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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.
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 $$ can get the best players.
God spoke to me
Sprigman states that Disney's 1967 movie The Jungle Book came out a year after Kipling's copyright expired, but I can't see how, under the terms of the 1909 copyright law, an 1894 book could have had its U.S. copyright expire much later than 1950.
One way it could happen (though I don't know if it's the case here) is that there used to be renewal deadlines, and if you missed them... too bad. An example that comes to mind is It's A Wonderful Life (1946) whose copyright shouldn't be up for quite a while yet... but which became popular when it lapsed into the public domain through someone missing a filing deadline.
As we saw recently with the MySQL AB vs NuSphere suit [ slashdot.org ] the lawmakers frequently don't have enough of an understanding to deal with technology.
I'd much prefer to have no laws governing new technologies than have a lot of laws created by people who do not understand the technology they're trying to create laws about.
-Sara
How to keep the public domain our right?
.$$$ 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
I respectfully disagree.
IMHO the problem is not the laws keeping up, but the principles underlying those laws being screwed with. For example, what if we had just stuck with the original 14 years for copyright. Screw the Europeans and their life + 70 years.
I am not saying that laws never need be changed or added, but I AM saying that the Founding Fathers got it MORE right than any other group of people in power, ever; that the underlying concepts that the USA was founded on are quite in harmony with the Internet and the information age. I can easily imagine the words 'Information Wants To Be Free'on the lips of Patrick Henry. The problem is not the laws being changed too slowly, but too fast, and with courts, congress and the states ADDING new laws where none are needed.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
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.
There should be different copyright schemes depending on the type of "work" that is copyright. 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 until at least the day they die.
However, technology has a finite lifecycle of a much shorter period than the average person's life. Software is constantly being re-coded and the old code discarded. For 'code' the copyright lifecycle should be a lot shorter, as is the shelflife.
-Sara
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'm sure I'm not the only person who realizes that there IS a benefit to copyright law. When people say things like this, it becomes very obvious that there is a segment of the population that will never accept laws that are passed, and beleive that they are justified in their opinions becuase they are fighting for what is "fair and right." With no legal training and a sketchy background in the history of legal protections such as copyright, it continues to amaze me that people in this forum complain that OTHERS don't have the training needed to deal with the problems they face.
It would be impossible for the courts to work out an entirely new paradigm for deciding how copyrights and non-physical property such as software should be copyrighted and patented, therefor working to improve the current system slowly is better than the suggestions I continue to see rehashed here.
If you really think no laws are better than inadequate laws, maybe you think that the stock marrket should be unregulated, or all theft laws should be repealed. These laws are imperfect, and it'd be great to change that, but otherwisse just learn to be satisfied with a set of laws that do a pretty damn good job overall.
I'm a concientious
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.
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.
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
how dont they have the time? have you ever watched CSPAN. its insane how much time they waste. maybe if they stopped pleasing special interest groups and actually WORKED hard on something it would be different. The founding fathers of the US accomplished an amazing amount even with all of debating and comprimise of interests. there was bickering and such, but they worked out something that has an excellent foundation. The foundation is still very good for today with the amendments.
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"
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"
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?
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
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
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.
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!
Simple, but wrong. Life plus thirty was never the law in the U.S.
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
All laws will be imperfect laws, however the laws dealing with theft, fraud, murder, the stock market, etc. are laws that are usually created by people who have at least some knowledge of the things involved and the implications of the laws they are creating.
By and large, people are scared of technology and uneducated about it. I would prefer to see no laws governing techology than see laws created by those who do not understand the technology they are trying to control. We've already seen the results of that with the DMCA where technologically saavy people with a vendetta have been able to pass a law governing technology because the people that allowed the law to pass most likely did not understand that they were permitting a law that more or less goes against Fair Use which has been part of this country forever.
It's almost as though the lawmakers and courts of this country are "Under the age of consent" with regards to technology. They do not have enough real-life experience to understand the implications of their actions.
-Sara
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
If you only produce one brilliant idea, why is it in my interest -- or anyone's interest, or the interest of the nation as a whole -- to distort technology, the laws, the courts, or the market to subsidize you for the rest of your life?
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.
Then of course you've never published the source code and so it doesn't fall under the purview of copyright. Public domain refers to the fact that -- as Jefferson pointed out -- once an idea is shared even once, it cannot any longer be owned. Thus extraordinary and explicit means -- i.e., copyright law -- is required to secure to the author any monetary benefit, so as to encourage production.
The whole brouhaha over intellectual output arises from a misunderstanding of the basic realities of economics for non-tangible items.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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?
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.
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.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.
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.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
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.
What if I produce that one brilliant work, and then crap.
Then you are a "one hit wonder". (There are artists who have relased albums which consist entirely of reworkings of one song.) All copyright was intended to do was encourage production and publication of new works. Not provide a pension for people who's work happened to be popular. Nor can it magically create talent.
You're not one of those Objectivist nutters by any chance, are you?
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..
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".
Where the laws were properly written in the first place there is little or no need to do much in the way of updating. Using a new technology to perform a criminal act does not necessarily make a "new crime". (The US Patent Office has the same logic problem here.)
e.g. if someone invented a teleporting machine why would you need a special law to cover misusing that machine for stealing things or hurting people? You'd only need new laws if the new technology makes a criminal act possible which was completly impossible before.
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.
As we saw recently with the MySQL AB vs NuSphere suit [slashdot.org] [ slashdot.org ] the lawmakers frequently don't have enough of an understanding to deal with technology.
Rather they lack understanding. In this case enough understanding to see that the "technology aspect" of the case simply isn't relevent at all. The dispute here is over trademarks and copyright infringement.
> 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"
There should be different copyright schemes depending on the type of "work" that is copyright. 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 until at least the day they die.
Quite often literature does have a "shelf life". Authors do not gain any royalties on out of print books. Similarly performing arts such as movies and music recordings can have "shelf lives" in practice.
However, technology has a finite lifecycle of a much shorter period than the average person's life. Software is constantly being re-coded and the old code discarded.
Much the same happens with popular music, maybe not quite so fast. But it certainly is the case...
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!"
...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.
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
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.
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
You are right, you can't impose a 200 year old law on a new technological freedom that has been around for 1 year.
Such a happening is very unusual. Most of the time all a new technology does is allow people to do things they have done for a long time (quite possibly thousands of years) in a way which is different, cheaper, better, etc. Which whilst it may make something previously uncommon commonplace does not make it "new". Only in a very few cases does advancing technology actually create some ability which has never existed before.
Attempting to legislate technology has some of the same problems at patenting it. You end up with nonsense such as the DMCA which attempts to treat things differently based on irrelevent technical details.
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.
_________________
Hmmm - this doesn't seem to be TOTALLY off-topic. In fact, it reminds me of another reason Disney inc keeps frantically strangling any ancient work that might grow up and go off on its own into the public domain...
I have to wonder how much of the control has to do with maintaining a "politically correct" image? Here we have Steamboat Willie portraying animal cruelty (Yes, *I* know it's just a cartoon, but a lot of loud people take this sort of thing seriously). Similarly - when was the last time you could find a VHS of "Song of the South" to rent or purchase?
If "Song of the South" escaped Disney's clutches into the public domain, the few copies floating around out there would be distributable, and of course, Disney would be embarassed to no end (and probably harassed by race-related groups to no end). By keeping a stranglehold on what works are available and what works the public isn't allowed access to, Disney has another tool to manipulate the public's perception of them...
Just a casual conspiracy theory...
"Daddy, maybe we can use Linux to fix Windows?" --my daughter, age 3(Okay, this part is off-topic but - I've actually done this - booted from Linux to copy data from horribly dead or damaged Windows installations that wouldn't boot enough for me to do so...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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"
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.
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).
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
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.
The point of copyright isn't to compensate the authors, but rather to maximize public utility by encouraging development in the arts and sciences and turning the fruits of that development over to the public.
How long art and literature can be enjoyed is utterly irrelevant to how long copyright should last. Copyright should last whatever time is optimal in terms of giving the public access to the largest number of works (while keeping it in mind that works that aren't created aren't accessible to the public, so some level of protection is useful).
Reading the documents of the Founding Fathers make these intentions explicit. I think that in addition to maximizing public utility being the original intent of copyright, it's a good system as well. Copyright sells the public's rights (ie. if you have a patented device, my right to do what I like with the parts that I own no longer includes the ability to create a device that acts the same way); it should always give the public a greater return than its cost.