that cannot even enforce parking regulations will never stop their breach and adopting them can only have the effect of weakening the rule of law.
Fortunately, our Legislative Council will not play along. I accept that its reasons likely have to do with a wider political game, but why look a gift horse in the teeth? The filibuster keeps the copyright chokehold at bay.
And I applaud.


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Jake's View

Reasons to applaud filibuster of ‘chokehold’ copyright bill

A photo illustration showing a man browsing DVDs for sale on Taobao. 07SEP12

Copyright law and its associated patent law do as much to hinder as to promote creativity.

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Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


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Jake's View | Reasons to applaud filibuster of ‘chokehold’ copyright bill