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Congressional Budget Office Studies Copyrights
gorbachev writes "C|Net is reporting that The Congressional Budget Office has published a study on digital copyright issues. The study basically recommends not changing the copyright legislation in favor of any particular stakeholder, including consumers or lobbyists. It's refreshing to see a governmental agency coming out with a study on copyright issues that appears to take consumers' concerns into consideration." Granted, this is merely the CBO, not Congress itself, but it is one of Congress' first places to turn to for information.
Also, regardless of what they claim about making official policy recommendations, they certainly do make recommendations:
(from the source document)
An inability to make official policy recommendations shouldn't be taken to imply that they can't express any opinion at all.
Living better through chemicals
I haven't read the entire paper-- but I did skip right to Section 4, to see the "conclusions", and read that in some detail. I love this bit (below), from section 4, describing the "Effects on Equity" in revising copyright law in favor of the copyright holder:
In the near term, copyright owners would benefit at the expense of consumers. However, if the additional revenues to copyright owners enabled creators to undertake more projects, consumers could also benefit from the greater availability of creative works in the long term.
Yes-- I'm sure the copyright holders would "undertake more projects". Oh-- and, certainly, those works are going to available in the "long term"-- or at least until they're not so profitable as to be sold anymore, at which time they'll be allowed to "fall out of print", will become unavailable to anyone, and will be "protected" for another 100 years (at which time the media they're stored on, and the compression and encryption algorithms used to encode and encrypt them will probably be vastly outdated and outmodded).
The public grants copyright as a social contract to the creators of content. It is a CONTRACT, and it "goes both ways"-- or rather, it did, in the United States, under the original terms of copyright set forth in the Constitution. The amalgamation of shit we have today bears little to no resemblence to the "founder's copyright", and is skewed heavily in favor of the copyright holders.
Copyright is granted BY THE PEOPLE. If we don't like the current copyright system-- if we want to "trade music files", or download movies "P2P"-- if the public really belives that's the right thing, we need to CHANGE THE FUCKING LAW.
Personally, I believe it's time for the contract to be renegotiated. Public outcry is a good start. Tell your friends, tell your coworkers. Talk to them about the DMCA and the abuses we've all seen. Talk to them about the efforts, past and present, to outlaw digital versions of technologies that are "protected uses" of analog technologies. Talk about "broadcast flags", and "fair use".
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Orville and Wilbur are most emphatically not the poster-children for fair patent practices.
Their patent on their mechanism for lateral stability (wing warping) was found by a really foolish judge to cover the entire CONCEPT of controlled, powered flight. Glenn Curtiss (who invented ailerons, which is what practically all aircraft use to maintain lateral stability) fought them for years for the right to innovate in the realm of aeronautics.
The Wrights were greedy, monopolistic hacks. They stood on the shoulders of giants, and then presumed to own all the work of those giants. Utterly reprehensible.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Sorry, here's the link for the moive Super Size Me. The government DID NOT make this movie.
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Without the Sono Bono copyright extension, Mickey Mouse would not have entered the public domain
That sentence is incorrect. Words like "Windows" and "Apple" are in the public domain, even though they're also trademarked in some contexts. "Public Domain" is not applicable to trademarks one way or the other.
you'd quickly be in hot water if you created and distributed a "new" Mickey Mouse cartoon, since Disney could rightly argue that you're infrin
It's only trademark infringement if you induce consumer confusion as to the provider of a good. Slapping "Not authorized by or affliated with the Walt Disney Corporation" on top will keep you perfectly protected.
Today unauthorized authors write non-fiction books on TV series like Star Trek or Buffy Vampire Slayer, or software like Oracle and Excel. It's legal for them to use the name of the show/product in their title, as long as purchasers are unconfused as to provenance (and no other copyright infringement is happening, beyond fair use)
But if the new author refuses to sully his title page like that, then you get into unexplored legal territory. Disney could make the same trademark argument you did, but the author could respond that (a) the company is "Disney", not "Mickey Mouse", and (b) interpreting trademarks that way renders the expiration of copyright meaningless, which was not the intent.
Back a few centuries when the concepts of copyright and trademark were first created, individual characters of a fictional work weren't trademarked. Now, Mickey Mouse and Luke Skywalker have changed all that (following the lead, actually, of Raggedy Ann)
I've never heard a discussion of how copyright terms apply to a series of works that are derivatives of each other.
It's pretty simple, and just as you'd predict. The newer works are fully protected, the older ones are not. For obvious practical examples, look at most any Disney movie. The copyright on Hercules expired 3700 years ago, but that has no effect either on Disney's Hercules or Kevin Sorbo.
There is a risk, of course. An artist who intends to only derive from the older PD work may inadvertently have taken in concepts from later versions. That could lead to some nasty lawsuits focusing on subtlties. For example, if the Sonny Bono extension hadn't passed, then Superman would be public domain today. But the original Superman couldn't fly (only "leap tall buildings").
So if the creator of a new Superman story makes him fly, then he's vulnerable... the argument "I decided to add flying to the original version, because it was a sensible change" could work, but it'd enrich both sides' lawyers.