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Supreme Court Accepts Eldred Case
Patrick Fitzgerald writes: "The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to intervene in a fight over copyrights, deciding whether Congress has sided too heavily with writers and other inventors. The outcome will determine when hundreds of thousands of books, songs and movies will be freely available on the Internet or in digital libraries." Openlaw's Eldred v. Ashcroft page has more information about the case, which seeks to challenge the most recent retroactive extension of copyright terms.
Agreed. From the article at the New York Times:
Once again we see that money interests in Washinton continue to threaten our culture and freedoms. Lobbyists for publishing industries keep upping the anti on copyright duration for their own greed and pride. Meanwhile the works themselves come under threat of extinction. I hope there can be some kind of rebound effect soon.
Petitioners are various individuals and businesses that rely upon the public domain for their livelihood. Some, such as the lead plaintiff Eric Eldred, build free Internet libraries based upon public domain works; others, such as Dover Press, publish public domain works in high-quality commercial editions. All depend upon a rich public domain to support their work, and many make their work freely available to others.
Isn't this about another group of people that thinks it needs to make a profit? Sure, the current handling of copyrite is absurd, but do we want to see a case won in this way? Couldn't a case be made for the enhancememt of society as a whole -- not some company -- that would justify the taming of current copyrite practices?
I guess my question is, in the fight against bad laws, do the ends justify the means if we're to score a trule moral victory in court?
Method of processing duck feet
There's an old saying that there's nothing new under the sun. I think the publishing industry would like to repeal that notion. In fact, if the publishing industry had its way, you'd have to pay to find out that the saying existed.
Consider, if copyright is extended indefinitely, then there could never be the notion of "classic" literature, freely available in many forms. Instead, there would be controlled literature that could be served up time and time again to a paying public.
Indefinite residuals. An attractive notion.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Copyright was meant as an incentive to encourage creativity. It was not considered to be one of the "inalienable rights" that the Constitution was created to defend. The mistake that's being made today is to treat intellectual property as a natural right, which I do not believe it is.
I like having protections for my works but there are limits. Generally, unless you are a Stephen King, a book will go out of print in 5-7 years, usually less, as sales fall to a trickle. Additionly, once an author is dead, who really cares? Books are written to read, appreciated and shared. I don't care if people steal my book, as long as they read it. And read really, if no one is reading your book, or if you are dead, why not release into the public domain. Copyrights should last 25 years, no renewals. Coporate copyrights should last even last less, to spur innovation and inprovement of abandoned product s(Really, why would really want to keep the source code to CP/M in a vault for 99 years)? Just my .02
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Many scholars in the legal community have taken to referring to the Sonny Bono Act as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, reflecting the fact that every time major corporate interests in IP (such as Disney's in its early content) threaten to fall into the public domain, these interests run to Congress for another extension.
Of course, this wasn't really about bringing us in line with EU directives; it was just a convenient cover to save Mickey's ass. Hence, you can bet your bottom dollar that in twenty years, when the most recent extension runs out, the IP lobbyists will once again descend on Capital Hill.
What this case is all about is whether this is unconstitutional. Activists like Prof. Lessig and others have argued that the Copyright Clause of the Constitution is limited by the First Amendment. Because IP rights have to be granted in the name of "advancing progress", there's a real question about whether or not giving Disney another two decades of revenues advances anyone's interests but their own.
Also, because the Constitution only grants authors rights for "limited times", granting an unlimited number of extensions, (20 years, every 20 years) constitutes a grant of an unlimited right.
And I don't think anyone needs to be a lawyer to figure that one out.
It may be cold, but at least it's clear.
Fortunately most of the people perceived as right wingers are also strict constuctionists. Scalia is one of the more right wing of the justices but he's very much a strict constuctionist. If you look at what the constitution lays out for copyright protection, it sets a very clear balance between copyright owners and the public. He's probably somebody would strike down the concept of fair use without a second thought, but if you look at the literal wording of the constitution this is what it says congress has the right to do:
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and invetors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
The first part of this phrase is the key to victory. There's no evidence that the items being retroactively considered for copyright extension will have any benefit to the progess of science and useful arts. If anything they are guaranteeing that items that might otherwise be useful to that progress by being released in to the public domain are being allowed to decay beyond the possibility of recovery.
Ultimately it's going to depend on where the balance is struck by the court. Technically speaking the terms of copyright are still limited even under the Sonny Bono extension. It's just a question of how far can congress go before it's violating the first part of the clause.
My feeling is that the supreme court may rule that newly created works may have this extension applied to them, but that there should be no retro-active application. Since this law is to incent production of creative works, it's very hard to suggest this is needed to incent already created works. Such a ruling would maintain the spirit of the law, assuming that they don't believe that the term of copyright has breached the threshold of being limited.
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Oh? What about Star Wars? going on 24 years! Should that entire property have just become public domain a decade ago? It's truly disturbing to see how many people are all for limiting the ownership of creative properties when all they want is to profit from it themselves. You want profit? Then create it! Create it, pay for it or slag off! There is absolutely no reason that anyone should EVER profit off of any star wars merchandise without the permission of the copyright holders. Without them it wouldn't exist in the first place. It's your choice to pay for it, or ignore it. Taking it or forcing people to give it away is absurd.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Copyright should not depend upon the lifespan of the producer. Life +20, for instance, means the possible equal of a corporate copyright if the author is 50 or younger. What if the author is 90 and on his deathbed upon publication? That means the work only qualifies for a 20 year copyright.
Or, here is another case. Your great grandfather was a famous writer. Your parents never did anything with the property where his house was, but when you inherited it, you went up there and found a first draft, never been published, masterpiece. But it has been far more than 20 years since he died and publishers refuse to publish it because it is already public domain. Which gives you NO financial incentive to see the work published.
All works should have the same set copyright period. I'd pick 20 years (the same period patents enjoy.)
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
So correct me if I am wrong here but, if a copywrite gives a copywrite holder exclusive rights to their work then why does anyone even need 20 seconds much less 20 yeas of copyright after they are dead? are they collecting royalties in the after life? Do you need protection from copying when you are dead?
the answer is no, if your dead then you also are not doing any business and have no need to make money, the only thing that you need to do after death is to decompose so the flowers can grow thats it, anyway IANAL and i am not sure if rights transfer but it just doesn't make sense to me.
Jon
I think the core of Eldred's case should focus not on Mickey Mouse, because as Valenti said, who cares if Mikey isn't in the public domain for another 1000 years. The argument should focus on the 10,027 books published in 1930, of which only 174 are still in print. Who is being harmed by these works being put into public domain ? Certainly Disney isn't hurt, nor the owners of the copyrights, since they aren't making any money anyway. We the people, thats who, each year there are less and less readable copies of these books. If these books are not put in the public domain, we are in real danger of loosing them. Project Gutenberg certainly isn't going to spend thousands of dollars to find out who owns a copyright, just to be told, no. As Lessig pointed out, it also stifles creativity, because no derivitive works can be done. He also pointed out two instances where an author has written a piece based on an older work, spent real money to find the copyright holder and been told NO, not, I will licence it to you for X amount of money, but NO. If we allow these extensions to stand, we get Mickey Mouse, if we don't let it stand, we get to preserve a whole body work for all time and we get a whole new body of work, which will never happen otherwise. This lawsuit should really be called Humanity vs Disney.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
It's very interesting to note how the AP story spins the issue. The very first sentence:
The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to intervene in a fight over copyrights, deciding whether Congress has sided too heavily with writers and other inventors. [Emphasis mine.]
The phrase "writers and inventers" conjures up images of individuals, working alone, and immediately draws our sympathy. The fact is, that the major beneficiaries of the law are corporations, a fact that never comes out in the article. And, of course, "inventors" is completely irrelevent, since inventions are covered by patent law, not copyright.
Indeed, the article's favoring of the status quo shows up even more when they note that the Bono law brings us "in line with the EU," (those Europeans, always hip and up to date), and their characterization of the supporters of repeal as "businesses that specialize in former copyrighted material," (clearly a group that leeches off of those writers and, um, inventors.)
I don't know who'll win the war, but in the propaganda battle, Lessig et al, doesn't seem to have a chance.
I am often in disagreement with the most zealous anti-intellectual property sentiments found on this board. Perhaps because my livelyhood depends on my ability to copyright and sell the reproduction rights of my work (graphic design and illustration). Copyright and patent protections are important to protect financial interests of the creators and inventors in society. Information may "want to be free" but until food, clothing, shelter and a college education for my kids is free too I want to get paid. If you make my information "free" you will get a letter from my lawyer (I've had one company attempt to "liberate" illustrations I did even before the net. They just photocopied product illustrations I had done for their competitor & put them in their own ads.)
But, the current length of copyright protection is obnoxious - and counter-productive. 70 years past the life of the author has nothing to do with encouraging or protecting creativity and invention. It has to do with protecting the interests of estates and corporations that do nothing creative at all but live off of the efforts of some long dead ancestor. Most of the time these buzzards, in their efforts to get the last scrap of meat off the carcass basterdize and demean great works of art. How many times have you heard of an estate or corporation (usually a publisher) doing something with a work of art that must surely have the artist rolling over in his grave.
It seems to me, though, that this is more than enough time, and another 20 years benefits no one. Moreover, what copyright owner really cares about what happens to his work 50 years after he's already DEAD?
You left prolonged monetary compen$ation out of your equation.
I definitely suffer the "free is for me" mentality, but.......
First off, copyrights and other restrictions are a cornerstone of capitalism. The make it free to everyone approach is the foundation of communism, not capitalism.
The second thought, is that if I devote my life to a project and produce a great work, shouldn't I be able to enjoy the spoils and decide the future of that great work? Shouldn't I be able to go to my grave, comforted by the fact that my magnum opus will provide for my children's future?
Let's face a little fact that we keep forgetting. Rarely, if ever, is a great work supressed or lost. Most often the works *ARE* available to any and everyone. But, you *do* have to pay for it. If it's not worth it to you, then perhaps it is not such a great work. Even the touted "research" that gets bandied about so often *is* available. But, alas you do have to pay Bayer or Pfizer millions to license it.
This is capitalism at its finest. Accept no substitute as you may be the one that is disappointed.
From what I heard before the Bono Extension passed, there were miles of historically significant film rotting away in vaults and basements. There were also archivists eager to get their hands on that footage, so that they could preserve at least some of it before it deteriorated entirely.
The Bono Copyright Extension passed, and it's quite likely that now those pieces of history will be gone, forever. But I guess that's OK, because Steamboat Willie will be safe in Disney's vaults.
I agree that this has to be interpreted along the lines of the original Constitutional Framers' thoughts, and that line appeals more to the conservative sides of the bench.
After all, if the mere ability to make money sufficed as a Constitutional argument, self-employed prostitutes should take their cases to the Supreme Court.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Should a washed-up forty year old basketball player receive the same salary as a twenty year old superstar? Like anything, talent and skill are transient, and the smart person knows to invest for the lean years. Remember, the intent of the copyright clause of the constitution is to provide incentive for people to be creative, and IMO, near-eternal copyrights don't provide much incentive to creativity.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
>
>All works should have the same set copyright period. I'd pick 20 years (the same period patents enjoy.)
(Side note - I agree with your "should have the same copyright period" comment)
Where I differ with you is the "no incentive to publish" bit. That's what's changed in the past 30 years.
There once was a time when "publish" meant "spend a lot of money printing dead trees, or shining light through acetate films onto photosensitive compounds". Today, that family could see to it that the masterpiece was "published" by spending an hour scanning the document through some OCR software and posting it to USENET.
As for Mickey Rat, Disney could still use trademark law to sue the fsck out of anyone selling Mickey merchandise, or making new Mickey cartoons, by saying "Mickey is a trademark of Disney, Inc."
All that shortening the copyright term to 20 years would do allow you to say "Click here to download an MPEG of Steamboat Willie, ca. 1928".
Disney could still make new Rat products, they could still make money selling Rat products back to the '80s. Hell, they could still make money selling a "Limited Edition DVD of Steamboat Willie". (Want the DVD? Buy it from them. Just want the video stream? Download it from some d00d who copied it.)
The other Good Reason (IMNSHO) for shortening copyright terms is because, for intellectual property, there's no longer any substantial difference difference between the aims of copyright and patent law.
Both were intended to give inventors temporary monopolies in order to promote invention/innovation/science/art. But today, they're treated radically differently.
Patent: I'm Mr. Pfizer, and I invented Viagra. Here's my patent application, which shows you how to make your own. In exchange for sharing my discovery with the world, the government grants me a 17-year monopoly on producing it. Until that time is up, you gotta buy it from us, or pay us royalties to let you make it yourself. After 17 years, you can make a generic version all by yourself, and we'll have to compete on price. We're willing to do that because we think we can make back our R&D costs in 17 years.
Copyright: Here's my song! Here's my movie! Here's my program! I tell everyone how to replicate it by distributing the bitstream on shiny plastic disks. In return, the government gives me a 75-year-plus-life-of-creator monopoly on those bits? What the fsck?
If the company that invents a cure for AIDS is expected to make their money back in 17 years, why can't we ask the same of the company that markets big-titted lip-syncing chicks and goddamn cartoon mice?
The government's case in Eldred v. Ashcroft depends on at least three lies. We need to expose them and debate the real issues in order to have an informed public decide on proper copyright law.
1. CTEA "harmonizes" U.S. law with the E.U. No--it is not possible to have the same copyright term as the E.U.'s, because until 1976 term was measured from first publication, not from author's death, in the U.S. but not the E.U. The 1998 retroactive extension was not harmonization. In any event, E.U. term still differs substantially in works for hire, film productions, and anonymous works. As an example, a work first published in 1923 might be in the public domain in the U.S. if not renewed, but protected until 70 years after death if author was European. No way to harmonize this--it is just protectionism for U.S. works in Europe, for which the U.S. public pays.
2. Perpetual or lengthy terms are needed in order to preserve old films and other material. Not so--currently, film studios don't preserve even all the films they own copyright on--you see ads on TV where they try to collect money from the public for preservation. In fact, two plaintiffs in Eldred v. Ashcroft are film preservation groups who argue that the term extension makes it impossble from them to find copyright owners in order to preserve old films.
3. Authors benefit from longer terms. No--the difference between 50 years after death and 70 years is not enough incentive to cause anyone to write a book now. See the brief by Berkeley economist Hal Varian at http://openlaw.org/eldredvreno.
We assert that the ones who benefit from the CTEA are large corporations not authors--they are the ones who lobbied for the bill and paid large sums to campaigns of legislators to buy the bill.
The ones who will be hurt if we fail are authors who wish to prepare works that are derivative or try to enjoy fair use of existing works. And the public will not enjoy the fruits of their publication--innovation will be stifled if the public domain is privatized. The Internet now and the next Internet, whatever it will be, will be threatened--instead, big corporations will own all content and license our popular culture to us as pay-per-view.
Uh, huh. And where was the Democratic president with the "Veto" stamp?
And what about this in the congressional record? - "10/7/1998:
Passed Senate with an amendment by Unanimous Consent. "
"Unanimous" doesn't sound like "The Republicans but not the Democrats" at all, does it? Sounds like Democrats were hanging out at the Big Media(tm) crackhouse quite happily as well. In short - This isn't a 'political party' issue!. This is a "Big Media offers Big Bucks to ALL politicians, and ALL mainstream party senators (and, presumably, representatives, but it's hard to say, it passed the house by voice vote) are happily taking bribes.
Pointing at whichever of the two mainstream parties you hate most and saying "it's all THEIR fault" just makes your least hated party happy to have the attention drawn away from them, whichever of The Two Parties(tm) they may be, and keeps this sort of thing "business as usual".
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Why?
It's not a frivilous question. Creators can produce work for hire, and copyrights can be bought and sold. Copyright is a "thing", a commodity that can be traded like any other. There's no reason to end / extend it to match the creator's lifetime. What if they sell rights for forty years with a reversion clause, then die five minutes later? How long do the purchaser's rights last? Forty years? Twenty years past the creator's death? Their own lifetime plus twenty? The lifetime of their corporation?
Copyright law is in a big old mess as it is, what with work for hire and corporate ownership screwing up the notion of when it should expire. Then there's the convoluted issue of copyrights of images of artifacts (see how many claims of copyright you can find for images of the Bayeux tapestry, for example). Copyright laws need to be simplified and unified.
First, copy rights in all media need to be unified. That means no distinction between music, still pictures, moving pictures, images of art (interpretive or otherwise), or text. One law for all.
Second, one law for all needs to be applied to the rights. Copyright is a "thing". It can be bought and sold. Duration should not depend on who owns the rights. The clock should start ticking the moment the work is created, and it should stop after a fixed time, regardless of who owns the rights at that time.
Third, shorter terms. Twenty years is reasonable. Yes, that would punish some creators, but the vast majority of work is forgotten within twenty years. We're talking about punishing a small minority, admittedly the people who make the very best content.
But isn't the best content exactly the sort that should be entering the public domain?
There's an argument to be made that if you shorten terms, cynical creators might deliberately produce content that's designed to be disposable and not last the test of time. I refer you to my earlier point: we're already swamped with mediocre, disposable content. The best people will continue to create the best content for the best reason of all: because they want to, not because they think that they'll still be raking in royalties in fifty years time.
Incidentally, I'm an author. And I still think 20 years is a reasonable duration. Five years is a good run for most books. Translations in other territories can extend that, but, hey, a translation is an interpretive derivation; it's only common sense courtesy among publishers that ensures that most authors are paid for translations right now!
I've thought this through, by the way. If I write a book that's good enough to be remembered in 20 years time, and if Hollywood decides to make a $500 million film of it and to not pay me a penny for it, then I could live with that. The one right I would want to retain would be the right to be credited as the original author. If I can't leverage that publicity to make a killing on the chat show circuit, or to sell a new bunch of books, then that's nobody's fault but my own.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I respectfully disagree. Laws that protect a business are not necessarily bad. Laws that protect business at the cost of the people are bad. Where you draw the line is where it gets fuzzy.
A law that outlawed cars to protect the horse and buggy industry is bad because it hurts the people, clearly. A law that protects Disney logo is not bad for the people. The prosperity that Disney enjoys employees millions of people, which is clearly good for the people. Also Disney creates entertainment and amusement parks, also for the peoples enjoyment. Stifling Disney's business by taking away their rights to there mascot is not clearly good for the people, as it is clearly good for other business and bad for Disney.
-Jon
this is my sig.
While that's a nice idea, it has a lot of holes in it. Have you ever seen a professional photographer work? They take a lot of pictures in the field (or even studio) later they go over them very carefully and select the best ones for publication (or to try to sell as stock). It's not uncommon to have less then one "keeper" in a roll of film (i.e. less then one out of 36). A lot of that is because several shots are of basically the same thing but the exposure, angle, or other things are just a little different. There isn't a lot of point to trying to sell all of those, just pick the best one and be done with it. Under your scheme the "almost perfect" shots not being available to the public have been abandoned, and after ten years anyone can use them. Even if the one selected image is a very valuable piece of stock, and the alternate is almost as good... (yes it would require a bit of dumpster diving to get the rejects, but it can happen; and no digital cameras won't solve this since many pros write all their stuff to CD before they sort -- who knows when a "discard" shot of an unknown woman hugging the President may come in handy months after the fact when the woman hits the news...)
Or in a less commercial realm, what if you take pictures of your wife or girlfriend that you (and she!) don't want anyone else to have? Since they are not available to the public at any price the guy at the lab who made an extra copy ten years ago can now sell it...(yes digital cameras make this exact story less likely, but you can get to the same bad place via a different route...)
Ah! On a more geeky note WoTC removed a number of cards from Magic because they were too powerful. Just wait ten years and they can come right back!
Copyright is used for more then just sucking money out of people.
"Mickey Mouse is a very important piece of Disneys brand"
Yes. Mickey is a very important Disney trademark. Releasing the copyright on specific Mickey Mouse films does not jeopardize their ongoing trademark use of Mickey. In fact, it would enhance the value of their current exploitation considerably.
We the plaintiffs of Eldred v. Ashcroft don't need money now, but you can support in other ways.
Add your informed discussion to OpenLaw at http://openlaw.org/eldredvreno and help us prepare legal briefs.
Read up on copyright law and the case there so you are better informed, then communicate with your friends. Write your local newspaper editor.
Support online books! See http://www.eldritchpress.org/support.html
Join and send money to the Electronic Freedom Foundation: http://www.eff.org
Scalia is one of the more right wing of the justices but he's very much a strict constuctionist.
Unfortunatly, in Bush v Gore, Scalia and the rest of the Nixon/Reagan appointees proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that their "strict constructionist" principles are for sale to the highest bidder at a moment's notice.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
This is a cool chart showing what could happen to the amount of public domain work available if Public Domain is unrestricted by term extension.
That's an awful graph. What exactly is it measuring? Copyright extensions don't take stuff out of the public domain, so why does the unrestrained line keep climbing while the hindered line drops to zero. Why is it linear? I'm unhappy it's being used for my side - it's obviously meaningless.
After reflecting on the concept of copyright the past several months, wading through legal documents and laws, and the process that brought it to where it is today, I have begun to ask myself very serious questions about the direction the concept of copyright has traveled in the past 40 years or so. Initially, when copyright was first introduced to this country, the means to distribute copyrighted works was really quite simple? It was by horse or by foot. If it was sent, by mail or messenger, it arrived by horse or foot. This meant that it literally could take months or years to distribute to the "maximum market". The copyright term of 14 years plus 14-year extension must have been determined in part by the physical constraints created by the ability to distribute the work in a timely fashion. For the creator of the work to see rewards for his work would take years, simply because of the inability to get the work to the potential buyers any more quickly. It could take 14 years or 28 years to realize a return. Now fast forward to 2002 and here we are with copyright extension after extension, to the point where individual copyright is now life plus 70 years, and corporate copyright is 95 years. Yet, here we are with the internet, satellite TV, cell phones, Ipaqs, wireless networks, cable TV, newspapers are distributed to the regional printing plant electronically, Ricochet, Aircard, that literally provide instant access to distribution. Airplanes, UPS, Fedex, 18 Wheelers, fax machines, distribute products in mere days (if not minutes) rather than months or years. Rather than extending copyright, shouldn?t we be shortening copyright? Say to 7 and 7? Same thing with corporate copyright, shouldn't they be shortened as well?
As they say in academic circles "Publish or die" Talk about an incentive to create! If you can't sit back on your laurels, then you must continue to create. This would benefit the culture greatly. One has to ask what would Disney have come up with if Mickey and his pals where going into the public domain as scheduled? What would Mike Stoller and his partner Jerry Leiber produced in the years since "Stuck in the Middle with You" (1972), had there been an incentive to keep creating? At the very least in 1979 they would have started working again to produce more of those wonderful tunes they were so adept at producing in the 50's and 60's.
It's my hope at least one court in this land of ours has some common sense, and interpets the intent of the law.
The fact that she needed her staff to tell her that perpeptual copyright would violate the Consititution speaks volumes about the sorry state of our representation in congress today.
You'd think a representative would be at least required to have *read* the Consititution. I know I was required to in 11th grade government class.
Indeed, the article's favoring of the status quo shows up even more when they note that the Bono law brings us "in line with the EU," (those Europeans, always hip and up to date),
Which isn't even a correct assumption. The EU is life +50, not life +70, which was taken care of by the Copyright Act of 1976....
What the Bono Act did, in part (as did the DMCA) is put us into position to accede to several international treaties on copyright-- the Berne Convention (which was ironically started in the 19th century to differentiate those oh-so-stylish Europeans from the US, which didn't even allow foreigners to copyright until 1870!), the TRIPS agreement, and the WIPO Copyright Treaty. (The WIPO Treaty is where the anti-circumvention language of DMCA comes from, though the WIPO Treaty is much less harsh.)
As I recall, many European countries were opposed to the Bono Act's increased terms for copyrights-- it took nearly 30 years for the US to match the European standard of life plus 50, (Adopted by the Berne signatories in 1948) and they didn't want another situation where copyright terms were different in the US.
Yes! I'd make the term of the first phase shorter, but that's the right approach.
Suppose you write a novel. Consider a time far in the future, say, 30 years after you're dead. Your children are dead; you're grandchildren are old, and they would hold the copyright. How upset would if:
1) Someone reprinted the novel, but didn't pay your grandchildren, but kept the profits themselves?
2) Someone reprinted the novel, paid your grandchildren, but claimed to have written it themselves (without permission)?
3) Someone reprinted the novel, paid your grandchildren, attributed you, but changed the story so the moral and meaning were completely different (without permission, without noting there was a change)?
I, and I think most people, would be far more upset with (2) and (3) than (1). The credit and integrity of the work should be protected for a long time. Monetary rights aren't nearly as important, not in the long term.*
Still not convinced? Consider:
4) Someone wants to reprint your work, but your grandchildren, who own exclusive rights to your work, hold out for more money, and in the end won't let them.
First, the US Constitution demands that copyright term be limited. When Congress retroactively expands copyright term, it breaks that limit.
As for the argument that it's not ex post facto -- well, I have heard that piece of hair-splitting argument (I won't call it "Jesuitical"--it's not!), and it helps me to understand where Bill Clinton's "It all depends upon what the meaning of 'is' is..." comes from.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
The "limited time" argument in terms of saying whether it should be 10, 30, 50, 70 or 100 years is not the kind of question that the Supreme Court can well put itself in the position of answering. The "rational basis" test is really a very deferential one that takes little to satisfy. True, the current Court has taken to rapping Congress on the knuckles for overreaching a lot in the past 20 years, but not with the tool of the rational basis test.
The extension of pre-existing copyrights is the best attack based on rational basis review. It is a big transfer from my ability to read and disseminate to the ability of authors to maintain their works in a grip-of-death.
We could well end up with a decision that "you can do that, but you can't do it retroactively." As for the "IP is bad" crowd, only Justices Breyer and Stevens are particularly sympathetic, and even they limit their depredations to narrowly construing copyright. (See Tasini case.) They are not Justices that are disposed to limiting Congressional power under the Constitution.
Wait wait wait wait.
First you say that what is good for one company that makes a product for us to enjoy is good for all of us.
Then you say that what is good for some other companies making a product for us to enjoy is bad for us.
Do you mind explaining? *Why* is giving so much MORE of our money to the Disney Corporation for products derived from a simple mouse character invented 80 years ago so much better for us that giving money to companies who can produce the same content at 1/10th the cost?
Sure it made sense for the first 20 years, because without promising that to Walt he might not have never bothered in the first place, and corporations might not have invested in producing Mickey Mouse product lines.
But that's clearly over now. Now it's time to start encouraging and providing money to *other* ideas, instead of funnelling our money into the Mickey Rat black hole.
Yes, with progress, people have to change jobs. You learn that in your first couple weeks in an Econ 101 course. It's up to us as a society to prevent changing jobs from being a sucky experience.
Heh...just been poking around in writings online about public domain, one of which pointed out the peculiar phrase everybody (including me - see the subject of my parent post) has been using about this - "falling" into the public domain. As if to imply that a public domain work is somehow "less" or "degraded" due to finally being released from the copyright-protection asylum...
Therefore, I think I'll be making an effort to call it "'Maturing' into the public domain" instead...unless someone has even better suggestions?
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
You want profit? Then create it! Create it, pay for it or slag off!
That may be true for movies, but eventually, it'll become impossible to create new music. U.S. courts have defined copyright infringement on a musical work as the use of at least four consecutive notes that are substantially similar to the melody of a copyrighted work. Given that there are only 27,000 possible runs of four notes under the "substantially similar" standard (transpose melodies to start on middle C, fold rests into previous note, fold notes outside an 11-note range inward an octave, quantize durations to short/medium/long), I'm afraid that the day will come when composers will no longer be able to write new music that doesn't infringe a copyright.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm an author. I'm against copyright. I'm in favour of authors' rights for actual humans, for the reasons set out in the US Constitution - and because it seems to me that having individual authors taking responsibility would do something positive for the quality of publishing (etc). Publishers are welcome to *license* these rights, but they stay with the author. Problem of unobtainable works pretty much solved.
Fantasy? In fact, this is the essence of the law in Europe (except UK & IE), Japan... most of the world. One effect, for example: French TV news says who was responsible for each report in a subtitle, because they have to. Authors not only have the right to license their work, but the right to be credited and the right to object if it's manipulated (in a way that damages their reputation). Those are the moral rights that just barely exist in US law.
Since this is /. I'll relate the issue to code.
Sorry, authors weren't paying attention when
copyright on computer code was legislated. Imagine
it had been done on the same basis as books and
movies in France. Every time you saw a BSOD, it'd
come with the names of the people responsible.
Under authors' rights the GPL (et al) would be
a lot shorter and sweeter, because as you can
see by now it'd be going with the grain. And MS code would be the property of the coders...
Remember, too, that the EU has just codified parts of "fair use" - if a work is protected by encryption or whatever, there must a way round that for libraries and archives, people with disabilities and a fairly long list of other uses.