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What Would You Ask For in Copyright Law?
BlastM asks: "The Australian Attorney General's Department, as reported recently on Slashdot, is accepting public input in a review of fair use exceptions (or lack thereof) in our copyright laws. Being an Australian citizen, I'll be directly affected by any reforms that are made, and under the Copyright Act in it's current form it's hard to avoid breaking the law nearly every day, whether format shifting music, recording broadcast TV shows or sharing movies via P2P or with friends. The question I pose to the freethinking minds, here: What fair use rights should be defined under copyright law? Is the use of a static, defined set of rights too restrictive? What's right/wrong with the copyright laws where you live?"
are very reasonable starting points IMHO.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This allows the artist the opportunity to choose what licence the work will be distributed in.
All licences are free for personal use. Restrictions can be added for commercial use, sampling and other derivatives.
I personally use Creative Commons for my releases.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Copyrights last 10 years, but with unlimited free 10 year extensions during the life of the author. If he or she doesn't care to apply for an extension, the work enters the public domain. Works for hire and transferred works have a 50 year limit.
Everything was fine pre-DMCA.
Not really. The famous Girl-Scout case was years before the DMCA was passed. This was the case in which the Scouts were sued for permitting their members to sing copyrighted songs around a campfire. And note that all the negative publicity didn't work in this case. The Girl Scouts are paying an annual fee for the right to sing around their campfires.
Then there are the explanations of how it comes to be that Happy Birthday is still under copyright, although it was written in the 1880's. The current owner gets several million US dollars per year for permissions to sing the song.
None of this is the fault of the DMCA.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyri ght/
1) Acknowledge the supremacy of the doctrine of first sale : When you purchase an instance of a copy of copyrighted work, your rights to view,use,modify,combine,interoperate with, dispose or resell that one instance are not impeded by either legislation or technology. This fact has been recognized time and again by the US courts.
2) The doctrine of first sale applies to both physical media and digital content where the receiver pays a transaction for an instance of a copyrighted work: When you purchase an instance of a copy of copyrighted work that involves the buyer making a choice for that instance of copyrighted work and entering into a transaction with the seller, then the buyer has the rights to that instance under the doctrine of first sale. Sellers of instances of copyrighted work cannot hide behind provision as a service, when you pay for an instance, you own that instance.
3) You do not have the right to record content without permission of the copyright holders of a live performance ( play, concert etc ) or private performance ( Film theater ) on private property or venue. You pay to attend a performance at a physical venue, not for a copy of an instance of that performance.
4) Broadcasted ( as apposed to downloaded ) copyrighted works as content received into a household or to device held by individual person or on that persons property, may not be redistributed outside of that person's household to anyone who does not receive the content though the same service. You may record a instance of copyrighted work for later viewing ( timeshifting ) and distribute a copy along to any person whos household also receives that same broadcast service ( Samaritan clause ). You many not redistribute or resell content recorded from a broadcast service to anyone not receiving that same broadcast service content.
5) Although you may not redistibute recorded copies of broadcasted copyrighted content outside of the terms of (4), there should be no limit to what you may do with instances of those works within your household. You should have the right to modify the works, combine with other works and interoperate with other works.
6) Copyright protection extends only to the particular work copyrighted. The Copyright holder's exclusive rights should not extend to the right to deny other combining an instance of copyright holder work with other works. You should have the right to distribute and/or sell, patches, recipes and addon components that refer and link to the content of the copyrighted work, but do not contain content from the original copyrighted work. The resulting combined and/or transformed work that contains content from the copyrighted work sources can not be legally redistributed without the permission of all the copyright holders.
As a person who relies on copyright to put food on the table, essentially as a creative producer of content, I have a different take on this issue. Thus far, I've seen some ridiculous suggestions for copyright law that could only be written by what is commonly known as "leechers" who would only support free (as in beer) stuff. Yes, this is probably flaimbait, but it angers me when people who know nothing about the purpose of copyright (both socially and personally) start spewing out their crap about how everything should be free and in the public domain. I did read a few good comments, but those were the minority when I began this.
What we produce on our time is our work. We have the right to do with it as we see fit. This is implied in any society, except for a communist or totalitarian one, where what we produce is a product of the state, whether in principle or by force, respectively. Copyright laws exist to clearly define the boundaries of this right that is as unalienable as life and liberty.
Just to give an example that is close to home for most people, this concept is especially important for the FOSS movement. Without the proper copyright protections, something like the GPL and its derivatives could not exist. Remember that the GPL is viral--works that include GPL'ed material must also be GPL'ed. With very weak copyright, anybody, including major companies, could copy code line-for-line that a programmer writes under the GPL, without paying the requested price of making the copy GPL'ed, or even crediting the original programmer.
So don't bash copyright. It's your friend. It's your right. It's your choice.
Disclaimer: I have my own biases and my own views on the whole thing, and these changes to copyright law are as much a product of my logical thinking as those biases. Also, IANAL, so I might just be restating something already in copyright law that I don't know about or I have never before seen interpreted in this manner.
That having been said, there are revisions I would like to see to existing copyright laws. They are:
1) Allow jointly independent copyrights. This is somewhat already present, as the owner of something like an mp3 would include the renderer and the owners of the individual parts. However, jointly independent copyrights are such that if there is more than one producer or creator of one work, both would have the copyrights to the work. So if Yao Ming and Shaq decide to sing a duet, both would be able to sell and distribute their rendition independently, or jointly.
2) Allow copyrights to be transfered postmortem. Inheritance, essentially, but with one catch: The transfer must be explicitly stated in the copyright owner's will, or the work would immediately go into the public domain.
3) Make copyright violations a criminal offense (something already done in many places), but prohobit civil suits at the same time. Copyright violators should be prosecuted as criminals, where defendents would be provided legal council. Any and all reparations would be determined by a judge, not by the plaintiff. Basically, no frivilous lawsuits and intimidation tactics.
4) Prohibit non-producers (middlemen) from claiming exclusivity to any part of the copyright. But with the internet, the need for such middlemen has been drastically reduced. What constitutes non-producers are entities or persons who did not participate, in part or in full, financially or creatively, in the original production of the work. Furthermore, prohibit the transfer of copyright with the exception of the case described in 1).
Of course, Fair Use is a completely different beast to tackle. The changes to Fair Use I'd like to see are:
1) Unconditionally allow the replication of copyright works only when the person performing the replication does not gain financially or otherwise through the work's replication, whether directly or indirectly, and only when the replication is perceived as perfect. In this case, a lack of a loss does not necessarily imply a gain.
Well, its one of the most innovative. If you've ever been in a college library, than you've used the Congressional Catalogue System (A-Z classification), which is much better for large collections than the Dewey systems (0-999 system). Its also at the forefront of digital collections, and it ought to be, as the world's fastest growing library. That, and their reference librarians are damn good. It also has the world's largest collection of maps and sound recordings. Lets not also forget that the British Museum is fairly new, made in 1973 as compared to 1800 for the LC
But, to answer your question, there is no 'world's best library.' It all depends on your subject and access to primary resources. If you're studying early British history, than the Library on Congress won't have a heck of a lot of original documents for you. Vice-versa for trying to study American history at the British Library.
Sleep is for the weak!