Slashdot Mirror
Copyright and Copy Rights
neocon writes "Today's National Review Online has an interesting
piece from John Bloom of UPI on the origin of Copy Rights (what Copyrights really are) and the
current attacks on them in Congress and elsewhere."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Everyone bangs their drum about how bad things are in the world today. Then they return to their own little world and do nothing.
I'm sick of reading about the ills of society and corporate america. If anyone actually gave a shit we wouldn't have the Republican Nation.
Americans need to shit or get off the pot. Either we have rights and freedoms or we don't.
a copyright law that was drafted a few hundred years ago cannot be relevant today without any change. at present, those laws are badly irrelevant to today's culture. as always, the rich and the powerful are just going to take advantage of the lucrative situation they have in their hands now.
the word "copyright" is quickly becoming a farce, at least in corporate and capitolist america. its sad how this issue has been ignored and cleanly swept under the rug. but as always and as mentioned earlier, the rich and powerful will have the last say.
High court weighs copyright law
The point is that bad policy isn't always unconstitutional, and the court may take that as reason to disagree without acting.
In general, this article is very light on the legal specifics behind this case and this law, but there are good resources out there, including specifically:
Opposing Copyright Protection
The Weekly Standard has also had a number of editorials on copyright--a writer has even come out in favor of mp3 sharing! This issue is finally coming up on the radar. I was pleasantly surprised when I came across the NR article this morning. I think some political thinkers are slowly starting to realize that this is a very important issue to a number of young adult professionals, and deserves a lot more attention than it is currently getting.
William F Buckley founded and runs the National Review. He is considered the senior voice of conservatives in America. He, and National Review, are strongly pro-life and also in favor of drug legalization.
It just shows that those who blithely put all Republicans into one stereotype are undereducated.
The only good weather is bad weather.
You misread the thrust of that statement. You simply restated the author's argument but quibbled with the nouns he used. I hardly think that was helpful to the discussion.
When the author said that Congress passed the Bono act because Congress viewed the issue as a property rights issue, he meant that Congress was ignoring the benefit to the public. Congress was in effect stating that the benefit to the public was what was incidental and that the mechanism of copyright existed to protect the property rights of authors.
It's very dangerous to think of information as property. It's not property. Don't use that term unless you want more laws that treat it as if it was.
Copyrights expire. Property rights don't.
There are "fair use" rights with information. There are no similar rights with real property. I can't "borrow" Hillary Rosen's car for "scholarly purposes", but I can copy her words.
The copyright on a work remains with the copyright holder, even after I buy it.
A piece of physical property is mine when I buy it, and not even the government can touch it without the appropriate legal papers.
The copyright follows the work, even as it is copied or changed into derivative works. Physical property only exists in one form at any given moment.
These differences should make you think twice about calling copyrights "property rights" without caveats. If the Framers wanted them treated as physical property, they would've put it in the Constitution.
s that the reason that "republicans" are generally against efforts to improve voter participation, such as the motor-voter bill? no this was another election with low turn-out and a definite lack of interesting discussion. sad! but, numbers-wise the winning candidates generally won with small majorities
You're half right. Both parties are generally against efforts to improve their opponent's voter turnout. One of the interesting things about the Motor-Voter bill was in many cases it helped Republican candidates, at which point they changed their tune quite a bit (as did the Dems in those areas.. they were less gung ho about after).
The Dem's shit stinks just as bad as the Reps when it comes to manipulating the election system in their favor.
I think this is a good article, and ending the progression in 1998 was a typical conclusions since no major events occured after that. But why end it with the Bono Act when you have the DMCA right after it! What could be worse than your right being abused (as the author explains) than having no rights at all via DMCA. This just shows you how ignorat the majority of people are when it comes to this issue. Except for online geeks, this isn't an issue for people who would read that article and feel sorry for authors who died 80 years ago because their work is not released.
I'd like to suggest "chessboard copyright", as follows: The term of an unregistered copyright shall be five years. Thereinafter, the copyright must be registered. The registration fee shall be one dollar for the sixth year; two dollars for the seventh year; and so forth -- for each subsequent year, the fee doubles.
The rationale here is that the cost of copyright to society is not merely linear with each year -- rather, it increases exponentially, since it cuts off the creation of whole genealogies of derivative works. Imagine if derivative works of the first Linux distribution were forbidden -- we would not simply have been deprived of the second Linux distribution, but of all the diverse branches of that family tree.
Chessboard copyright permits the holding-out of copyright over works which are exceptionally profitable -- such as Mickey Mouse -- for around twenty-five years. (The registration fee for the twenty-fifth year is $2^19 = about half a million dollars, still quite safe for a media mogul's profit margins.) However, soon after that it becomes untenable and shortly exceeds the size of the world economy. This is, of course, intentional.
Tweaks to this system might include adjusting the duration of unregistered copyright, the base fee, the exponent coefficient, and whether or not these values are the same for all classes of works (e.g. books vs. software vs. audio). If unregistered copyright lasted ten years, and the base fee was a penny, then a forty year copyright would cost just over 5.3 million dollars in the fortieth year.
That might be about right.
Clarification: This is a thought experiment, intended to balance between highly profitable companies' desire to hold copyright and the public's demand for innovative derivative works. I consider copyright itself much more problematic than this "proposal" suggests.
Actually, the view of copyrights being property is way off and causes a lot of problems. A copyright is just that, a right, not a possesion. A right can't be stolen, like property can. People can infringe on others rights, but they can't steal them.
People often compare copyright infringement to stealing, but it isn't the same. If something is stolen, the rightful owner is left without it. If something is copied illegally, the rightful owner still has it. People often argue about lost revenues, but those are often insignificant or non-existent, as in the case of VCRs being used to tape off of the TV.
Also many people compare bypassing access control to breaking into someone's house and stealing, when many times, such as with DVD encryption, you're only breaking into something you already own and have a right to access.
The only thing I know is that I don't know anything; and I'm not even sure about that.
Distinguishing TM vs. copyright is good, but it's still fairly close with regard to how it's dealt with in terms of legislation. Take a peek at the "Mickey Mouse Bills" which were passed on Disney [Corp.]'s pleading to prevent Mickey from falling into the public domain.
This is no different than drugs receiving protection for seventeen years, then the original patent holder making a benign left- or right-twist in one of the chemical bonds and declaring it to be a new product as a means of deterring anyone else from developing a generic which is "too close" to the most recently patented v1.001 (the newfangled left/right twist). This is *exactly* what Eli Lilly Corp. has tried to do here in Indianapolis.
If I wrote a classic, best-selling book many years ago, should I be entitled to add a single word somewhere in the text, claim the new work to be copyrighted and pursue anyone who attempts to violate my copyright because they are abusing a work which is too similar to the work I just copyrighted?
It's fine for corporations to be creative, toss lots of money into R&D, and there's nothing wrong with vigorously pursuing those who are obviously infringing on their competitors.
Whoever turned "copy right" into one word had to be a lawyer. We don't say "freespeechright" or "gunright" or "assemblyright" or "religionright."
As a result, 99 percent of the public thinks that a copyright is some kind of formal legal document. They think you have to go get it, or protect it, or defend it, or preserve it, or buy it, or hire a lawyer to make sure you have it.
Fantastic point. From now on let's refer to "copyright" as "copy right". It's an informative and accurate meme that need to be spread. Who's with me?
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
Fortunatly, I happen to disagree with you and I will try to quickly explain why.
First the term content producer is something of a misnomer that confuses the issue. So, for this post I will refer to them more correctly as a content arranger.
Fully understanding the rational of the behavior that corporations and content arrangers exhibit in regard to their views on protecting the content they have arranged, it is not just about them and to believe it is ignores critical facts. All works are heavly influenced by the culture that the arranger lived in, for no content can be produced in a vacuum. These arrangers entirely draw upon the wealth of creativity afforded by our culture and have stood upon the shoulders of those that came before them, which we as a society wholly encourage since it adds to the shoulder the next generation can stand on. Thus it can be concluded that the all new works can be considered a proper subset of the public domain and thus inherently also belong to the public domain. But being an enlightened society we realized that aranging content takes great time and the those that heavily contribute to this cause must eat, so we as a society graciously decided to allow the arrangers to for a limited time control the publication of that which they had arranged as encouragement for them to keep working. This encouragement is called copy-right.
So, as you can now clearly see copy-right is not something that belongs to you, it is the loan of a power from society. Which brings me to the point of systematically encrypting content. It doesn't belong to you, your just temporarly in control of it's distrobution. Thus when it reverts back to us, we want to be able to use it and if those that we granted copy-right to keep trying to abuse it, society will just forclose on what's ours anyways.
ummm...not really. Where do you think Hollywood gives its money to disproportianatley? Republicans or Dems? Seriously, it is the Dems (with some exceptions, Zoe Lofgren, Rick Boucher) who are in the pockets of Hollywood and the entertainment industry. How many prominant republicans are there in Hollywood (Tom Selleck, Charleton Heston, Ben Stein, Arnold Schwarzeneger, who else????). Hollywood gives money to dems, and dems respond to their bidding. Even Lieberman changed his tune on the morality of Hollywood when selected as the VP nominee for fear of offending one of the biggest Dem constituent $$ groups (the other two being trial lawyers and unions). Hilary Rosen's partner? Why that would be the head of the Human Rights Coalition, the both of them were the first to host Gore after his concession (the tenth one I believe it was, but the final one). So why be shocked that Republicans would stand up to Hollywood, who else would?
As an IP professor at the law school (prominant DC based) I attend said, "I hate it. I am a lifelong democrat and they are selling us out on IP issues." To which I responded, "I hear you, I feel the same way about republicans and civil liberties."
Yes, both parties take cash and have policies that favor certain interests, so don't turn this into, well republicans are bad cuz they are in the pockets of X,Y, and Z. The point is Dems will not stand up against Hollywood (with the notable exceptions mentioned), and the only ones who are left to are those who have been critical of Hollywood (for right or wrong), republicans. Hmm, could this be part of why Jesse Helms final legislative act was a big "screw you" to the RIAA and their webcasting bill? (but I thought he was an evil republican, how can that be????)
Indeed -- the fact that this is unusual is indicative of the disgusting state of politics in the US. If someone's political views are down-the-line identical to the "official" view of the Democrats, Republicans, or what-have-you, you're looking at a situation where:
(a) They've thought the issues through thoroughly, and just happened to agree with the party line on gun control, abortion, economics, welfare, civil rights, and a bunch more.
(b) They lie about their beliefs when they disagree with their party.
(c) They haven't thought about it at all, and are just agreeing with their team without assistance from logic or fact.
I think (c) is the most common by far.
It's also important to point out that unlike all other property rights, copyright originally only limited duplication rights for professional publishers. The general public was exempted as long as they didn't mass produce copies of the copyrighted work for payment. So, an individual could hand copy a book as often as he/she wanted, but a publisher could not set up a printing press to mass duplicate and sell the work without permission from the copyright holder. This is an important distiction and is the basis for todays "fair use" provisions in copyright law. --M
Revenue is up since September 11, 2001. See Through the Night With a Light from a Buck for details.
It originally came about as a method for the Crown to limit the printing and publication of material. Two reasons: as a means of censorship (copyright was simply withheld), and as a means of revenue. Since then, the term has been borrowed, with 'copyright' now meaning the exclusive right of the original creator to their work. Some of the history still lives on, hence the word 'royalties' for the monies paid to the copyright holder (as it used to go to the Crown). Just a little bit of history. In this case, things actually got better - they're getting worse now though, just to make up for things. Ah well. Don't get me started on 'intellectual property'.
Ahh, hmmm, no. I develop video games for a living and I have to spend more time and money dealing with f*^&@$ up copyright/trademark laws then actual creative development. Why you ask? So don't ever believe anyone who tells you that these laws don't hinder the creative process. I give far more money to lawyers that to artists and that's just plain wrong. These laws are killing creativity in this country.
how long is a reasonable time to set copyright? here's a suggestion - how about no period at all
yes - abolish copyright completely
as a poster noted earlier in this slashdot discussion, copyright is not a natural right belonging to authors that is being recognised by the government
it is instead a process by which the government seeks to encourage creation of material and transfer of that material into the public domain by rewarding 'creators' with a limited exclusive right to publish their works
i would argue that this incentive is no longer necessary in the modern world where there is a huge surplus of creativity and intelligence
truly creative ppl will always express their creative urges
we live in a world now where the wonderful creations of these truly creative ppl is mostly drowned out by 'cookie-cutter content' which is produced mainly for economic - i.e. copyright reward - reasons and not for reasons of responding to 'the muse'
in summary, trying to incentivise the creation of art and intellectual activity by economic reward has the opposite effect of rewarding mediocre 'content' that is created soley for economic gain, while the true art gets stifled and suffocated by the legal framework and control that was (originally) set up to nurture it
3 word summary -
no more copyright
(ever)
The amount of time a copyright or patent should last should equal the amount of time it takes for the owner to recoup the money and resources lost in creating that original work. This necessarily means copyrights shouldn't last a specific amount of time per se, but until the owner is properly compensated. That would do the job in giving incentive, and that would then free up the works for everyone else as soon as the owner was compensated.
In practice, it would make a new layer of beauracarcy and inspire even more forms of fraud, but we already get that with reporting taxes, so I think it could be handled.
Of course, no one would ever consider really implementing an idea like this, just because it is too different for the little minds that run everything.
...I lost all respect for this author's argument here, "There was no argument ever made for a third- or fourth-generation royalty, much less a perpetual assignment of royalties to a corporation that never dies."
US Copyright law limits the duration for corporations to 96 years from date of creation. Had Mr. Bloom done a little bit of research he would have discovered this tidbit of info.
Here's my stupid idea regarding copyrights:
1) No copyright should ever under any circumstance exceed 100 years. A nice round figure that's easy to compute and no one can really complain that it's too short. Personally I'd like it much shorter, but this is a figure I think everyone can agree on as an absolute maximum.
2) If a copyrighted work is ever out of publication, then a clock starts ticking: depending on the class of material, if the total time out of publication exceeds the time for that class, then the item becomes public domain. These times are cumulative to keep a company from thwarting it by offering items for 1 day every few years or so. Such categories might be 20 years for books and other printed material, 10 years for audio and video, and 3 years for computer programs. The idea here is to get abandoned stuff into public domain before it totally loses all value. (This would also have the result that Microsoft would have to keep selling Windows 98 or else 3 years later everyone could copy it for free.) After all, does anyone have any doubt that PKZIP will be totally useless in 2101 except for historical purposes?
3) If an author sells the copyright on his works, and it subsequently goes out of print, all copyrights revert to said author immediately. This will let said author possibly get some value out of it before the copyright expires due to inactivity.
There are some details that would have to be ironed out in a system like this (e.g. what's to keep a company from having something 'in print' but only sold at some exorbitant rate), but hell, it's much better than what we have now.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Vote Quimby.
I think everyone is taking this from the wrong angle. I don't know about most people, but I suspect they were brought up in the same public school atmospheres that I was. Every five years or so, Disney would release another one of their (excellently produced) animated classics, after leaving it on the production shelf and driving up demand. Disney made it, this was their right, and this kept these classics fresh. Good plan. You've got to admire the strategy, especially in the air of public school's cirriculum.
I wasn't even aware of IP until after I got out of school, when I started wondering about restrictions, and exactly what ©, ® and (TM) meant--why were they different? What would I apply to my own works?
We're taught the same course in arithmatic every year for the first seven years. We don't even touch IP, despite it's extremely prominent centerpiece in the American economy. This should change. IP should be covered as philosophical, political, and economic issues. Legislators should stop by mid- and high-schools for Q&A, so the students can see just who is full of shit. ("Mom, Senator Hollings stopped by for Q&A today, he was an asshole, called us thieves, and gave us candy.")
The political landscape is in the mind. Most of us are blind to it until we learn the mental gears neccisary. As it is, nobody is taught these things unless they find the urge to seek it out personally.
I think a great de-inhibitor would be a high-quality non-obtuse public domain text book.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.