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Copyright Rumblings
dcunning writes "The Economist has a short opinion piece entitled Copyrights: A radical rethink that suggests (horror of horrors!) going so far as reverting back to the original copyright term of 14 years, renewable once. The article suggests that, in exchange for this, the 'content industries' be given 'much of the legal backing which they are seeking for copy-protection technologies.' A worthwhile and fair tradeoff?"
Why would the content industries be content with a fair compromise when they can buy enough influence to have all the legal, anti-copy methods they want, and enough influence to buy 357 year copyrights?
For the first 14 years of release, the content industry would actually be able to leaglly force me not to read a book aloud? (If you recall this is one of the looney rules they have been trying to make fly with eBooks.) I don't really see how this is fair at all, especially given that 90% of attempted use of such material happens within a few years of its release.
Ñ'
The record companies know that, even if they were given all copy protection they wanted (barring the banning of unlicensed microphones), people would still pirate music. It only takes one person circumventing the protection to open a work to the world.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
The proposed copy protections are extremely unfair and unreasonable. Why should we allow ourselves to be bribed to permit such a thing?
The question of whether copyright limits should be shorter (I sure think so!) should be independent.
Personally I think eventually we consumers will win all of these battles. There's no reason to even think of accepting bribes from a corrupt industry.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
if you really think copy protection will suddenly disappear after 28 years, or the copyright owners will configure it to do so, I have a bridge to sell you.
sulli
RTFJ.
Damn straight it is. You get twenty-eight years to milk something for all the millions it's worth, AND you get to crush utterly and punitively anyone who dares steal even a penny's worth from you? Sounds like a good deal to me.
-Mark
Is there any such expiration date on open source code licenses?
word.
It's an old tactic:
First: present the consumer first with a horrible way of doing things.
Second: the consumer will take almost *anything* else, and even something else bad seems good.
This is a regular management tactic in some places. You should be able to sniff this one a mile away.
Further, the problems related to fair use remain. I have an affirmative right to use short segments of copyrighted material in other works. For example, if I wanted to preach a sermon demonstrating how media culture affects us, I might want to use a short clip from the truman show. I have that right under fair use - but I can't do it from a DVD legally right now because of the DMCA which prevents me from legally owning the technology that would enable it. The chilling effect is a scary thing.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Much of the inefficiency of current copyright law comes from the lack of registration, deposit, and renewal, all of which strenghtened the public domain in earlier copyright law.
h ives/ EAFAQ.html
Larry Lessig has proposed a tiny tax 50 years after a work is first copyrighted. If the tax is unpaid, the work goes into the public domain. The tax represents some positive move to show the work has commercial value.
Maybe 50 years is too long. But if we are to lobby for such an act we need to make compromises with the strong copyright interests such as Hollywood.
It might seem immodest to have an act named after me, but I have grown accustomed to the loss of my name after the case Eldred v. Ashcroft. I think it nicely opposes the Sonny Bono Act.
For more on the Eric Eldred Act, see
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/arc
What do you think?
when it comes to rolling stones i think some of their oldest stuff is whats still defining them, but i dont know if they go back 28 years
Um, dude, this year the Stones are celebrating their 40th anniversary as a band. They've released a 40-track double-CD collection called "40 Licks" in honour of the occasion.
-- Alastair
They have their cake and we eat it? Or we have the cake and they eat it? Or to we share tha cake? Or maybe it's a pie? I like blueberry.
Why do I have the feeling that this decade is going to be known as the "Mine! Mine!" decade.
The genie is out of the bottle, and no law, technology, or ad campaign is ever going to put it back in. Copyrights have been violated since the first artist in history signed their name (or stamped their mark) on their work.
(and as a descendent of one of the artists in Altamira, I would like my cut of the souvenir profits)
Why the recording industry (and others) now feel threatened enough to start raising a fuss, is because it's just become much easier. Although, overall, I don't see how it can really hurt their bottom line. They are making many times the profit on their product than they did in the 70's, 80's, and 90's (am I the only one who's noticed how $1 and $2 paperbacks are now selling for $9 - $12. Was there a sudden paper shortage that I never heard about?). Don't even get me started on CD's, do you really expect me to believe that the bottom line cost of a CD is twice as much as a cassette tape (considering the markup).
If the industry would get smart and offer their products at a decent price, it would help to insure that the run-of-the mill consumer is not tempted to use other means to acquire the product. But if they expect that a few words in a lawbook is going to stop what has already started, they are dreaming.
Dr. Wu
PS: If the music industry is so perfect themselves, then why are they settling the lawsuits against them for illegal price fixing.
Music CD Settlement
The author makes a great case. He proposes trade-offs that would be in everyone's best interest. And that's why it will never fly.
The problem is the content industries feel they "deserve" the original copyright term, and that the digital age is simply infringing on their "rights." And, quite short-sightedly, that all they need to do is get "better" laws and the next generation of technology will put it right.
Hundreds of people proposed very reasonable, in fact still too expensive, methods to make music available online. The problem with these systems was that they were reasonable. The current system of paying $15 for CD with 3 good songs 2 mediocre, and the remainder, crap is extremely profitable. No self-centered individual would endanger such a system for one that would allow a user to pay $3 each for their two favorite songs and ignore the rest. It just won't happen.
These people will fight tooth and claw to retain total control of our culture until we wrest it from their grasping hands.
The next generation of crypto-verifying players, and per user-agreement encrypted, signed music downloads, will be a telling test. They will lower the prices enough that many people won't care. They will then usher in laws that make any tool that plays digital music a "tool of piracy." Large proprietary software corporations will step right into the meal line with their ticket in hand, and the FOSS community will be all that stands in their way. Should be exciting to watch.
It would certainly change the business model. Those artists would either have to live off of what they've made already, or go on tour to do music and make money that way. Or *gasp shudder die* write new material. Not that all don't, but you'd see more of it for certain . . .
It'd be a boon for musicians starting out, because they'd no longer have to secure rights to play those classic songs, they could just perform them. And it would ALSO spell an end to those stupid bad substitutes for Happy Birthday you hear at resturants.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
Copyright extension should be halted because it drains the public domain of material. Period. We shouldn't have to bargain for that one. 75 years was plenty of time, we had settled into that time frame, and we had plenty of older literature and materials flowing into the public domain. Then along came the DMCA - reverse engineering, making compatible devices and software, using your own media (that you legally purchased) in other devices of your choosing - all these basic property rights and common law understandings of what people can do with things they own flew out the goddamned window.
I'm not willing to cut a deal with the devil, or the so-called content industry in this scenario, to bring back reduced timespans for copyrights. Cut copyrights back, abolish the DMCA (perhaps some parts are not unreasonable, but as I see it, everything in there is either not needed because it was covered by existing jurisprudence, or is flat out morally wrong), and THEN we can have an intelligent debate and discussion as a society about what kind of legislation should be in place to help protect content producers from unreasonable amounts of piracy, IF in fact existing laws don't provide them that protection already.
If in fact the problem is an economic one (people are pirating because it is economically sensible for them to do so) why not try modifying your business model to one that doesn't so strongly encourage such illegal copying? You're never going to eliminate it entirely. Sorry, but we don't want and won't take crippled devices. If the content industry hasn't figured that out yet, then fuck them. I'd rather have a crippled, less profitable, re-organized content industry with my rights intact, than have mandated, legally enforced DRM embedded in my hardware, and have Disney's profits secured so they keep pushing their schwag out on audiences. Oh yeah, and what do we get out of it? Copyright terms are only 14 years. Of course, that doesn't apply retroactively, it only applies to new content. Oh, so sorry about that. And in 14 years what happens? Copyrights get extended again, without public debate, once the sheep have gotten used to ubiquitous DRM.
Sorry, but I'll go down with guns blazing before I accept this "compromise". Right now, we are getting the strength of momentum behind us. The popular press is buying into it. Copyright term extensions are going down, though it may take a while. As for the DMCA - it's not going away just yet, but the debate in the public forum is just starting, and we'll get there eventually too. Once the content industry realizes how shaky the ground they are walking on is, perhaps we will hear a real compromise deal out of them, hrrmmm?
The big studios have the money to change the rules of the game at will. If they agree to something like this, don't be surprised to see them lobbying, 28 years from now, to change the law and extend the copyright period. Then they would have both draconian technical copyright enforcement measures, backed by the full force of law, and infinitely renewable copyrights.
Of course, some would argue that we already have both.
Not just classic rock, but a lot of Metallica that still sells. Lars would go nuts. It would never happen.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Make copyrights like tyrademarks.
You get copyright protection for only as long as you use it. Mickey Mouse gets used today, then Steamboat Willie and the MM icon used by Disney gets protected.
Sony doesn't sell N'sync CDs anymore to retailers? Fine, their music is now public domain.
On the plus side, it allows vendors with known icons (the Mouse) to retain the legal proection they need, while allowing 'abandonware' to go where it rightfully belongs - the public.
Don't forget this would cover games too, solving that nasty question of older games that aren't being made anymore.
How about this.. you are either entitled to copyright protection (current books, records, etc)... ie: no technological protections...
OR
you are entitled to technological protctions. not both.
If you want to restrict sometihng by technology, you are free to, but you have no protection of the actual work under law.
Yeah, I might be willing to make that trade, if you add in one more piece: as per the Constitution, only the original author can hold a copyright. And that author must be a human, not any kind of corporation or publishing house.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
"the Congress shall have power...to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Everyone argues about how long the "limited times" should last. And all the arguments have totally missed the point. They all come from the standpoint of "I want to do something with this old work-- it should be public domain so I can," or "I want to keep making money off of this old work-- it should stay copyrighted so I can."
The phrase we need to be concerned with is "promote the progress of science and useful arts." The government should appoint a team of unbiased experts to study the benefits and downfalls of differing lengths and mechanisms of copyright, come to a final conclusion about what would most "promote the progress of science and useful arts," and go with that.
c-hack.com |
That solution is bad because
just like what happened recently with
the copyright laws. Some corporation
(Disney) will buy themselves some judges
and have the time limit changed to infinity.
The only real solution is to stop price fixing
by the recording labels and dvd resellers.
In a truly capitalist system 15$ for a CD would
NEVER have been allowed for each and every cd.
To do this we need Campaign Finance Reform in
America, I don't know who to blame in the rest
of the world but in America the people have lost
their voice.
I've been suggesting this for a while:
Reduce the term of copyrights to somewhere between 20 and 40 years. (Basically, the working lifetime of an author.)
More importantly, I believe that copy protection clashes with the Constitutional purpose of copyright. I propose to not allow materials which are copy protected to be copyrighted. Make the author choose between the two. I think this is important since the purpose of copyright (at least under the US Constitution) is to produce art & science which eventual enter the public domain. Since copy protected materials are designed to impede reproduction, propogating those materials will often be difficult once copyright expires. Since they can't easily enter the public domain, they should not be copyrightable.
(You might also be able to convince me to make the penalties for violating copyright more severe if this is done, to help convince people to not copyprotect materials.)
I am for strong copyrights. I don't think Gone With the Wind, the Three Stooges, and maybe even Elvis should be under copyright any more, though, and I don't think any copyrighted materials should be copy protected.
John
Call me inflamatory, but we screwed up copyright the first time (Gosh... if forever was good, forever and a day is better!). Why do we have to give the content industry a lollipop (copy-protection enforcement) to get them to accept something that's sensible and in the public good?
The only copy-protection I'll settle for will consist of a Supreme Court justice in every box that tells me that what I'm doing is or isn't fair use. Unfortunately, unless the content industry and the Raelians team up, that tends to limit sales.
It's just like a fascist dictatorship, without the punctual rail service!
Marxists? Please.
The entire notion of copyright has been utterly bastardized. The philosophy behind the US Constitution's Copyright Clause is that Copyright is a grant BY THE PUBLIC to the creator to allow the creator to make a bit of cash before reverting the material -back- to the public.
There is not truly "original" content. In fact, there's only 7 basic stories, or plotlines. Unless the creator has -no- contact with anything outside of their own closed mine, the public has a direct impact on the creators, and on the content they produce.
For a -much- better explanation of this, please read Justice Stevens' dissension in the Eldred case (Ginsberg's is excellent as well).
The gist, though, is that -without- works falling into the public domain, creativity and the production of new works -SUFFERS-. Why the hell do you think we're getting sequels to all of the Classic Disney films (I mean, do we -really- need 4 101 Dalmations sequels/retakes?)
The same people who broke deCSS, hacked the Xbox, and who take camcorders to pre-release showings of major movies. They do it because they can, and it raises their status in parts of the online community. Since all of this can be done relatively anonymously, there's no real legal way to stop people from releasing copyrighted stuff on the Internet.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
OK. This sounds reasonable, with the following additions:
0) Corporate copyrights are set to 14-year terms, renewable once. Copyrights held by natural persons remain in force for the lifetime of the author or 28 years (nonrenewable), whichever is greater.
1) After the original period of 14 years, a copyright may be renewed once, unless no editions of the work have been released for sale in the past three years and plans have not been formally announced to release it within the following year. In other words, if you haven't been actually making money off the copyright then you shouldn't be able to hold it "defensively".
2) Copyrights apply to specific versions or editions of works, rather than the work in general. To give an example, Version 2.0 of a piece of software is protected by a different copyright than Version 1.0 was.
3) All copyright-protection mechanisms must stop working when the copyright expires. While this need not necessarily be automatic, if it isn't then the mechanism to disable the protection must be made available to the public, free of charge, at that time.
4) All copyright-protection mechanisms must allow for the fair-use rights of all users. To aid in this, a minimal, non-exhaustive list of fair use rights may be drawn up; at the absolute least this must include both time-shifting and space-shifting rights.
5) Content creators may not specify how a product may be used (also known as End-User License Agreements). Standard copyright law will forbid illegal redistribution, public performance without permission, etc. and this may not be modified by content creators except to grant permission there the law dows not automatically do so.
6) Computer code is to be considered a written work, protected by copyright but not patent. Copyrights will, as noted in Point 2 above, apply to specific versions of the software, rather than the software in general. When copyright on a specific version expires, the source code for that version is to be released into the public domain.
7) When and if this goes into effect, all corporate copyrights still in force will be set to expire in 14 years. Some old copyrights will be extended by this, and some will be truncated. Oh well; we can't pick and choose. This will be the last time copyrights can retroactively extended or shortened; see Point 8 below.
8) Congress may, at its option, pass laws extending these terms, by no more than five years at a time. Further, these laws may apply only to copyrights on works created after said extension was put into force.
OK. Build these into the law -thus putting binding restrictions on content creators to make their copy-protection mechanisms fair- and I'll let them have their little legal restrictions on DRM-circumvention (modified to take these into account, of course). If they want this, fine, but only if they agree to restore the balance between creator and user first.
Digital technology has made copyright moot in not one but two important ways.
The first is that content can be replicated with perfect fidelity for little or no cost.
The second is that copyright simply is not needed. The intent was to encourage people to produce works of science and useful arts, but history has shown that that is simply not necessary. People produce such works even without the promise that the state will use violence to ensure their compensation.
Just look at the open source revolution. Compare the quality of open source software with that of its copyrighted commercial equivalent.
Or compare the quality of literature and art before today's abuse of copyright with the pure shit that saturates our existance today.
Copyright is as archaic as slavery. It is as absurd to give ownership of a sequence of bits to an individual as it is to give ownership of an individual to another individual. And ironically, the very same Constitution originally gave sanction to both.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The other obvious problem with the solution is that all parties could agree now, with legally enforced use restrictions, then 14 years from now as the copyrights are about to expire, intense lobbying results in legislation to extend the term to 20 years ... then 30 years ... and so on, without repealing the restrictions.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
...until they extend copyright protection to databases like they've done in the EU with the European Database Directive.
The European plan not only extends copyrights to protect databases (which are large assemblages of facts... which have been the one thing you can't copyright here in the U.S. ever since copyright was written into our laws) but it also creates a new protection (that is not a copyright) that they term "sui generis" (in a class of its own). This protection is beside that of copyright and is renewable with olny a modest updating of the database... and, yes, this does mean that all you have to do is update your database every 15 years to get your protection extended another 15 years!!! This is truly perpetual copyright!!!
Let us switch to 28 years but no fair use ! Full copyright belonging to holder without permission to use it (note that I don't even say author).
25 Years later. Oh let us rise the period to 37 years. Retroactive. After all the copyright holder financed the work and has to get a return !
10 years later (35 years after the 1st work has been done under this law) Ho 37 is not enough, let us rise with a new law to say, 56. This is fair isn't it ? Oh, and it is retroactive.
10 years again later... We are abck to 74/98 years of copyright. With prolongation if the holder pay a small symbolic sum. Retroactively.
I certainly would not want such law as a consummer.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm a bit disappointed in the old guard Economist for failing to make the strongest economic argument for revamping the copyright laws.
Copyrights are like tariffs. They distort the true value of goods and thereby make trade inefficient. The end result is that they decrease the amount of wealth in the world. Reducing copyright terms is like lowering tariffs. Even though some industries and segments of society will be injured, in the short term by such an action, overall, it results in greater wealth for the nation and for its trading partners.
That's speaking in terms that the businessmen who read The Economist can understand. They can relate to the benefit of lower prices for textiles and hardware, so they ought to be similarly receptive to lower prices for textbooks and software.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Ummmm. Ever hear of Metallica?
;)
Oh, wait. You said semi-intelligent band....my bad.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
intense lobbying results in legislation to extend the term
Not if even more intense lobbying results in legislation accepted by 2/3 of the US House, 2/3 of the US Senate, and 1/2 of each of thirty-eight state legislatures, to limit the term to an absolute maximum of 50 years once and for all:
Wishful thinking, but as they used to say in the McWorld commercials: "Hey, it could happen!"
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't argue that making illegal copies of copyrighted material is morally correct. I don't care if it is or is not. I want to know if it's worth spending my tax dollars to enforce.
As it grows easier and easier to steal copyrighted material, I think the question of what should we and should we not do to protect corporations like Time Warner is better though of after taking an example to heart. Let's suppose I ran a radio station. Let's suppose I wanted everyone to pay me $.10 a minute to listen to my radio station. I have no technology to do this any differently from a normal radio station. People can turn to my radio station and listen regardless of whether or not they have paid me. It seems likely that thousands of people (at least if my content was any good) would listen to my station without paying. This angers me, and I ask the legislators to start passing laws with long sentences, and law enforcement to invade privacy to find violators.
Clearly there would be no reason for the government to artificially create a situation where my failed business model works. There has to some damn GOOD REASON to expend the time and money to make a business work despite the ease of cheating.
So the question isn't whether or not people steal content. It's not whether or not these people are good or evil. The question is, how hard would it be to actually stop them, and what do we really get by doing so?
The preceding passage has been checked for spelling, you will find no sentence without at least one mis spelled word
To me the worst thing of the copyright question is, that companies acrue title to the rights to copy and THEN decide not to as it is economically not "prudent" to do so. As a consequence a lot of important material never sees a reprint even though there is a need for it.
When material is "available" the cost of getting things that are rare like classical music is such that it cannot only be described as in money terms but also in effort. I live in a 200.000 person town and my personal collection is bigger that what can be found in the record shops. The function of a recordshop is to allow me a listen befor a sale. Without an infrastructure for the sale of material how can the punters be held responsible for not buying or for copying copyrighted material?
When I need a book for study and I cannot have it because of it being out of print, is it not criminal that I cannot get it? That I cannot have a digital copy and print it myself because of this "copyright" joke ?
When the Economist argues for a short period where an artist is to be protected, where does the publishing company come into play when they DO NOT provide the service that they ARE named for; publishing?
In my opinion, any period I can live with as long as there is an equal weight on the other side of the balance. That weight must be service.
Thanks,
Gerard
That being said, positive copyright reform is unlikely to ever happen, as the public domain has no billionaires to bribe legislators on its behalf.
"Piracy" is a paper tiger. Home taping never killed the recording industry. The photocopier did not kill the publishing industry. The VCR did not kill Hollywood. Content providers are running scared from file trading because it is a new technology. They have done the same every time a new medium has been invented. Each new medium they claimed would be the death of them actually turned out to be a boon.
Outrageous copyright lengths should be taken away from copyright holders, but they deserve nothing in return. They have robbed the public domain far too long.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Everyone keeps saying how "copyright can't be protected" on the internet. Well, that's absolutely right if you follow this rediculous method of turning a blind eye while crimes occur, and attempt to make it impossible for the crime to happen at all.
People learned long ago in the real world that for a free society to function properly, many things must be possible, but actual crimes need to be policed and criminals punished to have law and order. How long do you think it'll take them to realize that even in the digital world crime can not be coded out of the system?
The two questions of copyright:
1) Is it a crime to take some things apart and understand how they work? Yes! Even worse if you share that knowledge!
2) Is it a crime to knowingly aquire copyrighted works illegally and use them? Not at all!
All i have to say is.. http://www.redcoat.net/pics/riaa.jpg
magnanomous.