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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?"
Would you say then then GPL should be replaced on code more than 5 years old and a do as you please license attached?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I always wonder why there can't be something concerning commercial availability. If software isn't sold anymore, shouldn't that modify copyright? What about when a book or CD or movie is unavailable? What about so-called abandonware?
I'm probably in a minority, but I think America's Fair Use Clause is already pretty sensible, it states:
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
If we'd actually enforce this doctrine and not pass things to circumvent it, like the DMCA, I think oftentimes we'd find the law on our side. How does Australian law differ from these provisions?
I think alot of the bickering about IP rights comes from industries using money to skew the issues and interpret the law in their favor, and no strong voice stating what the law actually is or moving that it should be enforced fairly.
My main problem with copyright in the U.S. is that it is used to basically remove works from the populace. The vast majority of works are tossed in storage after they don't become hugely successful and are never seen again and often become completely unavailable. If I were rewriting copyright laws I'd require that all copyrighted works must be available for sale at a reasonable market rate or the copyright on them expires immediately (with an exception for works still in progress or about to released) and cannot be reinstated. I'd also require that two copies of every work to be copyrighted be provided free of charge to a national archive, thus ensuring that they will not disappear. (This used to be law in the U.S. but was repealed at the same time most of the rest of our copyright laws were rewritten by lobbyists.)
This still allows artists and publishers to make money on works, but also preserves them for the public when those companies stop offering them.
I'd say really, short of changing the mindset of the society in which we live, there's nothing that really "should" be changed about copyright. I mean really, if you think about it, people need to make money to live, therefore they "should" fight to the death to protect anything they have that is worth "money". Why shouldn't Disney have exclusive right to make money off of Mickey Mouse indefinitely (ok so maybe that would be a change from current law, since they can't do that now)? Why shouldn't the RIAA try and defend the music it pumps out for profit (assuming it does it legally, not through abusing the legal system, that's another can of worms)?
I'd say that all in all, copyright law for our time and place is relatively good in concept. The biggest problem, and something that I would make clear, is that the limits of that copyright need to be clearly defined. I think the problems that arise from copyright law these days tends to come from both sides bending the rules and trying to exploit the system.
Unfortunately, until we evolve past a state of fighting for "money" to "survive" we are still going to have to face issues of how much "money" our ideas are "worth". I'm all for stopping people from ripping off other's ideas, which copyright law does "in theory" but unfortunately the limits haven't been well defined and thus are being exploited.
Now Patent Law, on the other hand, needs some serious readjustment, but that, again, is another can of worms.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
1. Copyright must be applied for. If copyright is not applied for within 1 year of publication, the work is public domain.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
To get a copyright for a work, you should have to register a highest-possible-quality unencrypted digital copy of the work with the copyright office.
At a minimum, this guarantees that works don't vanish from existence before their copyright expires, denying the public domain their content.
Additionally, you could add criteria to address abandonware-- if a work is not produced or sold for a period of 10 years, it becomes available from the copyright office for a small copying fee, and has becomes part of the public domain.
Alternatively, this could act as a form of "mandatory licensing," where you can purchase the work for a nominal fee from the copyright office, and the proceeds are split between the office (for maintaining this library of works) and the copyright holder. This way, even people who are no longer able to sell their works could make a modest sum from the sale until the copyright expires, and people would have access to works that would have otherwise disappeared.
I'd ask for unrestricted use for education. Specifically state-funded education at the k-12 level. One of the stipulations should be that the copyright holder/publisher should provide, at cost, a copy of material for each student that needs the material.
As much as I loved books like Tom Sawyer, I hated having to pay for them out of pocket.
And I know something has been written in the last 100 years that students SHOULD be reading, but can't because of copyright.
This should include music (sheet for the band members and performances for appretiation classes), movies, books, software, etc. Basicly anything that can be copyrighted should be avalible at no cost to students.
There would be an exception for books written specifically to be used as textbooks.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
4. The notion of "derivative works" is abolished. Only copying is prohibited. New creations are OK.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
With regards to point 6; there needs to be a form of protection for those kind of things. For example, if someone makes a film of Macbeth, that interpretation is subject to copyrights, but the original work isn't and someone else can put on a play of it, make another film etc.
Using concepts from the film version in your production is a dodgy area.
7. Anything you do to a legally acquired copy of a work is OK (e.g. stripping the protection, backing up, resequencing a DVD to remove parts you don't like), but making more copies is not.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The after X millions is asking for trouble. Who is to determine what a "pile of money" is? How often does that need to be updated due to inflation or in reference to the "pile of money" that was invested in said copyright?
My thoughts on copyright are it should not be transferable. Meaning that the creator is the soul owner of the copyright, not the record company or their family hundreds of years after the original creator is dead. I also believe that it should last the lifetime of the creator, but they can waive it and put their creation into the public domain at any time.
The only problem is that copyright could then be circumvented via patents or trademarks or some other legal tricks. Although Walt Disney is dead. Even if the copyright were to disappear for Mickey Mouse, I doubt any Mickey Mouse cartoons would be able to be in the public domain due to trademarks on the Mickey Mouse name and image, so we are still stuck.
Using concepts from the film version in your production is a dodgy area.
I'm sorry, everything in the public domain should be fair game. A film with an expired copyright falls in this category. As far as I know, there is no such thing right now. Keep in mind, up until the 20th century in the US, copyrights actually expired. This is exactly how Disney was able to get it's start. It borrowed heavily from material in the public domain, and arguable our culture has seen benifit from this. 20 years is more than fair, considering, if something makes a profit, it usually does so within a few years, usually within one.
The problem with having no public domain and it monolopy it creates, is there is very little incentive for a creator to genuinely make something new. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Loonie Toons (old war times cartoons from these guys are some of my favorites), we have all heard of them. Used again...and again...and again. It's lame, but it's profitable. Familiarity breeds stagnation. In many ways, much of the truely creative material (which usually means higher risk) is relagated to smaller distributation channels. Meaning the majority of society will never see or hear of it. As a result, the west is slowly redefining it's "Folk culture" to a point that it has little meaning. Our society suffers from it.
The guys who wrote the US constitution understood this, but today it's been repaced with market economics and profit. Neither of which puts societial culture and experience in very high esteem, since the "creators" of works are eternal and have, as a collective whole, any understanding of what it's means to be a human who just plays the guitar around a campfire.
Burn Hollywood Burn
So redistribution for no profit, no matter at what scale it occurs, should be legal? What if this means that a large studio (that can afford the bandwidth) could just host a copy of any indie film so that the makers see no profit?
How about: Copywrite ownership ALWAYS remains with the original author. Also meaning you cannot copywrite Public Domain. Copywrite lasts for up to 25 years, or when the author dies. Copywrited works can be used in any manner other than re-distributing in whole or in part without the author's explicit consent. I'm an Aussie too! Let's get something that works.
So that if you were to "redo" Star Wars and "add" things to it, the original work would become free.
Thus if it wasn't an improvement, most people wouldn't "redo" things to extend and expand their copyrights, because they would have a disincentive to do so.
However, adding extra footage would not invalidate the original, but wouldn't extend the copyright either. So you could do a director's cut.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I would like to see protection for new business models to fund creative works. More specifically, I would like to see a safe-harbor for copyright violations of works incorporated into works released into the public domain and for the more free versions of the creative commons license. Any damages awarded for such a case would be limited to no more than the net revenue generated by the work.
This would allow a business to form enabling a work-for-hire model without fear that an accidental inclusion of an "old-style" copyrighted work would destroy the business.
For example, you record a song and it happens to include a bass-line that has been copyrighted by some music label 20 years ago. Studio time, etc costs you $600 to get the recording mixed and ready for production qualit release. You charge $1000 to release it to the public domain - 500 fans each pay $2 and so you relase it. Said big music label decides to file suit for copyright infringement, the most they can get are two things:
1) Song is "withdrawn" from the public domain.
2) $600 in damages because that was net revenue generated by the sale
This avoids the ability of the sudio to sue for $150,000 or so for every copy of the song ever made which is about what the current (USA) copyright laws allow for. $150,000 x millions of downloads would totally bankrupt any business.
So, if alternate business models are going to get off the ground, they need to be protected from legal attacks designed more to protect the current business model than to protect the artist. Changes to the law should enable creativity in art and in business, not fight it.
Seriously, this whole question is very biased. It's like asking, what would you ask for to make slavery law just? Well Duh. How about GET RID OF IT!
Copyright monopolies are unjust by their very nature. Why in the hell should we make it anything more than a term of 0 just for the sake of appeasing the common masses who are more interested in appearing to fit in than swallowing simple honest facts. Yeah, extreme, I know, so was democracy, free speech, free religion, and a round world. Societies of the future will look at us like ignorant fools for trying to cling to a poor belief system that just doesn't work, just like the way we do today toward the poor fools who clinged to dear life for hope of the slave states getting along with the free states.
...to redo the entire copyright system, I would rather present suggestions within the current system, to halt a disturbing trend:
1. It should be illegal for any copyright protection scheme to enforce restrictions on non-reproductive use.
Examples:
Fast forward disabled, protected by CSS: Illegal
Fast forward in an "open" bit: Legal.
Region restrictions, protected by CSS: Illegal
Region restrictions in an "open" bit: Legal.
2. Copyright must be granted under the Berne convention. But protection of a copyright protection scheme is only granted on the condition that decryption keys are placed in escrow with the government, to be released into the public domain at the same time as copyright expires. If this key is protecting several works, it will be released when the first work enters the public domain.
Example:
[Movie company] releases a DVD. The symmetric key is placed in escrow with the government. When the copyright expires, that specific key is released.
[Music company] releases a compilation CD with a single key. When the first track enters public domain, the key is released (which would quickly lead to a system where each object is protected by its own key).
The public/private key pair in CD/DVD/TV players are never released, only the specific instances of keys.
3. All DRM systems which have the characteristics of a sale must allow resale under the first sale doctrine free of any comission, even if a license can not be reliably revoked (i.e. the buyer gets his copy, the seller keeps his). However, after invoking this the old original is considered an illegal copy, subject to relevant copyright law.
4. If the work is protected by a DRM system, the company must provide replacements at cost. Proof of ownership may be either damaged media, or reciept if the content is uniquely tied to the user. (As medialess content is).
Example:
DVD broken: Replacement.
iTMS tunes lost in disk crash: Replacement
DVD gets stolen: Car/home insurance case. Too easy to commit fraud otherwise.
These are areas where DRM is threatening to undermine basic consumer rights. While this is not nearly enough, I fear it will be hard enough to save even this much.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Agreed.
Though as a compromise I would propose an intellectual property tax in return for shorter (than current) copyright durations. If the tax isn't paid then the work enters the public domain from where it can't be retrieved.
The deal is copyright protection for any published work and lasts a maximum of 25 years from the date of publication. If an individual or business entity wishes to hold on to the copyright after that period then they have to pay a yearly tax for that privilege.
People don't realise that they are getting ripped off at the moement. Copyright exists so that those who make cultural contributions are given an incentive to carry on making contributions for the good of soceity. If you haven't made any money out of your work in 25 years then you don't deserve the copyright protection afforded to you by the government any more. If you are making money then you can afford to pay the government to protect the copyright for you. Why is the taxpayer currently helping to pay to help protect old copyrighted works that generate their owners millions ?. How is soceity benefiting from Disney making money off flims that are more than 80 years old ?.
Disney are of course the ultimate hypocrites having founded their company on the works of classic fairtales. Imagine if the todays copyright laws applied 100 years ago. Its strange that copyright is being extended in america since copyright that never expires is anti capitalist.
This compromise would allow profitable copyrights to be held (for example the beatles back catalogue) whilst the vast majority of work would enter the public domain. This might keep Disney happy although they would obviously prefer there current plan, copyright which never expires.
The danger of current copyright laws is that in 400 years time any current work would still be under copyright. Imagine if schools had to pay everytime they put on the future equivalent of todays shakespeare's plays. That is where we are heading now.
There have been a number of suggestions that copyright should expire when the protected work has been unavailable from the owner for a fixed period, typically 1 year.
This would protect works that are still generating income for the owner, while preventing the problem of having all our culture locked up in vaults forever, unavailable to anyone.
This has particularly been suggested for software, but usually with the concept of "support" thrown in. Imagine if, when a company's CS people told you that their product X is no longer supported, you could simply demand that they email you the source code, since their lack of support means that it's now public domain.
Not likely to happen, though. This would undercut a major business model of much of the software industry, based on forcing you to "upgrade" to a new! improved! product.
But it's fun to think of a society in which we could demand that the RIAA and MPAA companies hand over all those early works that they have locked up in their vaults, unavailable to anyone.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
If a work does not make money within twenty years, it never will.
Set it to five years, and let's use something big for an example - say Windows 95. It was released in Aug 1995, regular support ended after 5 years, 4 months, extended lasted another year (source). I'm pretty sure the sales revenue on windows 95 was zero by august 2000, and if it were to have open-sourced itself I can't see that enabling other companies to provide better support than MS even if they wanted.
Really, if you're serious about your software, even if it's not well-known or well-distributed, a new version every 2.5 years isn't much pressure, and ensures that the expired versions are two major versions behind you - at that point all they really do is act as a source of learning, and even perhaps a "free" enticement and/or demo.
How exactly is the Library of Congress "the best library in the world"? Seriously - I want you to justify that claim.
It isn't the biggest, it has 128m items, British has 150m - check the websites. Does it have the best librarians or something? Best coffee machines, perhaps?
What makes it the best library in the world? Please reply, I genuinely want to know what makes you think that.
A licensing agreement is a licensing agreement.
But not all licensing agreements are end user license agreements. The GPL only governs distribution, it does not cover use.
I think the problem here is that the "pragmatic" approach here has already been tried 200 years ago, and it failed miserably just as society hit the information age.
We probably wouldn't be in the information age yet without IP protection. Throw out Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright and you enter a very slow moving generic world. The implementation of the current system is too restrictive, but you don't have to scrap it completely.
If someone said "lets limit food to the 3rd world more than it already is because we want to get more profit"
IP protections were never meant to ensure profits, it was to encourage development by offering a chance at profit. Realizing that creating an idea is not free, but the distribution is; IP protections were created so you can get a chance at getting a return on your investment of time, money, and effort.
The advantage of IP protection is it encourages people to specialize and take risks in the area of information. In the case of specialization, instead of spending 40 hours a week working and 20 hours on their intellectual hobby, they can devote all their time as a professional programmer, songwriter, inventor. People have more time to hone their skill, and more time to create new ideas. On the risk taking side, it allows movie studios to invest $100 million dollars on a movie, or companies to spend $2 billion on R&D because there is a chance to have and edge on the competition and get a good return on those investments. The quality and pace of innovation is increased.
Like you said the current approach was developed 200 years ago. The pace of change and communication has increased, the time to product realization and distribution has decreased. We should be taking a fresh look, but not abandon something that has worked well.
Right now the law is too far on the protectionist side of things. It's a balancing game, if IP laws are too restrictive innovation is stifled by lawsuits, not restrictive enough and innovation is stifled by lack of resources.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
"I agree, but will there be enough of such people to sustain a business model?"
Remember when the RIAA said cassettes were going to kill vinyl, and no recording artist would ever make a penny again, and won't somebody please think of the set designers, and the sky is falling?
I do. I remember when consumer grade tape recorders of any kind were illegal in the US, thanks to the RIAA's lobbying clout. Ever see an 8-track cartridge recorder? Ever wonder why not? And gee, in some blinding coincidence, 8-track somehow was the biggest bomb of a format the RIAA ever forced down the public's throat. Gee, I wonder why?
Funny thing is, they wound up making a ton of money on cassettes in the 80's and 90's, just like they're going to make a ton of money off mp3's once they quit bitching about it and get with the reality of the marketplace already.
And most of you here are too young to remember it, but in the 80's there were these things called cassette clubs. And it would consist of people signing up on a mailing list, and whenever somebody in the club bought an album, they'd dupe it for everybody else on the list, most of whom were complete strangers. So "file sharing" has been going on for about 30 years now in the music scene. Somehow music has survived. In fact, somehow music has thrived.
So no, I'm not worried about the business model at all. I'm a musician myself, I've been chief engineer at a recording studio, I've seen all aspects of the business. And it's more than robust enough to survive a little file-sharing.
"If so, is that enough money to encourage creativity?"
Real creativity has nothing to do with how much money you make off it. The artists who are the most creative are usually the ones without the record deals. I think South Park summed it up perfectly - the only artists who are making such a huge deal about file sharing are the ones who suck, and need the muscle of the RIAA cartel and their price-fixing schemes in order to have even the appearance of success (which somehow never lasts more than one album).
Creativity preceeds profit, and doesn't expect it. Creativity is it's own reward. Profit is nice, and most artists won't turn down money for their work (though some will), but no serious artist wakes up in the morning and says "today I'm gonna make a million dollars". They wake up and say "today I'm gonna make the best piece of art ever."
"First of all, please don't drive down the street with your stereo turned up. It annoys people like me."
I don't even have a car right now, so I think you're safe for a while...
"Secondly, that's not the only alternative at all."
Why not? I'm publicly broadcasting a copyrighted work whose publishing is controlled by ASCAP, SECAM, or BMI. I've seen car stereos that have larger effective broadcast ranges than some low power FM stations. Why should all those people get to hear all that music for *nothing*? Won't somebody please think of the set designers...
"Surely we can find a compromise point between giving a copy to two friends and putting it up on a website for two million?"
Nobody's putting them up on websites, and nobody's distributing them to two million people. You appear to have a vastly inflated sense of the P2P scene.
The situation will be remedied, and the forces involved will come to a better balance than exists today. But the means to that end is for the RIAA to wake up one morning with the taste of its own balls in the back of it's throat, because that's where we'll have put them.
Artists should have rights. Consumers should have rights. The single biggest impact on those rights is the RIAA. Copyright law, and frequent and outrageous changes to it, are one of their primary tools for doing so. As it stands today, the RIAA is taking money from the mouths of the artists it claims to represent, not giving them any of the money it's making from the file-sharing suits, and claiming they're the good guys. They must be, and will be, stopped, if not by the gutless Republican Congress than by the sheer force of the market.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
You made it, it's yours. Upon your death, your right to your works CEASES. YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD. Maybe it shouldn't even last that long, but from creation to death of creator seems fair.
People sharing music P2P for FREE should be legal. Nobody's making money off of your works, INCLUDING YOU. Probably because YOU SUCK THE BIG ONE at marketing.
I should have every right to do whatever I want with any signal that enters my home. IE, if Hughes insists on radiating my brain with their digital television signal, then I insist on decoding it and using it as I see fit. What if tomorrow, I fall on a pile of radioactive waste, and can suddenly decode the signal in my head? Are you gonna chop it off and use it as evidence against me in a DMCA Act lawsuit? IF YOU DON'T WANT ME TO TIME SHIFT OR FORMAT SHIFT OR SHARE OR EVEN SELL YOUR CONTENT, DO NOT SEND IT OVER PUBLIC AIRWAVES. If I threw a giant wad of cash at you, I'm sure you'd be much obliged to take it. So don't throw your EMR at me, because I'm going to do the same.
Musicians? I will pay to see you in person. I will pay a very small fee to cover your costs for the media and recording of your music. If you want me to give you a glamorous lifestyle because you can play repetitive, shitty music, FUCK YOU. I will NOT be poor so you can drive a fucking Porsche. It is ART, a PASSION, not a FUCKING CAREER.
I'm 18, and a student. For a living, I clean floors. The only laws that protect my living protect yours too. When I get a contract, it isn't for life. It's until I FUCK UP. I don't need no fucking laws to protect my livelihood, so you pussies shouldn't either. Metallica, BURN IN HELL. Unless you would enjoy that, that is, if that is the case, may fluffy white bunnies rape you all day long.
I will start with the questions in the article and then continue with some other additions:
Your question points out a very obvious problem: every time rights are defined, they are restricted. The Founding Fathers, the authors of the US Constitiution, probably would have found the idea of locking up a book ludicrous, but today we have DRM where publishers have fine tuned control of how we, the owners, use our own books. I am pretty certain the Right of Access would have been assumed by the Founding Fathers. Now that it cannot be assumed, many people claim it is not a right.
Having said that, if you are going to create enumerated rights, they should be as broad as possible. Things like: You may do anything with the copyrighted material except sell it for such and such a term.
The entire idea of derivative works should be eliminated. If I translate a book, that is a new book. If I want to make a better Star Wars, let the public choose whether or not I have beaten Lucas at his own game. If I want to annotate or critisize a book that I agree or disagree with, I should be able to. And I should be able to sell that book with same protections as the original author got even if it contains the bulk or the entirety of the original text.
Where I currently live, the Republic of China, copyright is imposed by another culture. Europe is taking its ideas of censorship and exporting them to the rest of the world. These information control laws have been imposed on every Asian country, and the US government is constantly putting pressure on the ROC government to extend and enhance enforcement of these foreign (barbaric?) copyright laws. The USA is even a victim of this exportation of European feudalism. The 1976 Copyright Act imposed the "moral rights" provisions of the Berne Convention which altered the entire face of copyright. It increased copyright terms, added derivative works, and made copyright automatic. The last addition, when applied to the Internet makes copyright an enemy of free speech.
China has a long history of annotation going back thousands of years. Many editions of books have extensive and very useful commentary added by subsequent authors all throughout Chinese history. While the original author's words were often preserved, other educated people were able to contribute to their works without fear of any sort of punishment. Chinese society for centuries was the most educated society on earth for precisely this reason.
This was the first society to have paper and printing, and the prices of books here have always been lower. People here read way more than people in the West. Text is such a part of life that it is impossible to watch a movie without subtitles. In the USA, people complain if the movie has subtitles because "It's too much work". This is in large part a result of the lack of restrictions with respect to the exchange of information here.
The cost of information access in the West is staggering. The best example of this is college text book "business". Ten years ago, some books cost up to US$80. They were updated -- rarely noticably -- every two years or so. Often, a student could not sell the book back because the new edition was out. By contrast, when I studied in Taiwan, I never paid more than about US$8 for a book. In addition to that, the language books were better than any language book I ever had for any Western language I ever studied.
Another good example is Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China. In the USA, each volume is about US$120. In the ROC, each volume is around US$30. It is exactly the same book. Here, I can afford it, in the USA, I cannot.
Copyright, in this case, se
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
"Copyright was meant to reward the author for contributing something worthwhile to society, by allowing them to reap the profits from the work for a limited period."
I used to believe that. Then I read up on the history and found out that that belief is just the spin on the idea that the publishers used back 300 years ago when their crown monopolies names were dirt and they needed a less politically sensitive way of retaining their power. Solution; say it's really the 'authors rights', but leave the rights entirely without any protection and rely on their far more powerful economical position to force the authors to sell cheap.
Monopoly power was what the crown used to buy them then, monopoly power is what it uses now. The problem hasnt arisen, the problem was the basic idea from the beginning.