Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Extension In Australia
femto writes "The Motion Picture Association and
APRA have commissioned a
report
from Allen Consulting into the
effects of extending Australian copyright from life+50 years to life+70years.
This forms the MPA and APRA's contribution to
US-Australian free trade negotiations,
currently underway. The report recommends that copyright terms should be extended.
An extension of copyright would not be in Australia's interest.
Some would argue that it is not in anyone's
interest. Projects such as Project Gutenberg of Australia
would be adversely affected by such an extension. Perhaps now is to time to write to your Member
of Parliament, asking them to oppose any extension of copyright or patents, and shore up whatever resistance there is to an extension of IP in Australia?"
Slashdotting a pdf on Allen Consulting's meager web server. Good move. Oh... good move!
(For those soon to be unable to reach it, it's basically the template rent-a-stance enumeration of weak arguments against extension, followed by a refutation, followed by an enumeration of arguments for, and supporting arguments for each. Selective focus with input from Allen associate Mr. Straw Man.)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Don't make it retroactive. If it's really about encouraging new products, only make it apply to new products. Any extension to copyright lifespan shouldn't apply to anything created before the law is enacted.
Ironic. Companies like Disney, which make their money by deriviting copyrighted material from out of copyright works, want to retain their own copyright for even longer.
I will certainly be writing to my MP. Unfortunately as it is John Howard this won't make much difference.
Sadly this is another example of policitians putting corporate needs before the greater good. Until corporations can have their leverage over politicians dissolved, this will always be the case.
I say I ain't giving you no tree fiddy you goddamned Loch Ness monster, get yo own goddamned money!
yes good point.
however I cynically suspect that this kind of sensible point of view has absolutely no place in politics these days, especially over anything relating to intellectual property or innovation.
laws are made by companies with money. companies with money have already succeeded. the last thing companies that have succeeded want is innovation.
Just to eke out a few more dollars from that Yahoo Serious movie?
Will an extra 20 years really make that much difference that movies will either be produced or not produced? If you can't enough make money in the first few years (and ideally the first year)of realease, why bother at all?
How much (other than as much as their pockets can fit) money do they really have to make to justify their projects?
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
The freight train of hysteria's due to run this topic down, but I'm gonna try anyways: The US extended its copyright laws to match those of the EU. No, we were not _compelled_ to match their IP laws, but if you want to lay the burden at someone's door, it belongs to a door in Belgium, not Washington, DC.
yes apparently most movies make their money back in the opening weekend or thereabaouts. which is why we had the story a while ago aboutt wanting to ban mobiles because they allow bad opinions to be spread too freely and interupt the PR machine.
but so long as you have absolute control over something, even if you're not clever enough to do something profitable with it yourself, at least you can stop anyone else trying.
if you can't raise yourself up, then keeping everyone else down is just as good.
the USA wants Australia to take away the Pharmacudical Benifits Scheme (PBS). PBS gives millions of Australians access to cheap medication. I am a diabetic, and if PBS is taken away, I will have to pay $500 or so a month for my meds.
Fuck The Corporate Scumbags and there Free Trade.
While we're on the topic of IP, Patents and Australia, does anyone know what Australia's position on software patents are? Just wondering because it's something that may become important for me to know, but yet I have no idea about it...
Better yet, does anyone know of a comprehensive online listing of which countries have software patents, and what exactly can be patented in each country? I was unable to find such a list, but I'm sure there must be one.
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
The original justification for the length of copyrights, to keep them long enough to make money, no longer exists because of the rapid transmital and sales possible by current technology. IE a 100 years ago, it could have taken awhile to start amassing sales world wide. Today, distribution is possible worldwide immediatly. Copyrights should be *shortened* in todays climate. It borders on insanity (or an unrighteous desire for monopoly) to wish to extend them in this climate.
The way I see it copy right term extension is transference of public property into private hands without payment being rendered in return. What has Disney --and all those companies that have successfully lobbied for longer copyright durations-- given back to the public in return? Nothing. That's right. They got what was to be public property for free and gave the public *nothing* in return. Its corporate welfare and its theft.
So Walt Disney Corp can still sell Mickey exclusively and so that Time Warner can sue you for singing 'Happy Birthday' of course. What? You don't see the point in that??
Congrats, your Apache2 install went well. Now make sure you lock that box down and make us proud.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Slightly offtopic, but one bizarre thing a free trade agreement with the US would mean for Australia, is more US television content. There are currently laws in place that mean television broadcasters must allocate a certain amount of hours to Australian content. It's much cheaper to buy television content than it is to make it, so the broadcasters are well and truly in favour of it. Many consumers feel that we get too much US content as it is without opening the flood gates.
There are many ways a free-trade agreement would benefit Australia as well. As a largely primary producer, the subsidies the US government give its wheat producers price Australia out of the market. No-one has managed to convince me either way that such an agreement would work out better or worse for Australia. I certainly can't see any benefit for the US. Obviously, things will change (some for better and some for worse) for both parties. But is it truly worthwhile for either?
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
I was not arguing for a socialist model at all, merely a reasonable appraisal that if a project is not going to make sufficient profit to justify its going ahead within 50 years, it is highly unlikely to generate that extra money in the final 20 years.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
Check this out.
Use of copyright to restrict redistribution is actually immoral, unethical, and illegitimate. It is a result of brainwashing by monopolists and corporate interests and it violates everyone's rights. Copyrights and patents hamper technological progress by making a naturally abundant resource scarce. Many, from communists to right wing libertarians, are trying to abolish intellectual property myths.
Who the hell wrote that? Well, it's better than the RIAA's version. Interesting :-)
No.
While I certainly support people's efforts to obtain educations for their children, most artists would not benefit from this. Artists generally don't make a significant amount of money from royalties (which copyrights impact, as opposed to artistic labor such as concerts, or the sale of actual pieces of art as tangible things). Art is just not a money making profession. A few people can become tremendously sucessful as artists -- but the odds of being one of them are on par with winning the lottery. And of course, the economic value of those few works that have ANY noteworthy value to begin with declines rapidly over time.
So the only people that would get enough money from a life+20 term -- or even a term over perhaps 20 years -- are the people who are raking in a fortune, and thus don't NEED the extra money just to send their kids to college.
Thus it is extremely unfair to have long terms as a system for providing for widows and orphans since it only helps a small group of them (those that are the widows and orphans of artists), AND it is a tremendous failure because most of those artists never made, and never will make, enough money to provide for their loved ones anyway. A life+20 or longer term does NOT translate out into making money. Probably it's economically worthless, and if it's not it's probably only worth less than you could make at a minimum wage job.
The ultra-small minority of people (often not the artists) who hold copyrights to very successful works will of course benefit tremendously. This could be worth millions of dollars to them. But they're already making assloads of money -- do we need a half-assed flop of a social program to provide for them?
If you want a widows and orphans fund, if you want to help kids go to college, then may I suggest that you just have the government directly fund such things? It's fairer, since you don't have to be a close relative of an artist to qualify, and it's simply more practical since more than a fraction of 1% of people will actually benefit from it!
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I think you should be guaranteed 20 yrs, and anything after that (up to life of creator, or 100 years for a corporation, whichever comes first) would be fine as long as:
1. The owner pays for continual upkeep and maintenance on a pristine "master copy." This mean recopying it, restoring it, digitizing it, or transcribing to new media/formats as necessary to guarantee that a usable copy is available at the end of the copyright term. This also includes storage costs for the Library of Congress (or equivalent body in country where copyright is being extended.)
2. For every year beyond the minimum, compulsory licensing must be made available if there are no publicly purchasable copies of the work. For example, if Vol 1, Issue 9 of Comic X is out of print, and the publisher wants to hold on to the copyright, they must make that material available for sale (ie, via a digital download, on-demand copy, graphic novel or other compendium) or else be subject to compulsory licensing of the work. This ensures that copies of the work are publicly available (even if they have to be extremely expensive.) None of that stop selling for X years to build up demand crap that Disney pulls.
Why these conditions? To make sure that the material is available to the public, and if the owner doesn't want to pay for the master copy (to ensure that the work is accessible after the copyright expires) then the copyright expires right there and then, and if people think it has value, they will copy/distribute it and preserve it that way.
For an example of where this is happening, some copy-protected programs/games from the 80's are no longer available from the original owners (no master copies exist.) The copyright has yet to expire, but even if it did, there are no master copies exist for people to copy and examine. However, there are collectors (ie, pirates) who might have broken the copy protection, archived those copies, and have kept copying them to new media (5 1/4 floppy -> 3.5 floppy -> hard drives -> CD-Roms -> DVD, etc.) This is moot without the hardware to run this stuff, so enter emulators to run the software.
Thus, an item that had value was maintained by the copying of collectors even when the original owner lapsed in their duty to preserve that original. Ironically, this behavior, preservation of a public good (which it would have been, once the copyright lapsed), is illegal under the DMCA. What a way to erase cultural history and hundreds of man-hours of creative work in the name of profit and greed.
What happens to IP which is, for example, at life + 60 years? It's been in the public domain for 10 years and there may well be people out there happily exploiting it - for example, a publisher publishing a public domain book. Do they suddenly need to withdraw it from sale or start paying royalties?
It seem bizarre to me that something could enter the public domain and then leave it again.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
As to why, if someone creates something, it should _ever_ have to go into the public domain? If I create/discover something...why shouldn't it be mine and my descendants for ever? (not flame baiting here...I'd be really interested in learning the finer points of this debate)
The FTA is nothing but bad news for Australia.
... the list goes on and on.
If nothing else, it further entagles us with the lunatic foreign policy of the US.
But of course the bad news doesn't stop there. Health care, local media content, copyright law, drug law, terrorist law, foreign ownership,
For those who are interested, the ISO is holding a social forum this weekend, and will be discussing just such issues, and many more. It starts tonight ( 7pm ) and goes until Sunday. It's at UTS. See http://www.sydneysocialforum.org for more details. Honestly, this is the best place to discuss the issues involving the FTA, and build resistance groups to lobby the government. See you there!
...it's actually surprisingly understandable.
It's also surprisingly balanced. Their conclusion is that the benefits and costs of copyright term extension approximately balance each other, and hence harmonisation arguments result in a net gain for extending the term.
I noticed that they, like most pro-copyright-term-extension reports, miss out on one crucial thing, and that's that they do not acknowledge that thanks to modern technology, there is a burgeoning "public domain industry" which consists of real stakeholders whose interests are directly in opposition with the existing copyright holders on this issue.
Moreover, this industry is making a real foothold in Australia. I own a number of Australian-produced DVDs of 1930s era animated shorts, for example.
People writing to their MPs might like to point this out. A copyright term extension would effectively kill a new Australian industry.
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However, there are cases where movies which were never popularized under copyright flourish after the copyrights expire. The classic example of this is, of course, "It's A Wonderful Life". Although now one of the most-watched Christmas movies and most-imitated storylines, the initial reception for the movie was cool at best, with the movie barely making back the production costs. It wasn't until the copyrights expired that it began showing regularly every December and saw its popularity skyrocket.
If there'd been the same trend towards perpetual copyrights back then as there are today, we all would have missed out on this kind of gem. The public (especially later generations) got to see a movie that would probably have otherwise disappeared into the discount bin, and he studios lost nothing from the experience (it wasn't until IAWL was out of copyright that it took off). In fact, given how often the formula for IAWL has been copied, it could be argued that they've benefited by using its popularity to spawn a bunch of derivative works, which they later capitalized on. (I've lost count of how many TV shows and movies have used this theme.) It's unfortunate that the studios seem to prefer to take the shortsighted "milk-it-to-the-last-drop" view to a more longer-term and broader perspective.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
The answer is a utilitarian one: Human progress happens by building on the fringes of what we have now. If what we have now is locked up indefinitely, progress will effectively stop due to the cost of determining who owns what already exists.
Think about this for a moment. How much would your computer cost if, for every component in it, you had to pay a royalty to the descendents of Faraday, Telsa, Volta, Planck, Boole, Turing, Babbage and so on for everyone who discovered something crucial to its operation?
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I am an Australian who is quite frankly sick and tired of the corporate world slowly stomping away all our rights, privileges and national identity in the name of $$$. Look through my older posts for more insight on my views on copyright (short answer - they should be abolished).
I also don't believe in this "War on terrorism" we have enjoined with the United States. I see it as nothing more than a global land grab for US oil and gas interests. Read "Rebuilding America's Defenses" if you don't believe me (http://www.newamericancentury.org/).
Ironically it has taken the "war" to get me interested enough in where we are potentially headed to actually decide that if I can't change those IN power, I better get my voice heard by being in government myself.
So to this end I am interested in hearing from fellow Aussies (and others if you want to make your view known) on whether or not you want to support a future Senate candidate who is a geek at heart, and who plans to have a party based online with forums where everyone can make their voice heard. You've all heard that sending email to politicians is useless; well my view is that email and forums such as this are the BEST way to make issues known to those in politics (well, those that really care, anyway). It will allow me to disseminate my ideas and allow for consensus based policy making.
Anyone who wishes to help by donating a small amount of server space and forum expertise to set up a fledgling party page, please contact me at quizo_NOSPAM_69@hotmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
As we have learned from Pauline Hanson's screwups, I would need 500 registered party members to make this a legitimate endeavour, in time to run for the 2004 Federal Election. I'm not kidding myself though - as a lone Senator I would not be in much position to formulate national policy and have it succeed constantly, but I would be a tech savvy person who would vote down stupid laws that take away our privacy, and give $$$ to corporations at the expense of the citizenry.
Oh, and instead of a fridge magnet, I'd give everyone a CD with free software such as OpenOffice.org etc, and mandate that government use open standards to deal with the public.
Anyway, if anyone thinks they would like someone in office who is not a politician by nature (I'm a pilot by profession) then drop a comment here or email me (bear in mind Hotmail will die silently after the inbox fills so posting here is preferred!). If there's enough interest I'll begin the process of running for parliament next year.
I don't want to make this post too long so read my other posts for more insight into how I view the world.
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
I wish for works to be in the public domain 2 years after the ORIGINAL AUTHOR dies. And that's really it. This would seriously promote new material, as the copyright holders such as corporations would have to bring new things into market as soon as possible in order to make the most money.
But even the 2-year span is too much. The best solution would be that the original author retains the copyright, but only LICENSES the work to publishers and others to sell and distribute for profit. That way the original author would be able to do whatever he pleases with his OWN work, including revoking a license from a publisher so that no future copies could be made. Including putting it to public domain after he's made enough money from it.
This would be the best solution from the point of view of the author, i.e. the original copyright holder. Of course it's too radical and doesn't think primarily about companies, so it wil never get approved.
Originally, the copyright term in the US was 14 years. If your work was successful and you therefore felt it was worthwhile, you could extend that term by another 14 years if you applied for it. This was in the days before modern printing technology, advertisement, and mass transportation, let alone the Internet! So if you wrote a book or recorded a phonograph, it took awhile for enough copies to be manufactured and shipped across the country. Without modern communication and advertisement, it took even longer to achieve enough popularity to sell significant volume. And yet authors survived just fine.
Today, we live in a world where near-instant capitalization is possible. A popular writer can sell millions of copies in the first week of a book's release. An unknown writer of exceptional quality can become well known in a few months. Similar scenarios exist with all other forms of media. A typical hollywood blockbuster makes several hundred percent profit in a theatrical release cycle alone. As a result, most of the capitalization occurs within a few years of a work's publishing and then quickly tapers off to a relatively insignificant level.
So the question becomes: Why are copyright terms getting longer and not shorter? The vast majority of the incentive to produce occurs in the first couple years of release. After that period, one must reasonably weigh the pros and cons of allowing that term to continue. Because copyright law is a social compromise, it must be judged by its value to society as a whole. Does allowing a term to continue into years of greatly diminished sales give enough extra incentive to authors to outweigh the costs to society of the work not entering the public domain?
There are many possible factors to consider. On one hand, very prolific authors can retire earlier on the combined trickle income from the remnant sales of numerous old works. This could be seen as an added incentive to become an author. However, at the same time, it is an incentive to stop producing earlier! On one hand, a longer term allows for certain works to go through several revisions by the original authors. But at the same time, there is no longer an incentive for others to produce derivative works of what would have been public domain material! Disney is, of course, the most classic case.. They make big money on reworking the public domain but then don't want their derivatives to ever go public domain again!
Perhaps one of the largest factors is simply the shortage of modern public domain material. Besides removing the incentive to innovate on old material, this shortage creates a gap of cultural heritage. Consider music: when people go looking for music, they generally support the artists that are currently in style and/or innovative. Most are unwilling to pay for old music, not just because it is less popular, but because they can't afford both. (and after all, why would you "support" someone who's already dead?) And yet there has been a recent resurgence in the popularity of "oldies" music in youth. It is now common to hear parents saying things like, "Hey, I didn't know you kids actually listened to that stuff! That's older than I am!" Casual investigation reveals that unauthorized P2P swapping has largely replaced the functionality that public domain was intended to serve!
By and large, there is great need for copyright length reform. What was once intended to create vibrant culture of quality, public information has become a system that often chokes innovation and rewards greed and slothfulness. Copyright is a good social institution, but its implementation has been greatly corrupted. It is high time for citizens to petition their lawmakers bring reason, fairness, and the public good back into the picture.
This post is public domain. Do with it as you please.
This is the time to ask for a shortening of copyright terms. Life is too long already. What use do dead people have for royalties? Also, the original intention of copyright was to encourage the creation of works which would eventually enter the public domain. This needs to be borne in mind in any discussion. Oft has it been said that "my ideas are my babies": well, babies have this tendency to grow up and develop an existence independent of their parents.
Here's what I would do if I was drafting a brand new copyright law:
Default term of copyright
Copyright should run for five years after the receipt of the first royalty payment, or five years after publication if no royalties are ever paid. If you can't make any money out of it in five years, then face it - you're probably never going to.
Extension to five year term
Extensions would be granted by court order and charged at five times the national median annual wage for the first six months, doubling the multiplying factor and recalculating the median wage for each additional six months thereafter. The onus would be upon the copyright holder to demonstrate why the work should not enter the public domain immediately.
Prevention of abuse of copy-prevention measures
If any technological measures are used to prevent unauthorised copying, then at least one unencumbered copy must be placed in escrow with the national library or a similar organisation in order that the work should be able to enter the public domain upon expiry of copyright. Failure to provide such an unencumbered copy would be grounds for termination of copyright. In such event, any penalty for attempting to circumvent copy-prevention would not be applicable in the case of such a work: it is in the public domain and the public has a statutory right to access it, using reasonable force if necessary. That the techniques used might be {illegally but successfully} applicable against other copy-prevented works should serve as a strong disincentive against "snake oil" merchants.
And finally, the bit I think is really the most important: Protection of works in the Public Domain.
Once a work has entered the public domain, whether by the expiration of copyright, by consent of the copyright holder or by court order, it would be legally protected against any attempt to re-copyright it. Exactly the same provision would be made for the fair use of PD material in copyright works as for the fair use of copyright material, except that nobody would be entitled to grant permission over and above what constitutes fair use.
It's harsh, but so was the Thirteenth Amendment. We moved out of the age of muscle power and into the age of engine power; thanks to James Watt, there was no longer any even remotely legitimate reason to allow people to be kept as slaves. Now we have moved out of the Age of Scarcity and into the Age of Plenty, and the law needs to change to recognise that -- not to create artificial scarcity.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It's partly about whether US video game royalties were included in the agent's contract (Pooh stories were written decades before video games were invented).
I'm not a great fan of the heriditary system anyway - why should you inherit your ancestors book characters (copyright), or wealth (death taxes help) or Presidency/PM (USA, India)? Get a job yourself! My Uncle bought my Grandad's farm off him, which is fair.