Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Issues in the Mainstream
dmayle writes "Recently, the Supreme Court of the U.S. ruled on a momentous topic, the Grokster case (as covered on Slashdot). It turns out, however, it's not just geeks who are taking notice, and we're not the only ones who think things are getting ridiculous. The Economist has a great story on the subject, noting among other things, that if the cost of publishing had come down with the internet, perhaps the amount of protection needed to encourage publishing is less as well." From the article: "Both the entertainment and technology industries have legitimate arguments. Media firms should be able to protect their copyrights. And without any copyright protection of digital content, they may be correct that new high quality content is likely to dry up (along with much of their business). Yet tech and electronics firms are also correct that holding back new technology, merely because it interferes with media firms' established business models, stifles innovation and is an unjustified restraint of commerce."
Copyright was meant to protect the consumers, right? Uhm..
The cost of publishing is rapidly approaching zero. The cost of creation, at least for Hollywood and game companies, is rapidly approaching infinity.
Surely you mean they broke in and shared your day's work, no?
And without any copyright protection of digital content, they may be correct that new high quality content is likely to dry up...
Actually, I find that high quality content and ideas are harder to "rip" and replicate. Maybe not the best example, but Slashdot's code and ideas are out in the open, yet there aren't many competing sites for the same audience. The problem, to some extent extent, thus perhaps lies with the quality of content.
see a Text Widget
Movie makers make business in the first week, gaining profit in that time. Why they bother that others who are not-so-keen on watching the film early download it instead of paying at a cinema?
This is an excellent article, and one that anybody with a brain could agree with. But it looks like the history behind this (the last 30 years or so) and the high-priced legal firms will do everything they can to keep the status quo.
I'm afraid that we will eventually have to push for a constitutional ammendment to fix this copyright issue -- there is simply too much inertia for the law to catch up with reality. Who knows how long this will take? If you thought the "war on drugs" was fun, just wait until we do about 40 years of the "war on pirates"
See "SarBox And The World of Tommorrow" before it hits the theatres!
Is this meant to imply that people who read The Economist aren't geeks?
A first, useful step would be a drastic reduction of copyright back to its original terms--14 years, renewable once. This should provide media firms plenty of chance to earn profits, and consumers plenty of opportunity to rip, mix, burn their back catalogues without breaking the law. The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents.
This is perfectly in line with what i've heard from copyright experts and people who _used_ to work for copyright protection groups/organizations.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I said it before and I'll say it again:
Exchanging goods for money is an old and well trusted system. It has worked well for centuries because those doing the selling were generally the only ones who could comfortably produce the product.
However, we are now entering The Information Age. Many businesses no longer sell goods, or services, but rather sets of instructions, plans and ideas. As these are not tangible objects, they are easily reproduced.
Previously it was possible to bind these ideas to tangible objects, thus making them harder to reproduce. Recipes were printed in books. Music was pressed into vinyl. Because of this, businesses could stick to the age old business model, but now that the consumer can also easily reproduce products, cracks are forming in this model.
All well and good, but what's the solution? How can businesses make money on the ideas/information/programs they produced initially? At the moment there seems to be a knee-jerk legal response, but this doesn't seem to me to be a viable solution in the long term (but I am not an economist). One alternative could be to scrap the "sell multiple, low-cost copies" model and go with a "Sell one, high cost copy which will cover expenses and profit". For example, 20th Century Fox makes a new movie costing $100,000,000. They release it to the public for free (and Free) and keep track of how many copies are in circulation. Depending on how popular it is, they are then paid $5,00,000,000, or what ever, by a central organisation. The consumers have to pay this organisation a set amount each year to cover their costs, but are then free to do whatever they want with the movie/music/software.
Will people be happy being forced to fork out a few grand a year for products? They fork it out already voluntarily.
Do people get a say in what's produced? How do we insure the producer is producing a quality product? Through market research and strict auditing of the producers.
A crazy, poorly formed idea, but one which does eliminate the problem sellers we are now facing.
This makes no sense. Copyright was originally intended to encourage publication by granting publishers a temporary monopoly on works so they could earn a return on their investment. But the internet and new digital technologies have made the publication and distribution of works much easier and cheaper. Publishers should therefore need fewer, not more, property rights to protect their investment. Technology has tipped the balance in favour of the public domain.
Exactly! In this day and age, most media that is published is *long* forgotten after only a few months. The only reason the conglomorates want this 90+ year protection is so that they can gaurantee that every single person alive when the piece of material was produced will be dead before it can be used somewhere else.
That isn't protecting distribution to make back profit, that's protecting big business to control every facet of their holdings while fucking the public out of what should have been rightfully theirs.
It's really sad that the lawmakers and interpreters are either ignoring this important fact (or color blind -- green).
Eight years is too much, nevermind 28 or 90+!
I wouldn't care quite so much if they only took a copy, though.
I support Freedom of Information:
1. If I produce an information pattern, it is my right whether to disclose it or not.
2. If I do disclose it, I should have NO right to stop its further dissemination.
So I'd still consider breaking in and taking the copy without permission wrong, but I find any further copyright over information absurd.
Ah, corperate fights. Time to kick back and watch the corperate giants for innovation fight the corperate giants for media rights. If only it were mud wrestling or death match style.
Evolution or ID?
With enourmous amount of industry lobbying and general public not knowing any better, I don't see any way for a legislative body to reduce copyright protection term. None.
This could happen if the public became suddenly sensitive to this issue, but since the same media companies are also controlling majority of information channels (i.e. TV, news media sites), such awareness will not appear any time soon.
So buckle up and get ready to be taken for a ride by the "content gods": they'll tell you what to watch and how much to pay for it.
Copyright was meant to protect the consumers, right?
Copyright was not meant to protect consumers. It was meant to protect the rights of the guy who wrote the material. It is to protect the right of the supplier.
Evolution or ID?
The Supreme Court held that you cannot distribute technology with the deliberate intention that it be used to violate the copyrights of another. The decision was correctly made, in my opinion. I also agree that the falling cost of publishing may (see another top-level comment regarding the cost of creation) indicate decreased need for the protections of the copyright system. However, the Supreme Court is not where you should go to make policy, and since this is not a Constitutional ruling it is comparatively easy to change: go to Congress and get them to change the copyright laws on the books.
Yes, Congress is a cesspool of corruption; and yes, Congress gets more time in bed with the entertainment industry in a year than any of us will have with our wives in our entire lifetime. But Congress is the place to fix this, not only because it's the appropriate place but also because Congress is more attune to what people want and more able to make policy decisions. After all, the Supreme Court refers to Congress and the Executive as "the popular branches" for a reason.
Do some research, determine what changes need to be made, and push them through Congress. If it's a good enough idea, then enough people will subscribe to it to convince their legislators to fix the problem. But don't bitch at the Supreme Court for telling you not to break the law. And if you want to make a point about it by breaking the law as a form of civil disobedience, remember (unlike so many current-day protesters) that the hallmark of civil disobedience is being arrested and charged with a crime.
That isn't protecting distribution to make back profit, that's protecting big business to control every facet of their holdings while fucking the public out of what should have been rightfully theirs.
Oh really? "Rightfully theirs"? I dare you to say that to the face of a musician or an artist or an author. I dare you.
I don't respond to AC's.
This is a false analogy -- here's a better one: say you make a horseshoe in your workshop. I then buy it from you. Is it now wrong for me to make my own horseshoes? These horseshoes I will make will not be taken from you -- they will be entirely my creation.
Now, society benefits from a supply of horseshoes, and you might not invent the horseshoe if, once you sold me one, I would never buy another from you. Therefore, society took an unusual step: by legal fiat, we will voluntarily give you a monopoly on your invention for a limited time, even though you can't force us to do it. Since it us doing it, we'll optimize the "limited time" to maximize the benefit to us -- long enough for you to make enough of a profit to justify spending time on creating new things, short enough so that we too can make a profit by making horseshoes. In fact, we realize that if we gave you a permanent monopoly you'll simply grow fat making horseshoes. On the other hand, but limiting the time of your current monopoly we hope you might decide to go back to the shop and invent something new (the crowbar?), so you can get a new monopoly.
Copyright law is based on the same principle, except now it's about ideas rather than physical invensions. Again, we need to strike a balance between allowing the authors to get a return on their investment of time and work, and between our desire to profit from their ideas by selling them as their are (reproduction) or reworking them in new ways (making derivative works).
I think the currenty copyright standards being practiced stifle innovation in two ways (please feel free to correct):
1. In an example of 'artists' who make a living on their creative assets, the old copyright standard allowed them to make on a temporary monopoly until that artist could create another piece of work to then copyright and derive income from.
Now, however, we have more people making a living off of infringment lawsuits than the money made from the copyrighted work in question. That's just sad on so many levels.
2. In the case of technology: 5 computers per license isn't that great when there are a growing number of people with a desktop computer, laptop and consistently upgrade. Do I have to spend another several thousand dollars to re(place | new) all my DRM'ed content after I get another 2 computers a few years down the road?
I think a lot of lawmakers are trying to enforce one standard that should work for all mediums of content, and there just seems to be too much difference between digital content and physical to blanket over everything conviently.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
Oh really? "Rightfully theirs"? I dare you to say that to the face of a musician or an artist or an author. I dare you.
There are plenty of artists here... I did say it to their face now and I have said it many times before.
I dare you to tell the holiday cheerleaders that they can't sing Jingle Bells, go to see holiday plays and concerts, or enjoy any of the other various rights they enjoy because copyright law did not extend into infinity.
People will eventually tire pre-processed, big production entertainment. Open source, independently produced media with alternate forms of distribution (if not made entirely illegal) and funding will arise to bring the big media conglomerates down. This isn't going to happen today, or next year, but the change is inevitable.
Actually, what's closer to the truth is that they do realize it and they are going to do everything in their power to milk the old structure and institutions for every dollar they can.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Abandonware, and deliberately restricting access.
Sure, I quite like the idea of sharing mp3s and downloading TV shows, but I realise that the arguments against doing that do have at least some merit. What does annoy me is that it's impossible to get access to a lot of media.
The market for classic video games is small-to non-existant. Occasionally these are relicenced, but mostly people are not making money from these games. The TV Pilot "Global Frequency" would not have been seen by anyone except people downloaded it. This caused complaints from WB. Not for any good reason. They weren't losing any money from it because there was no way to buy a copy, but The WB want to hoard their IP.
Society does better from these when people are breaching copyright. It's better that a show is watched than a show is buried in a vault, but copyright hasn't caught up with this possibility.
...is a lot like trying to convince your wife to go to a swinger's party. The whole time you're trying, she will put up a fight and say that she's not interested in that sort of thing. Or that the guys are all going to be fat and balding and the women harsh. Or that she's not into chicks. Etc... But once you actually get her to go to one and she sees that the people are just normal everyday people like the ones you work with or are your neighbors, she revises her thinking and agrees to go again, but not necessarily participate. After a few more times, and maybe meeting a few guys she thinks are attractive, she might actually take the next step.
;P
This is exactly like the music/movie industry's stance on electronic distribution. For the longest time, they've been opposed to the technology because they felt that it would be detrimental to them (ie. having to fuck the fat balding guy). Then they agreed to let it happen here and there as long as they didn't really have to participate in things that were beyond their control (ie. agreeing to go to the parties, but not really get involved. Retaining control.). The only step the MPAA and RIAA need to take now, is to find out that if they allow some of their music to be released using non DRMed MP3 and other format files on normal P2P networks (eDonkey, Gnutella, etc...) that their sales might go up when people want the rest of the album (ie. finding the one or two cute guys with big scholongs that your wife actually enjoys spending a little time with, but still eschewing the fat balding guys). It'll happen sooner or later or my name isn't secretly Trolling4Dollars!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I think we can thank the music industry for this lengthy extension of time to the copyright law in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Don't you imagine that this was really to cover and protect the recording works of the 60's such at the Beetles, Rolling Stones, etc? The original founders had intended that at some time copyright works would become part of the public domain for public good. Unfortunately, they didn't spell out a specific time so now we just get infinite extensions. This is only good for the corporations and bad for society as a whole.
0 5-298.htm
http://www.techlawjournal.com/courts/eldritch/pl1
Justice Breyer, back before he was on the Supreme Court, wrote an interesting article on this, arguing that publishing costs were high enough that we might not need copyright. This was before technology drove publishing costs way down.
There seem to be a lot of people who think "copyright was fine when it was a pain for me to copy stuff, but now that it's easy to copy stuff, we should get rid of copyright". They seem to think that the purpose of copyright law was to tell people they couldn't do what they weren't going to do anyway.
"Yet tech and electronics firms are also correct that holding back new technology, merely because it interferes with media firms' established business models, stifles innovation and is an unjustified restraint of commerce.""
And yet you'll note that these "tech innovations" depend on content produced by the content industry for their existance. Would the innovative Ipod exist without content from the content industry? Would it be as useful without it? How about the CD and DVD player? Now you and I can burn our own, but it was the content industry that originally drove demand for both products. How about "tech innovation" VHS? Weither it's your favourite movie taped off TV, or produced commercially. Content produced by the content industry (porn falls under this banner) drove demand. The people with their camcorders, and burners came after the "tech innovations" took off, not before.
I recently saw some unknown-to-me-big-shot rapper, and yes, this guy was nearly starving from hunger... all because of you guys pirating het music. We need to save those rappers! Do not copy their music!
If Microsoft was mass, stupidity would be gravity.
On a related note, right after the decision by the US Supreme Court the Economist.com (Global agenda) penend a very well written perspective on the decision. ( Click here to read it.) They conclude the article by stating that, "19% of downloads, involving about 7m individuals, now happen through someone else's iPod or MP3 player." and, "around 28% take place via email" and wonder if this decision will indeed be the "silver bullet" that the music industry has been seeking. I am not so sure but it will sure slow things down.
Restricting distribution of works created a century ago where the authors are long dead won't help the author any way, and won't encourage him to create other beautiful works either (well, unless they manage to ressurrect him).
Copyright at 14 years would allow for ample opportunities for all artists and authors to get paid for their work, as most of commercial use of the work happens within those 14 years anyway. AND, it allows for other, new authors to create new creative derivative works without huge legal problems; it solves abandonware; it solves orphanware (allowing to reproduce an obscure song cannot get the author's permission because he is dead, but resolving the legal issues of ownership would cost countless thousands).
Since you are really sure you know what the faults of the movie industry are, why don't you start your own media company to make, distribute and promote movies made with normal, middle-class actors, good plots, sparring special effects, good bands & the works.
Let's get this straight... you have no rights to somebody else's work, any more than I have a right to break into your house and steal your stereo.
I don't respond to AC's.
Making a movie isn't all that expensive by itself. The real cost is in marketing it. There are countless examples of movies that were produced relatively cheap, and still mass marketed (eg. Blair Witch Project).
But producing lots of movies on a small budget is very risky and laborious for large media companies. They'd rather spend 80% of their annual budget on one or two blockbusters. Sure it's a much bigger gamble, but at least the marketing costs (and revenues on merchandise) can be estimated with some accuracy.
The crackdown on copyright infringers, the lame titles and scenarios, the ever boring superstar casts... are all due to the ultra large studios and their unimaginative cowardly management. And since noone there seems to know a way out, they've been consolidating for years instead of diversifying.
OK. I'm ranting so I'll stop.
There is a lot of crud in the air when it comes to copyrights. I think it's important to air these things:
1) Artists create in a vacuum. The act of creation is a mystical experience above ordinary humans.
2) Without long copyrights, there would be no incentives for creators to create, leaving us with a dull and lifeless society.
One is at the heart of a lot of publishing group propaganda. Of course, all of us create art. Most of it isn't very good, but we all create, from doodles, to humming, to solid prose and moving music. We are often spurred to create by other art. Art influences art. This doesn't mean just immitations, but also reactions, remixes, rebuttals.
Two is in the head of a lot of artists. At some level, I can't blame them. No one wants their hard work exploited. But I will point out that art was created before copyright legislation. The need to create and share went before the profit. Also, copyright and extensions to copyright have ever been pushed by the publishers, from the Statute of Anne onward. The idea is very mercantilist -- provide a monopoly to encourage production. It isn't terribly modern.
There are modern ways to approach the problem of compensating artists. I think the current roadblock is the publishing industry. They say they serve to both reward good creators and silence bad ones, so as to not choke up the public mide with poor ideas. People are perfectly capable of culling what they like from what they don't, and can use social networking to filter out content they don't want. The internet has made this a solvable problem. As for compensating artists, there are ideas like the Street Busker Protocol, where instead of a publisher, an escrow keeps things honest.
The link I used to have has died, so here's a brief run-down:
For the purpose of this, our artists is a writer, and she has just written a novel. She encrypts the novel and sends it to an escrow. She works out that she wants $200,000 dollars to release the key to the novel so that it can be read. The escrow will take a small cut and will solicit buyers for a set period of time, say 60 days. The writer sets about promoting her new work. She can release teaser chapters, related short stories, go on late night TV, whatever. Meanwhile, the public can offer up contributions online to get the key. The escrow holds all of the money. If, at the end of 60 days, the novel hasn't attracted 200k in contributions, the contributions are returned, and the writer must start again. If the goal is met, the writer is paid as soon as she releases the key.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents.
Yeah, I'm sure Congress is going to get right on that. No doubt they'll reverse their current trend of supporting big business because of this article.
I'm sure I'm not the first to have thought of this idea, but it seems to me that the length of copyright is an unstable equilibrium. Here's why:
For a given term length, a creator can anticipate how much revenue he is likely to earn before his copyright expires. This dictates the amount of investment he can afford to put into his work. If the term is long enough to allow him large profits, he gains wealth and influence to have the term extended. Longer terms lead to larger investments in future works, greater profits, more influence, and still longer terms. The effect is bigger and bigger budgets for works.
Conversely, if the length of the term is too low, investment in works will be low, and fewer works will be created, especially those that would require large budgets. Copyright terms stay low, or even decrease due to lack of lobbying powers.
Copyright law should aim to hit the "sweet-spot" where things stay stable. Of course, this is impossible: minor variations in the economics of production will push the pendulum to one extreme or another. Decreasing publication costs, for example, would increase profits and start the vicious cycle.
Of course, all of this assumes a very money-driven view of whether and how works are created, i.e. that works are created primarily to make money. If investment in a work is not tied to its potential monetary returns (that stem directly from a copyright monopoly), we'd still see works being created. I think Open Source is a good example of this phenomenon. Some people do it for the love; large companies do it to demonstrate expertise and cultivate service contracts.
In short, wherever the economic model allows decent profits in the absence of a government-enforced monopoly, copyright and similar monopolies should be heavily restricted. This seems to be the case for software and other intangibles. However, when the only method to recoup investments is through monopoly (and this claim should be heavily contested), copyright and patents, etc. are a bit more reasonable. Perhaps pharmaceuticals would fall into this category (at least today).
Do you think that the relatives of Shakespeare should be allowed to control his works ?
We are speaking about classical works where the author is long dead. Works from 1920'ies, where people cannot create derivatives without fear of being sued. This is stifling innovation.
How about Mickey Mouse ? It should belong to the public now; Walt Disney and his inheritors has already reaped the benefits, but now this popular culture icon is not still available to the public. Walt Disney won't create any more, since he is dead, and other young talented artists, some of whom might have the passion to create new Mickey Mouse drawings - they are prohibited from doing so.
Should our history of culture belong to a few families ? Why shouldn't Disney's creations be treated the same as Shakespeare's ? The public should have the same rights.
You're still breaking in aren't you?
Don't justify your bad behavior by replacing it with "friendlier" terms.
Slashdot remains popular because it costs relatively little to mantain and it does not make any worth mentioning profit, if any. Try to actually make some money out of slashdot, to pay bills & medical insurance for your kids, and see for your self how fast the audience will flock to the competition.
Who the hell moderated this flamebait?
Actually to comment on your second point, if you are talking about iTunes, you can have upto 5 machines at one time that are authorized to play your music. If however you upgrade or replace a machine, you can deauthorize that machine and then authorize your new machine. I think this is fair. Also if you really want you can burn to CD and then rip it to whatever format you would like.
If you were not talking about iTunes, then please disregard.
Wrong physics model.
With physical property, if I take it from you, you don't have it anymore.
With information, if I take it from you, now we both have it.
It's a completely different world now, and you need to adapt your conceptual metaphors to suit it.
The only reason they keep it so long is because of DISNEY. God forbid mickey mouse becomes uncopyrighted and in the public domain.
I am a lifelong computer programmer and open source author. I have contributed to the Linux kernel. I have also worked at Microsoft for a few months. You can see some of the software I am now writing at
http://complearn.org which allows you to do advanced data-mining for free.
I am writing this now to address what I consider to be a very serious matter. It is relevant to the moral basis upon which Intellectual Property is founded. As a scientist and programmer, I am a very technical person and tend to get very involved in my own health decisions. It happens that I was born prematurely in 1974, and received a blood transfusion from my mother who was infected with Hepatitis C (HCV). For those that are not aware, this causes a lifelong degenerative liver disease. Both of my parents have already died young due to its effects, and I am HCV+ as well and have been slowly suffering liver degeneration my entire life as a result.
This concerns IP because some years ago I did some research online about my possible treatment options. In the year 2000 the possibilities were "old, normal" interferon or pegylated interferon, taken in both cases in combination with ribavirin. These are chemotherapeutic type drugs, with very harsh side effects, and you must take them for a year in order to have a decent chance of curing yourself of HCV+. The problem is, with my genotype, 1b, the chances of success using the old medicine were only about 30%. The new medicine had about a 60% chance. But the FDA did not approve the new medicine until years after Europe did, for reasons which are not entirely clear, given the solid research findings in its favor. So I flew to Europe, got the new pegylated medicines for about twenty-five thousand dollars of my own carefully saved money, and flew back to USA.
I spent about 3 months treating myself with this medicine that was not yet approved in USA and then checked my viral counts to find great news: I had lowered my viral count to undetectable levels, suggesting that if I just continued with the yearlong course of treatment, I would probably be permanently cured. What great news!
Imagine my dismay, then, when I received a note from the customs office saying they had blocked shipment of the second half of my pegylated interferon + ribavirin. The reason, apparently, was that there was a patent or IP law problem restricting the European branch of the pharmaceutical industry from selling these drugs to Americans, even if I bought them in Europe with my own money for personal use. I figured it would not be a big deal -- I would just explain to the customs officers that this was a life-threatening illness, and they would help me find some way to appeal the block before it was too late.
The big problem is that if you skip your medicine for more than a week or two before the full year, you may as well stop entirely because the virus will almost certainly come back in full force.
So, having explained this to the customs official over the phone, I was shocked to find that it seemed there were no provisions in place to handle the case where an IP restriction is in direct conflict with human life. My life. I am still HCV positive now.
Its now several years later. My parents have since died and my liver has gotten worse. I would enjoy being around to continue to contribute for free (because I love programming) and would enjoy talking more with all of you about many things. But this will not be possible unless we reframe the IP debate in terms of human-centric goals. It should not be the case that a creative scientist and programmer with a lifelong history of giving away his technological creations for free would be denied the resources he needs to satisfy one of the simplest and most basic human needs -- to have his illness treated in the most effective way possible -- because of a mere Intellectual Property dispute. It should not be
Do you think that the relatives of Shakespeare should be allowed to control his works ?
Yes I do. Do you believe that all of your assets should be given away once you die, leaving nothing for your family?
I don't respond to AC's.
you have no rights to somebody else's work, any more than I have a right to break into your house and steal your stereo.
Obviously I was not clear or you don't understand the underlying issue... What I'm talking about are the rights that were taken away when copyright laws were extended to 90+ years.
Huh? Copyright has nothing to do with property rights, if people don't understand that they need to shut up. If I copyright my garden, it prevents people copying the design not squatting.
Absolutely true! Yet I suspect that most of the ongoing illegal distribution of media on the internet would still violate any of proposed changes to rebalance copyright suggested in the Economist article. What percentage of P2P music and video is older than 14 years? Would those that illegally distribute first-run movies or games be willing to wait 14 years or any number of years to allow content creators to make enough money to pay for the cost of the first copy?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
That's fine, as long as you are ready to accept the consequences. There are plenty of creative people out there that make their lives because they can control the distribution of the product of their creativity and get a revenue stream back. Take that from them and you force them to flip burgers at MacDonalds. The final consequence is that nobody, except for the rich people, will be able to make creativity the center of their lives. That will stiffle both engineering and arts. Welcome to stagnation.
"That's somehow our fault and we should be punished for it? It is *not* the public's burden to have to support crazed, millionare actors; over-budget films with bad acting, no plot, and too many special effects; fad, cookie-cutter bands, that exhaust their appeal in two months, and expensive videos that may run for one week...
If the media companies want to waste their money on that, fine, but don't expect us to wait out 90+ years (when everyone who saw the movie when it was made) is dead."
Well according to your "insightful" (Ha!) argument. If what's being produced is as bad as you say? Then waiting 90+ years is a moot thing. Crap is crap regardless of weither you get it NOW! or 90+ years from now.
Now the GOOD STUFF you may not want to wait, but that's not the basis for your argument.
It's not an asset. It's not property.
His family gets the money earned from the works.
If the due time (14+14 years, as originally was) has not expired, the family continues to get that income.
I am saying that using 'artistic control', and 'creative control', 'artists moral right to define how derivative works should be created' as arguments for copyright is simply illogical if the author is not anymore.
I am saying that using 'artists need to eat, too, if we want to benefit from their creativity' is valid for the 14+14 year copyright, but that argument is void when even the author's children are dead of old age.
I am saying that using 'artists need incentive to create future works' is valid for the 14+14 year copyright, but that argument is completely baseless when speaking about copyright where the artist is already dead.
OK, so if you die and leave a car to your family, then the public gets to use it after x amount of time, right? You saying that a creative work is not an asset is ridiculous, and again, insulting to people who create non-physical products.
I don't respond to AC's.
I gotta tell you - if the patent holder (Chiron?) was indicted for attempted murder, and I was on the jury, I'd vote him guilty.
Because you can't spell "slaughter" without "laughter"
By copying that music on to your hard drive and making it avaliable for download by other people (for free) you aren't making any money off of their product. If you were, they could possibly demand part of that money, wouldn't they? I guess part of the RIAA settlements is that they wanted some of the "money" that people made off of the downloading of free music.
Media firms should be able to protect their copyrights.
Copyrights don't need to be actively "protected". Protection means preventing destruction, so this is clearly a propaganda word.
You wouldn't like it if someone broke into your workshop and took your day's work. ... and worse, if he finds out your "work" is entire crap and publishes that to your shame.
That's somehow our fault and we should be punished for it? It is *not* the public's burden to have to support crazed, millionare actors; over-budget films with bad acting, no plot, and too many special effects; fad, cookie-cutter bands, that exhaust their appeal in two months, and expensive videos that may run for one week...
If the media companies want to waste their money on that, fine, but don't expect us to wait out 90+ years (when everyone who saw the movie when it was made) is dead.
Perhaps if movie companies had to make sure that they recouped all their lost money in less than 10 years they would stop paying artists the exorbidant salaries they do, would stop rushing out unfinished and questionable material, and would stop wasting their money on talentless people just because their boob job is top-notch.
Of course it's not the public's burden to support millionaire Actors, over-budget films with bad acting no plot and too many special effects, cookie-cutter bands, etc...yet somehow the public appetite for all of those things isn't exactly abating.
Your logic makes my head hurt because it is as if you're implying that everything produced by the entertainment industry is crap. Yet if it is true that there is nothing of value in entertainment, why do you have any problem waiting 90+ years to take advantage of the intellectual property contained in those works???
I just don't exactly understand why there's such an intense correlation between the people who claim that all mass-produced entertainment is abominable and the people who openly express the opinion that they should be allowed to consume that mass-produced entertainment without personal cost.
:::: the insomniac's digest
So, you've basically defined trade secret protection. But, it's insufficient, especially insufficient today.
You have a free-rider problem: if anybody can copy your stuff, then you can't make a living off of it. Let's say you spend $1M publishing 10 books and two of them are successful while eight lose money. I can come along, sell copies of the two successful ones and undercut your prices because I don't have to pay for either (1) the cost of creation or (2) the loss on the other eight books.
In that scenario, are you going to publish any books at all? You take all the risk, but gain very little of the reward.
Copyright has to exist if people are going to profit from their own work. The questions are really (1) how long? and (2) what exactly is protected?
Depends on what they do with it. If they sit on it forever, no, we don't.
If they release it into the world, the whole thing changes. It starts influencing things, people build around it, teach it to their kids. It becomes our thing, rather than their thing. So it is only fitting that they lose the right to control it after a suitable time.
If all ideas belonged forever to their originator, it would be a pathetic world. Can you imagine science where you'd have to license every idea you built on in order to publish your own work? Music where every instrument, every note, every muscial style was copyrighted to death, and completely unavailable? Literature where all plots are copyrighted? Can you imagine computer science where, in order to write code, you have to first buy a license to use a programming language?
That's what you're advocating. That's apparently what you want, so you can horde the tiny part of the world that you originated, which is based entirely on the works of everyone who went before.
Just be glad they didn't feel the same way.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
IP law is about the protection and promotion of that particularly scarce resource known as the entrepreneur. Ideas are common. The people who can turn them into something useful are not.
they shouldn't have to worry about losing the copyright, because the mouse is trademarked. trademarks never expire for as long as they are enforced. even if disney loses the copyright on mickey, no one can use his image anyway without violating the trademark.
i believe what disney is doing is simply trying to get added insurance by making sure copyrights never expire.
For one, the SCOTUS said only that a civil suit may not be automatically dismissed if there is a legitimate use, on the grounds that you should be allowed to present evidence demonstrating that the defendent promoted infringing use.
It is a very subtle thing. The impact isn't so much a change in the interpretation of the law. Defendents, like Grokster, are still likely to win their cases, but they are now subject to a lot more expensive litigation than they were previously.
This is "common knowledge" that is quite arguably wrong. See Creation Myths: Does innovation require intellectual property rights?
Unfortunately, your story may not even be noticed by the moderators and could get lost in the noise.
Consider submitting to Slashdot. Maybe, even Kuro5hin.
Actually, you do have a right to somebody's work. Copyright and the "Public Domain" are inseparable; you can't have one without the other. Look at it this way; copyright makes it unlawful to copy stuff without the permission of the creator. But copyright expires, what happens when a work is no longer covered under copyright? Answer it enters the public domain at which point anyone can make an unlimited number of copies without the permission of the creator. All copyright does is keep works from entering Public domain when they are first published. So the Public does have a right to see all works enter the public domain. The only thing that is at issue when a work enters the public domain. If you want to say that Public Domain is a bad thing go right ahead. But keep in mind the Public does have a right to all works eventually.
Also, property rights are a very different set of laws and have no direct comparison to the topic of copyright/PD.
Hi, I'd like to renegotiate my social contract.
Seriously, the Berne convention only calls for a 50 year copyright minimum. I say, let's be slackers and return to the minimum.
bance.net
I'm sure congress will step right up and reduce copyright terms. They always side with consumer. Look at the Microsoft monopoly. Remember when they split Office, IE and Windows into separate companies... oh, wait.
Although, I'd side with big business too if they handed me lots of money. Free money to screw over most of the country sounds fair as long as I get something out of it. That's the American way.
First the expose on the BSA, and now this.
When did the Economist get taken over by dirty hippies?
I had an argument...with the person here at the university that teaches OS design. I wonder when I'll learn --Linus
I'd say the distance between infinity and the current cost of creation and the cost of creation ten years ago is exactly the same.
:)
x = current cost
y = 10-years-ago cost
infinity - x = infinity
infinity - y = infinity
infinity / x = infinity
infinity / y = infinity
infinity - (x * (x/y)^k) = infinity for any k...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Short copyrights protect artists from having to compete with copies of their recent work. It gives them a business model. They can give up their day job and work full time on creation. That is good for the both the artist and the public.
Long copyrights protect artists from having to compete with old public domain works. Copyright lasts so long that only very old work is in the public domain. Old stuff gets "retired" by the copyright holders, neither for sale nor in the public domain.
That is against the public interest. If artists can produce work that is better or more up to date than good, old work, then a short term of copyright provides a business model and funding. If an artist's work cannot compete with the good, old stuff, because lacks enduring merit and also lacks shiny newness it does the general public great harm to force it onto them by retiring the good, old stuff.
1) the work overall. 2) the characters/worlds/whatever the work contains.
I think that the 30 years someone above advocated for works overall is a good length of time. If it hasn't made a profit by then it isn't going to.
But the cgaracters or other intellectual works within the copyrighted work can have a much longer life. Think mickey mouse. The little blighter has been going on for decades through indidual works. One might make profits from mickey for at least ninety-nine years.
So give the intelectual property within a work 99 years. Give the work overall 30 years.
Yes, cutting the dividing line between those two could be quite tricky. A very well written law would be needed. That's a good reason why someone outside of congress/parliament is needed to write the thing...
Music is not created in a vacuum. Musicians build on a vast heritage, from the inventors of musical instruments and the musical theory behind them, to the inventors of the electronics they use, to all of the music created before them that they've listened to throughout their lives, even perhaps to a snippet of code that maybe I wrote at some point in my life that is part of their mixing software, who knows. Certainly there is an important sense in which they are creative, and they deserve to be compensated for it, but in the big picture perhaps they are adding 1%, if that, on top of all the elements that ultimately make up what you hear.
One can make analogous arguments for authors, artist, photographers, etc. An author only needs a pencil and paper, you say? Deny the author language, education, and all the books he or she has read throughout his or her life and see what happens.
While "rightfully theirs" is perhaps a bit strong, it is all to easy to overlook the heritage and infrastucture that enables them to do what they do, not just technically, but as an integral and usually unacknowledged part of their creation.
Following that logic, there would have been little artistic creation prior to the 18th century, when copyright law first took off. But there were millennia of human artistic creation before then. In ancient Rome, literary works were usually copied freely and no author could control his work, yet we still have classic works such as Virgil's Aeneid and the witty epigrams of Martial.
And art wasn't merely the preserve of the rich then, either. Many of the great painters of medieval times and the Renaissance were dirt poor.
Artists create because they have an irresistable urge to do so. The security provided by copyright is certainly not necessary, as the vast majority of human history shows.
You wouldn't like it if someone broke into your workshop and took your day's work
Why do people keep comparing "copyright infringement" with "thievery"?
There's a reason for that, it's called Living Beyond Your Means.
Michael Jackson may very well have the coolest house of all, but he's $300 million in debt.
People will eventually tire pre-processed, big production entertainment. Open source, independently produced media with alternate forms of distribution (if not made entirely illegal) and funding will arise to bring the big media conglomerates down. This isn't going to happen today, or next year, but the change is inevitable.
Actually, what's closer to the truth is that they do realize it and they are going to do everything in their power to milk the old structure and institutions for every dollar they can.
An interesting thought, and one I hear professed often, but I don't personally believe it will ever happen, and I don't see the public developing a taste for low-budget entertainment as a rule.
The problem with this idea is that people eventually realize that their ideas have some sense of value once they gain in popularity. Now, I fully accept that there are people out there who are comfortable with the idea of giving away their creativity for the good of society, but at a certain point it becomes personally impractical to do so without compensation.
Creative types, in general, enjoy being creative. Sounds simple, but think about it...if you're a creative type, you don't want to be expressing your creativity in your spare time, you want to be doing it all the time. Somehow you've got to pay your bills and dedicate the bulk of your usable daylight to being creative. If you give away the potential for compensation, you close avenues that could foster the future growth and expression of your creativity.
I think it's obvious that people don't have to make a fortune on their works, but as people get more and more involved in distributing their creativity, they're going to become more and more involved in protecting the profit potential of that creativity. The shift then comes as open-sourcey independents begin to operate closer to media conglomerates and reserve certain rights that can be exploited for financial gain of one sort or another.
The issue I have when people talk about "taking down the media conglomerates" is that no one is really identifying what industry they're specifically referring to. Film companies? Fox news? Publishing houses? Distribution arms?
There's a difference between content creators and the distributors of that content, and I think the content creators are much more akin to the open-source independent community then they are to the business-oriented distribution community. The real ones in jeopardy are the distribution arms of media, not the actual creators.
We're rapidly moving into an era where the creator can BE the distributor and thus can set their own terms for the consumption of their works.
I believe the result of that is that we're going to see many more of the so-called professional content developers and the independent open-source developers moving towards a common ground and profiting without the media distribution middle-men.
There will be no "revolution" overthrowing the media creators. They're not making buggy whips and it will be only a slightly challenging transition for the vast majority to transition their operations towards a slightly more decentralized method of distribution while protecting some element of profitability.
Big media conglomerates will not crash and burn, they'll just evolve to fit the climate like any other diversified business does. The only interests in real danger are companies that are heavily invested in the physical understructure of the old system. In my estimation, companies with equity invested in film printing and distribution, large-volume CD/DVD manufacturing, audiovisual post production houses, and certain publicity and advertising agencies will be most in danger, as those services will soon be written out of the supply chain as a mandatory expenditure.
:::: the insomniac's digest
Artists have been creating art, sculpture and music several hundred years before copyright even existed, let alone before long (90-year) copyrights existed. There will still be art and music when copyrights cease to exist. You may have noticed that video did not in fact kill the radio star.
This metality strikes me as a sort of temporal cultural-centrism: "without the system we have now, there would not be the things we have now."
There are non-monopoly systems of distribution which provide material benefit to creators of art. Direct or indirect patronage systems, for example. My point is not to endorse these here, but rather to remind everyone that there are "other ways to run the railroad," i.e. - copyrights are not the only (or even best way) to provide art and music.
You can't add pianos and telephones.
It's nice to hear a reasonable, sane, viewpoint on copyrights. So much of the discussion we've heard on this subject takes place in the shrill whine of the zealot or the menacing growl of the mercenary. To me, it seems obvious that the author of a product deserves some compensation, even if only to cover his expenses and the cost of living while producing his work. Those who suggest that 'copying' takes nothing from the author assert they have a right to do what they will with the material. Doesn't the author also have this right, including charging for access and providing the material in a protected format if he wishes? Just as there would be no need for school zones if a few people were not stupid enough to go speeding through the streets surrounding schools, there would be no need for copyright laws if a few people were not dishonorable enough to copy other people's work without permission. The "pirates" forced the creation of DRM, not the other way around.
That said, as the article so aptly states, the copyright system has been broken both by new technologies and the rampant coporate greed that has perverted so many things in our society. One solution may lie in the process wherein the author assigns the copyrights to his work to a third party. Perhaps the time covered by the copyright could be reduced. For instance, the original author may be covered for 14 years, with the possibility for one extension, while any second party assignee would receive a copyright good for 7 years with no extensions. Maybe commercial use could modify the copyright - such as making a limited number of copies available by law to anyone who purchases the product. A rational evaluation and discussion would certainly create many good ideas along these lines.
billy - who says...you can copy this if ya wanna
You're still breaking in aren't you?
Not if the information is on a DVD that I legally purchased, and have in my own home, running on my own computer.
When I copy that, I am not breaking in to anybody's home, and I am not physically taking anything away from anyone. That's why the initial analogy is so far off-base.
Contrary to popular belief, a potential sale cannot be "stolen" in any legal or practical sense of the word. It could possibly be prevented, but in many cases this isn't as bad a thing as the monopolies would have you believe.
In the periods of time you are referring to, the cost of copying a literary work involved paying a scribe to copy it by hand. No photocopiers, no OCR- the technologies available made large-scale copying like we see now impossible without great cost.
For some products (medications, movies, games, music), the cost of the first copy is extremely large relative what any individual would be willing to pay.
Then don't publish the work until you have enough preorders. To promote your product, publish freebies. Then amortize the cost of the first copy of the work across all preorders. Besides, you can make money on value-added, hard-to-copy attributes such as good paper in a good binding. Cory Doctorow has taken this approach with his works.
Would those that illegally distribute first-run movies or games be willing to wait 14 years or any number of years to allow content creators to make enough money to pay for the cost of the first copy?
If a work's copyright lasts 14 years, after which the work is available for others to create and publish derivatives, you'll see at least a few warez kiddies rejoining the light side, taking classic films and classic music and releasing their own reinterpretations on the net.
Oh really? "Rightfully theirs"? I dare you to say that to the face of a musician or an artist or an author. I dare you.
I'm an artist and I agree with that statement.
Let's get this straight... you have no rights to somebody else's work
Yes you do. There's no right to compel them to create it, and no right to compel them to release it. However, there is a natural right to use it, copy it, etc. once access has been provided in some fashion.
Copyright is a temporary check on that inherent right, but it is artifical, granted by the public, and basically part of a quid pro quo intended to serve the public interest.
You don't understand copyright, as evidenced by another of your statements:
OK, so if you die and leave a car to your family, then the public gets to use it after x amount of time, right?
The thing you're missing is again, that authors don't inherently get copyrights. Copyrights are granted by government, in service to the public. And what they grant is only temporary.
So if you rent a house for a year, and die during the rental period, your heirs can enjoy the house just like you did. But only until the end of the year.
A copyright is a temporary monopoly. When it runs out, it runs out. Ultimately it is there to benefit the public, and ultimately the public gets to decide how long it will last, whether it will exist at all, and so forth.
You seem to ascribe too much importance to the author.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
And I expect this to happen oh, about NEVER!
People here live and breath to do certain things. Would the phonograph have driven Mozart out of the composing business? Did the player piano end live performances?
Do you really think Hollywood is suddenly going to decide, "Oh my, the masses have discovered broadband Internet connections. Time to turn out the lights, sell this valuable real estate, and get a new profession."
Ain't going to happen. They'll adapt and they'll continue to prosper. All this you'll lose all the good programming if you don't give us everything we want is nothing more than scare tactics. Truth is, most of them really can't do anything else, and wouldn't want to if they could.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You're crazy. Totally crazy. A car is property. You can pass property on. Property is tangible. It can be destroyed. It can be moved from one place to another. Copyright is not property. It's a restriction. I'm speaking as a copyright holder.
In Rome, there were teams of slaves tasked to endlessly duplicate literary works. And the literate population was smaller. The situation had essentially the same proportion as that of today's digital age.
We've already seen that even somewhat good writers, namely Stephen King, have tried this and failed.
The simple fact is that few will pay and many will share, and the author/artist will likely not see a return on it.
Thus they'll stop, because they have to eat. And you can eat words, but they won't provide nourishment.
That's a common misconception.
Actually, if the copyright runs out, Disney will lose some of its trademark rights.
This is because a trademark has to indicate that a product must ultimately derive from only a single source. Also, the trademark must be something other than what the good or service it identifies is. That is to say, you could not trademark the word 'Apple' for the fruit of the same name. And note that trademarks are a different sort of animal than copyrights; they deal with different rights and subject matter.
When the relevent copyright expires, Mickey Mouse enters the public domain, and anyone can create works using him. This means that the character is generic, and that there is no longer only one source. Thus the trademark cannot survive, at least with regards to books, films, etc.
It could subsist elsewhere -- there's Peter Pan peanut butter, and Peter Pan bus services, but you can't trademark the character as to creative works.
This is more evident in the patent field (see e.g. the Shredded Wheat case) but is true no matter what. Disney is well aware of this.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Lights. Camera. Action! = Acting Talent.
CGI effects at a keyboard = Programming Talent.
Rates set by scarcity, skill, deadlines, and what the market will bear. Maybe someday the Holy Grail of CGI will be reached, which is no live actors at all. Then maybe the programmers will become the stars. Wouldn't that be a kick?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"1) Artists create in a vacuum. The act of creation is a mystical experience above ordinary humans." No. Musicians (like me) write music based on past experiences. A long time ago back when i was in high school, i used to write music resembling video game music, because video game music was what i listened to. Then i started playing the piano. Mostly classical music. Suddenly what i wrote myself had in it some parts inspired by classical music (bach mostly). Certainly not on par with the masters, but you could hear the inspiration. Later i got into alternative stuff like Mr Bungle, Tomahawk, Fantomas. The result was that in my music i started incorporating things which i learned from alternative music. This could also be heard in my music. In conclusion: Music is not created from a vacuum. Music is based on past experiences. If you have heard a lot of metal you're bound to "know" some of the components used when writing and playing metal, so your music will probably incorporate these parts to an extent. Though i admit it WOULD be interesting to hear someone who has created music out of a vacuum. Ie someone who has not heard any music his entire life...
So then, people can't own non-material things? I don't see the difference between a table that I build and a book that I write.
I don't respond to AC's.
To be honest, I wouldn't. People don't have an obligation to help one another automatically, and merely holding a patent isn't enough to create such an obligation.
A better solution for the ill poster would be to go to someplace where they can pursue their treatment.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
No, copyright is not based on the same principle. Copyright is absolutely not about protecting ideas. The law clearly states that only expressions (in tangible form) are the subject of copyright. You can not copyright ideas.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Any business reaches a point where the worry moves from how much money you need to make, to how much money you can make (a natural evolution). Once you find out how much you CAN make, you try to find every way to maintain or increase this profit margin. You will also find ways to protect your ability to make this proft, eg. every litigation used to protect intellectual property, corporate espionage, or buying your competition out. This country is not run in such a way that there is an incentive to run a fair, ethical business. It's useless to try to change corporations, you simply need to remove their influence on government, then change the government.
erin go bragh!
However, using the "information wants to be free" as an excuse to steal is no excuse; it tarnishes the nobility of the ideology. Think of it this way: you're not paying for the information; you're paying for the investment of time, energy, and *my* money in gathering that information and producing something useful or enjoyable for you.
The real issue should be kept to: copyright is good; copyright without limits is bad.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Eh?
There's a big difference. They can surely inherit the BOOK. But the contents of the book are purely abstract. They can be reproduced indefinitely.
If we follow your suggestion, then relatives of monks from the 11th or 12th century could come and sue the shit out of most history books for using their illustrations without permission.
Whoah. THAT surely is going to help education -_-
Considering my current text book on art history has about 1000 various illustrations (mostly paintings) and costs about 100 usd, i don't want to even imagine how much it would cost if they had to pay the copyright inheritors of every artist whose work is depicted in that book.
It is possible that this will result in the loss of some of Disney's trademark rights, but that's necessary.
And this is why Disney cannot allow Steamboat Willy to fall into public domain. Which is why Disney will do everything it can to keep copyrights from ever expiring.
I wonder if a compromise can be reached. I understand Disney's need to protect it's "property", and I understand why senators will keep helping them (in a what's good for GM/Disney is good for the country sort of way). But I don't think it's fair or necessary that every single piece of work since the 20's is never going to enter the public domain because of it.
One solution that's been floating around is making copyrights cost money after 14 years or so. The cost would go up exponentially. For example at 14 years $200 to renew, at 28 years $40,000, at 46 years $1.6 million. Abadonware would fall in to public domain at 14 years, the vast majority of works will fall into the public domain at 28 years. The few things that are worth millions to corporations can stay copyrighted forever.
Another solution I just thought of (which is therefore probably worthless, but what the hell) is creating a distiction between copyrights and other "properties" such as characters. Copyrights could have a reasonably short term (14 yrs + one renewal for 28 yrs, total), but characters can be registered and protected indefinitely, like trademarks. Therefore, derivative works can only be made if they don't include a protected character's likeness. It sounds crazy at first, but think of the character as becoming something like an actor, that the studio which created it owns. Just like you can't stick an actor (or his likeness) in a film without the actor's premision, you can't stick this character in a film either.
It's going to be easy to just ignore both patent and copyright. All you have to do is buy the product as a Chinese import. No inconvenient IP in any of the products or its components. US corporations will be happy to continue to import "finished" goods from China without greatly reduced costs of labor and no IP costs. It will help them compete better.
[end heavy sarcasm]
Strong Mad - 2008: "I PRESIDENT!"
One solution that's been floating around is making copyrights cost money after 14 years or so. The cost would go up exponentially. For example at 14 years $200 to renew, at 28 years $40,000, at 46 years $1.6 million. Abadonware would fall in to public domain at 14 years, the vast majority of works will fall into the public domain at 28 years. The few things that are worth millions to corporations can stay copyrighted forever.
I would object to this for several reasons. The public domain should not be a dumping ground for merely unprofitable works. It is a good thing for works to lose their copyright, and this should occur even-handedly. Also, I fear your terms are too long, and fees too low. The notion that anything could remain copyrighted forever is also unconstitutional and repulsive.
Another solution I just thought of (which is therefore probably worthless, but what the hell) is creating a distiction between copyrights and other "properties" such as characters. Copyrights could have a reasonably short term (14 yrs + one renewal for 28 yrs, total), but characters can be registered and protected indefinitely, like trademarks.
And would die at the end of the copyright term, for the reasons I've already set out. The Constitution demands that works enter the public domain. To only do so for parts of a work is unconstitutional.
Just like you can't stick an actor (or his likeness) in a film without the actor's premision
Which is a dumb idea.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Even if the original horseshoe did take massive amounts of money to make, doesn't this process hold back other attempts to make a better horseshoe? What if someone else creates a new manufacturing process based on that the original idea that lowers cost or makes the horseshoe do it's job more efficently. Granted, we are stretching this metaphor a bit too far, but the idea is clear...no idea is isolated from another, all innovations are the culimation of a thousand other ideas someone has referenced (i.e. stole) from someone else. Thus, by creating an artifical monopoly on an idea, there is no way for further that idea into something new. This is esp. dangerous in software patents, where the idea is less a tangible thing and more a concept or way of organizing the world. With this in mind, what if someone patented quicksort or linked lists or the idea of love in literture for 14 years.
well then i guess that is why i am not a lawyer.
anyway, what i think they should do is allow for indefinate copyright renewal, but at a cost.
for example shorten copyright to 14 years. allow one free renewel. after that we should start charging copyright holders money to allow them to keep their monopoly on the copyrighted work at the publics expense. if the copyright holder views they can still make money on the copyright, then it would definately be worth some money for them to keep their copyright. but by keeping that copyright they are harming the public domain, and so the copyright holder should have to pay to renew the copyright after the first free renewal.
it should start at a low price, say 25 cents and will extend the copyright an additional 14 years. this would bring abandoned works into the public domain, because the copyright holder would not buy an extension.
and then every 14 years the copyright holder would have to buy a new extension for each copyrighted work, but the price for this extension should be doubled. so the next extension would be $.50 then $1 then $2 and so on. i believe this to be a simple solution to many problems.
it allows a copyright holder to keep their copyright as long as they want, however it punishes them for not releasing it into the public domain and thus enriching all of society.
eventually a large publishing house with many copyrights would not be able to afford renewals on all of their copyrights, so they would eventually be forced to release the non-profitable ones into the public domain
if a copyright holder isn't willing to pay $1 to keep their copyright, then maybe they should have that copyright anymore.
Eight years is too much
On first impression I felt pretty much the same way, but thinking about it I realized very short terms would too often be dodged. As an example imagine you wrote a movie script. You submit it to a movie studio, and they simply file and reject it without bothering to read it. Eight years later they dig through the files when it's free and clear and run with it. If the term is too short companies will just sit on stuff a little while to avoid paying you.
Our original 14+14 year term wasn't too bad. The original Star Wars movie would be hitting the public domain at the end of this year. We'd be getting a whole flurry of 2006 independant Star Wars movies and probably even a Star Wars TV show.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
anyway, what i think they should do is allow for indefinate copyright renewal, but at a cost.
That would be unconstitutional.
for example shorten copyright to 14 years. allow one free renewel. after that we should start charging copyright holders money to allow them to keep their monopoly on the copyrighted work at the publics expense. if the copyright holder views they can still make money on the copyright, then it would definately be worth some money for them to keep their copyright. but by keeping that copyright they are harming the public domain, and so the copyright holder should have to pay to renew the copyright after the first free renewal.
I understand your basic position, but I think you're being too generous. I would prefer to see formalities as a necessary prerequsite to copyright, very short terms, with more renewals (usually), and yet still overall a very short maximum term.
This would likely cause self-selection by authors incentivized by copyright (who are the only ones to which it should be granted) but would involve sufficient granularity such that they continue the self-selection process over time.
and then every 14 years the copyright holder would have to buy a new extension for each copyrighted work, but the price for this extension should be doubled. so the next extension would be $.50 then $1 then $2 and so on. i believe this to be a simple solution to many problems.
Have you done the math? You're giving away the barn. Trademarks have 10 year renewals (basically) and cost hundreds of dollars each go.
Copyrights should be reserved for authors that are treating them as a business asset. Authors that create for the love of it don't need copyrights to act as an incentive. When you're in business, the numbers you're citing are chicken feed.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
It all really comes down to the business model of the media publishers.
Over the past century the media publishers have continued to increase their profit for the same goods. Extension of the copyright life has served to increase this almost indefinitely. As long as there was not a vast web of computers connected via the internet this model works fine, however this medium of communcation does exist, and makes publication orders of magnitude cheaper than previous means.
The problem is the over-inflated profit margins of the 'legacy' publishing companies can not be supported in a free market where consumers are used to getting boundless resources for just a monthly access fee. Advances in technology allow musicians to record their own music just as well as the record labels (and actually many of the offerings from indie/free music are better than the vast majority of traditional record label offerings), allows writers to reach millions of potential readers, and software developers to distribute their own work without the overhead of packaging and promotion in traditional retail operations.
Extending copyrights, restricting file sharing to such an extent that it impinges on fair use, and holding the developers of software that supports it liable for damages is not the solution - it is only a short sighted bandaid to help companies maintain their profits at the detriment of invention and society in general. The real solution is for the traditional publishers to rethink their business model and accept the fact that profit margins will have to fall back to realistic levels, or they will lose customers.
Case in point: I no longer purchase traditional music CDs because of the inflated pricing and forced packaging. Instead I download indy/free music - which doesn't infringe on anyone's rights and is within the realm of what I believe is a reasonable price to pay (small or free - when compared to the major record label's prices).
Technology is ushering in a time when it is reasonable for individuals to make their own music, movies, and publish their own books. The middle-man in the sense of the large media distribution conglomerate is not needed, and most people are finding is not wanted. The more the conglomerates try to stem the tide of change through draconian means, the more people will search for alternatives that do not run afoul of the law and does not put more money into the inflated jaws of the media publishers. Publishing companies will either change their business model to play in this space, or perish due to the ill will they provoke in their (previous) customer base through insisting on pursuing an outdated business model.
The most interesting thing about all of this is how companies don't couch their lobbying for extensions to copyright and their efforts to 'stem the tide' as interrum measures. For all intents and purposes they are not attempting to change. This would be like radio companies lobbying congress to prevent televisions from being used to show programming in the 1930s - and all of us in 2005 sitting around a radio listening to the 'Slashdot' show. Time marches on, and breakthroughs in technology eventually become available to the public. Business has to be more flexible to deal with those inevitable changes when they come; this takes long term planning - which business is not good at (in an almost childish way; a child 'wants it now', and adult prioritizes, plans, and sets aside resources for the day when changes are needed to make the transition smooth). Instead the customer must deal with change - but the twist is the customers now have the tools to change and remove the middle man from the equation - which they will if businesses don't change their ways.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
The crowbar would of course come in handy in the workshop breaking in business.
Hey, this is a good idea. You contradicted yourself in some places, but the overall concept is great. And while yes, this didn't work for King's "Riding the Bullet" that doesn't mean that we should abandon the idea entirely. Besides, with the spread of RSS and "social marketing" systems, the idea that people would contribute to this kind of system is not that unreal. Socal marketing is slowing making big business marketing techniques obsolite, giving people a more "natrual" way of finding out what they want to buy and supporting they own niche forms of entertainment. It's going to take time, but never the less the ride will be very interesting indeed.
If you can't see the difference between a physical object like a table & the information in a book, then you seriously need to reevalute your model of reality.
Big hint: you can see/touch/feel the table. Please describe to me how you can do the same with information if you take away the book.
Thus, by creating an artifical monopoly on an idea, there is no way for further that idea into something new.
There is most certainly a way, it's just a way that rewards the person who had the original idea. If somebody in our horseshoe world figures out how to make titanium, he now has a way to make lighter, longer lasting horseshoes. He can offer to sell titanium to the smith, and they both stand to benefit from the deal. As long as both parties are reasonable, everybody wins. When one of them tries to get too much gain from his idea, everybody loses for 14 years, and the greedy guy never makes any money.
no idea is isolated from another, all innovations are the culimation of a thousand other ideas someone has referenced (i.e. stole) from someone else.
Very true, but some people have better ideas than others. Thomas Edison had a lot of great ideas, and it seems reasonable to provide a way for him to make a living simply coming up with more ideas. Some people don't necessarily have novel ideas, but they take the critical steps to make an idea practical. This can be expensive, so there should be a way for them to recoup their investment in advancing the useful arts. I don't mind contributing to the public domain, but if I'm going to invest my time and money, I'd like some kind of return on my investment (I at least don't want to lose money.) The current system is set up to allow the market to determine whether my results are worth what I put into them.
Now, as you said, an idea doesn't exist in a vacuum. My ideas are stimulated by somebody else's ideas or works. However, some people make bigger leaps than others. Some ideas spawn entirely new fields of endeavor. These types of risky thinking are what we want to encourage, far moreso than just incremental improvements on what already exists. How do you encourage something? Usually with a monetary incentive. Again, the market decides who's idea is worth rewarding.
Now, IMO a lot of patents have gone too far. Software patents, as you mention, often reward trivial things instead of groundbreaking new ideas. If somebody puts a decade into creating a strong AI, then he deserves a patent. If a company pays a team of mathematicians to develop new compression algorithms, they deserve a patent. If somebody spends a week coding a new interface style, he doesn't. Business method patents also seem iffy to me. Those seem like they should be adequately covered by trade secret laws (far less potent).
Would those that illegally distribute first-run movies or games be willing to wait 14 years or any number of years to allow content creators to make enough money to pay for the cost of the first copy?
I think many P2P users *would* restrict their offerings to pre-1991 material if it ensured their legal status and immunity to prosecution. Anyone offering the latest pop would then become a much sharper and more vulnerable target for more effective litigation. In fact that effect would feed on itself driving an increasing percentage into copyright compliance and further exposing infringers.
That alone would go a long way towards bringing the "overwhelming P2P piracy problem" down to "managable proportions".
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
A) Government Involvment /.'ers actually like the thought of government involvement in technology? The thought of it scares the hell out of me. For example, if, the American government, realized that there are security holes in an OS and that these OSes are hooked up to the internet and can potientially be exploited to become zombies used to attack said internet. What do you think they would do? Hopefully, they'd do the smart thing and create a list of recommendations and have a "safe OS" sticker program where the standards were well designed. Or something similar. But we all know what would happen. Companies like MS, and IBM would get preferenial treatment in creating these standards.
/.'ers would rather see anyway. At least the one we'd be more interested in.
How many
Let's assume that all "monopoly" laws were never created (and the concept never existed). Alternative OS advocates would then just focus more on the inferiority of windows, rather than hoping that the law would do the right thing. I think this is the type of battle most
B) The World's Digital Now
The moment that digital copying became feasible, the days of the old method of distribution became numbered. Trying to preserve them is an exercise in futility. Only demonstrating what the muscles of the legal system and government can do. The sad thing is that most people can't read between the lines. But I'd say that financial analysts and technologists agree on this one. Such a thing is surely a sign of the apocolypse.
C) Socialist Protection vs. Free-Market Revolution
In your system, what happens when something becomes entrenched? It's bound to happen. Think about a potiental revolution within a market over time. When it happens the old try to crush the new. Sound familiar? Because it is the current problem, and will be the outcome of the parent's solution. Which is why it is a band-aid at best.
D) Cut Throat Capitalism
I've always liked the thought of cut-throat capitalism. Companies no longer have any other option but to innovate, because they must out of neccesity. The problem is that if it is perfectly cut-throat, there may be too many players in a market and even the biggest party may not have the resources to do it properly (or the largest party may not be able to get a sufficient return from their investments). This is where concepts like open source become the winner (where resources are donated by the community). The amazing thing is that the concept of free software (in both sences) creates the cut-throat capitalism and then thrives in it. It is why the dominance of free software is inevitable.
E) There is no E, I'm just tempted to put ??? then list F as profit.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
Re-read the post. He did go someplace else, and spent $25,000 on a drug that would save his life. The only reason he can't have the drug (and, I presume, can not have a refund either) is because the patent holder is blocking him from collecting it. I don't think the patent holder has an obligation to help the man - but I do think that he/she/they have an obligation not to deliberately conspire to murder him. If they just stepped aside, he'd live. If they take action, he dies. Maybe not murder, but at least manslaughter.
Of course, I'm assuming that everything he posted is factually accurate and there are no other facts to consider - if this were a trial, I'm sure there would be, but based on the evidence presented so far, juror #6 is leaning toward the death penalty.
Because you can't spell "slaughter" without "laughter"
Back then they didn't have extortionate costs with producing works either. It was cheap to write a book on paper. But the costs for making a film or TV programme can be in the hundreds of millions. No-one's going to put that sort of money down without being able to profit from the distribution.
From all those poor artists, ever wondered how much more art they could have created if they didn't have to work a day job?
However, using the "information wants to be free" as an excuse to steal is no excuse;
Not everyone believes that information is something that you can own. The piece of paper it is written on yes. The data itself, no. I just copied your sentence. You created it but there it is. I have duplicated your 'work'. Would you say that I have stolen it? The reason I was able to copy the information is because it is inherently copyable. It is inherently uncontrollable (as the Chinese government is finding out). This inherent free-flowing nature of information means that earning a living from its creation is difficult. But does the creator or 'owner' of the information have the right to prevent the world from using it even when it requires great intrusiveness by the government into everyone's life in order to do so? For me the answer is no. It is not worth it. However, preventing the commercial reproduction of art does not require such intrusiveness. So for me that strikes a nice balance.
it tarnishes the nobility of the ideology.
What ideology?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
If I am not mistaken, it is legal to buy the horseshoe, figure out a different way to make a device that protects the foot of a horse, then sell this new invention as competition for the horseshoe. But, if the horseshoe cost $100 million to develop, but the competitor only spent $20 million becuase they used concepts evident in the original horseshoe they bought, does the inventor of the original horseshoe have any claim to being undercut because his work was stolen? Or was his work even stolen if the concepts were evident just by owning the horseshoe? You can patent to process to make the horseshoe, but you can't patent every little concept involved with the thing. This is the type of case that really muddles the whole process because an endless grey area is created which is then sorted out with over priced lawyers. Who wins? Lawyers, mostly.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
I read it. This is the bit that stands out:
So I flew to Europe, got the new pegylated medicines for about twenty-five thousand dollars of my own carefully saved money, and flew back to USA.
He's been importing into the US an article that embodies a patented invention. This is infringing. So is using them in the US as well, actually.
The logic behind that is fairly plain, for a patent in the US is pretty useless if it can be circumvented merely by importing articles from abroad which aren't allowed by the US rightsholder. Hence the import ban. There is a similar one for copyrights.
I am suggesting that he travel to Europe, or someplace, and stay there during the course of his treatment.
They're hardly liable or guilty of anything. They're doing nothing, and they've incurred no duty to help him.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
No, because they'd be in the background, like the costume designer and the make-up artists, and so completely anonymous.
As for no actors, remember that Gollum had an actor behind it, albeit a bad one. And the golden rule of CGI still applies: you should only use it when you ABSOLUTELY have to. When you can use real actors, there's no need in using CGI to replace it.
I happen to agree. It will be the rest of the world, implementing the true meanings of copyright and patents, with 15 to 20 year lifespans for both, that will crush the monopolistic practices of the corporate-controlled lifetime plus 25 year embarrassments which we call US copyright/patent law.
And about time, too.
That said, I still have the first filing for All Of The Above (TM) as used in digital media and print media, just in case. Filed back when I was a teen in both the US and Canada.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
" I wouldn't care quite so much if they only took a copy, though."
What if the value of your work became $0 because everyone was simply sharing it for free? People think there's no harm in simply making a copy, without understanding the economic consequences of what they're saying.
Vote for Pedro
If you could provide a clear example on how artists (speaking broadly, including photographers, scultors, painters, authors, computer programmers, musicians, actors, etc.) have really gained anything with this current system, I would love to hear what you are suggesting.
Certainly a few people at the top of each of their professions have made millions or billions of dollars (i.e. Bill Gates) from strong copyright, but I would argue that the rank and file artist who is trying to be creative and pay the mortgage on their house is generally losing their shirt based on the current system.
Authors have it quite rough, but there are now several alternatives to placing the written word whereever they want to. Earning money from writing is a bit tougher, but it can be done.
Musicians are generally the worst off with the current system. Record lables tend to take just about everything that is made off of a record, and most musicians would be lucky to get a few cents from every CD sold. Quite litterally, if they instead bought their own computer with a CD-R burner and made their own CDs, most new musicians would be money ahead after the first dozen CD sales. I've seen regional bands that do exactly that sort of self-publishing because they don't trust the major labels. Those bands are also much more approachable on a fan level.
As a computer programmer, I certainly hope most of my software doesn't survive the life + 75 current copyright regime. Heck, software I wrote 10 years ago I'm not getting a single penny off of anyway, and neither is the company that I wrote it for. I fail to see the financial incentive for either myself or any company that will employ me to even preserve that copyright rule, and if it went to 14 years it would still be worth while for me to write computer software. It would also mean I could hack an Atari 2600 emulator together and have some fun with some old games that the publishers addresses aren't even known.
No, they can't own something non-material.
The government (which by extension is the people) gives the creator exclusive rights to copy their work for a given amount of time. Even when copyright is still in, they don't actually own the content; they merely have the sole reproduction rights. Once those reproduction rights expire anyone can make copies of the information (which regardless of who created it, was never owned by anyone).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That would be unconstitutional.
but not impossible. theoretically how congress is treating current copyrights by continually extending them retroactively and never letting them expire is the same as putting and infinate term on them, however sadly apparently the supreme court failed to notice that and ruled it as being ok.
Have you done the math? You're giving away the barn. Trademarks have 10 year renewals (basically) and cost hundreds of dollars each go.
fine, then start the fee at $200, then using my method a publishing company holding say 1000 copyrighted works for 98 years would cost about $3mil granted $3mil is still pocket change to a lot of companies
but renewing again at the 98 year mark would cost an additional 3.2mil to keep all of those works copyrighted, then 14 years later $6.4mil 14 years later another $12.8mil, then $25.6 mil and so on
this would allow companies to keep their already long copyrights for a reasonable fee, but if they want to keep a lot of copyrighted works then eventually this will add up and they will have to start releasing some works into the public domain.
the idea is to stop large companies from ammassing a giant copyright portfolio and never releasing them to the public...sort of like the big publishing houses were doing at the time the constitution was written, which spawned the original copyright law. and now because of the constant retroactive extensions from congress we are quickly returning to the time before the original copyright law was written.
copyright law as it is currently written is broken. many times things were supposed to start entering the public domain but were saved at the last minute by congress. because of this i no longer have any reasonable expectation that any of these works will ever enter the public domain. the next time copyrights start getting close to expire i very well expect congress will pass the "mickey mouse protection act" which will once again retroactively extend copyrights another thousand years. i believe my idea to be a possible solution, it allows a company to keep their copyright as long as they want, but the longer they keep it the more they have to pay. as well as it doesn't significantly punish an artist(or the artists family) or a company that is only holding onto one or two copyrights.
"2) Without long copyrights, there would be no incentives for creators to create, leaving us with a dull and lifeless society."
Good thing cavemen had long copyrights, otherwise there'd be no cave paintings, eh?
I don't think long copyrights have anything to do with why we create things. People create stuff all the time, even knowing that no one will ever see it. It's in our nature. More important than the money insured by copyright is expression and recognition that comes from creating something new and interesting. Having a 14 year copyright wouldn't affect either of those reasons OR limit the core amount money made by an artist in all but extreme cases.
What it WOULD do is give society a bevy of art and expression to reinterpret and do with as it will, which is what artists do now anyway, it would just be "legal" to do so freely without paying for song samples, etc. Long copyrights are unnatural and unnecessary and don't benefit creators and culture but corporations and lawyers.
" This dictates the amount of investment he can afford to put into his work."
Doesn't the cost of creating a work relate to the cost of creating the work? i.e. its not that a song costs $1000 to write if copyright is 14 years and $6500 to write if copyright is 90 years.
The cost is related to the cost of making it.
That musicians and directors etc. get much more than the actual cost is surely just a side effect of over generous copyright.
Movie costs for example, they pay $200 to the director of Lord of the Rings trilogy. Would he have done it for $50 million? I bet he would. $10 millions? Yep. His reward is so much greater than the cost, so its not the *cost* of creating the work thats the limiting factor.
Copyright was created as a stimulus, to promote publication.
The cost of publishing had dropped so drastically, that authors and publishers feared that they could not make enough money to cover initial costs, before someone undercut them.
So copyright doesn't protect someone's existing right. No such right ever existed. Copyright gave publishers an incentive to publish, by giving them a legal monopoly on publication (actually to the author, who then had the right to license it).
In this environment, publishing flourished. The availablity of books grew exponentially. This is undoubtedly responsible for a massive general increase in education who's effect cannot be overestimated.
Copyright fulfilled an important need.
But copyright has been expanded and extended. It is longer in effect and wider in extent. It now covers copying, and it covers movies, music, artworks, software etc.
When the constitution was written, it was clear that copyright needed a clear fence around it to maintain the balance.
This balance has totally shifted - and not to authors, or even artists or other creators. The balance has shifted to corporations.
The reason is, these corporations have the money to buy opinion in congress and the power to exclude creators from publishing their own works.
And what they've bought in congress is a copyright system which effectively does not end.
What we need is a reasonable copyright system that recognizes the needs of the public and the creative and innovative people.
I believe it should, for example, be illegal for a corporation to own a copyright - the indiviuals should maintain their monopoly until the copyright term. And the copyright term should be reasonable for the kind of material involved.
The point is, that we have the power to change the system to benefit all of us.
Copyright isn't for protection of publishers, it's for protection of authors.
A web publisher doesn't care if he has protection on content any more. He just cares if he has content that he won't get sued over and it's always changing.
But individual authors will get ripped off if they post something that a content-hungry megaportal wants to co-opt unless there's copyright.
Copyright enables the de-coupling of the idea of "sharing" from the idea of "giving up all rights". If posting something is the same as giving it away, no one could ever read what you wrote without you having the worry they were stealing it at the same time.
Copyright allows someone like me to post a story I wrote and not have Microsoft or AOL or somebody just take it from me and offer me nothing in return. That's a powerful tool. It might or might not get me money--probably sometimes it does and sometimes not. But losnig that tool will be a loss to already-underpaid authors everywhere.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
If I am not mistaken, it is legal to buy the horseshoe, figure out a different way to make a device that protects the foot of a horse, then sell this new invention as competition for the horseshoe. But, if the horseshoe cost $100 million to develop, but the competitor only spent $20 million becuase they used concepts evident in the original horseshoe they bought, does the inventor of the original horseshoe have any claim to being undercut because his work was stolen? Or was his work even stolen if the concepts were evident just by owning the horseshoe? You can patent to process to make the horseshoe, but you can't patent every little concept involved with the thing. This is the type of case that really muddles the whole process because an endless grey area is created which is then sorted out with over priced lawyers. Who wins? Lawyers, mostly.
You raise a number of very good points. Reuse of a patented invention is a tricky matter and one of the subtle checks and balances built into the patent system. On the one hand, a second company cannot copy a patented product. If the second company creates something that seems to be too much like the patented item, they will be sued. On the other hand, the patent process forces the applicant to disclose the invention. In theory, the patent should contain enough information to allow someone else to replicate the invention even as it prohibits that replication.
As you allude to, disclosure enables the second company to invent an even newer product, building on the work of the first company and then leading to its own patented invention. Its an imperfect system, but it does try to encourage innovate by both protecting the financial fruits of innovation and by sharing the intellectual fruits of innovation.
Sadly, lawyers are a necessary evil in any complex society that claims to offer due process and the rule of law -- who shall represent the the two side in any ruling on that process or law? Most things, especially most innovative things involve the gray areas and it is up to lawyers (professional advocates for each side) to argue how the new circumstance or gray area can be made consistent with the body of case law, legislation, regulation, and the constitution.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The fact is that more and more people are paying for music downloads.
I don't because I believe the DRM that comes with it should not be supported.
We, the people, should have control. DRM shifts that control to the software and entertainment companies.
Apparently they feel that they don't have enough power.
Regardless, I would much rather pay the artist directly for a download, than I would buy a cd from a store and give money to companies that lobby congress to take away my rights.
I still have to say, it doesn't cost very much compared to earlier times to create things. Especially books.
:)
There is a huge amount of material on the internet that at most cost the people time that is as good as anything you can buy. There's a lot of crap too, but hey - look at movies today
The point I'm making is that creation of, say, books is nearing $0. There's time involved, sure, but typing something up is all there is. Distribution is also nearing $0 with things like bittorrent.
Then there are the many authors who make more money via exposure after releasing books for free as e-books than when they didn't. Check out baen books someday for a breakdown from an author.
The claim that you lose money over electronic distribution is constantly proved false for anyone other than the industry made superstars. And I just wonder how many people care that they lose a million dollars from their hundered million or whatever.
I also wonder why people feel copyright is necessary. People get rich selling *water* for god's sake. I'm sure there is a way to make money there. Heck, the freenet project is paying it's developer $2300 a month, and they don't charge a thing - it's totally donations.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Even if you have a known-good property (e.g., the Star Wars franchise), there's no guarantee that the sequel is any good. Moreover, who would pre-order a viewing of a new movie if they : a) did not know the quality of the sequel (which must be unknown because you have to withhold publication) and b) the viewer knew that could snag a free copy within a few days of the release. I tend to watch movies months or years after they appear and would never pre-order anything.
I like your suggestions, but some don't make sense for some types of content. For medicines, there are no "hard-to-copy" feature. It is the fact of the regulatory approval that makes the drug valuable -- that approval is extremely expensive (averaging about $800 million to $1.2 billion per drug given all the costs of clinical trials and all the dead-end drug candidates). Once approved, the medicine is easy to copy. Moreover, its hard to create a pre-order market for medicine. I don't know if I'll need the next blockbuster anti-cancer drug and if I need it, I'd go with the cheapest available source.
Even for music, the idea is not implementable for a broad class of the fan base. For example, I like to listen to music in my home on my own schedule. I don't like concerts, don't care about the band, don't care about fancy boxed sets, etc. It is the music I want. The same is true for movies -- I've never even looked at the extra features on a DVD and don't care for theaters. The only thing of value that a musician or film maker has to offer me is a copy of the content (the easy-to-copy part).
I can only hope you are right. But I fear that most people prefer copying the latest hits from the latest artists.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If a hospital refuses lifesaving treatment to a patient because they cannot pay, then they are held liable for the persons death. This much the same situation.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Indeed, I made a very bad choice of wording. Ideas are certainly not copyrightable. What I meant is that copyright tries to strike the same balance with intangible creations that patent law does with physical inventions. The way it is done is by offering a monopoly on the way an idea is expressed,
All you're arguing is that the price should go down as the cost of publishing and the cost of distribution drop. The cost of duplication is nearing $0, NOT the cost of creation.
"Typing something up" is not the hard part of authorship -- read The DaVinci Code and ask yourself how much of the writing process was just typing.
Let's say I have a choice between getting paid $100,000 at some job or writing a book. If I write the book, my 'cost of creation' is $100,000.
Copyright is necessary to encourage people to create works of authorship by granting them a limited monopoly to their creation. Without copyright, there would be far fewer works created.
Whether that's the case or not, I don't know. But this is not the same situation. The normal rule is that so long as you don't owe a duty to someone, you aren't obligated to help them.
If it's different for hospitals, then I would imagine that that's due to their unique position as hospitals. Mere pharmacuetical companies are totally dissimilar; they don't have to let people infringe on their patents if they don't want to.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
There needs to be a definite and hard set maximum, and that needs to be a short duration. Inifite copyright will result in what we already have, even if it is very expensive. Then the useless cruft will drift into public domain, but anything actually innovate and useful will continue to be copyrighted.
There is no benefit to society to maintain a copyright for very long. It uses force of government to protect profit. The Constitution allowed for that becuase there was, and still is, a need to protect new works from immediate duplication. Used in this way it can accomplish the original pupose of encouraging innovation and new works.
Ultimately, the fees for copyrigth and patent hinder the little guy and do nothing to big business. We could always fix many problems in the USPTO by removing the requirement for sulf-sufficient operation.
Very interesting, yet not unexpected, to see how so many changes to the Constitution resulted in terrible things. The copyright and patent laws, the 16th, 17th, and 18th(repealed by 21st) amendments, as examples. Yet we don't fix things that do need improvement, like the commerce or public welfare clauses.
"With physical property, if I take it from you, you don't have it anymore."
But I still have the costs of creation.
"With information, if I take it from you, now we both have it."
But I still have the costs of creation.
"It's a completely different world now, and you need to adapt your conceptual metaphors to suit it."
In this brave new world, I'm still stuck with the costs of creation. The only difference between the two is that commiting a form of eminent domain without compensation is made easier by technology.
Well, let's turn that around. Why would you only expect to get paid once for the table you build, but paid apparently forever for the book you write?
Also, it comes down to whether you belive that copyright (is/should be) about ownership of ideas or promotion of creativity/innovation.
Currently, it seems you and the industries believe in the first - that you should be able to not only own an idea, but you should own that forever, as well as anything based (derived) from it.
The problem with this is that humans a)aren't that creative, and b)cannot create in a vaccuume.
You will eventually end up with no one being able to make anything, due to the amount of people he would have to pay for it. Or, you end up with the situations of today where you can't even find who to pay to get permission to use/build on the idea, so essentially you cannot use/build on the idea.
Do you see why that might be bad?
Now, if you believe, as I do(and the founding fathers seemed to), that copyright should be about promoting creativity/innovation, then you would think we are very far from that now, and are going in bad direction.
Here is the senario:
If an author currently writes a book:
and it's bad - the author will need to write another one (or get another job, but bear with me) to make more money to live.
If it's mediocre, he's working on another book in a few years for the same reason, more money.
But if he writes a best seller, one that is endlessly reprintable(and he isn't in a rather stupid contract of some reason) - like Salavatore's Dark Elf Trilogy, or Tom Clancy's books - He's got a gaurenteed revenue stream.
He never needs to come up with a new world or characters, and if his book is popular enough - Rowling perhaps - there's no economic incentive to ever write another thing again. Just keep reprinting the books and getting the royalties.
Now, we pass that on to his kids. Well, they never have to work, nor be creative - they're still living off the reprint royalties of their dad's work. Now imagine we turn that into eternal copyright. Well, a whole family has been turned into a group that never has to work again, never has any economic incentive to create. It's a drag on the economy - they produce nothing of value.
Worse, other people who might have interesting ideas cannot use the characters or world to tell their stories - we not only lose out on the family, we lose out on other creative talent.
So, it's promoting the opposite of creativity/innovation. This will lead to no new books eventually - there's only one or seven plots if you ask the english teachers after all.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Right on - a creative property becomes more valuable when released into the world, doesn't the world deserve some consideration for that?
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Can I get a chant going?
It's like the difference between kidnapping someone or just taking a photo of them or sketching them.
You better be careful what what you do with that photo of someone else, you could end up being sued. Without consent you can't legally sale a photo of an identifiable person though you can use it in an editorial fashion in the US. However in some countries it's illegal to even take a photo of someone without their prior approval.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Lawrence Lessing once said that we live in a bumper sticker society. Well I've got a sticker for you "Why free Shakespeare?"
Why is Shakespeare free for anyone who wants to copy, modify or perform it on stage?
Du'h, Because its copyright has expired!
That's begging the question, why should its copyright expire anyway?
Because it is old.
So what? It still sells! No matter how old it is, the characters don't grow old and the places don't get reduced to ruins.
But it has become part of our cultural heritage!!
Really? Nowaday more children recognize Darth Vader than Hamlet, more people nowaday have seen the complete Star Wars saga than the complete work of Shakespeare, by that standards it should be free now, just like Shakespeare.
But Star Wars belongs to George Lucas. There is no one to receive payment for the works of Shakespeare.
Not true. The London publishers are still around. Shakespeare sold them the copyrights so it morally belongs to them. They have every right to claim their money back.
But Lucas needs the money to produce new pictures!
And the London Publishers need their money to further publishing more wonderful books. Anyway, its their money, they want it back.
They don't need money! Shakespeare is old stuff!
Are you are implying that every popular work that is old; that means -not new- should belong to the public domain? That includes every pop song not to mention virtually every copyrighted work.
No, these are new, ask anyone!
The works of Shakespeare are new for many people today, and will be new for every generation to come.
But we need the work of Shakespeare to build upon it, to make new versions and interpretations.
Then why is it legal to collect and distribute the unadulterated original works? Or performing them in theaters? And why do you need them anyway?
Because many independent young actors, not to mention million dollars selling blockbuster productions depend on Shakespeare being free!
At the expense of Shakespeare? Pirates! If you need a cultural heritage you have The Bible, I heard it is still free, Shakespeare isn't, it is copyrighted stuff.
But copyright should not be forever!
What about forever minus a day? Just kidding, copyright is forever. Shakespeare is the original author, it belongs to him. He sold the copyrights to the London Publishers, the rights belong to them, forever. Or are you saying that Shakespeare somehow cased to be the original author?
No, all I'm saying is that the works of Shakespeare belong to the world.
You have failed to provide any good reason for your case.
But our fathers made it free for us. They wanted free Shakespeare!
So all I need to do is wanting free movies for them to be free? You should have said it before! I will go download one right away, then I'll show it to all my neighbors!
No! that is theft! You must acquire a licensed copy from a licensed provider for licensed uses only. Because it is copyrighted, that's why.
Could you give me a good reason for it to be copyrighted?
I can give you plenty!
One that doesn't apply to the works of Shakespeare too?
I've got it! Copyrighting Star Wars serves the "public good", not copyrighting Shakespeare serves the "public Good" too! You totally don't get it! It's all about balance!
And by "public good" you mean American Publishing Corporations that pressed strongly for it? I totally get it now! It's all about BS! If any, people should be buying from the London Publishers!
But what about people who can't buy them at all? poor people, people downloading stuff from the Internet, teachers and students, and the benevolent Hollywood producers of "Romeo + Juliette"
Poor people can't get it from the net, and it isn' practical to download it anyway; it's way much comfortable to buy i
But... the future refused to change.
When the constitution was written, it was clear that copyright needed a clear fence around it to maintain the balance.
Thomas Jefferson didn't even believe in copyrights but evenually his friend James Madison convinced him they'd be beneficial. Then using an actuary table he calculated copyrights shoudln't last longer than 28 years.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Copyright was originally ment to allow the govenment censors to control what could be printed.
Not quite, at least in the US. All that had to be done to copyright is to file for a copyright and submit what is being copyrighted. As for why copyrights were established, it was to encourage the creation of creative works. Following are sections of correspondents between Thomas Jefferon and James Madison:
Copyright Law and Practice
From Thomas Jefferson to James Madison on 31 July 1788
The saying there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to be opposed to that of their general suppression.
On October 17 1788 Jame Madison replied:
With regard to monopolies they are justly classified among the greatest nuisances in Government. But is it clear that as encouragements to literary works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the Public to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely less danger of this abuse in our Governments, than in most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few. Where the power is in the few it is natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as with us, is in the many and not in the few, the danger can not be very great that the few will be thus favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.
Eventually Madison was able to convince Jefferson that copyrights could encourage creative works. Once he was Jefferson calculated copyrights should last 14 years with another 14 being available as an extension.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I like a good blockbuster film as much as the next guy but I also like a little substance and it's becoming preciously difficult to find.
Is there a Landmark Theatres near you? They show a lot of foreign and indie movies.
FalconShould there be a Law?
And I gladly paid the price of admission to see the movies on opening night, I also paid the cost to both DVD editions for the first one and at least one edition of the next two. Lord of The Rings was a masterpeice where all the "flashy" stuff fit and wasn't put in just for the heck of it. Also Tolkiens "script" was pretty much stuck to with minimal rewriting so the plot and dialogue was superb. The actors and supporting cast even the many people working on the details also treated it as much as a labor of love as anything else.
This is the second tyme I heard something like that. I told someone else I wouldn't see the "Lord of the Rings" movies because I read the books and loved them and almost every tyme I go see the movie of a book I loved I am disappointed but he said the movies were pretty faithful to the books.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The "Blair Witch Project" had a "shoestring" budget yet made millions. As I recall it started out as a class project for some college students. Or there's "Kissing Jessica Stein , it was made for under $1 million and grossed $7 million at the box office according to one website.
FalconShould there be a Law?
OT from your reply, but regarding movies, how often have you seen a movie in the last several years that was truly original, and not a remake of a previous movie, or based on an existing comic book|novel|classic literature?
Though I'm not sure I'd had to say 6. There's My Life Without Me, Whale Rider, Under The Tuscan Sun, Kissing Jessica Stein, Amelie and The Hours . Well there are more but I don't want to spend much more tyme now this right now.
FalconShould there be a Law?
A copyright term of 14 years, renewable once [if the movie turned out to be good enough to make it worth their while] would be sufficient and will not reduce their innovation.
Ah, just as Thomas Jefferson proposed, but you knew it didn't you?
FalconShould there be a Law?
Sounds like Natalie Portman, though she went to Harvard.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Wanting to see something that costs nothing and being willing to fork over $12 (for me, equal to 2.5 hours of unpleasant work) to see it at the cinema are two very different things. This is just basic economics. For instance I have almost no interest in paying $12 to see the new Romero movie because I am not a big fan of zombie movies. But I may be willing to download it for free and skim through it out of curiosity. No one has lost any money by my (hypothetical) download. A customer only willing to buy with a price of zero is not a customer at all.
This brings up something I've heard overs who download say. What they do is download a song to listen, if they like it then they'll try other songs on the cd and if they like them enough they will go out and buy the cd. With movies, they'll see it at the theatres if they like what they downloaded. Otherwise they won't buy/pay.
FalconShould there be a Law?
30- to 50-year copyrights ARE reasonable. While they certainly benefit megacorporations, they offer the exact same protection and profit potential to individuals. Of course, people who don't create anything but posts on the Internet have a tendency to forget that...
I have to diagree, the reason copyrights exist to encourage creative work, which means the idea is to have more created. Short terms, like Thomas Jefferson had, of 14 years with an extension of another 14 years will do more to spur creation than a term of 50 years I'd bet. Those who are in it for the love will create the same whereas those who do it for money will want to create more so they can make more.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I live in an expensive area (SF Bay) and survive quite comfortably working 20 hrs/week at $15/hr. I spend my other time comosing music, from which I don't expect to profit.
You don't have to be rich to make free art. You just can't expect to become rich making it. And you may have to pass on some other luxuries (giant houses, frequent airplane trips, excessive restuarant dining, new clothes, automobiles, etc.). Artists make choices about what's most important. I think most of us would place time for making art high in our list of priorities!
OK, so if you die and leave a car to your family, then the public gets to use it after x amount of time, right?
No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying that if I buy the car, then I can sell it without paying Ford $1000 to sell my own car.
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