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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?
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.
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."
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 |
But, copyright law was created before the U.S. reached the Industrial age ... The general attitude for copyrights has shifted dramatically during the past 200 years.
Not meaning to pick on U.S.-centrism, but copyright laws were created before the U.S. reached _any_ age, and the original purpose was to... wait for it... protect media cartels from competition and maybe be a handy mechanism for censorship, to boot.
Within the last 200 years, well, fair enough. The U.S. constitution said the purpose was to motivate further technological and intellectual progress. But within many other countries (especially in Europe) there is much more attention/justification around 'author's rights' than around 'scientific progress'.
It's a sad, but true, fact that the obviously insincere rationalization for the Mickey Mouse copyright extension is at least in part true: it _did_ bring the U.S. into line with international copyright practice. (And no, I don't buy the standardization line... I said it was obviously insincere.)
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
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?
But, copyright law was created before the U.S. reached the Industrial age ... The general attitude for copyrights has shifted dramatically during the past 200 years.
It is true that the Framers felt the early American republic needed some protection against the large content producers of their day in London. But if there is to be a shift, it should recognize that today it is the large content owners in Hollywood and New York that seek protection by means of global trade treaties--and they have the least need in the world for protection--they have already achieved dominance. Developing countries have reasons to oppose strong "intellectual property" laws.
Another point is that the U.S. Constitution Article 1 Section 8 is based on the 1710 British Statute of Anne, which also gave exclusive rights to "authors" and not publishers. The publishers have been trying ever since to win back the monopoly they enjoyed before then with the Stationers' Company guild, in return for censorship of material offensive to the crown.
Today it is a few media giants, large global corporations, who claim to produce and therefore own all ideas and expressions. They are quite willing to censor material for the government or other powerful groups.
it _did_ bring the U.S. into line with international copyright practice...
No, the CTEA did not "harmonize" U.S. copyright law with European law, that is a misconception that Jack Valenti keeps lying about. In fact, there is no way that retrospective extension could be harmonious, because before 1978, U.S. copyright dated from date of registration not from date of author's death--that causes many confusing differences between term in England and the U.S.
As the Jungle Books example shows. Since Kipling died in 1936, his works were protected by copyright in England until 50 years after his death, and so still at the time of the film in 1967--until 2007 now that England increased the term to 70 years after author's death. In the U.S., however, the second volume of the book published in 1895 would have been protected 28, 56 (when renewed) and then 75 years after first publication in 1895, and went into the public domain (IN THE U.S.) in 1966, one year before the film, as the column states. If the CTEA term had operated to harmonize, or if it had applied before 1966, then the work would still be under copyright both in the U.S. and England. Disney would have had to pay many bucks for worldwide rights unless it could, as it did, "pirate" the work from the public domain owned by you and me.
The Jungle Books example shows also that copyright is also used to suppress the creation of derivative works as much as it is to give incentives to produce new works. How can Kipling be given an incentive to produce any new books--he died in 1936! Why should not every schoolchild be allowed the right to draw her own figures from The Jungle Books without having to pay Disney a royalty or even get permission? But Disney and other large corporations claim to produce and own all our culture and ideas--even our genetic information--and the right to rent it back to us as pay-per-view forever.
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.
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
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
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!
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?
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.
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 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.
But we're not talking about mechanical engineers, we're talking about logical engineers who are building not machines but data tranformations which will be carried out by machines built by someone else for the express purpose of performing such tranformations (or "programs").
Why should I be able to patent a method of using your machine when the whole point of your machine it allow it to be so used? This is like patenting a novel because it uses paper in a unique combination of ink-markings to produce a "novel invention". Copyright is much closer to the correct solution than patent law.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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..
> 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"
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!"
The real reason for DVD region coding: a publisher may not be able to secure the worldwide rights for a particular copyright.
I don't believe this for one second. Even if I did, I can't see how that makes the manufacturer of a DVD player responsible for protecting the publisher from an infringment suit abroad. The publisher should avoid publishing in jurisdictions where he has not secured his rights. If a bootleg copy makes it into the as-yet-unsecured market, that is no fault of the publisher or the manufacturer.
Edith Keeler Must Die
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...)
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