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I'll have some respect for copyright when the terms aren't life of the author plus 75 years. That's ridiculous. If someone makes a work today, I'll have been dead 50 odd years before it's in the public domain - assuming, a big assumption, that the shill maximalists don't get the terms extended even more towards perpetuity.

Current terms are also theft: they are the theft of things that could have been. If terms were 20 years then at that mark new works could be created by anyone who would wish and their work would then get 20 years. You want to see an explosion of culture? Look at that right there. Creative works that take ideas in ways the original author couldn't conceive of or didn't think was worth the money. 20 year term: and I will never infringe again, unjust terms bring all of copyright into contempt.

For a free (pdf download) of a book which explains the issue in detail, see: The Public Domain.

Copyright has no clothes is how the saying goes.

Perpetual copyright - and make no mistake it is that by extension after extension - robs our culture of rich works that never were. If copyright was a sane term like 20 years then after those 20 years new authors could tell new stories in those universes and receive their own 20 year copyright on their flavors. But, no, better to let the tapestry rot away for a few pennies more a year.

Get a free book on the issues here: The Public Domain.

Correlation does not prove causation, but interesting paper none-the-less reading the summary: "Copyright and Creativity -- Evidence from Italian Operas"
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa...

But even if it was true, should most of humanity be denied access to most of human knowledge via the internet that could otherwise be available right now (like via Google Books) so we might get a few more operas and other such thing?

Beside, current research (even by the US Federal Reserve) shows reward is not motivator for creative works (or sometimes even has a negative correlation of causing artists to just rehash more of the same old thing). Lot of studies are cited in these works by Alfie Kohn and Dan Pink to support my point:
"Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books...
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Also: "Studies Find Reward Often No Motivator: Creativity and intrinsic interest diminish if task is done for gain"
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

A better answer to the issue of people having enough time to do quality work (including learning to do it) is to have a "basic income" for everyone (so, for example, monthly Social Security payments in the USA from birth, not just for those 65 and older).
http://www.basicincome.org/bie...

There are plenty of reasons copyrights stifle creativity these days, because artists can't easily remix.
https://gigaom.com/2011/12/12/...

Most, as in 99%+ (my guess), of artistic people are only held back by copyright, because very, very few people can make a living at licensing creative works as authors or composers or whatever, but they instead generally have to pay for access to contemporary novels and music and such. Some of that is discussed here:
http://www.thepublicdomain.org...

The old saying "The Emperor has no clothes" applies here. Copyright law is a distorted abomination. The terms of copyright are outrageous, a work created today will not enter the public domain in my lifetime because the length of protection is so corrupted. Since I will die before Alien (1979) enters the public domain then that means copyright is effectively unlimited. "Expiry" is a lie. Sane copyright law would see works enter the public domain after a reasonable amount of time such as 14 (original term) to 20 years (what would be acceptable). Not only would those works then be able to be freely shared but also new works, with new sane protection terms, would be able to be created in those universes. A new Alien movie which does not need the blessing of the old creators. 20 years is long enough, long enough for Terminator 2 to now be public domain and Skynet to be a free literary construct. When it comes to copyright laws another saying applies "unjust laws serve to bring all laws into contempt." A primer on the subject can be found here as a freely downloadable PDF: The Public Domain.

Yes and no. A starving artist who makes nothing from his work should continue to receive his small royalty, if he gets any; a project that hasn't earned back its costs should have copyright extended for a *long* time--maybe 40 years or the lifetime of the artist, whichever is longer. But a project that has made its producers hundreds of millions should enter the public domain within five to ten years. There is no justification for copyright beyond that term when a project has been enormously successful.

The old saying "The Emperor has no clothes" applies here. Copyright law is a distorted abomination. The terms of copyright are outrageous, a work created today will not enter the public domain in my lifetime because the length of protection is so corrupted. Since I will die before Alien (1979) enters the public domain then that means copyright is effectively unlimited. "Expiry" is a lie. Sane copyright law would see works enter the public domain after a reasonable amount of time such as 14 (original term) to 20 years (what would be acceptable). Not only would those works then be able to be freely shared but also new works, with new sane protection terms, would be able to be created in those universes. A new Alien movie which does not need the blessing of the old creators. 20 years is long enough, long enough for Terminator 2 to now be public domain and Skynet to be a free literary construct. When it comes to copyright laws another saying applies "unjust laws serve to bring all laws into contempt." A primer on the subject can be found here as a freely downloadable PDF: The Public Domain.

The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
By James Boyle

Available for download under the CC by-nc-sa 3.0 at

http://thepublicdomain.org/

Indeed. As a curious fact, when US copyright was 28+28 years (until 1976) only 15 percent of the rights holders went for the 28 years extension. [1]

Richard Stallman has proposed that we used tax money to support arts. This way artists would get paid and not some uncreative fat cat execs. Also he suggests that funds be distributed e.g. using the cube-root of artist's popularity so we can have a wide base instead of a handful of super stars. [2]

[1] http://thepublicdomain.org/the... page 9
[2] http://shop.fsf.org/product/fr... page 125

I'd like to propose a little civil disobedience. Copyright terms are insane and have been continually extended by copyright maximalists for years now. I think sane copyright terms are 20 years for everything but software and 10 years for software as it changes so fast.

I will separate my downloads out into two categories: older than the above terms and younger than those terms. If I ever have the misfortune to be dragged into court over my downloads the older ones I will plead no contest to with a submission that I am not accepting Hollywood's forever copyright, and anything newer than those terms I will have to plead guilty of copyright infringement for.

20 years is long enough for copyright - maximalists are holding our culture hostage by pushing for anything longer.

The Public Domain

If you are short of some good Christmas reading, you could do a lot worse than James Boyle's excellent book, "The Public Domain." It looks at a number of similar issues, critiquing the rise in the enclosure of the public domain, with the call to arms that, without defenders actively arguing in favour of the public domain, it will be gradually eroded by the proprietary claims of third parties, since it has no voice, nor lobbying power, of its own.

He has made it available in PDF under (CC) BY-NC-SA 3.0, so you can "try before you buy" or else not buy it if you do not want to but, in my opinion, it's worth every penny. (Although I feel rather stupid having a hard copy sitting untouched on my shelf, just so James and his publishers receive money, when the electronic copy was worth far more to me!)

David Bollier's "Public Assets, Private Profits" (sorry - Google link) is definitely worth reading, too, for those who care about the preservation of the commons.

Thanks. From that PDF file: "As Png (2006) notes, there is a lack of empirical work on copyright generally. Existing estimates of optimal term are very sparse. Boldrin and Levine (2005) calibrate a macro-oriented model and derive a figure of 7 years for optimal term in the United States. (Akerlof et al., 2002) in an examination of the US Copyright Term Extension Act argue, simply on the basis of the discount rate, that a term of life plus seventy years
must be too long. By contrast, Liebowitz and Margolis (2005), argue that the current US term of life plus
70 years might not be too long â" though they too do not provide an explicit model."

This is the reference at the end of the paper: "Michele Boldrin and David Levine. IP and market size. Levineâ(TM)s Working Paper Archive 618897000000000836, UCLA Department of Economics, July 2005."

Boldrin's site, with a link there to the PDF file:
    http://www.micheleboldrin.com/research/innovation.html
    http://www.micheleboldrin.com/Papers/scalenew.pdf
"Intellectual property (IP) protection involves a trade-off between the undesirability of monopoly and the desirable encouragement of creation and innovation. Optimal policy depends on the quantitative strength of these two forces. We give a quantitative assessment of IP policy. We focus particularly on the scale of the market, showing that as it increases, due either to growth, or to the expansion of trade throughmtreaties, IP protection should be reduced."

  I could wonder if something like that is mentioned in here, too?
    http://www.thepublicdomain.org/

There are mentions there about the high cost to future creativity of extensive copyrights, because pretty much everything people create builds on previous works.

See also my other note in this thread referencing the biggest flaw in all this economic reasoning, that science shows creativity diminishes if work is done for gain
    "RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
   

http://james-boyle.com/ http://www.thepublicdomain.org/
"Chapter 7: The Enclosure of Science and Technology: Two Case Studies"
http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/162
"Think of the reaction of the synthetic biologists at MIT. They feared that the basic building blocks of their new discipline could be locked up, slowing the progress of science and research by inserting intellectual property rights at the wrong point in the research cycle. To solve the problem they were led seriously to consider claiming copyright over the products of synthetic biology -- to fight overly broad patent rights with a privately constructed copyright commons, to ride the process of legal expansion and turn it to their own ends. As I pointed out earlier, I think the tactic would not fare well in this particular case. But it is an example of a new move in the debate over intellectual property, a new tactic: the attempt to create a privately constructed commons where the public domain created by the state does not give you the freedom that you believe creativity needs in order to thrive. It is to that tactic, and the distributed creativity that it enables, that I will turn to now."

Rather than hurting "anyone" is actually hurts "everyone". This is just another case of what's called the "tragedy of the commons". Each person who pirates a game benefits himself or herself, but if enough people do this it's no longer tenable to make games and no one has a game to play, for free or otherwise.

Be extremely cautious when comparing information to physical property. James Boyle have written a nice book about the trap you are falling into:
http://www.thepublicdomain.org/

Instead of thinking in terms of black and white, we really need to focus on the real issue: How much legal protection is needed?

I think we can all agree that "life + 75 years" (depending on country) is vastly more protection that a computer game needs. In my opinion, this excessive protection can only lead to stagnation.

We need to create a sensible copyright law first, then people will respect it. And only then can it be successfully enforced.

There are many such works already, for example: The Public Domain, which is a free book that details exactly why Copyright is broken and how you are getting screwed. Enclosing the commons of the mind indeed.

If there was mutual trust between customers and copyright holders this situation wouldn't exist. People are stealing because they know intuitively in their gut that they are being ripped off, see: The Public Domain. And copyright holders are failing to meet the needs of their customers - nobody wants digital restrictions yet they insist to maximize that little thing called profit. It will come back to bite them in the ass, it already has.

That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. We know in our gut we're being ripped of? Have you ever run a company with thousands of employees? Do you know the requirements to run a company and the costs associated in keeping it afloat when you are producing a product or service. Heaven forbid that a company makes a profit right? Forget that public companies have an obligation to their shareholders. No we should sell music to jackasses like you for 10 cents. Guess what you would still refuse to buy it and you'd still download movies from your local usenet group because you're nothing but a thief.

If there was mutual trust between customers and copyright holders this situation wouldn't exist. People are stealing because they know intuitively in their gut that they are being ripped off, see: The Public Domain. And copyright holders are failing to meet the needs of their customers - nobody wants digital restrictions yet they insist to maximize that little thing called profit. It will come back to bite them in the ass, it already has.

I'd just like to do a quick summary of my position, to avoid wasting time contesting points that we both agree on.

I think your intentions are admirable, but your methods aren't sound. Big Media needs to pay, but we need to make them pay by the book. Boycotting has the same effect as piracy (sorry to harp on about it), plus it shows dedication to the cause, the kind of dedication that wins sympathy from other people, including the courts. Piracy just generates disdain.

Also, copyright needs to be fixed, but a few things need to happen first. Firstly, people need to start respecting copyrights more (otherwise, courts will inevitably side with copyright holders). Secondly, we need to fix our legal system, from which much of the corruption of copyright spread. As an analogy, it's no use lopping off the infected arm, when the disease is spreading from the chest.

Thirdly, copyright is broken, but not that broken. Artists can still create, and people still have reasonable access to their culture. When I say "fix copyright", I mean we should tune it so it runs optimally, and make sure it's not forced even further out of alignment by corporate interests.

That's pretty much it.

Since you've proven that the issues are systemic I'd like to focus mainly on your summary but I may draw from the rest of our comments when scoring a point.

To promote a mutual understanding I'd like to link to this: book. It outlines the issues in an entertaining, engaging, and understandable manner. It's a legal and free download from that page. Please promote it when appropriate. I'm still reading it so I may not be able to argue from a balanced position of facts on the topic yet. From what I've read so far I do believe this singular book carries the right tune.

Boycotting is a social phenomenon. With the Internet we have the ability to press our issues more than ever before. What is needed to enable this is a common glue to connect people into a cohesive whole. I believe that the only thing that can connect people is truth. To arrive at that you need virtue, you need to be noble to the point that you cannot be questioned. Debating is the method to arrive at truth. All parties need to be honest and tear down their prejudice where it is proved to exist. You are right. Boycotting is the way to do it, pirating is not. However, boycotting needs to be whipped into shape as an effective tool otherwise it is also not the way to do it.

Read this whole thread. When it comes to fixing the legal system I am promoting harnessing social networks as vehicles of debate. This debate would provide much needed and refined opinion to our policy makers to consider when they are making decisions. We have a golden opportunity here but it will be what we make it. By the way I'd still editing that: post. Right now I'm working on how truth moves through the tree-structure and I hope to make a reply at the Facebook feedback forum soon with it.

Thank you. Please continue with anything I've missed or press any points that are relevant as well. You've made my morning and I now look forward to coming back to this thread again.

Please see this: Thread for some suitable outrage yay! But also, please see this: Book (its a free download) for facts.

There is a book called, The Public Domain written by a professor of law from the Duke Law School. You can download an electronic version legally and for free from that link. It outlines the conflicts facing areas of creativity like the arts and sciences and explains the history of how it came to be so enclosed. It also does not pull any punches, it supports industry where deserved and advocates Citizen interests where right. It certainly is a lot better than my rants and raves when I scream: I Want My Public Domain ! Although he has more reasons to be tactful than I. Inform yourself, read the free book. I am and once I'm done I'm going to go read some Pirate Party propaganda to see if it is compatible with the good professor.

As a lawyer working in the area, I highly recommend Boyle's book, 'The Public Domain' - available under a Creative Commons licence, as well as in dead-tree format.

A fascinating (and easy to read) discussion about the concept of 'the public domain', which is well worth reading for anyone who cares about the future of technological development / societal impact of overbearing IP regulation etc.

Then throw this at them.... http://www.thepublicdomain.org/ That might wake'em up. Scott

The DMCA makes it illegal to bypass any copyright protection measures, and does not state that it's ok to bypass such measures after 50, 70 or 100 years.

Actually, the DMCA does not make it illegal to bypass technological protection measures on works NOT protected under Title 17.

Sorry to disappoint, but take a look at what James Boyle, an expert in intellectual property law, says on the subject in His Book It's true- the DMCA makes old copyright law, and the span of years, largely irrelevant.