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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?"
Copyright was originally 14 years, renewable once. But that was back before movies, radio, and TV. Typesetting was done by hand, books were distributed by horse-drawn carts. In this day and age 5 years is more than enough time to display your work and make a tidy profit.
...if it is broadcast (tv, radio) over the airways free to the viewer, listener i should be able to do what i want with it. ie. record it, edit out commercials etc. share it with all my friends. if i am paying for the content (cable tv, xm radio) i should be able to record it and view, listen to it later.
always mosh clockwise
are very reasonable starting points IMHO.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They already do that, but you don't remember it. See how effective it is? We will be there in a few minutes to wipe your brain again, so enjoy this information while you can.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
1) faster expiration.
2) the ability of a media consumer, having paid for a legit copy of a movie or a cd, to manipulate it in any way he/she sees fit short of redistribution for profit.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
1. 15-20 year limit on all copyright
2. All sufficient quotation to talk about a specific copyrighted material allowed.
3. All parody allowed, even if it violates trade dress, or any other contrived notion of property
4. Limited copying for immediate friends and family allowed
5. No EULA's allowed (unless specifically signed by both parties, in person)
6. You can't copyright something that is already in the public domain (silence for example), merely you're specific version of it. (Someone makes a story based of a centuries old fairy tale, you can do the same, even if they get all sorts of trademarks from it)
You don't get 2-6 if I don't get number 1.
Burn Hollywood Burn
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?
In both cases, these are driven not by the creators, but by the greedy businessmen who are selling their creative works. The problem is that they are the ones who have been essentially dictating copyright law for the last 40 years or so, and their only purpose is to maximize their monopoly profits.
Mickey Mouse should have died and been replaced a LONG time ago. Preserving the Disney franchise is *NOT* the primary goal of copyright.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
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.
It'd be 5 years inherant at the time of creation. Registration isn't necessary, but you'd want some way to prove date of creation and ownership, so a good idea. During this time you'd have exclusive and total control. Now after 5 years you'd have three choices:
1) Do nothing and allow it to fall in to public domain.
2) Reregister for an additonal 5 years under the same terms.
3) Reregister for 25 years, but under different terms that included compulsory licensing for derivitive works with reasonable and non-discriminitory fees.
This would ensure that the ability to make money is there, but that the public gets the work in a timely fashion. If you creat it and just abandon it, the public gets it in 5 years. If after 5 years you still find you are cashing in, you can have another 5 to continue to do so. A decade is more than enough to cash in on a work. However if you find that you aren't selling a lot, but there's interest from others in licensing it, you can get a quater century where you are gaurenteed royalties for any derivitives.
I'd also mandidate fair use clauses making illegal to implement any technology that interferes with fair use. You are free to work out a copyprotection, if you like, however it must be one such that all fair use rights are protected.
However, that's a pipe dream and I know it.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
Should we be asking what specific rights we'll give the consumer, or should we be asking what specific rights we'll give the content owner? I would suggest the latter. The US Constitution, for example, takes that tack; all powers not explicitly reserved for the federal government are implicitly remanded to the states. I'd like to see the same thing in copyright law so we don't have to go change the law everytime someone thinks of something new to do with content - any rights not explicitly reserved for the content owner are implicitly remanded to the consumer.
2. The duration of copyright on a work is set at the time it is first published. It may not be later extended.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
3. All copying of a work is permitted so long as absolutely no money is made as a result of it (including ad revenue).
(C'mon, this is what we really want, right?)
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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)
Last year, a group of graduate students (myself being one of them) asked that exact question and came up with their (our) suggested answer. Link below. It's under a CC license. It's US-centric, but feel free to forward to any Australian (or anywhere else) leaders you feel it would positively impact. :-)
http://www.garfieldtech.com/copyright/
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
I've always felt that a balance should be in place, but weighted more towards the interests of citizens/society than corporations. I'd like to see the following implemented:
Ten year copyright to the original author. The original author is defined as the single "person" or "group of people" who actually wrote/crafted/composed the work in question. Corporations and companies do not qualify as an original author.
The original author may transfer ownership of the work to another entity. Corporations and companies may qualify. This entity is considered the copyright holder, but is NOT considered as the original author.
If the original author still holds ownership of the copyright after the end of the original 10 year term, they may choose to extend it for 1 additional ten year term. The original author must explicitly seek the extension. By default, the work would fall into the public domain. If the original author is no longer the owner of the copyright, or has not maintained sole and exclusive ownership of the copyright for the entire original copyright period, then the copyright cannot be extended. No matter what occurs, all copyrights revert to the public domain after no more than 20 years maximum.
I believe such an arrangement allows plenty of time for an artist/author/composer to profit from their work, while protecting the publics interest of extending the public domain. It would also greatly curtail corporate hoarding of cultural works.
As far as fair use goes, I believe it's time to stop treating citizens as criminals by default. Time shifting, format conversion, and sampling should be completely unencumbered.
As far as the work as a whole is concerned, illegal redistribution should remain so. However, no government should attempt half-assed means to restrict technology with the short sighted goals of protecting copyright holders. Prosecute and punish the violators, not society as a whole.
Just my $0.02
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.
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)
License it. You retain copyright, they get to exercize it, and the duration is still the same.
I'm not arguing for either side here, just playing devil's advocate.
When a copyright term ends, the author should take reasonable measures to make sure that the work enters the public domain. With books, that work automatically enters the public domain, but with closed source software, the source code remains secret. This undermines the original spirit of copyright, which was to provide government protection (funded by public funds) in exchange for the eventual benefit of the public by adding to the body of works in the public domain. With software, this model is severely broken as copyright owners have done nothing to contribute to the public domain (by the time the copyright expires the platform is usually long gone, and source code is required for porting). If anything, they have tried their best to ensure that they give nothing back.
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 work in animation, and though I'm not a creative genius myself (and will never create an original property) I've known quite a few people who are, some who've made it big, others who've fallen by the wayside.
I see a lot of people in this discussion throw out "5 years from date of creation" and similar time frames. I find that to be ridiculous. It could take five, ten, fifteen years or even longer for a creative type to find success. Someone could write a book or song in their twenties, release it in relative obscurity and then find success with the next generation (or two generations later, it happens.) Why shouldn't they be entitled to reap the rewards?
Look, if you create something, a property, a song, a character, whatever, it should be YOURS. As long as you are alive. This isn't patent law, where an invention and variations of the technology could be good for society. Nobody needs Mickey Mouse, it doesn't benefit the world for "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" to be free for everyone to use, and Steven King should be always be the first to profit when an edition of "Christine" is published. This has nothing to do with digital rights, Bittorent and all that... It has to do with who owns the rights and says what can be done with his or her intellectual property.
Of course, many if not most properties are in the hands of corporations, and I would suggest that copyright law be changed so that only individuals, not companies can own a copyright-- otherwise it's "leased" for a specific period of time (and here is where the five years figure could come in.) After which, the creator can renegotiate for a fair value or take it back. No more cases of Marvel screwing Kirby or Nickelodeon dumping Kricfalusi from his own show.
I would further suggest that copyrights cannot be owned by an estate. Public domain happens when the artist dies, period-- and then the work is released to the ages to be remembered or forgotten. Anyway, wives, children and grandchildren are notorious for "selling out", caring more for cash than any integrity.
http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyri ght/
I would ask for very strong copyright laws and abolishment of patents.
The long-term influence of patent removal would quite likely be to slow technological growth within the country in question. High-cost, high-risk speculative R&D is only commercially driven through patents. We simply need more practical research input than academia will provide us with.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
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.
Does that mean that corporations aren't considered people for copyright? And can't "buy" copyrights, only "lease" them?
OK.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
For those considering "life of the author" as a factor in copyright law, it may be interesting to consider how that may change if human lifespans are radically extended. Do we want to allow for copyright periods measured by the millenia?
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
...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
The problem is not with copyright law. The problem is with our Congress. They get campaign finance money from the movie and record industries. So to ensure that the money keeps flowing in they whore themselves by passing legislation to extend copyright length. Our constitution prohibits an infinite time period for copyright. So instead of making it forever which would be unconstitutional they just keep extending it. I say they should put it back to fourteen years as it was intended or stop pretending that they care about enriching our culture and just make the length twenty-five billion years and be done with it. F**king whores.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Something doesn't actually have to be registered to be copyrighted.
In the United States, you already have to register a copyright before you use it to sue someone, and you already have to register before infringement in order to collect (ridiculous) statutory damages and (less ridiculous) attorney's fees unless the alleged infringement occurred within three months of first publication.
Expires when the last author (if a group project) dies.
That's all.
No extensions for the company.
No extensions for the family.
5 guys develop it, last guy of the 5 dies. Public domain. Period.
I bet you company health care programs will improve.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
So if I change the least significant bit in one sample on a video/audio recording, is it a new work? Derivative works specificly deal with the problem "When is this new?" Maybe you want to redefine it somewhat, but I think your idea might get messier than the current one.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
One great idea he suggests is to have an online registration that costs (say) $1 per year to register, with a maximum life of (IIRC) 50 years. If the copyright owner doesn't register it every year, it's in the public domain. If it's not worth $1 to register, then it shouldn't be copyrighted anyway.
Although when I'm feeling idealistic I like to declare that all copyright laws should be thrown out, I'm willing to take the pragmatic approach.
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. And that makes allot of sense. You can't go telling people that they have this "moral right" to restrict what people copy, and then expect them not to try and secure this "right" by using every resource they can to push it to the extremes.
With regular physical property, you have natural limiting factors that limit those extremes, with copyrights you don't because they are not a natural law creation. Copyrights are simply people coercing limits on things that have no natural limit for the sake of greed and monopoly.
If someone said "lets limit food to the 3rd world more than it already is because we want to get more profit" most people would see this as the pure evil that it is. But when they do the same thing with the worlds information, then oh my God - it's a RIGHT!?
Which is a short story by Spider Robinson. http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___ 1.htm
It addresses the issue of what will happen to the artists do when there is nothing new to discover.
What if a company spends millions upon millions hiring, training, and supporting a huge staff to just pump the product out in the first place? A set profit limit is very good for a single programmer, and very bad for a huge team.
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.
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.