Slashdot Mirror
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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)
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?
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.
...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
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!?
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.