Slashdot Mirror
Internet Archive Loses Copyright Fight
tiltowait writes "As reported on LISNews.com, the Internet Archive has lost a copyright lawsuit which challenged the Congressional lengthening of copyright terms and conditions. The ruling has implications for abandonware and other copyright-eligible materials that have no active owner. Brewster Kahle plans to appeal the decision." The decision is available. As we noted in an earlier story, the Eldred case challenged the length of copyright expansion, this one challenged the breadth, and so far, this one is going about as well as the Eldred case did. Stanford has an overview of the case.
Wow, that sucks.
Another win for big business over the little guy! Go Disney!
paid to help business out - not the folks they are supposed to be helping.
Relocate the server to some small island in international waters or some country that doesn't give a Flying...ya know... about U.S. laws like North Korea.
I thought abandonware was defined as software that was no longer commercially available or supported. What's that got to do with copyright?
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
As a long-time consumer of abandonware, this is horrible news. If the product is not available for sale, I would aruge that common sense dictates that the public sharing of the product hurts nobody as the copyright is not being actively protected! The persecution of Abandonware when the programme is still available for purchase as part of a 'legacy' series is understandable, but otherwise it is rediculous.
Besides, the ability to play the games that I once oggled over in PC Gamber but couldn't afford is really quite something.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
This is the first time I can recolect hearing about this battle, I wish it had been more public because it would have definitly drawn my support.
In regard to copyrights what Google's cache is very similar. So is the Google cache next on the hit list?
I guess we'll have to resort to google when looking for information/stupid stuff that gets real old real fast
Has any big company ever used a Creative Commons license? Or even a non-"all rights reserved" copyright?
AnimeNEXT anime convention
Fuck you, you fucking asshole!
Those who control the past, control the future; those who control the future, control the present; those who control the present, control the past.
Rewrite fullwise ubsub netarch.
Its ironic that the company that probably benefits the most (Disney) from the copyright extension owes it existence to the lack of long copyrights 50 years ago. Lots of the older "Disney Classics" were based on books with expired copyrights. Disney never would have been able to remake Cinderella if the book they adapted it from had a copyright as long the laws allow today.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Kinda ontopic, as it deals with IP laws. Given the idiocy the patent office is descending into, has anyone considered giving a prize to the first person to sneak a perpetual motion device patent past them?
And if not there, then in congress.
But somewhere deep down in my brain, I know that there are no political solutions. We should just find a technical solution, and be done with it.
One of the things that is happening in this country is that people - especially with issues outside of the sight of the mainstream - are taking their pet causes to the courts for problem solving.
I think we need to face it: the copyright extensions passed by Congress were legal. We had one of the best minds of any generation - Lessig - argue the Eldred case in front of the Surpreme Court. They remained unmoved. Why? Because the Constitution is pretty clear on the issue... Congress gets to regulate these issues as they see fit.
The courts are not the right place to fight this issue. The courts are the wrong place to fight this issue.
Congress is where this is at. They pass the laws, they pass the penalties, they make it all happen. The courts cannot and more importantly should not be used as a legislative tool.
Copyright has swung too far from the commons that defined much of what is good about this country. Congress needs to move it back.
The Courts generally can offer no relief where there is none deserved. What is happening now with the extension, DMCA, etc is *exactly* what was intended by Congress.
Since our (United States) congress is so out of control in this realm, the only way to stop this nonsense is with a constitutional amendment declaring explicit copyright terms and terms for revocation.
Perhaps slashdot (readers)could hatch a plot to make this happen. (Perhaps I'm dreaming.)
Some states provide for direct democracy by ballot initiative; other states will require more work. (Sounds like a hackers challenge to me.)
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done shall not interrupt the one who is doing it.
Finders Keepers.
I think the same should apply for Music and Software.
Who can sue you if the owner is gone?
For an article on how to join a PAC that is concerned with fighting this sort of thing. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65651,00 .html?tw=wn_tophead_1
you'll understand what is wrong with the US Judical system. It is owned lock, stock and barrel by Corporations. Same goes for the USTPO.
Hey, most guys who write software aren't very active. Why should geeks be forced onto treadmills to keep their copyrights?
You know what?
Disney of course can still make money, and on principle, a can support them being able to get extensions, but it is stupid to not allow abandoned works to be free.
sorry 'bout the mess...
judges sell out the law,
americans sell out the country
and people sell out each other
Words to men, as air to birds.
Then who's around to actually pipe up and complain about "their" material being made available online?
but I looked over the ruling, and it said basically on all counts that the case was "dismissed with prejudice". Some of the rebuttals were of the form
1) Eldred vs. Ashcroft said this, so we can't overturn that, try to go to the Supreme Court.
2) People live longer now so copyrights should last longer (for kids and such)
3) Congress carefully considers the meaning of "promotes the progress of arts and science" every time they extend this
4) Technology increases the amount of time a given work is "valuable", (tell that to the RIAA, or anyone using an old version of Windows) and thus extending the copyright gives authors even more of an incentive to create.
My question though is that since all charges are "dismissed with prejudice" is there any grounds for an appeal?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Congress, the cause, and solution, to our copyright woes...
Has any effort been made to request of congress the creation of a statutory "safe harbor" with respect to the use of material eligible for copyright protection but otherwise abandoned? Would it hurt Disney if the law included protection from liability for those who make a good faith effort to get permission but receive no response?
For that matter, if we really want to treat IP with the same rules as physical property, then should notions about adverse possession, abandonment, and eminent domain apply?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Intellectual property, e.g. copyright, is a legal fiction along the same lines as "corporate personhood". The mistake it appears the courts and the legislature are making is to imbue intellectual property with the same sanctity as actual physical property.
Now I'm a Libertarian who works in an idea business, so I understand the utility of intellectual property, but it seems reasonable that the law should require an actual rights-holder to affirm their rights and/or create a process by which someone who wanted to republish abandoned intellectual property could give notice to the purported rights-holder. If there was not a negative response in say, 60 days, the person would get the rights to publish the work.
Just a thought.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...killer Benihana shrimp...
Software abandons you!
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
As a long-time consumer of abandonware, this is horrible news. If the product is not available for sale, I would aruge that common sense dictates that the public sharing of the product hurts nobody as the copyright is not being actively protected! The persecution of Abandonware when the programme is still available for purchase as part of a 'legacy' series is understandable, but otherwise it is rediculous.
Besides, the ability to play the games that I once oggled over in PC Gamber but couldn't afford is really quite something.
Oh and before you mark this REDUNDANT know that Staplrh lost rights to this original post by abandoning it after posting. I've now assumed copyright to it...
Now this is funny someone mod parent up...
Actually, how disney makes money is:
1) Find a classic story with expired copyrights.
2) Whitewash it until it can't offend anyone.
3) Use its mass media engine to make it ubiquitous, similar to how Microsoft sole Windows 98.
4) Copyright their neutered version of the public domain work, and pay the government to keep it copyrighted in perpetuity.
It's reminiscent of how many humans take all their nourishment from their environment, yet take every measure, from coffins to embalming, to prevent giving back to it when they die.
I think the quote you're looking for is "rewrite fullwise upsub antefilling."
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Well at least everyone who is legal to vote in the US. Starting a little over a year from now, your local political parties will be holding meetings to determine their direction for the next election. Find out when and where they are, then show up. For the two major parties this is public knowledge posted well in advance. (third parties hold them too, but finding out when and where is more difficult)
Once you are there, start talking, but make it intelligent. Find out the format in advance each party is slightly different. Prepare some resolutions in advance.
Normally the format is someone starts by reading a prepared sentence ("Be it resolved that abortion shall be illegal"), and then the floor is open for debate. Immediately someone will jump in and say no, they disagree ("Abortion is a women's choice"). After a few minutes the chair stops discussion and calls for a vote: yes, no, abstain. (Note I specifically picked an example you are likely to hear when you go! Your resolution will not be near as controversial, so it won't get near as much debate)
At some point they then pick people to represent their local area in the state convention. Get picked! (this isn't hard, in many areas anyone who shows up gets a position if they want it, and then they pick alternates from those who couldn't make it that night but have gone to state in the past) At the state convention much the same happens, except the debates are larger.
Remember, present your resolutions as non-controversial, good ideas. Most people will not be informed, so they will abstain. Then when it gets to state the only people who care are those from /. who took my advice, and are on your side.
Now get your party elected.
The above is the grassroots processes. It is how everything is done politically in the US. The power is by following the above, forget the party boss, they are nothing compared to the millions of little guys working together to get something done.
Note that it does not matter much which party you pick. Neither major party has a monopoly on doing the right thing as far as copyrights (both have done the wrong thing countless times). Pick one you generally agree with, and fix the parts you don't. This works even better when some pick the republicans, and others the democrats. Then when congress meets in 2 years, there is strong grassroots bi-partisan support for your issue, so congress passes it so they can be reelected for doing something non-controversial.
Of course the above is ideal. In the real world reform can take years, and many will oppose you. Keep at it. Good luck.
should've been sold Windows 98
The car in my garage that I haven't driven in 10 years is still mine, and you can't take it just because you need a car and I'm not using it.
That's because taking your car would be an act of theft, leaving you with no car. It is not the same as copying a program, whereby you would not lose anything tangible.
If a company is not selling the product anymore, then how can copying a program deny them a sale? They're not making any money off of it.
I believe they were illegal. The only reason we even can have IP laws is the constution allows it. However it doesn't ust say "And congrass can pass whatever law it likes in relation to IP. It says "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;"
The relivant restrictions here are:
1) "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". The reason for copyright to exist is to promote progress of them, not grant arbitrary control or stifle innovation. Thus if it can be shown (and I think it can) that current copyright acts to retard progress of the arts, then it would be unconstutional and thus illegal.
2) "securing for limited times". The intent is that the time they get it be as short as necessary to serve the purpose of promoting the arts and sciences. They didn't put a specific time limit on it since the constution is a framework, but the intent is clear. I think it's also pretty clear that life + 50 years is in violation of that.
Thus the courts are an appropriate place for this battle. Congress passed a law that is in violation of the constution (or at least so I believe, as do others). Thus the law itself isn't valid and must be struck down. All laws must conform to the constution, it's the highest law and can't be legslated away, it must be ammended to be changed.
I agree that abandonware should be archived and publiclly shared. Here's a prime example: Alta-Vista Personal search engine, which was developed in 1997, and worked on win89 and win2000 flawlessly (until a win2K bug forced me to index manually) -- it was pretty quick, and did a better job than google's current desktop search. It also didn't run constantly in the background, but updated it's index at preset times.
Finding altavista personal search is almost impossible now (and it won't run on XP), but it's still useful for other WIN OSs. FOr those interested: you can get it here
I create some software.
My company collapses thus the software is no longer sold or supported.
1 year later I create a new company and I want to sell my software again.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, it was a nice run while it lasted. The creative torch will pass to someone else and the USA will fade into the background. The "Once Great and Late" USA.
not a coincidence that my last accepted story was about just that.
Please note that I did not anywhere claim that copying was theft. It is not. It is illegal copying, which is very different from theft, but still illegal.
If a company is not selling the product anymore, then how can copying a program deny them a sale?
It cannot, but, as per my original post, copyright protects copying and distributing, not sales.
KFG
"I would have thought that in the Politics section of Slashdot, the resignation of a cabinet member would be newsworthy."
Cabinet transitions following an election may be newsworthy in some sense, but what would be exceptional, would be for the cabinet NOT to change hands.
Cabinet members resign every term. They usually aren't as visible in the public spotlight as they are under Bush. (Can you name or list the department of the single Reagan secretary to serve both full Reagan terms?)
When you get someone like Janet Reno, who served from 1993 until 2001, that is quite exceptional.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, I don't know if this is "technical", but here's an idea:
A copyright Goodwill, or Salvation Army.
Let's say we call it the "Public Domain Foundation" or somesuch. When people are done with their intellectual property, and have squeezed every last dollar from "Doom 2, Electric Boogaloo", they can donate it to the PDF and get some tax writeoff. Just like people donate their old sneakers to Goodwill. Then the PDF declares the IP to be public domain.
Just like with the used goods charities, not everyone will donate their used stuff. A lot of people throw out their old clothes. But an awful lot do donate. Given a little PR campaign about "Recycle and reuse, get a tax break", I think a fair number of old works would be donated by publishing houses and other IP holders. Maybe the practice of donating older works to the Public Domain might catch on, and become a standard practice in industries...?
Ok, so its not as good as reducing copyright terms, but if the law is going to treat copyrights as property which effectively last forever (I'd love a car which lasts 70 years past its builder's death), we ought to play by the rules on the field. It's better than letting the copyrights go into the limbo they currently go into when their users are done with them.
I'm no attorney, but in reading the ruling I get the impression that it's possible to make this same appeal, directly to the Supreme Court. Is that correct, or is this ruling by the Appeals Court the end of the line?
>
> I think the quote you're looking for is "rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling"
Believe me, if I could upsub anteposting, I would have. Serves me right for posting prepreviewing :)
Internet Archive had copied my copyrighted material without permission. I don't think it should have the right to copy anything without asking first.
That's because taking your car would be an act of theft, leaving you with no car. It is not the same as copying a program, whereby you would not lose anything tangible.
Sure, but consider extending that analogy a little. Instead of stealing his car, you simply head down to his garage in the middle of the night with a team of designers. You scope out his wheels, make some notes, and go back to your own garage wherein you assemble a copy of his car.
A software program isn't simply a collection of parts, much like a car isn't simply a collection of components. It's got style. Possibly poor style, but that's beside the point. Some programs are simple utilities to do simple jobs. Other programs are grandoise applications, each with its own flair and feature set.
If I had built myself a custom hotrod, all pimped out and dressed to the nines in spiffy hand-designed accessories, and somebody had come around and copied it, I'd be a little pissed off. So while it may not be illegal (trespassing overlooked), it's understandably aggrivating. I imagine that a number of people might want to "protect" their work from this type of thing.
Just looking at it from the other side. I'm more of an abandonware-as-freely-available supporter myself.
But please, for the love of God, someone explain this
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that matters only to them
...to mention the Abandonware Petition.
It pretty well sums up what I believe about this sort of thing, and there have been several thousand people who pretty much agree with me.
And I'll take the opportunity once more to thank Teresa for putting it together and hosting it.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
The United States government is divided into three branches in a system known as checks and balances. It most definitely IS the job of the courts to keep Congress in line. The courts are the only way to declare any legislation unconstitutional, and get bills/laws overturned, provided enough proof is presented. Googling for "US government checks and balances" produced a site featuring a lesson plan describing the system, and how it should work. The section labeled "The Judicial Branch" describes what the main function of the courts actually is (in a hypothetical situation, but insert any bill and it still works), outside of settling various corporate disputes and injury lawsuits.
From the site:
The Judicial Branch
The Congress is considering a bill that will make criticism of the President on the Internet's World Wide Web illegal. If the bill is approved by Congress and approved by the President, the Supreme Court must be ready to hear arguments in favor and against the bill. The Supreme Court must be ready to ask the Congress questions about the bill in order to learn facts that will lead to a decision in a lawsuit brought by the Press against the bill. The Supreme Court must develop five to seven questions it can ask lawyers on both sides. The Supreme Court will also have to vote on the constitutionality of the bill. Those in favor (there must be a minority of students taking this position even if they disagree with it) and those opposed to the bill must write a "majority" and "minority" opinion in the case.
This is a lesson plan aimed at students, so the five to seven questions thing can be ommitted, but the idea is clear- the supreme court IS HOW TO REGULATE CONGRESS. It's how the government was designed, and the most effective way to combat purchased politicians. I'd hope it's more difficult to lobby a judge (who would be appointed- no need for campaign money), than the local congressbeing (who IS elected, and has massive financial support for campaigning).
That's a very interesting theory. The REALITY is that our dear Congress keeps saying "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further" every few years.
Ever since the Bono Act, we are living in an age of perpetual copyright. I do not expect any current copyright to expire in my lifetime. It's far less likely to happen than Social Security being solvent in 2040.*Perhaps* this is because *that's the deal* that *your band* *agreed to* when *you* *signed* the *contract*. It's *the price* for a *chance* at *major label* fame and *fortune*!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The court rules on whether the act is legal. Not whether it is a good idea. And there's simply no reason for it not to be.
It is a limited monopoly. It is for a limited time.
I guess what we need is an actual abanodware act. Something that makes it legal under certain conditions (e.g. not for commercial use), to make copies of works that are no longer being published, but a change in the law is what is needed. Challenges to existing laws will not succeed.
I'd say that allowing a copyright owner the ability to exercise dog-in-the-manger style control, by intent or by apathy, is clearly unconstitutional.
With above distinction, your view reads to me as: "because the law doesn't have the intended effect, it should be declared unconstitutional". Newsflash: this happens all the time, and laws aren't unconstitutional because of it. I read court decisions like this as saying: "Yes, maybe the law doesn't have its intended effect, but we don't deal with that. We only deal with (whether Congress has the right to put that law in place). We (the court) decide that Congress has that right".
A pity, but I can accept that. It just means that Congress/lawmaking is the place to fix this, not the courts.
For a suggestion, I quote from the Stanford article: "For the first 186 years of our Republic, copyright laws established an "opt-in" system, one in which copyrights were secured only to those who took steps to claim them. In 1976 and 1989, Congress inverted this regime, transforming copyright law into an "opt-out" system, one in which rights are granted automatically and indiscriminately unless disclaimed." (anyone know an important reason why this change was made?). Me thinks it would really serve the public to revert that change, back to an opt-in policy, where authors have to take active steps to secure copyrights. That would solve the orphaned-works problem in an instant.
Too bad, the copyright-profit industry clearly has better lobbyist teams working the Congress than the public has.
If a company is not selling the product anymore, then how can copying a program deny them a sale? They're not making any money off of it.
One could conceivably argue that it deprives them of competitive advantage. Eg. even though Microsoft no longer sells Win98 having Win98 available freely would hurt WinXP sales. Even if one person chose that Win98 is good enough and they don't need WinXP, that is lost revenue.
i sold you,
and you sold me.
Here is a related topic which occurs regularly in the fansub circles of Anime.
A well loved anime, KOR, was not licensed for distribution in America. As a result, a fan group subtitled and released the entire series for free, using the arguement that since it wasn't licensed for sale in America, they weren't hurting anyone. This was back in the good old dual vcr and tape days. Because this was a popular anime, pretty much anyone who wanted to could get a copy of the fansubs for the price of the tapes and the time to copy them.
A few years later, a company was approached by the fans of this series, asking them to purchase the rights to distribute it in America. The company declined at first, citing the fact that since the fansubs of the anime were so prevalent, no one would have any reason to buy them. Eventually, in this case, a happy ending came about when the fans pre-ordered enough copies to make it finiacially viable to actually do the project.
However, just because this one ended in a happy note, does'nt meant they all do. The fact of the matter is, most of the time fansubers, abandonware sites, and other gray area copyright violators who aren't stealing out of a desire to not pay but out of a lack of any other avenue to get the product, end up hurting themselves in the end.
Typically what happens is that instead of reviving the product, they hammer the last nail into the coffin by removing ANY hope of the company seeing any finiacial viablity out of bringing the product back on their own.
On the other hand, damn it sure would be nice if companies couldn't horde these things as long as they do now.
Of course, the powers given to congress to grant copyright by the US constitution are predicated on promoting "useful arts and sciences". It's hard to argue that that condition is being satisfied when something is being buried so that absolutely nobody benefits from it.
Look, I want things to enter the public domain as much as the rest of you, but it looks like the copyright laws here made a decent amount of sense. Read the decision. Meanwhile, the lower courts are correctly noting that where the complaint directly conflicts with Eldred, they have to choice but to dismiss the complaint.
In a nutshell, current copyright policy looks like it was created to deal with an unmanageable system of registration, notification, and people who DID want to maintain their rights losing them. I find it interesting that we complain the US is isolationist and then reject this attempt to conform to world policy.
Finally, with regards to abandonware, the premise is that the original company is making no money off of it and "doesn't care" if it's distributed. If this is truly the case, then distribute it anyway, even if it is copyrighted. If they don't care, then no problem. If they do care, then take it down. The stuff that truly is abandoned will still be distributed, but the items that the copyright holders still have an interest in will not be.
The legal nuances only come into play if someone takes you to court, and if to reach that point generally means that not only do they significantly value the work, but you've most likely refused to resolve the situation amicably. Companies, even large ones, would much rather send a simple letter than sue someone.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
So it turns out that Havenco and Sealand are fantasies that didn't survive contact with the real world. Why am I not surprised?
>> If someone's great-grandson wants to live like Grandpa the Inventor, then great-grandson should become an inventor. That encourages creativity.
Something I have never understood. This seems to imply, and has been stated pretty explicitly in other places, that not allowing us to re-use someone elses work stiffles creativity.
Why does it promote more "creativity" for us to copy the work then it would to force us to come up with new ideas?
If forcing the great-grandson to become an inventor encourages creativity, then wouldn't the same thing (forcing others to become the inventors instead of the new owners) apply to everyone else?
Of course you forgot the most important step of all!
5) Profit!
The length of Copyright is already unconstitutional. Well, maybe not against the letter, but against the spirit, IMHO.
"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" - U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8
I also did not address the ethical or moral implications of the current law.
KFG
as a libertarian, you should know this better than most people.
property necessarily exists because of scarcity of resources. unless this is the matrix, at any given time there's only so much accessible gold, so much corn, so many AMD athlon CPUs, etc.
price (systems) are determined by the intersubjective valuation of those scarce objects over time (across the time domain).
according to libertarian / austrian economic thought, markets represent a real-time distributed (scale-free) evolving algorithm for optimizing where scarce goods need to be and who uses them. property allows for decisive dictatorship of the individual to perform localized processing.
problems are created when governments, representing a monopoly of force, distort markets with these "legal fictions" -- copyright, patents, incorporation (actually government sub-charters, like dukedoms or somesuch).
of particular problem is this farce of "intellectual property". ideas, software, intangibles which are not inherently scarce and have virtually no transaction cost of reproduction, really cannot be property. it's like making property out of air when there is no economy (scarcity) for it. (perhaps on a spaceship...)
remember, government recognition of property is, according to thomas jefferson, "a gift of social law". inherently, deep anarchy reigns supreme.
so simply put, ideas, software, "know how", sounds and sights -- INFORMATION -- does not satisfy the requirements of the NEED for property. copyright and patents are distortions of CONTROL and entail all of the problems of communist central planning.
"3) Congress carefully considers the meaning of "promotes the progress of arts and science" every time they extend this"
This is the worst one. Congress does no such thing.
Well perhaps, perhaps not. But it's not up to the court to speculate on whether the law does "promotes the progress of arts and science". They could only overrule it on this grounds, if it was quite clear that the obvious result of this extension was detrimental to the progress of arts and science. While there is some evidence to support this position, it could be argued that longer copyright protection has encouraged some publishers to continue publishing their work for longer.
Personally, I think the arguments a load of hokum, but unless I can disprove this and any similar argument, then it has to accepted as the wisdom of congress.
Cracker Jacks was common slang, which became a trademark and copyrighted.
b li ng+bling&r=f
There are many examples of this.
Folks should be listening for new slang on the streets, and make some small investments in copyrighting it.
If I was still young, I would have BLING copyrighted, as well as JING.
Use WIPO to take over whoever might have BLING.com and then resell jewelry using my Amazon.com affiliation.
Woo hoo -- Don't we love the modern world.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=
We desperately need to get rid of our current government and implement a government of the people, by the people, and for the people of this country. Only after democracy is instilled in America will this nonsense stop.
2) Whitewash it until it can't offend anyone.
3) Use its mass media engine to make it ubiquitous
4) Copyright their neutered version of the public domain work, and pay the government to keep it copyrighted in perpetuity
How does any of this stop you from producing your own version of The Wind in the Willows, Robin Hood, Zorro, The Three Muskeeters, Treasure Island, or The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? Oh, wait, no, it doesn't.
It's not about copying. It's about learning from, building upon, and deriving from the works of others. So long as they remain copyrighted/patented and "untouchable" that is impossible.
This applies more to patents than it does copyrights, but the concept is roughly the same.
If a work can be disseminated and freely shared without limits or boundaries -- real or imagined -- by anyone then that is where the real long-term value is, and where the proof of its value lies.
Blech. Signatures.
Yeah, lock up all public domain material in a big fucking vault so all the new bullshit can sell better!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
This is utterly obscene and ludicrous...even though the archive.org hosts cached internet sites I cannot see how it infringes copyright in a way that is harmful or detrimental to the creator/original owner...its simply an educational site dedicated to the raw true history of the Web. This is ridiculous and IMO it is indirect censorship.
If you own the original material, it is your right to do anything with it that you want with it, including locking it up in a vault. Just because you're not selling it and not profiting from it doesn't mean it automatically gets released into the public domain.
I agree that copyrights shouldn't be allowed to persist as long as they are, but that is quite irrelevant to my comment.
I think you're right. The ``... we don't deal with that.'' part is where the court goes wrong. In a case like this where the intended effect is explicitly given, failure to achieve that effect is relevant. Congress has the right to pass the law for the purpose. They don't have the right to pass the law if it doesn't further the purpose. In general, not having the intended effect wouldn't matter, but, as I say, this is a special case, because the constitutionality hinges on the intended effect. The courts can't legislate, but I think they could have told Congress: ``This doesn't pass the test.'' without stepping over that line.
It just means that Congress/lawmaking is the place to fix this, not the courts.
Yes, but I think it's because the courts are broken, not because that's the way it should be. What a pity that Congress is broken, too.
See what I've been reading.
It stops you from making a new version of mickey mouse tho, even when walt disney will have been dead for a hundred years. Is there some line in the sand (or constitution) that says "everything before the mouse is fair game, but everything afterwards should be protected for corporate exploitation unto eternity?"
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
At the moment we have a line somewhere around 1920 and a sign that reads: "No public domain after this point". And you are arguing that putting more stuff in public domain is bad, why isn't that relevant again? What does society gain out of copyright right now and why should we uphold our end of the deal? That is what this is all about so the lenght of copyright protection has everything to do with your comment.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Bambi was released in 1942. The Bambi copyright was not secured until 1926. Disney fought and won on the issue of a "timely renewal" of the coyright in 1954. Amelia Translation Project
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just badly informed and incapable of understanding my posts. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not a troll.
1. Where does it say there there's no public domain after this point? Right now copyrights are "limited" to max (95 years after creation, year of death of last author+75 years)
2. Where did I say that putting stuff into the public domain is bad? I just said that just because you're not selling something doesn't mean should automatically come into the public domain.
If that were the case, Linux would be released into the public domain automatically since Linus Torvalds isn't profiting by selling it.
See? Microsoft isn't a monopoly. The compete with themselves!!!
What you say is true, but Congress doesn't simply pass laws saying "None of Disney's stuff will ever pass into the public domain." (Which would be bad enough...) Instead, to avoid blatantly showing who they are serving with these copyright extensions, they extend the copyright on everything published since Steamboat Willy (which is the first appearance of Mickey Mouse, if you didn't know.) The result: an impoverished "myth spring", and a gradual depletion of "free ideas" that are available.
You see, once upon a time, the idea of "intellectual property" and "copyright", would've been laughed at. I mean, when I tell you a story, I still have the story, right? Languages and numbers only become more useful with each new person who learns them. However, all knowledge is power, and many people preferred to keep that power to themselves. A fine example is the Masons, who prospered for for many years due to secret stoneworking techniques and still have a reputation for secrecy to this day.
As a way to encourage the sharing of ideas and works of art, the idea of copyright was conceived.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage artists to share their works with the public by allowing them exclusive publishing rights for a limited time, after which those works would enter the public domain.
Would Disney have been able to create Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, etc, if the inspirations for those works had not been in the public domain? Of course not, and Disney's success is one of the best arguments for the necessity of allowing works of art to pass into the public domain. Yet Mickey Mouse (and literally thousands of other works of art, published since 1928, the first appearance of Steamboat Willy) has not passed into the public domain, as would be proper. Instead, every time that mouse comes close to becoming public property, Disney lobbyists donate money to purchase another copyright extension, and more and more works that should belong to society as a whole are dragged along with Steamboat Willy.)
The public has been denied the compensation it deserves for allowing Disney the copyright in the first place, and it seems that will continue to be the case, until a sufficient number of people wake up to what we are losing in exchange for Disney's success.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
...there may still be at least one more logical argument for overturning current copyright law on a Constitutional basis that I did not see in the linked documents and that would be the lack of requirement of registration and mandatory inclusion in a searchable database of protected works. The current system makes it impossible for the average citizen to determine whether or not a work is in the public domain which places him at risk of unknowingly violating the law.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Personally, I'd argue for *shorter* copyright terms, not longer.
Reasons:
1) Given the pace of modern change, it's a lot easier and faster to capitalise on an idea or product. In one month, you can have prototypes built for you and be marketing to the entire planet.
2) Kids. There's really no reason for kids of inventors/authors to benefit from super-long copyrights. If my Dad makes a pile of money from an invention or work, I'll inherit that. If he wants me to take over the business, he'll train me. I shouldn't feel entitled to a life on easy street just because an ancestor of mine was smart or lucky.
3) Cross-collaboration. Getting new inventions, methods or processes out into the wider community where they can be combined with existing ideas is of huge benefit to a modern economy. A thousand years ago, it didn't matter too much if a new castle design or plough was delayed ten years, because it would take a century or so to get to a significant fraction of the planet. Today, if you delay a year, you've lost the advantage.
I've tinkered with assorted copyright length schemes, mainly with either brutally short expiry times, or geometrically increasing extension costs (for companies which just HAVE to have one more year of owning Mickey Mouse). The major problem is that eventually it becomes cheaper for a large corporation to buy a change in the copyright law than it does to pay for another year of copyright.
Maybe if laws-for-cash was legalized and formalised somehow? Rent-a-law?
a million geek march to...Hollywood!
What?
Creative talents are driven in part a desire to provide for their children. That doesn't make them greedy, it makes them human, ask an actor or actress to explain what part residuals play in their financial planning.
What gives people incentive to work on Open Source projects? Hint: It's not the length of the copyright, I can promise you that.
I have wondered at times about the demographics of open source.
How many programmers leave the game after they quit school, get married, take on a full-time job, buy a house, have kids? There will always be room at the top for superstars like Linux, with free-spending corporate sponsors. But who occupies the middle ground and the lower, where the rewards are less visible and the future less secure?
I need to back up the internet archive...
I might also need a little faster connection and a few other things
One good example of this is old 1980's video game code.
It's no longer available in its native form, and many of the companies involved no longer exist.
Under "abandonware" thinking, those programs should be free to distribute.
However, thanks to the recent retrogaming craze, a lot of company's successors are seeing a good revenue stream from those once "abandoned" titles. (For example, who ever thought we'd see Atari 2600 titles for sale again, but there they are, built into a joystick at Toys R Us.)
As far as "old movies of little value," certainly there are those who think "It's A Wonderful Life" should still be Public Domain; the current copyright holders would disagree vehemently.
I've always felt that the 95/life+75 term is WAY TOO LONG. I mean, shouldn't people be able to expect works produced in their childhood to come into the public domain at some point in their life? Most people don't even live to be 95 years old, period! Why should the public domain only consist of things produced long before you were born?
I think 30 years would be a reasonable copyright term. Plenty of time for authors to make lots of money on their work, and hope that a large number of people alive when a work is produced will someday see it in the public domain.
-Z
Fuck you U.S.A. Government.
Fuck you Media Copyright Moguls.
They still have to enforce their prissy laws, so let them have at it.
They have not held up their end of the deal, I'm not going to hold up mine.
A few years ago, the RIAA wanted four Internet backbone providers to block access to a music server in China. The court case was never resolved because the music site went offline. The fact that a few companies can control inbound and outbound Internet traffic might well be a concern in itself... Consider the implications of such a chokepoint on Internet traffic. One article considered whether the providers were "common carriers" like a postal service. (This means that they are not liable for illegal content because they are not really supposed to filter content.)
Anonymous proxy services could bypass backbone filtering. The services would have to have legitimate uses (i.e. privacy protection) to avoid being targeted.
For resisting censorship, peer-to-peer systems may have hope. The manufacturers cannot really control the use of the systems even if their license prohibits illegal use. The Freenet system is resistant to censorship but is difficult to use.
And then it continues with ''Well, we have a new program that does the same thing. That will be $89.99''
One unique property that software, fiction, nonfiction, and other creative works have is that they *NEVER WEAR OUT*. Thus, old creations are direct economic competetiors to recent creations. Thus, the cheap availability of old creations in the public domain would affect and depress the market of recent creations. The copyright feudalists have done their best to keep this from happening by keeping old creations far away from the public.
Thus, copying old artistic works/abandonware could be detrimental to current creation. For instance, if copyright law was 42 years, most black&white film archives would be out of copyright --- I'd expect a lot of reruns of those instead of recent creations on TV.
Unfortunately, keeping old creations far from the public and rotting away is also destroying our cultural largess to our descendents. Under the current law, our cultural heritage will be lost. How many 80's arcade games are already lost forever? How many would have been lost forever by now without MAME?
To me, the preservation of our culture for the future is more important than an argument that the professional creation of modern cultural works would suffer a minor economic decline. Personally, I think the availability of more culture in the public domain would lead to a bit less professional creativity, but VASTLY more total creativity.
Don't you mean "alive + 75 years" instead, and on the next extension it'll no doubt be "alive + 95 years" or more.
We're PAST the author's life, already. Copyright lives to maintain corporate monopolies. Face it. Get over it. Hope the rest of the world is more sane than the US.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
... this is just another case of the little guy getting screwed ...
... if music be fruit of love, play on
That's because taking your car would be an act of theft, leaving you with no car. It is not the same as copying a program, whereby you would not lose anything tangible.
If a company is not selling the product anymore, then how can copying a program deny them a sale? They're not making any money off of it.
You could easily lose something tangible. If I own the rights to SoftwareWidget v1, I could decide to stop making copies available before I release SoftwareWidget v2. If suddenly during that time everyone who wants a copy of SoftwareWidget decides to make their own copy of version 1 then that is very likely going to lower my sales of version 2.
If the author wants to stop distribution while retaining exclusive rights of copying because he wants to create some scarcity, more elaborate measures, such as contracts with buyers, or at least registration, should be required. If the author/publisher stops distribution just because it is no longer profitable to make it available, it is against nobody's interest to allow the public to copy it without authorization. If the author decides not to distribute something until later, then the public are allowed to but cannot do any copying before the first publication (because no one else has a copy), while after publication the author do have exclusive rights over copying.
Your post refers to the current law, which IMHO is not very fair to the public.
Authors can make money off their works during a short copyright term, then they can give the money to their kids. The kids themselves probably won't be able to make much more money anyway (unless the work is never published), since most best-sellers are mostly forgotten after 10 or 20 years.
Its not property, that's the point.
If it was property, it would be subject to property tax.
Its not.
If it was property, you couldn't have an infinite number of copies around.
So please.
Copyright is a bargain...the law protects you in order for society to gain use of the product. As soon as you stop distributing, you break the bargain.
Steamboat Willy (1928) was the Mouse's first talking picture, released after his silent debut in Plane Crazy (1928.)
You see, once upon a time, the idea of "intellectual property" and "copyright", would've been laughed at.
Shakespeare's plays were closely held in his lifetime because they were the prime assets of his company and defined their market. It was equally essential to have an aristocratic patron who could not be imposed upon lightly. Different means to the same end. The First Folio was printed in 1623, in ten years the Puritans would close the last of the theaters. Publication preserves his work, but only 500 or so readers have access.
Intellectual property is a middle class conception, meaning that it serves the interests of those whose livelihood depends on their own creative talents, middle class in it's insistence that the law is the final arbiter of property rights, not the nobility, not the church and certainly not the mob, middle class in it's demand for arguments a tad less new age and nebulous than talk of an impoverished myth spring. I suspect that the idea of intellectual property is as old as the middle class itself.
Consider all the properties that were copyrighted in 1928, books, films, photograps, sheet music, etc., how many survive in print, how many survive at all? We have Steamboat Willy because it was and remains in Disney's interest to preserve it. You cannot legally produce a work that is explicitly a derivative of the Mouse without Disney's consent. You can find in Steamboat Willie inspiration for an independent work of art.
"However, as long as the author or the rights holder is alive, they (like it or not, right now) have the right to set the terms of distribution, including limited or no distribution."
You've made the original poster's point exactly, although I suspect you didn't mean to.
30 years is still way to long. There isn't a single piece of software for the x86 architecture that's less than 30 years old as the archaic architecture itself isn't even 30 years old.
In my opinion, 1 week for news, 3 years for software, and 5 years for other works would give over 90% of the incentive that companies currently get.
Of course, even with such reduced terms, it would still be much more efficient to fund art in a different way, as copyrights divert massive amounts of resources into beauraracy, lawyers, and duplication of effort, transaction costs, monopoly costs, and enforcement costs (DRM).
"Copyright has swung too far from the commons that defined much of what is good about this country. Congress needs to move it back."
Here's the thing.
You and I think so, and yet Congress is convinced for whatever reason that America's properity relies on making sure people don't take our movies and music and making it freely available.
So they're convinced, rightly or wrongly, that if anything, copyright holders need more power, not less.
As a result, people are going to court because if you're a congressman, you have a couple of guys on the internet arguing copyright extensions are bad, and yet lots of businesses and respected professors telling you that that its good, you're probably going to side that seems to be telling you to strengthen copyrights, because there doesn't appear to be a downside as far as theyr'e concerned.
I don't see an obvious solution to the problem yet, because it hasn't hit the public where they can notice.
So my guess is copyright laws will get downright draconian (i.e. "the right to read") before things move back into balance.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The "limited time" clause is a referral to the Bible. Check it out. Just like many of the other references to the Bible and God, "limited time" appears in the Bible in several areas.
As our country fights over the separation of church and state we forget what the word "separation" means. It does not mean "To Divorce" nor does it mean "To live with or through". It means that we must recognize some basis for our laws and ways of life but that the church can not control how we live our lives. Thus, the two are separate - but equal.
The church has its way of doing things, the government its own way of doing things. But the basis for both is the same - the Bible. Including the terms. After all, why do plaintiffs pray the court hear their plea? Why did you use to have to swear on a Bible to give testimony? In God We Trust isn't there by accident. We put our trust in God to know the difference between right and wrong. The Bible has within its pages how you are supposed to act. (And yeah, some of the things in it are a bit strange!) But the basis of our entire country is within those pages and as much as some people wish to divorce church and state - it can not be done. You have to have some foundation to start from or else murder is not a crime, fraud is not a crime, and rape is not a crime. All of these are shown within the Bible to educate people on what is right and wrong.
Taken in its proper context (and not from the angle of greedy corporate rules lawyers) the term "limited time" is easily recognized to mean exactly what the original writers of our laws concerning copyrights meant it to mean. Not the twisted "limited" meaning misconstrued to mean for as long as anyone wants it to mean, but the realistic, common sense, for a single 14 year period with a single extenstion of an additional 14 years.
To put this all in plain speak: This is the same crap some people who played D&D would do. They would contort the rules to fit their own demented outlook on life. Not satisfied that they had good characters they always wanted more. Never caring whom else they hurt doing so they continued on until no one really wanted to play with them.
Well, those are the people who are now in office and are now making the rules and from where I sit it looks like soon no one else (ie: other countrys) are going to want to play with us. After all, how many messages are you now seeing on SlashDot where people in other countries are not saying nice things about us anymore? There's a reason that is happening.
Our country was founded by people who were fed up with over the top bad government (and who just happen to have been ruled by another George). Let us not forget that for the moment it still is a government of, by, and for the people. If the people say we do not want this loudly enough - the government has to obey. So SCREAM! Organize letter writings, phone calls, I know it is drudge work but if you don't do it you will have to live with a corporate run government and we will all become slaves to the corporations.
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
This page specifies, among other information, the copyright terms in various countries. In some cases, the "life of author+70 years" term was adopted in a retroactive manner, and supposedly this meant that copyrights were restored on public domain works. In Mexico, copyright is for the author's life+100 years! For copyrights in Cote d'Ivoire, the term is usually life + 99 years.
fuck it. i am going to pirate everything. there was a time not too long ago, where i felt it was important to reimburse people who created intellectual property. i bought cds. i paid for mirc. i even bought half life 2 recently. no more. the greed and disrespect towards me (and the public at large) is too much. i almost feel a twinge of guilt towards those who would have earned my money legitimately. i am officially an outlaw now. come arrest me you bastards.
strike
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
There should be some way to get copyright to be declared to be abandoned by a court.
Since I don't imagine there is a standard proceeding for it, maybe one could set up a dummy fight between strawman A and strawman B, one claiming to have acquired the copyright, the other claiming that it has been abandoned.
This way, one might be able to get a court ruling on the issue. Good, since it is clearly bad if you declare something abandonware and later the copyright owners knock on your door.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Murder, fraud, rape... if You have to read the Bible to find out IF those are wrong, You are dangerous!
Mickey Mouse is trademarked, not copyrighted. The stories are copyrighted, but that's not what keeps you from writing a new story about Mickey Mouse. Thus, even if this case goes the other way on appeal, you still won't be able to make Mickey Mouse cartoons.
"it could be argued that longer copyright protection has encouraged some publishers to continue publishing their work for longer."
That shouldn't matter. It's not the publication that is important, but the *creation*.
In the article at http://www.lisnews.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/30/141 0232 this is written in the end, and I see 2 sides of the argue here.
The copyright holder wants to keep their copyrights and possibility to gain financially until their copyright on the material pass on.
The information-wants-to-be-free-activists; All information should be accessible, no matter what.
I believe that it's natural that the copyright holder defend their rights, and they should be able to decide when or if their material should be shared by anyone without their control.
Though I also believe that these copyright-holders should perhaps loosen up when it comes to defending their copyright when it comes to material that is more trivial and of common interest, and where-of this material doesn't bring them financial gain. Some "good will" would be suitable.
IMO copying could be arguably not theft, but this sure is theft. The real thieves are the ones who keep preventing works from entering the public domain, decade after decade.
It's stealing from the public - the public no longer have full access to the works.
The people involved in supporting and making such laws are the real thieves.
But with old software, quite often the company owning the copyright has disappeared, and even if it changed hands, very likely the old software is nothing more than dusty files in a warehouse that will never be referred to again. No one who worked on it (the real creators) works for the "owners", there is no chance of it being revived. It will just disappear if the letter of the law is followed.
Anyone else read the judgement? They quote this breathtaking line from Eldred vs Ashcroft:
/do/ allege:
'the profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science'
A sentence that will make most (underpaid) scientists jaws drop. Whats even more bizarre is the argument they hang on this shaky peg. It appears in the section discussing the lack of copyright registration, which IA argue makes it hard to gain a license. At present, there's a jack-in-the-box system, where if you use apparently abandoned material, the author may pop up and sue - fear of which, IA argue, is a 'chilling effect' on free speech.
The court uses the supreme court quote above to say that authors have a financial incentive to register material to make it easy for potential licensees to find them.
Yeah, right. So, every schoolkid writing an essay should contact the LoC and register it, because ONE DAY they will make back their costs? Or speaking more directly to this case: authors of material orphaned in the late 60's - who had EVERY EXPECTATION that their work would be PD by now - should jump out of their graves and file their work?
That doesn't even begin to make sense. And then theres the actual grounds for dismissal:
"As plaintiffs do not allege any alterations to the "traditional contours of copyright
protection," no further First Amendment analysis is necessary"
But that is exactly what they
"Plaintiffs assert that "[w]hereas the traditional contours of a conditional copyright
regime [are narrow], an unconditional regime
guarantees [wider protection]" (my elisions, p6 line 9, and following lines).
WTF???
Perhaps there's a way to save a subset of these abandoned works. Corporations and other business entities which are regarded as separate entities from individuals fold -- often. State government give "life" to these entities through legislation, and that legislation grants the ability to own property to these entities.
So look to your state laws to find out what happens to intellectual property when these companies fold. Suggest to your local representative that these laws are amended so works that aren't reassigned through a public announcement become public domain.
In Maine, I believe for corporations, this is the relevant statute for amending (Title 13-C Sec. 1440). Notice how all assets are to be reduced to cash(!):
Assets of a dissolved corporation that should be transferred to a creditor, claimant or shareholder of the corporation who can not be found or who is not competent to receive the assets must be reduced to cash and deposited with the Treasurer of State or other appropriate state official for safekeeping in accordance with Title 33, chapter 41. When the creditor, claimant or shareholder furnishes satisfactory proof of entitlement to the amount deposited, the Treasurer of State or other appropriate state official shall pay the creditor, claimant or shareholder or that person's representative that amount. [2001, c. 640, Pt. A, 2 (new); Pt. B, 7 (aff).]
If a comment saying "i don't know what to say... it sucks..." gets modded to +4 *insightful*, I just wonder what kind of insight /. moderators mean...
(I'm intentionally cutting that quote short)
While your suggestion may indeed be meaningful with respect to "some small island in international waters", relocating your server to a country that doesn't pay attention to United States laws (there are several of those) isn't going to help you a bit. This legal case isn't about challenging overbroad U.S. legislation (for whatever definition of "overbroad"), this is about challenging the constitutionality of recent changes to U.S. copyright law, changes that came about as a result of the United States acceeding to an international treaty, namely the Berne Convention.
Your operation handing out copies of old works still under copyright protection will be regulated by essentially the same copyright regime in any Berne Convention country where you choose to relocate. That's a little over 100 countries, probably most of the countries where you would want to relocate. If you want to put up a fight, make sure that you are fighting the right enemy (the Berne Convention, not the United States).
As for myself, I don't consider copyright by default to be much of a problem, but that's because Sweden acceeded to the Berne Convention even before I was born, and copyright by default is the general rule in Europe. It's the United States that is the latecomer in this respect.
Even if the challenge is successful on constitutional grounds, I doubt the United States could amend its copyright legislation to your liking and still be in compliance with the Berne Convention. As Kahle suggests, you would have to discriminate against your own citizens, requiring United States authors to register their works for copyright protection, while granting it automatically to foreign authors (or authors from other Berne Convention countries, to be precise). Would you accept that?
Even with automatic copyright protection, I think it should be up to the copyright holder to sue for infringement. Unfortunately, the Swedish supreme court found in one case that infringement had occurred even without a lawsuit from the proper copyright holder.
That proves the parent poster's arguement exactly. How many of those works survive today? How many more would have survived had even one of the works fans been allowed to keep and distribute copies in the public domain, despite there being no commercial incentive to the original creators to maintain distribution?
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Let me make the distinction between "Our constitution gives Congress the right .." (the law itself), and "to serve the public interest" (the effect the law has).
You can't always make such a distinction. Since in some places, most notably the First Ammendment, the limits on the power of the US Congress specifically relate to the effect a law has. Regardless of whatever the intent of the law might have been.
That proves the parent poster's arguement exactly. How many of those works survive today? How many more would have survived had even one of the works fans been allowed to keep and distribute copies in the public domain, despite there being no commercial incentive to the original creators to maintain distribution?
Traditionally Copyright Libraries would have also preserved works which were not a commercial sucess. If copyright is X years from first publication then all the librarian need do is label a book with a date in the future (assuming that the printer hasn't already done this.) When you have copyright as "author's life plus X" or where the term can retrospectivly change you need a complex system to work out when something becomes public domain.
In addition with more books being published and longer copyright terms Copyright Libraries just cannot keep even one copy of every book published.
not trolling, but honestly, why dont we all just go back to just playing board games, and entertaining ourselves instead of relying on companies to entertain us?
Very possibly. After all, 1963's "The Sword in the Stone" and 1985's "The Black Cauldron" were both based on works still under copyright. However, it would have been much less economical for them. Licenses can be purchased... but only by those few who already are rich, which limits the ability of new artists to grow their skills by working in part from the talents of others before standing upright on their own.
Mind you, it's still a bad law.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Primarily because of the Berne Convention, an international agreement on copyrights. The standard everyone could agree upon was automatic copyrights. By agreeing to implement the terms of the Berne Convention we got lots of good stuff (notably other Berne Convention countries must respect our copyrights), but we had to go Opt-Out.
However, I think it's a good plan. Filing for copyright is a bloody nuisance and raises the barrier to profit from ones work. It also means that an accidental failure to file for copyright. (This happened to the movie It's a Wonderful Life . On the other hand, it's this failure that made it popular today; networks can air it without paying anyone.)
Our copyright system is broken, but I don't think going Opt-In is the necessary fix. Shorter durations (Berne only requires Life+50) would be an immediate improvement with do measurable down side. (A publisher isn't going to offer an auther less money because they'll only have the rights for 50 years instead of 75. Averaged across all books years 51-75 are basically worthless. The occasional book is an exception, but it's basically impossible to guess which will still have value in 50 years.)
Another option is a blended form: The initial period is free, but you have to pay to extend it after a period. I believe Professor Lessig is pushing for this. I'm picturing something like 20 years for free, but then you have to pay for renewal at increasingly expensive fees. Getting another 20 or so years would be reasonable for any work making money, getting another 100 would be prohibitively expensive for any for the most profitable of enterprises. Most works would become free after 20 years, long past their profitable stage.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Mickey Mouse is trademarked, not copyrighted. The stories are copyrighted, but that's not what keeps you from writing a new story about Mickey Mouse.
Actually, you are wrong. Mickey Mouse is copyrighted and trademarked. However, any unautorhized derivative work, which includes using the same characters, is copyright infringement. This is what makes fanfic technically illegal.
IIRC, the international treaty that we are currently "harmonized" with, forbids having a registration requirement. I think the reasoning that the copyright is automatic is so that you don't have to re-register in every country to be able to be protected.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
Perhaps there is something to be said for public funding of political campaigns. Though it might sound expensive, it is important for the government to be responsive to all people.
Those who are interested can take a look at the following for starters:
Public Campaign -- A New Kind of Reform Politics
Public Campaign Action Fund
Campaign Finance Reform: The Issue
Money In Politics - Common Cause
Exactly, the heritage of our culture is disappearing, not because it is worthless (although that is rapidly becoming true) but because the legal methods of preserving it are constrained to the point they can not keep up, meanwhile the multitudes who could, and are willing, to maintain the burden of keeping these records are demonized and criminalized by the organizations responsible for maximizing the profits of the rights holders.
I personally am willing and able to maintain several hundred gigabytes of artistic merit for as long as I can. But, not having a large endowment to guarantee perpetual preservation, the best I could do would be to share what I can, and spread as many copies as I can, so that if my archive disappears, then at least others may maintain public access. However, with the current legal tactics available to the production houses, and supported and supplied by the government, the best I can do is weep for the beauty and truth that is being lost every day and which my children will never have the chance to know.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
An individual has argued that the Mickey Mouse character may already be public domain because of previous copyright requirements that were not properly satisfied.
Wow I really got a lot of responses on this one.
I guess I was thinking more of the situation where a one man "company" shuts the doors. For instance, maybe the company isn't bringing in enough money so this guy decides to shut down the shop for now and get corporate employment and then 5 years later he's built up enough reserve cash and possibly been working on his former product during his free time.
I personally have a situation not exactly like that but similar. In all honesty it probably would be better if the software had gone public domain because I have no idea if I'll ever have time to get back to it.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Look at all the bootleg NES and Atari "controller plug into your TV" systems out there. They still have value and Nintendo could (and may have) re-released these 10+ year old games at a later date.
Look at Square, they re-released some of the early NES final fantasies on playstation.
Look at Sierra (this is going way back) they re-released Quest for Glory 1 as a VGA game (and it was cool too!).
I understand that it's frustrating not having the opportunity to purchase something and at that point it feels justified to copy it and I'm not completely against it either but I do think that it would be nice to have some rules that covered the situation a bit better.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I'd rather go with the flat fee. Otherwise more management/audits have to be done.
License plate tags are renewed every year or two at a flat rate. Something like that could work for copyrights I guess.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin