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The Mouse That Ate the Public Domain
An anonymous submitter writes: "Antitrust lawyer Chris Sprigman has written a thoughtful column In Findlaw's Writ on the issues behind the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act and the legal challenge (Eldred v. Ashcroft) to that law. I only spotted one mistake. Sprigman states that Disney's 1967 movie The Jungle Book came out a year after Kipling's copyright expired, but I can't see how, under the terms of the 1909 copyright law, an 1894 book could have had its U.S. copyright expire much later than 1950. Except for that one glitch, (if that's what it is) it's a fine column. There's no explicit mention of computer software except in the mention of the title of a 1970 article by Stephen Breyer, but everything he says about the usefulness of the public domain in literature applies with a vengeance to source code. And his is discussion of the U.S. Constitution's framers reminds us (though Sprigman doesn't develop this point extensively, and might not himself put it in as blunt terms as I'm about to) that there's even a deeper reason than utility to cherish the public domain: it is our right."
The copyright extension act (passed at the behest of Disney and the Gershwin heirs, who cynically manipulated the death of Sonny Bono to their own ends) was a bad law. What's more, I think it is an unconstitutional laws. Whatever you think of copyright, the law in the US is clear. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution provides Congress the power to grant copyright solely for the public benefit. It is part of what has been called the "copyright bargain". The public gives up for limited times the freedom to copy the work, in return for the production of new works as a result of the exclusive copying incentive. Retro-actively extending existing copyrights by definition cannot encourage the production of new works, which is a major justification for copyright law. (The companies will surely argue in friend of the court briefs that giving them additional copyright time will cause them to keep old works in distribution, which is a public benefit. We'll have to see how this plays out). Companies like Disney don't need gov't subsidies. The Gershwin heirs should go get jobs. Authors already had life+50 years protection before the new law. How much more can you want?
Read the full text of the Copyright Term Extension Act at the Tech Law Journal.
That is the biggest problems in our laws today, the laws are slowly being updated to meet the changes in technology. So what we wind up trying to do is to apply ancient laws to new "crimes". I hope our gov't wakes up on this!
Ask any staunch patriotic working class American what they think hollywood suits should be paid. "I work in a fish gutting factory for minumum wage, what do they do? Make fancy pictures. I'd give me remaining 3 fingers to do what they do for half of what I make."
Heh, the truth be told is that the answer on how much someone should be compensated is simple. Aim to give them money equal to middle class people so they can make a living doing art.
Granting a dynasty to hollywood, sports players, or musicians... Not only is easily viewed as unfair, but detracts from the actual art they are to produce.
Some easy to see detractors:
Instead of aiming more art at specific groups, art becomes less targetted at a general audience.
As for sports, the teams that can pay the big $$ can get the best players.
God spoke to me
Sprigman states that Disney's 1967 movie The Jungle Book came out a year after Kipling's copyright expired, but I can't see how, under the terms of the 1909 copyright law, an 1894 book could have had its U.S. copyright expire much later than 1950.
One way it could happen (though I don't know if it's the case here) is that there used to be renewal deadlines, and if you missed them... too bad. An example that comes to mind is It's A Wonderful Life (1946) whose copyright shouldn't be up for quite a while yet... but which became popular when it lapsed into the public domain through someone missing a filing deadline.
Kept on Kipling until 1936 or so, how could they tell for sure? That would make 1966 equal to life plus thirty or thereabouts. Would that be legal?
How to keep the public domain our right?
.$$$ domains being developed that we make one that is really public and keep it so through aggressive legislative activity.
.org was supposed to be public but it is not. /. for example is commercial and private. we need to establish stringent standards for such a public domain and keep it as clearly registered and demarcated public groups.
I suggest that, with all the new
The
your personal webpage should not be in this public domain, sites that actually advance the public interest should be.
I don't think that ICANN can responsibly deliniate which sites fall into this category. Who can? I do not know. Groups like eff.org should be involved in this decisionmaking process and corporate groups should not. The debate on what is in the public interest and what is not continues.. I don;t think that game information or whatever should be there, though.
I think things that in themselves maintain freedoms on the Internet itself should be, and that the government should be involved. On a global scale, public interest sites on the Internet should organize and lobby global orgs such as the WTO, etc. to delineate this public space on the Internet. There should be a dot-whatever URL-style that people can go to to look up environmental, technical, social, and political information from verifiably independent sources.
Goat sex free since 2001
But, copyright law was created before the U.S. reached the Industrial age, which in turn led to large corporate style think-tanks. These laws were aimed at private inventors rather than large corporations, so when you bring a company like Disney into the equation there is sure to be some abuse.
The general attitude for copyrights has shifted dramatically during the past 200 years. Originally the sole purpose (whether you agree or not) was to motivate further technological and intellectual progress. In the 19th century this shifted to protecting the property of corporations (although not so much until the the 20th century when the industrial age evolved into the information age).
The solution is definitely not to eliminate copyright law outright, simply widespread reform. Being a capitalist country should not rely on government protection of property, seeing as how that is contrary to the concept of capitalism in general. But we do need government intervention to aid private inventors, perhaps in the form of government subsidies. As an added fact, we need to keep at least some copyright laws to keep all those copyright lawyers employed.
Under the current terms of life plus 70, Sousa would just be coming out of copyright this year! Born before the Civil War, never on TV, opposed the introduction of the phonograph, out of copyright this year! Some of his copyrights were still in effect in the 1960's. His grandson used to terrify people in the 1960's by marching(!) into people's offices, telling them that he was John Philip Sousa (he was), and demanding his copyright money. If Sousa was still under copyright in the 60's, why not Kipling?
sometime around 2080, the copyright on tux will run out. oh wait, a mascot which isn't copyrighted.. who's idea was this?
There's no mention of this in the article, nor apparently in Eldred v. Ashcroft ... I wonder if they are pursuing this angle.
Let's say you're a songwriter. You write a hit tune. It goes to the top of the charts. You collect royalties up the wazoo. Great. A year later you realise, that since you're getting enough royalties to live comfortably, you really have no reason to write more songs, other than you might enjoy it. So you say, I'll write tomorrow. I've got lunch dates all day today. And you get lazy. Soon the public (your fan base) is funding your inaction.
But if the copyright only lasted long enough for you and your label to recoup expenses and make a tidy profit on top of that, chances are you'd be getting back to work a lot sooner. When you're hungry, you work.
c-hack.com |
I don't see how any of this applies to computer source code. If the source was never released to the public then I see no obvious reason why it should ever lapse into the public domain. The binaries which were released should have limited copyright protection, but it's not evident to me why something which was kept private should be required to be made publicly available. Do people's diaries and journals don't become public domain after their deaths? This is the closest analogy I can think of.
Very simple...Rudyard Kipling died in 1936. Authors life + 30 years = 1966. One year before 1967.
This mis-anecdote originated from the following exchange, on http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/2000-02/0 428.html:
}}} If I've checked my facts correctly, Kipling's
}}} "The Jungle Book" was published in 1899.[1]
}}} The U.S. copyright statute that would have
}}} controlled at expiration would have been the
}}} 1909 copyright act, which provided for a
}}} 56-year copyright term (28, plus another 28
}}} on renewal). This would have Kipling's
}}} copyright expire in 1955.[2]
}} According to the Internet Movie Database,
}} Disney's "The Jungle Book" was released
}} in 1967, eleven years after the Kipling
}} copyright expired.[3]
} My bad. I had written down 1957 for the film.
So, assuming the above is all accurate, Disney waited 11 years, not 1, after the 56-year Kipling copyrights expired. The point still remains, that if the current copyright term had been in place, Disney could not have created the film until ~2007 instead of 1957.
>;k
The article's closing sentence is: Perhaps if campaign finance reform succeeds in helping good arguments compete against ready cash, copyright will right itself.
The fight against DCMA, copyright extension, UCITA (or whatever it was - the law being peddled to states to give click-through licenses teeth etc.) are all worthwhile, but they are attacking the symptoms. The influence of money over politics is the cause.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen or resident, so arguably this really isn't my business.)
Anybody want to get some easy karma by posting links to campaign finance reform organizations?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
This has been hashed out on CNI many times, but people keep forgetting either when Disney's film was released or when Kipling's copyright expired.
For the record:
Kipling's copyright expired in 1956.
Disney released their version in 1967.
Now let us never speak of this again.
Why are so many posts being modded as troll, when similar posts aren't? Just curious.
BlackGriffen
I've read an number of historians who designate the year 1950 as the first year of the present age and accordingly date every year before 1950 as Before the Present. C. Shannon presented the Mathematical Theory of Communications in 1948 and John von Neumann had the first 'modern' computer up and running about the same time. We could take 1950 as a conveinent year with which to begin the Information Technology revolution.
Noting the submission's referral to Kipling, Disney and The Jungle Book it's not uninteresting to note the technology to reinvent The Jungle Book has only just become available and prior to Disney and movies the only 'threat' to the book might have been an unauthorized printing and stage presentation. But Disney, TV, and the movie industry represent a reinvention of the work in a novel venue with it's attendant technology and the entrechment of that technology in patent law. The net and it's attendant conflicts and revolution of copyright law is also a case of new technology presenting a potential for reinvention and redistribution of existing works, which, are sometimes movies or recorded music. Putting aside the nuts and bolts of the law and it's processes it's interesting to take in the overview as a lack of social structures capable of keeping up with the growth of technological change, as much as, power grabs by the mature patent corporations.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
If you follow the link
Correspondence between Jefferson and Madison regarding the drafting of the Copyright Clause
and then read the mailing list message, there is a beauty in there by Madison. He thought that "monopolies" would be OK, for a limited time, and that there was little probability of abuse because of the democratic system being created in the US.
With regard to monopolies they are justly
classed among the greates nuisances in government.
But is it clear that as encouragements to literary
works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too
valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not
suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public
to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified
in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely
less danger of this abuse in our governments than in
most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many
Follow the link ! The Madison and Jefferson writings are just great. It's the "inifinitely less danger" part which kills me. It's obvious our current payola system of government would be abhorrent to the founders.
Absolute statements are never true
After all, would you want to see an un authorized Mickey Mouse pr0n flick? (never mind ....)
the thought is enough to make Disney spin in his refridgerator.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
An inventor's heirs can't secure copyright, so what's your point?
you really have no reason to write more songs, other than you might enjoy it.
I'd say for the vast majority of songwriters/performers that they enjoy writing songs is the primary motivator, money is secondary.
Stephen King is a rich man several times over, but he still churns out books. I recall reading somewhere that Paul McCartney makes something like $10K a day on royalties, but he still writes music and tours occasionally. The guys in R.E.M. aren't hurting for money either, but they're still recording. Granted, the pace may have slowed somewhat -- but I don't think that in itself is a bad thing.
Hell, they paid Maria Carey something like $7 Million to dump her from her label and she's trying to get a new deal. (Note: I have no idea if she actually writes her own music, but work with me here...) From my perspective, it's a shame if she does record again, but the point is that money must not be her primary motivator to do music (if you can call it that...).
OTOH, the guys in XTC have never had a big hit, but they keep making records. Robyn Hitchcock isn't burning up the charts, but he still records and tours. Many people would probably have looked for "real" jobs after they'd realized that they weren't going to get rich, but writing music is obviously what they want to do. In the case of XTC, they'd probably have made a few more albums if they hadn't had money/label problems. So, cutting off the money supply isn't the answer here.
Expiring copyrights prior to the life of the artist is, IMHO, unfair. Even when you're talking about code -- if a person or company owns the code, they should choose what to do with it. Even if what they choose to do is selfish, it's their right.
Something else to consider, given the mentality of most record labels -- if copyrights expired after a shorter period, how many labels would just sit on material waiting for the rights to expire before exploiting it so they didn't have to share any royalties? I'd almost guarantee it'd become a common practice. Songwriters would be getting just above minimum wage while the labels cash in a few years later.
Not true. Copyright is a property that can be bought, sold, traded. It's a commodity, and as such, can be passed via the will; you know, that thing you pass your private property down to.
...
It's not always their heirs, anyhow. Sometimes the copyright goes to a good friend or whatnot.
I will admit that I'm not sure that copyrights, initially, were considered to be private property that could be bought or sold. It would be interesting to know
"Old man yells at systemd"
IIRC, "Dear God" was a fairly big hit, depending on your definitions of "Hit" and "Big" and also where you live.
HTH
XML causes global warming.
I don't know that any law specifying "life+x" is a good idea, particularly if x is small... it's too easy to set life=0.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
So, a math problem should be solved with more math?
Your first book was terrible, why do you think you should write another one?
Your first argument had some logical flaws, why do you insist on continuing to reason?
Let me get this straight, you have a bug in your computer source code, so you are going to write even more source to fix it?
Explain, please, how this works?
But they can inherit copyright, which was his point.
The only valid negative moderation is "offtopic". Everthing else is a matter of opinion.
The parent here makes a very valid and sane argument, far more realistic than most legal briefs that depend on the minutia of statutes for rationalizations.
The so-called "moderator" who rated the parent as a "troll" should be publicly rebuked. Too bad we'll never know who it was.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I will never show you source code I've written for certain programs and that is my right. Public domain is not applicable to items used in the creation of public works, e.g., source code as compared with the resultant application, but rather to works shown to the public in general (in OSS, this does include source code). If I decide after releasing a final version of my product, to erase all copies of the source code, that is my right. If I decide to keep one copy of the source code hidden in a safe box in an undisclosed foreign country, that is also my right. If 100 years later the government says my heirs must turn over said source code, they can plausibly deny its existence. Public domain is essentially equivalent to brute force but brute force can easily be outwitted. I am not saying this as an opponent of OSS, as I plan to release all my important code through GPL/LGPL but I am saying it as someone who sees too many people on /. assert their rights to things which they do not own.
Copyright by individuals lasts for the duration of the person's life, plus 50 years. This means that it does not matter how long ago something was written, but rahter, how long ago the author died. IF copyright is owned by a corporation, its duration is a fixed period of years. 20 or 50... I can't remember.
Not according to the Constitution. The Constitution doesn't talk about IP. It talks about copyright for the creator. The P part of IP is just one of those "well surely that's what they must have meant" things. (Response: Maybe and maybe not. And don't call me 'surely'.)
I am seriously thinking of putting my IP where my mouth is: adding a line to each source file I create, right below the copyright and the GPL blurb: "In ten years this work will automatically revert to the public domain. That is, if the latest copyright date listed above is from at least ten years ago, the copyright has been abandoned." Does anyone have a better way to express this?
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
How do new laws help? There are already a dozen different ways to murder someone, with a dozen times that of "circumstances", each representing different statutes. And that is just one single type of crime among thousands. The fact that the "law" requires entire libraries to house it is obscene in the extreme. Ignorance of the law may not be a defense, but you demonstrate that it is the common condition.
Intellectual Property in "America" was settled over a hundred years ago, with a combination of copyright and fair use. My profitable use of your ideas is limited by copyright, your ability to restrict my non-profitable use (such as education, archive or critique) is also limited.
How does this NOT apply to "new technology"? Was public showing for profit somehow "legal" when using a VCR instead of a film projector? Is copying by hand illegal, but machine copying legal? As long as I use the latest and greatest technology and the laws haven't specifically covered it yet, may I reprint your books with my name on them and be safe from prosecution?
The call for new laws is a cry for someone else to solve your problems for you. Every way for a person to injure or trespass on someone else has been "illegal" for thousands of years. It is a sorry mind indeed who cannot see past having everything outlined in perfect detail for them by their master.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Yes, money or fear of poverty is a great motivator to get someone working, but a drive for money is not what produces creative insight. If you want to find a great new idea, you look towards people that have an interest in what they do beyond money. Great songwriters are those who love writing music, great actors are those who love acting, and great programmers are those who love programming. Look at all the people in college today going into compsci or any other industry simply for the money and tell me how many creative, revolutionary ideas are going to come out of them. IF you want money, you work a 9-5 and make yourself a living, if you want make something new and innovative, you do what you love.
The author is applying a 1909 US law to a british subject. The british at the time had their own copyright system, which also had been updated several times. One of the updates was the allowance of copyright rights to british subjects living abroad. Thus kipling would have qualified for the British copyright, which was honored by treaty.
"Dear God" was a fairly big hit, depending on your definitions of "Hit" and "Big" and also where you live.
It never charted in the US, I don't know about the UK. It got a bit of radio play and even made rotation on MTV, but was pulled pretty quickly after PDs realized what the lyrics were...
Attack the real root of the problem: Politicians and bureaucrats are IN DEMAND for the power they wield.
The corruption of power is not just the addiction to personal gratification that individuals get from being powerful, it's also the astonishing amounts of money that flow into the hands of those same individuals.
Here are two very serious hints: Paid corporate lobyists, and millionare representitives.
So-called "campaign finance reform" will only ever favor the incumbant. Under the new rules, while their opponents and anyone who disagrees with the incumbants is muzzled, the politician in power gets to publish continually from their "office" about their daily successes in bringing home the pork.
Imagine that, for a moment. Can you?
Money flows into politics because there is something to be bought. Remove that power, and the money will go elsewhere. Jefferson walked from his inauguration party back to his rented room. Why? Because he as President didn't have any power anyone wanted to buy.
That's my kind of president!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Before someone jumps on me I'll add that there's an exception for unpublished works, that basically says if you find Grandpa's unpublished manuscript from 1910 in the attic, you can copyright and publish it despite its age. However, that's simply matter of how the law works, not anybody's inherent right one way or the other.
It's all about the old saying "you can't take it with you" except everyone now is trying their damnedest anyway.
Artists and innovators produced art and innovation prior to copyright and patent law, and they would continue to do so if it was abolish. In fact, it would drastically increase quality in all likelyhood, as pop garbage would stop.
The US needs to take a hint from Parliment, who had this figured out centuries ago. Ownership lasts for existing life + 20 years, and stops, no extension.
An awful lot of America's woes can be blamed squarely on the puritans (bloody conservatives) who came up with the rediculous idea that anything you earn or own in your lifetime belongs to you to do with as you choose until the end of time, utter complete hogwash. Now as a direct decendant of their idiocy we have the travesty of modern IP, and whiny brats squaling about death taxes and other limitations on ownership.
Under the '09 Act (as it existed upon its supercession by the '76 Act on 1/1/78) the term of copyright was 28 years plus a renewal term of 28 years. Add 'em together, you get 56. Add 56 to 1894 you get ..... 1950!
What if I produce that one brilliant work, and then crap. You speak as if artists are simply fountains that perpetually flow with creativity. That may be true for some but not all. If I get rich off that one great work, i'll be hella mad if I have to do 1 a month to pay the rent while joe, I went to a shitty art school gets the money doing hotel room paintings.
And who ever said I did my work for the benefit of society, I do it to please myself. If I don't want to do it I don't.
Photos.
Yeah, you might say that extended copyrights seperate the real musicians (the ones who do it no matter how much money they have/don't have) from the posers, and perhaps even thereby insure a generally higher quality level, but take F Scott Fitzgerald. I read somewhere that he wrote so much because his royalties couldn't support his crazy lifestyle, so he had to keep churning out stuff to stay afloat. Maybe there are a lot of people who have less demanding personal expenses who could produce quality work, but just get lazy. But is it society's responsibility to motivate these people? We'll always see quality work from dedicated artists, now matter what the laws are, but maybe reducing the copyright term might give some of the more unmotivated ones good reason to get out there and do some work. On the other hand, would that mean we'd just have more mediocre crap around? On the third hand, my Fitzgerald reference proved that you don't have to have a divine inspiration to create quality work, you just have to sit down and do it, for whatever reason. A very complicated issue, to be sure.
That's a very good point, about labels sitting on content until it falls into the public domain, but I'm sure musicians could include something in their contracts about immediate release. Plus, if the material was in the PD when it was released, then other people could distribute cheap copies and the label would make way less money.
One thing is sure: Anyone who creates anything, whether it's CDs or code, has a higher responsibility that only they can decide how to come to terms with.
c-hack.com |
But if the copyright only lasted long enough for you and your label to recoup expenses and make a tidy profit on top of that, chances are you'd be getting back to work a lot sooner. When you're hungry, you work.
But this leaves the problem of that the music companies will *ONLY* pick up on those things they can make a quick buck on. There's ALREADY a problem where they only care about stuff that they can make money off as quickly as possible, thus leading them to almost exclusively push "catchy", BUYMEBUYME but artless and substance-free bullshit like, well, everything on the radio. As is, they do at least have the possibility in the back of their minds that some bands are worth keeping around because their albums have *relisten* value, meaning people are still keeping those CDs around six years from now and playing them to their friends, meaning that that CD could potentially still be making money 20 years from now. As opposed to, say, the backstreet boys or new kids on the block, who 15 years from now will be lucky to get a single track on "HITS OF THE 90s VOLUME III!". Remove the incentive to put out long-lasting, solid albums with substance and shit, and you'll see a LOT more "britney"s and a LOT less "Dark Side of the Moon"s.. which makes this clearly not a solution to the current problems with the musical art.
Clearly, instead, the solution is for all pop musicians to have heroin addictions. You see, if they have a heroin addiction to feed, then the money from that hit single will run out an order of magnitude faster, thus requiring them to continually produce new stuff to stay at the top of the charts.
What, why do you THINK all great musicians have had drug addictions? You really buy that "troubled artist"/"escaping the intoxicating pain of intense creativity" line?
(( note: i'm probably joking. i think. ))
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Art and literature have no shelf life--they can be enjoyed thousands of years after the author has passed away. It is reasonable for the author to retain copyright to their work
So what happens when somebody owns a copyright on every possible melody? It makes it pretty damn hard for songwriters to create something new. See also bananas and elephants.
until at least the day they die.
Corporate authors do not die.
For 'code' the copyright lifecycle should be a lot shorter, as is the shelflife.
The current U.S. copyright law framework provides no way to distinguish between "code" and any other literary work. Remember, code is speech, and speech is code.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Repeat after me, class: Intellectual "property" is not property . The whole stupid term only came into use within the past two decades, for goodness' sake; and only because the Content Cartel wanted to push its insane definition of copyright infringement as "piracy". In other words, the people calling it property are -- amazingly enough -- the people who most benefit from the misidentification of intellectual output as property.
It boils my blood to see the argument framed using terms that were designed to bias the debate toward one side. It especially boils my blood to see the opposing side accept that stupid definition of terms. It's time to get over it, so we don't keep refighting a battle that shouldn't have to be fought in the first place.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
As for sports, the teams that can pay the big $$ can get the best players.
Not always. Two words: salary cap.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Except they don't "own" the code. They hold the copyright to the code, an entirely different thing. Once you accept the fallacy that you can "own" code -- or music or literature, or what have you -- than it makes no sense for there to be any expiration of copyright. That, after all, would be a taking.
But since intellectual output is not property, it cannot be owned. Copyright is a state-granted monopoly on a service (copying), not a state-granted piece of property. The intellectual output is licensed, so to speak; and of course, thus the license can expire. It's more like leasing mineral rights on federal land than purchasing property from the federal government.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Under a Life+50 copyright term, of course, it would not have been in the public domain until 1986.
Under a Life+70 copyright term, it would still be under copyright today.
entertainment
Pronunciation: "en-t&r-'tAn-m&nt
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 : the act of entertaining
2 a archaic : MAINTENANCE, PROVISION b obsolete : EMPLOYMENT
3 : something diverting or engaging: as a : a public performance b : a usually light comic or adventure novel
Somebody needs to remind the ENTERTAINMENT industry just what exactly their place is in the grand scheme of things! They've bent and twisted copyright laws and now they want to cripple every digital device under the sun, and for what? To protect Mickey Mouse cartoons and a few lousy movies??? NO! It's ENTERTAINMENT! It isn't something that actually matters that much! Yeesh, You'd think that it was a "national security" issue...like protecting nuclear secrets or something!
No Disney, you can't cripple all the computers. People use them to do things that are more important than a stupid cartoon mouse...like helping to treat the sick!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Kipling's copyright expired in 1956.
In the United States only. It didn't expire until 1966 (life + 30) in a few other major markets.
Disney released their version in 1967.
Worldwide.
The real reason for DVD region coding: a publisher may not be able to secure the worldwide rights for a particular copyright.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I continually find myself at a loss as to why so many consider software as something to be covered under Copyright Law. Unless I am mistaken, and I rarely am, Programming Code is nothing more than the ordering of electronic gates through a high-level intermediary, i.e., a text document which is then 'compiled' into the necessary arrangement to form a machine that acts on electrons.
You can copyright all the blueprints you want, but that doesn't give people the legal right to market your 'invention', which is the arrangement of electronic gates found in the CPU, regardless if they obtain or duplicate your blueprints.
Computer Code clearly falls under the auspices of Patent Law, and nothing further. It is a purely mechanical system, and the code is ultimately just shorthand to arrive at the desired effect. In other words, a diagram. Just as a lawnmower or lightbulb would require for a patent. That it is inconvenient to show a physical diagram of software is irrelevant, just as it is irrelevant to copyright computer code.
That this simple fact continues to elude even the most (self-styled) brightest minds of our age boggles the mind. Individuals and Companies have been getting away with 'copyrighting' their mechanical inventions for far too long now, and I say it is high time that some sense is brought to the table.
Yeah, but I'm talking in terms of decades here. 10, 20, maybe even 30 years. I don't think record labels give too much thought to how much dough a CD is going to bring in 20 years from now, but I could be wrong.
Imagine how rich the public domain would be if album copyrights expired even 30 years from the release date! Imagine (pun intended)! Every Beatles album, accessible to the world for free. Hell, the Beatles (those left) don't even make money off their own works--Michael jackson does! If that's not an indication of a corrupt system, I don't know what is.
offTopic
I heard this from a reliable source, but still can't be sure of the veracity: The lead singer of Sublime, back when they were starting out and could'nt seem to write a memorable song, had an idea. All of his heroes--Coltrane, Cobian, Miles Davis, etc--were smack addicts. He decided he'd get addicted to heroin, write a hit album, and get off it. Well he got on the smack, and they released that smash CD with the cover with the with the Sublime tatoo on his back. Big hit, top of the charts. So just like he said, he gets off the stuff. He actually does it! Everything's great until a year later. He's at this party, and someone's got some heroin. He can't resist. He takes one hit, and dies. I'm 99% sure this is true, but like I said, I heard it from a friend (albeit a knowledgable one) rather than a new source, so I'm not promising anything. Wierd though, huh?
/offTopic
c-hack.com |
Copyright by individuals lasts for the duration of the person's life, plus 50 years.
No, life plus 70.
IF copyright is owned by a corporation, its duration is a fixed period of years. 20 or 50... I can't remember.
Ninety-five.
(posted AC so as to show up on your messages.pl but not lose karma to Redundant moderation)Except from one school of personal rights theory.
In this theory, first, only living people have rights. Second, a person's natural right to property extends only to himself, the products of his labor, and whatever he can trade for. Unowned natural resources only become "property" insofar as they have been changed by labor from their natural state, and only because they are transformed by labor. Since intellectual property is entirely the product of labor, it is under this theory as much property as a gold ring -- perhaps even moreso, because nobody had a right to the gold created naturally, but only after the first labor was put into acquiring it.
Upon death, of course, the human no longer has any human rights. And since he has no right to it anymore, so he cannot distribute things with a will; he could only distribute the property while he was alive. Therefore *all* his property, physical or intellectual, falls into the public domain at that instant.
Now, property at this point returns to the status of unowned resources. It can only be reclaimed through labor, which might be as minor as occupying the house in the case of a physical good.
But the only way to claim the right to the unowned intellectual property is to apply labor to it -- to make a derivative work. Without an artificial scarcity of atoms, anybody can do this. For all practical purposes, this becomes identical to the public domain, where anybody can create a derivative work and claim copyright to it.
Life plus thirty was never the law in the U.S.
True, but Disney's The Jungle Book was also released outside of the U.S. in at least one market with life-plus-30 law.
Nowadays, DVD region coding prevents Joe Sixpack from playing (say) U.S. Disney's Peter Pan DVDs in the U.K., where James M. Barrie's works are still copyrighted, and Disney has to absorb the royalty in the price of the Region 2 DVD.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Prior to that date, his work would have been subject only to "common law" copyright (which no longer exists in the U.S.) and which had an indefinite term.
Minor clarification: "Common law" copyright primarily protected unpublished works. U.S. copyright law now protects unpublished works for the normal copyright term plus 25 years.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Computer Code clearly falls under the auspices of Patent Law, and nothing further.
Parent (Score:-1, Opposes Slashdrone Position). We're supposed to be against software patents, remember? Burn All GIFs!
(just kidding)Will I retire or break 10K?
IANAL, but with the way the American legal system is in place now, this is what seems to be the digs. Source code is copyrighted - algorithms can be patented. Object code can be neither.
Source code is a personal interpretation of an algorithm - a description in a particular language of a method for manipulatig anabstract quantification of a problem. That it happens to be realized on a computer is irrelevant - if a group of children understand the syntactic structure and semantic content of C++, you can write a parallel quicksort algorithm on a chalkboard, give them each cards with numbers on them, and have them quicksort the numbers. Source code is not a method - it is a description of a method. For all intents and purposes, it is a literary work, at least according to the U.S. Copyright office.
Algorithms are methods - the RSA cryptographic protocol and the Lempel-Ziv compression/decompression algorithm are methods. They were patented, and the patent for RSA expired (Lempel-Ziv compression is still patented, AFAIK).
If I take some source code, change all the while loops to for loops, change all the variable names to arbitrarily-assigned integers, and add an instruction to "do nothing for 5 minutes" between each basic block of actions, have I fundamentally altered your method? No. Your source code? Yes. Your resulting time/space complexity? Probably. This is why a "clean-room" implementation of existing code doesn't violate copyright. Person A didn't see Person B's code - if neither of their code looks the same, and each accomplishes the same result, how can you prove that A copied B's, or vice-versa? A similar argument follows for object code.
The problem is that the courts did not agree with you about code and patents. See there is this very old rule that you cannot patent mathematical formulas or physical laws. those things are said to be too abstract, and not really inventions. When the problem of code started coming up, the courts decided that code is more like an abstract mathematical formula than a machine. I think the courts were quite wrong on that one, and they did not understand the true nature of software. So they decided to make it unpatantable. I guees it is relevant that back then patents were a bit unpopular with the federal courts, who really disliked monopolies and limited patents whenever they could. Because software is unpatentable copyright protection was sought. Now software is patentable but copyright protection is widely used already. And it is free. Although copyright lasts much longer than patents it is not as powerful as patents. You cannot copyright an idea although you can patent one. So I dont think that copyrighting of code is that bad after all. It prevents you from copying code, but does not prevent you from doing essentially the same thing the same way if it is done with different code.
Mental exercise: copyright law for corporations is modified to extend only until the death of the last contributor to a work. Disney sues to keep an elderly cartoonist or voice actor on life support, though the family wants to let go. Surreal.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
behold:
- An Idea, as you refer to it, is an heuristic/algorithm. This might equate to a 'problem' for structural or mechanical engineers to isolate and define.
- Source Code amounts to little more than working blueprints or mechanical drawings under this excessively tight metaphor. Blueprints can (and should be), of course, be Copyrighted.
- Object Code is ultimately a physical relationship of modular components, and the only practically useful form of the art. It is entirely equivalent to, in fact, by definition is a mechanical system.
Take for your example the simple fact that you or I could, with enough resolve and determination, implement absolutely any software using naught else but millions of garden hoses and 3-way water faucets (presuming limitless water pressure and component durability, and forgiving the latency inherent in manually turning all those knobs in sequence...)It seeems that your rebuttal consists of little more than towing the party line, whereas I am attempting to advance the state of affairs with a little rational consideration. That you fail to even hint at consideration of my points in your attack against my comment would indicate, at least to me, that you have little creativity and/or only the smallest grasp of the over-all picture here. I don't mean to be overly harsh with that, but you could at least rebut my actual points rather than just condescending to give me a cursory lesson in the basics of this current and timely debate!
Moreover, those who create stuff even though they don't need the money, and would create anyway would benefit from leveraging of copyright, because they would be able to use previous work as their inspiration and base their work on previous work.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
Soon the public (your fan base) is funding your inaction.
Nope, the public paid for your to write the tune in the first place. The possibility of continuing royalties was one of your incentives to create the tune way back in the beginning.
I will agree with you that copyright terms are way to long, but if you base the term on the amount of money one makes, then some people will never have their copyrights expire, while some will have them expire the moment they hit the top ten.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Why not? He's already running your country, right? You silly americans should probably just overthrow your government, and be done with it. I'm kidding, of course. At the current rate of decay of your rights, you still have more than ten good years of "freedom".
Honestly, it scares me to know that if US citizens can't protect their rights now, then the civilized world doesn't stand a chance when our turn comes. US laws have a rather insidious way of becoming global. Can you spell embargo?
FWIW, IMO, copyright is a good thing. There are only two really major problems I see:
- 20 years *total* is more than enough. None of this lifetime+time until december 31+320 years+6 full moons crap. 20 years. If you haven't made your money by then, I don't think another century is going to help.
- Copyright is not a right that should be given to a non-person. Sure, corporations should be able to negotiate the right to use copyrighted material, but not to own it. Just how does that lifetime part work anyways with an owner that doesn't technically die?
Heh. Well, *technically* it's legal to download and burn music here in Canada, so I'm going to go enjoy my rights while I still live in a free country.I can't help but wonder if Michael Eisner is sitting in his office thinking, "If I try to do that again, I'm going to have to cough up a lung!"
Woney
The labels stopped being interested in developing ANY 'catalog killer' artists when Top 40 radio started to take on its current importance. DSotM came from an AOR/FM era. Those days are gone.
Artists who've been around for a long time develop savvy, hire better lawyers, are less easily ripped off. The incentive is NOT to put out lasting albums.
you're perfectly right. notably in France, it was the case.
US Law went from registration date, not authors death, up until '78. Unlike in Europe, copyright here was not supposed to be an entitlement - you didn't get it automatically, you had to register and put a copy of the work in trust so it would survive, and you had to renew it regularly or it would expire.
'66 is 75 years from the registration date, that's what mattered.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Yes! Case in point: sampling. Remember Odelay? Beck's groundbreaking album that featured an amazing and deeply personal use of samples, and which earned a grammy for album of the year? Here's what he had to say about it: "I'll never use samples like that again, after seeing what a headache it was getting them all cleared." Using samples is an art form of its own, and free advertising for the artist being sampled. I've bought many CDs just because I heard the samples and wanted to check out the original songs. And it's the best form of advertising--honest celebrity endorsements! I really can't understand why derivitave works like sample-based tunes are illegal to distribute, except maybe to guess that it's a power trip on the part of the labels. Kinda like how they shut down Napster even though it made their revenues go up.
c-hack.com |
What happens if someone's found an old copy on Google's cache or something?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
That's fine. If it's an old version, it's in the public domain. That was deliberate. If you want to use a newer version of my code, you'll have to comply with my licensing terms (currently GPLv2 across the board).
I think a 10-year limit on copyright for source code is more than sensible. If a company (or me) has been modifying said code for the past 10 years, I doubt the 10-year-old version of the code is going to help their competitors very much. If that particular code module has remained unchanged for that time, well, ditto. Either way it's clearly not cutting-edge tech, or a competitive advantage.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
some animators famously did make a mickey&minnie pr0n sequence, and walt disney himself promptly fired them.
I was under the impression that dead people's copyrights lasted 70 years (outside the US), but IANAL and I don't even remember of this time was counted from the original publication of the work or time of death of the artist so I'm just posting out of my nose.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Something else to consider, given the mentality of most record labels -- if copyrights expired after a shorter period, how many labels would just sit on material waiting for the rights to expire before exploiting it so they didn't have to share any royalties?
Once the rights expire the material is in the public domain so anyone can then make use of it. Also we have a big problem with publishers sitting on material right now. With a much shorter copyright term this becomes less of a problem. Also a short copyright term adds an air of urgency to make the most of their exclusive rights...
I was going to point out the huge flaw in your first sentence, but you've very kindly done it for me.
I'm sorry, but you fail the clue check. The vast majority of people involved in song creation are now doing work-for-hire. The concept of an "artist" is the exception, not the rule. The labels already own the right to the song. Any royalties that they choose to pay to the people involved (to the creators of the lyrics or music, or to the meat puppet miming to them, for example) are a purely contractual matter. When the rights expire, it's the label that loses out, because they can't stop other labels or you or me copying or creating derivative works without restriction.
The same applies even in the unusual case of an artist retaining rights and licensing them to a label. If the label chooses not to exercise their right to copy and distribute the work, they lose out as well when the creator's rights expire, because then their license become worthless.
What you really illusatrate is how badly understood copyright laws are, and that what we need more than anything else is a single, coherent way of dealing with copyright and intellectual property. "Author's life plus some" is both relatively recent, and already obsolete!
Consider that the majority of content that you and I experience on a day to day basis is done as work for hire. Songs, TV, film, some reference books; they are created by individuals, but the rights are owned by corporations. In this case, the expiry of the rights is based not on the creator's life, but on a fixed term. (And considering that that terms keeps getting extended on demand, I mean "fixed" largely in the sense of fraudulent).
There's also a misconception that individual rights can only be licensed and not sold. Guess again. Once created, rights can be sold lock, stock and barrrel. No, this doesn't mean that you pretend that OmniMegaHyperCorp created the work or caused it to be created, you just sign a contract that says you give them all rights in perpetuity and without restriction, and (as if by magic) it happens. It's not part of copyright law, it's contract law, but it's de facto and supported by case law.
But in this case, how long should the rights last? Lifetime of the creator? Fixed term? If the individual signs them over after fifty years, does that reset the clock on the fixed term ownership by the corporation? Or what if the creator dies two minutes after signing them over? Does that start the "death plus some" expiry? What if one individual sells rights to another individual? Or what if an individual doing work-for-hire for a corporation buys the rights to the work that they created some time after the fact? What if they then sell those rights back again? Most of these questions have yet to be answered by case law, because we keep changing and extending terms so often that most work is essentially worthless and not fighting over before the issue comes up. Where there's an exception, like early Disney work, Congress is happy to extend the duration of their copyright to avoid the issue.
The whole issue of expiry is a big kludgy minefield. The only solution that makes any kind of sense is the original solution before we confused it by tying it to a lifetime: a fixed term associated with the creation of the work. It doesn't matter who caused the work to be created, or owns the rights, or how often the rights are bought or sold. The clock starts ticking the instant the work is created, and the bell rings after a fixed period, regardless of where the rights are in the pass-the-parcel world of modern IP.
That's the way it used to work, and it was a damn shame that we "fixed" it, because it wasn't broke.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yeah, but I'm talking in terms of decades here. 10, 20, maybe even 30 years. I don't think record labels give too much thought to how much dough a CD is going to bring in 20 years from now, but I could be wrong.
In many cases they might well be looking at timescales of months even weeks to either make money on a piece of music or consign to the "miss" vault for a century.
Whilst copyright terms have been getting longer the timescales which publishers consider have been getting shorter.
Copyright is fine for a while. Intellectual property has a place in society, but people who copy will always copy.
Arguing about Mickey Mouse now is a big waste of money and time. Disney are rich, they want to protect their money. Unfair.
Give others a chance, for christs sake, for innovations sake.
Arrgh it makes me sick. The rich are always finding ways to protect what they have, and screw others.
Democracy != Meritocracy
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I tried to post a huge ASCII of "The Giver" last night but it wouldn't get past the lameness filter... any suggestions??
Note that it doesn't say Inventor's heirs, just Inventors. It seems that a very strict constructionist should simply throw out the '+70' part of the 'life + 70' clauses of the current law - there is no constitutional power for that (of course, how this would apply to corporations is a bit of a conundrum).
A strict interpretation would probably toss "remainder of the inventors/authors life" too. Since this pushes the definition of "limited time". Most likely it was intended to mean "limited time" as viewed by an average person who had no interest in redefining "limited" as "as large as possible without being unlimited".
Problem is that AFAIK no-one has bothered to ask regular people how long they consider "limited time" to be. Maybe such a question should be part of any future census carried out in the US.
Not true. Copyright is a property that can be bought, sold, traded. It's a commodity, and as such, can be passed via the will; you know, that thing you pass your private property down to.
...
You miss the point. That is that, at least in the US (Disney, the RIAA and MPAA, etc are based in the US), using copyright in this was appears to be outside of the US constitution and thus completly bogus.
I will admit that I'm not sure that copyrights, initially, were considered to be private property that could be bought or sold. It would be interesting to know
You cannot simply ammend a written constitution by passing a law with is in conflict with it. Otherwise there would be little point in having such a constitution in the first place.
It boils my blood to see the argument framed using terms that were designed to bias the debate toward one side. It especially boils my blood to see the opposing side accept that stupid definition of terms.
:)
Unfortunatly copyright is hardly the only issue where this goes on. Plenty of issues where this kind of blood boiling is completly justifiable
Money and power are interchangeable. Money buys power. Power facilitates inflow of money. It's a positive-feedback loop.
Campaign finance reform entrenches incumbents? Fine. I gots two words to solve that problem: term limits. But the amount of power concentrated in the Legislative Branch of the U.S. government is corrupting enough as it is (you mention pork barreling, neh?), get the can of gasoline away from the fire!
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
If they actually made copyright extensions roll all the way backwards as well.
For example, suppose copyright is extended. We would then apply that to all older works too, and find that when Disney made their Jungle Book film, the Jungle Book itself was still copyrighted. Thus, Disney must immediately start negotiations with Kipling's estate or lose the royalties they got from the film (inflation adjusted). Likewise with Hans Christen Andersen, etc..
I think this is a really good idea, actually - after all, if these firms seek copyright extensions they surely ought to seek for *all* artists to get the extension, including those whose lapsed copyrights were exploited in the past.
After all, heaven forbid that they were using the law as a competition weapon by cherry-picking the public domain now and then having copyright extended to cement their claims on the ideas..
How do new laws help? There are already a dozen different ways to murder someone, with a dozen times that of "circumstances", each representing different statutes. And that is just one single type of crime among thousands.
One thing which certainly dosn't help is "supercriminization" passing a statute against something which was already illegal in the first place. Typically done purely for political kudos...
How does this NOT apply to "new technology"? Was public showing for profit somehow "legal" when using a VCR instead of a film projector?
A decently written statute defines something simply by what is done, rather than how it is done (including what tools might or might not be used.)
Is copying by hand illegal, but machine copying legal?
Why should one machine be considered differently from another machine?
As long as I use the latest and greatest technology and the laws haven't specifically covered it yet, may I reprint your books with my name on them and be safe from prosecution?
Only if the legislators and judges are utter fools... Unfortunatly quite a few of those around at the moment appear to be. Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together would realise that the above example is copyright infringment and fraud. No matter if you use a paper and pencil or a replicator from Star Trek.
The call for new laws is a cry for someone else to solve your problems for you. Every way for a person to injure or trespass on someone else has been "illegal" for thousands of years.
If anything in many parts of the world what's needed is more a case of tidying up the old laws: why have 20 laws when one will do, get rid of cases where laws are mutually exclusive or refer to entities which no longer exist.
> Repeat after me, class: Intellectual "property" is not property . The whole stupid term only came into use within the past two decades
If you're claiming that copyrights were not sold or transferred in a commiditized fashion before 20 years ago, I think thats flat out wrong.
http://www.publaw.com/1976.html:
Under the Copyright Act of 1909 the ownership of a copyright could only be transferred in whole, and not in part. If the copyright owner assigned anything less than the entire copyright such transfer was only recognized as a license and not an assignment. The owner of the entire copyright was called the "copyright proprietor."
Seems to suggest that even the 1908 copyright law included the right to transfer (only in whole, not in part), a copyright, thus, effectively making it property.
Whether or not we use the stupid IP term or not doesn't change that copyrights were transferrable by law long LONG before you claim they were.
Now, what constitutes infringement is a whole other thing. I think 50 years, period is sufficient. But don't let your distaste for the current legal and social climate of copyright issues get in the way of recognizing that even if we've 'swung too far' towards the private interests with respect to the private vs. public implications of copyright law, copyrights have long since enjoyed the ability to be transferred to another party. Thus, it is property, and has been for a long time. As it relates to the parent post, the fact that a copyright can be transferred via a will plus the ever-growing copyright lifetime, allows heirs (as the parent poster noted) to live off the fruits of their parents/grandparents/etc. I think it's wrong, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't been that way for a long time.
"Old man yells at systemd"
If your source code is copyrighted, and copyright expires, your source code will be the public domain.
It doesn't mean you must give your source code away. You have the right to keep it a secret.
What is does mean is that you no longer have any say what somebody can do with it if they do get your source code.
Example: If someone finds your source code, and it isn't copyrighted. They have the right to post it on thier website or even sell it if they choose.
Do people's diaries and journals don't become public domain after their deaths?
If it isn't copyrighted, it's in the public domain. No exceptions...
Copyright is a government granted limited monopoly that must (according to the US Constitution) be granted for a very specific and limited purpose and for a limited term.
The records of the writers of the Constitution unanimously make it very clear that copyright is not property and that it must be limited; that it is granted for a purely pragmatic purpose. Some, Jefferson particularly, were opposed to as strong a measures as even the original limited 14-year term (granted only after registration with the Lobrary of Congress and after payment of the appropriate fees).
That's the Constitutional picture. It is the law that is supposed to bind Congress, the President, and the courts.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Have you seen this film that Disney is so trying to keep out of the public domain? Boy-oh-boy, Steamboat Willie sucks. It is simply a horrible film. For those of you who care, and those of you who don't, here's my synopsis.
Mickey is piloting a steamboat ship when old Pete comes to the bridge, roughs Mickey up a bit and tells him to scram. Pete chews some tobacco, doing tricks with the juice, until he splats tobacco juice into his own face. Meanwhile, the boat makes a stop to pick up some farm animals. In doing so, Mickey gets squirted in the face by a cow's udder. The boat leaves without Minnie Mouse (huh? where did she come from?), so Mickey uses a winch to pick her up by her underwear and hauls her onto the deck.
A goat eats Minnie's violin and sheet music, so the mice get the idea to wind his tail like a music box. The goat starts bleating the song "Turkey in the Straw." Then Mickey goes around the ship, torturning all of the animals in time with the music. He pulls piglets' tails to make music; he repeatedly strangles a cat then tosses it by its tail. Old Pete catches him, and tosses him into the potato bin, where Mickey hits a mocking parrot with a potato.
That's where it ends. I'm not making this crap up. It's so awful, it's laughable. This is the precious commodity that Disney is trying to save.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Chris Sprigman writes : "Authors in ancient times, as well as monks and scholars in the middle ages, wrote and were paid for their writings without copyright protection. Taken as a whole . . . the evidence now available suggests that, although we should hesitate to abolish copyright protection, we should equally hesitate to extend or strengthen it."
It should be noted that in ancient times and in the middle ages literacy was a rare skill. I'd hazard a guess that writers were paid for their ability to write rather than the content of what they wrote.
I doubt that this specific argument about the success of writers in ancient times can be applied in any meaningful way to today's literate society.
I think I am being misunderstood, I have a problem with old laws being applied to new problems. New laws or no laws for technology problems is my stance.
Then I could send a copy to the Disney CEO replete with Mickey humping Minnie ;-)
'course I expect Minnie's a good bit younger than Mickey, so I'll be waiting for her release. (That Mickey is such a cradle-robber!)
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
...Mickey Mouse pr0n flick?
"I owned Mickey Mouse Massage Parlours, but those Disney sleaze-bags shut me down. I said, 'Look, I'll change the logo, put Mickey's pants back on", but there's just no reasoning with some people."
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
When I was reading through the article, the Jefferson quote on ideas struck me as applying pretty directly to any sort of information, such as software...
Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me . . . .
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
Just try replacing the words in bold with appropriate digital information related terms and see where it gets you. Just a thought.
-SablKnight
This is a question that's bugged me about a lot of laws. The Constitution explicitly denies Congress the right to write an ex post facto law - yet the CTEA certainly goes into the past and extends copyrights. How is this not blatantly unConstitutional?
Jon
if i had any mod points today they would goto you. the companies have no incentive to sit on say a back street boys song for a year, let alone 14 years, or artists life +90years. do you think this crap will be sellabe then? even if it is sellable, it's in the public domain so any one can use it.
-- john
Aimee Mann
Thievery Corporation
King Crimson, and all their "children" and "relatives"
Ani DiFranco
Michael Jackson
Almost any Indie musician
These are just a handful of artists who, by either creating their own label or working the system, have managed to secure all the rights to their works. These guys are the exception, of course.
But so are work-for-hire-artists. Work for hire is when an artist gives up all their rights to their work (including royalties, IIRC). Not a lot of artists are dumb enough to sign a contract like this, and in some cases it can be brought to court and dismissed. The vast majority of artists sign a contract where the label gets the "publishing rights," which are the rights to the recording and they get the "performance rights," the rights to the song. There's a fine but important distinction. The reason for this is that the songwriter did all the work in writing the song, so he gets the rights to it. In the vast majority of cases, it's the label who does all the work and puts up all the money to record the song (much of the time, losing their investment), so it's only fair that they get the rights to the recording. You should really check your facts before saying someone doesn't have a clue.
Work for Hire goes on in Hollywood and TV because that's what people are doing. The directors, actors, stuntmen, gaffers, are all working for the studio, who is putting up all the money for the film's production and distribution. It's no different than a software development company, really. If you owned a company that was pouring huge bucks into hiring people to make something, you wouldn't be giving the rights away either.
You're right, people can sell all the rights, including ownership of their songs, and they do. George Clinton sold it to songs that wound up earning $100m. He went to court over it, and it was ruled that the rights were sold and that was it. But this is pretty much the exception.
It is a big kludgy minefield. But if we want to navigate it successfully and once and for all, we have to look at what's fair for both the artists and the corporations.
c-hack.com |
Um.. yes. Perhaps i was not clear enough.
:P Whatever. I give up.
My point is that they already have little interest in the long-term value of an album, but that what tiny incentive they have in that direction would be removed if the copyright terms became *too* short. (The post i was responding to seemed to be almost implying copyright terms of 10yrs from publication..)
I.E: It's never so bad you can't make it *worse*. Besides which, not all labels are major.. and some (some) of the non-major labels *are* interested in long-term album sales. And more and more lately i find these are the only record labels that interest me anymore..
I mean-- i agree with what you're saying. I just don't see how it's disagreeing with my post
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
How is this different from an automobile factory? They design and prototype a car, then they perform the service of duplicating that car. Anyone with the necessary resources could duplicate that car, if not for the state-granted monopoly they have.
Do the resources required to copy make that much of a difference? Paper books are much harder to copy than their electronic kind, yet they're both just a bunch of IP.
Now, usually when you're talking about owning IP, you generally mean all copies of it, which isn't right, but the right to produce copies is the same.
First of all, get real. Second of all, I highly disagree with the way companies allow for us to handle the rights to their "intellectual property," althought we buy licenses and such. If you are one of those type of guys who have never participated in any sort of "black market" or "underground" viewing, purchasing, hearing, or whatever, then I commend you, however I would highly doubt it. Third of all, my case is for laws to be changed in order to better accomodate our new technologies, can you tell me that the laws are meant to be a permanent thing in our lives and untouchable, or unmodifiable? Then why do we have ammendments? You have to admit that some alws are just not applicable and that the heart in which those laws where created was a different one too. Don't use the laws that are there now to protect the bullyism that is going on in our society and delivered by the record, movie, and software industry.
I am truly sorry that you feel the way you do and hope that you realize that there are two types of people in this World, the little people and the big people and you are siding with the big people.
Here you get into an analogy that could muddy the waters, because there are two ways in which, say, Ford "owns" the newest Taurus. Ford does indeed own the actual, physical cars that have been produced and are sitting on a lot. To use one, you must purchase it; otherwise, it is stealing. I don't think anyone disagrees with that.
On the other hand, Ford would claim to "own" the design, via the patents and possibly copyrights. (I'm not sure under which part of the IP regime a design of a car would fall.) But they don't own the design. When I see the car, I immediately take in the exterior design; and now I "own" it too.
Of course, precisely because the state has granted an exclusive right to Ford to copy that design -- that is, to "fix it in tangible form" through the production of another physical car -- Ford can control distribution and reap the benefit of their intellectual output. I don't see how that differs from books or music at all. In both cases, the corporation holds a copyright or a patent; it does not "own" the idea expressed.
The IP part of this seems, again, to be more of a service thing. How do I know? Because Ford can license the right to copy the design to someone else -- a subcontractor or whatever. Then that someone else -- who already "owns" the design -- is granted the legal right to make copies of the design and fix them in the physical form of an actual car.
I don't think the given example undermines me at all.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
My
We don't have to imagine a world without IP - it exited. The inventor often sold the product of his invention yet still keep it a tightly held secret. The Zildjian family has kept their metalurgical inventions secret since 1618 (before patent laws arose in the Ottoman Empire) and have enjoyed a near monopoly on cymbal making for much of that time. This is how it worked before patents. Patents are not a deal where the public/government "owns" the intellectual product (which it simply doesn't posess) and grants a license to it's creator but where the public/government acknowledges the inventors ownership and makes a deal - give up your secret (an unguaranteed but unlimited ownership) and we will guarantee your ownership for a limited time ("face it your secret probably would have come out sooner or later"). The inventor need not fear losing his livelyhood by his secret being discovered by a competitor. He can also engage in more direct business methods not dominated by the need to maintain his ownership through secrecy. The public benefits by those more efficient, less secretive business methods and by the guarantee that the inventions WILL eventually enter the public domain (some secrets can be kept for a VERY long time - just look at Zildjian, or they can be lost with the death of those initiated into the secret, or by a fire at the factory, etc.)
Some inventions covered by patents and most creations covered by copywrite don't have the kind of advantages that inventors like Avedis Zildjian had but they would still attempt to secure their livelyhood from the excersice of their craft by limiting the publics ability to duplicate it without compensation. This wasn't such an issue before the advent of printing, recording etc. that copywrite laws grew up alongside. A musician can profit from public performances, an artist can sell original paintings. Movies would ONLY be available in theaters. Software would be available custom written, on a secure server or with incredible copy-protections. And screw "fair-use" that is a concept belonging to "IP" the physical product (disks, dongles etc.) is IT - take the physical object as is or leave it. And forget "open-source" software - it's all public domain now, if a commercial vendor wants to take your source code and use it in his binary only, copy-protected product - who are you to protest, he "owns" it as much as you do.
I am not arguing that the current looooong time afforded to copywrites is good. Far from it. I'm merely pointing out that as a practical matter the creator DOES own his creations. His "IP" rights are a method to make the creations he indisputably owns available in ways he no longer individually controls, for both his and the "publics" mutual benefit.
Americans already have Mickey Mouse as president: look here.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
As an author, I'd like to see the market itself play more of role in copyrights and patents. I'd like to see them traded and sold, and I'd be very interested in seeing the public have the ability to retire a copyright by paying for it. Library associations or the government could put a work into the public domain by insuring that the author has a good amount of money for it.
Something like this system would accomplish several things at once. It would give the government a nice way to compensate artists for their art (like the National Endowment for the Arts, but less opinionated, since the money would come after the completion of a work). It's certainly more democratic. And MOST importantly, such a market would give artists a VERY good reason not to sell their rights to an industry.
Come to think of it, a market as such would be the perfect marketing vehicle for artists as well. "Say, that band Squidloaf has gone up five points in the last week -- maybe I'll check that out."
All the law needs to say is essentially, "respect copyright". After that, the market takes over and decides how long the copyright lasts, and the market allows anyone to retire a copyright, whenever, for the right price.
I'm just thinking off the top of my head, so I may not be seeing any inherent "bads" in such a system, but honestly, at first glance, it seems to be a natural way to value art in our culture and gives artists an option to release their work to the public domain and an incentive to keep it out of other people's hands (since they could make some money off of it).
Actually, the idea gets ridiculous when you start thinking about futures on copyrights, but that's a different story.
_________________
Its quote clear that Jefferson thought ideas were not thought to be "property." Whats not so clear is the last bit: "without claim or complaint from anybody." Is he saying society doesn't care?
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
For a long time? Well, the original intent of copyright in the US and the UK is clearly to avoid a simple equating of rights and property, as others have pointed out. Just for entertainment, here's an early Victorian (Macaulay) on the subject (the whole thing is here, courtesy of Eric Flint)
...I will take an example. Dr Johnson died fifty-six years ago. If the law were what my honourable and learned friend wishes to make it [term extended], somebody would now have the monopoly of Dr Johnson's works. Who that somebody would be it is impossible to say; but we may venture to guess. I guess, then, that it would have been some bookseller, who was the assign of another bookseller, who was the grandson of a third bookseller, who had bought the copyright from Black Frank, the doctor's servant and residuary legatee, in 1785 or 1786. Now, would the knowledge that this copyright would exist in 1841 have been a source of gratification to Johnson? Would it have stimulated his exertions? Would it have once drawn him out of his bed before noon? Would it have once cheered him under a fit of the spleen? Would it have induced him to give us one more allegory, one more life of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal? I firmly believe not. I firmly believe that a hundred years ago, when he was writing our debates for the Gentleman's Magazine, he would very much rather have had twopence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a cook's shop underground. Considered as a reward to him, the difference between a twenty years' and sixty years' term of posthumous copyright would have been nothing or next to nothing. But is the difference nothing to us?...
Speech to Parliament, 1841
Chris:
I think one person in a hundred liking your music is hopelessly optimistic, seeing as how you are into polyrhythms, microtones, and who knows what else. However, from what I've heard so far I am one of them. I'm looking forward to hearing the rest. So far, I've tried several of the dragon tunes... a little trancy for my taste, but there's a lot of interesting stuff going on.
I'm looking forward to hearing the rest.
It's obvious you do it for the love of doing it, which is the best reason.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Seems to mean that he means that exclusive rights should only be granted if nobody complains about it. That is, if people complain that so and so doesn't deserve such and such rights to profits arising from invention, then they shouldn't.
:)
Of course, in true free-market capitalist style, now we have a huge industry who's sole job is to prove or disprove the validity of said complaints. So the complaints grow, so the industry grows, but of course, that industry also aligns itself counter to its original purpose - strengnthening the hold on those exclusive rights. (Not surprising, as the one with the money to pay for the legal might in this scenario is the original potentially illegitimate copyright holder, whos interests would include extending the life of copyrights.)
On a side note, its a good example of how capitalism doesn't always have a self balancing mechanism, because new markets can form to solve problems that may or may not have been solved by the 'self-correction' mechanism that free-marketers claim is supposed to happen every time in the original market. In this case, where the content market may have fought between the effectiveness of different kinds of copyright terms, it has become more profitable to the economy as a whole to create a new market to deal with the problems arising from the social and economic problems of the current copyright law. So the original problem is left untreated while the 'doctors' get entrenched in the industry and the problem becomes 'neccessary' to a whole wack of people who've spent their lives dealing with the flak that arises out of current copyright law. Completely free markets encourage faulty legislation! (I realize I might just get flamed for that contention.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Ok, I'm sorry, I was confused about what you were saying.
When you're dealing with term of life+20 or life+50, what's the point of killing the creator? So that you may, perhaps get access to the work in 20 years? If you're an heir, then you'd have just as much incentive to kill off the creator whether the term was life+20 or a flat 50 years.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It's just as a matter of theory. However, with copyrights being granted to all sorts of useful rather than artistic things these days (software comes to mind) it becomes less a matter of money and more a matter of creative control.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
That is that, at least in the US (Disney, the RIAA and MPAA, etc are based in the US), using copyright in this was appears to be outside of the US constitution and thus completly bogus.
Obviously, YANAL. If it were completely bogus, people would not have to argue so strenuously that the new law is unconstitutional. A hundred years of law has been estabished that copyrights are indeed transferable and licensable. How else could publishers publish works for authors? The Constitution does not explicitly mention the concepts of "works for hire" or "fair use" Do you think those are unconstitutional as well?
It is absurd to believe that the Constitution must describe the powers of Congress in such detail. It is absurd for the Constitution to say that Congress has such a power as a legislative body, and then mean that no law regarding that power can be passed that is not explicitly in the Constitution. If it were already in the Constitution, there wouldn't be any need for any statute!!
You are missing the point. In particular, the qualifying words "in nature" Sure, ideas aren't property in the sense of inherently limited possession. That is why statutory power must be invoked to grant to ideas the legal status that ordinary property has in nature had from the beginning of common law.
Once that statutory power has been used to create copyrights and patents, then the expressions and inventions then *assume* some of the character that naturally pertain to physical property, namely the "exclusive right" that society has chosen to grant!
The extent to which ideas are property is solely and completely due to statute. Society has chosen to create copyright and patent legislation. Hence, *legally speaking*, they are equivalent to property, to the extent that statute provides. Penalties exist for the unlawful use of an idea, just as penalties exist for the unlawful taking of other types of property.
Wouldn't it make more sense to base copyright expirations on accumulated revenues/royalties? Then you could, for example, retain copyright for the first $1M or $10M or whatever, after which the work in question immediately returns to the public domain. If you chose appropriate values for the different types of media, popular works would enter to public domain much more quickly than today (of course, this assumes there is some positive corrolation between sales and cultural or literary value...)
tastes like chicken
Which is a good reason to use a set period of time, instead of life + x...
Really, twenty five years should be enough time to profit on something. (My view is 15+10 if requested).
In fact I'd advocate that all software source
_automatically_ enter the public domain after
years. Here you advocate = 10, but I'd
think actually = 5 should still provide enough incentive for commercial publishers in most cases.
As you said, the incentive is to create enhanced
versions so that the older, public donain version
itself were not that valuable. Which is different of course from literature and music.
Now, there would be a number of interesting side effects to this, e.g. governments could indefinitely support themselves e.g. Windows 95,
since its source would be in the public domain by now.
Very few software creations have a commercial
value after 5 years. Remains to distinguish whether privately or corporately creeated software needs to fall under this clause. In my view it would be sufficient to oblige software companies to deposit the source code at time of publishing so that it can be automatically release.
Words of pure fiction, of course. Still try to argue me out of it - I think it's sound and feasible and would among other things fix the M$
stalement afa I am concerned.
It's clear you really don't know why laws are passed. They are passed in order for politicians to get re-elected. Since the bigest single factor in being re-elected is getting the most MONEY, most new laws are passed in order to pay off or inspire more contributions from wealthy businesses or labor unions.
Since I explicitly point out "fair use" as a good thing, and "fair use" is expressly beneficial for the little guy, I do not see how you can consider me somehow favoring the big guys.
I think copyright is a sham, as it is enforced now. It was designed to be a limited thing, not an eternal thing. Again, the abuse is seen in the new laws, which have extended copyright to absurd lengths which stifle competition and crush new ideas. If it were all thrown out tomorrow I'd be thrilled.
The only book burning party I'd joyfully attend is a lawbook burning party.
I suggest you examine closer the arguments you're engaging in, so you don't argue against phantoms of your own creation. I have done this myself, sad to say, so I know how hard it is.
And yes indeed I've gleefully partisipated in the "underground" economy in various ways, and will do so again at any opportunity. Fan subtitled Anime is an old and noble tradition, to name one.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I believe it's Washington state, but anywhere recently a very popular term limit statute was thrown out. It had passed by voter ballot, and let sit for a couple of years before the politicians (who were about to be rotated out) brought a suit to have the law overturned.
The court where it was brought said "Yep. You win."
Like magic: No more term limits. Maybe a google search will bring up articles on the event.
It's too bad that tar and feathers have gone out of style, those politicians deserve such treatment in spades!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Actually, I was only agreeing with the principle involved; I think that 5 years would probably be better too.
I'm not going to try to argue you out of it since I agree!
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Obviously, YANAL. If it were completely bogus, people would not have to argue so strenuously that the new law is unconstitutional.
In the case of the US there is an odd quirk that if an unconstitutional law gets passed (which is perfectly possible where laws can be lobbied for, even outright "bought") it's treated as though it is valid until the US supreme court strikes it down. Which can take a long time since this court appears to have been overloaded with other tasks not in it's original mandate, often dosn't act on its own initutive in striking down unconstitutional statutes and dosn't like being petitioned directly, dispite the first ammendment.
A hundred years of law has been estabished that copyrights are indeed transferable and licensable. How else could publishers publish works for authors?
Transfer and licencing are not the same thing. Also it would be perfectly possible for publishers to operate with only licencing...
I know very well that transfer and licensing are not the same thing. Perhaps that is why I used both terms? Some publishers (e.g. technical journals) depend on outright transfers. Anyway, how can you selectively license something that you don't actually own?
You are asking to deprive them of the hundred years of precedent they have relied on so that the Supreme Court can affirm your radically limited view of what the copyright power means. Your primary reasoning seems to be "it is obviously unconstitutional." Do you really think in the past hundred years that there haven't been any copyright cases before the court? That something so "obvious" would be missed in those cases?
Furthermore, *any* judge can rule a law unconstitutional, although that judgement only serves as precedent in a limited venue. There is no "odd quirk" that you claim. A Supreme Court decision is only needed to create a precedent that acts as the law of the land.
In fact, any ruling of unconstitutionality by a lower court is going to be a very good reason for the Supreme Court to grant certiorari, as different courts having different holdings on constitutionality is a serious problem to be rectified.
No real judge is going to rule the way you want. In the real world, this means your opinion is not legally valid. Expecting the Supreme Court to declare some well-established body of law unconstitutional is not like expecting Linus to include a patch in the kernel.