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."
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Imagine for a minute that some company creates a drug that can cure cancer, AIDS, and a number of other diseases that we can't cure today. The company could choose not to patent this cure in the hopes that no one would be able to discover how it works. If no one could ever figure it out, they could continue to charge whatever they wanted for it, and people would have no choice but to pay or to likely die from their illness.
However, the company can patent it and protect their rights to it for a certain amount of time. If it were 14 years, they would have the sole right to create or allow other people to create the drug. After those 14 years, anyone could freely create the drug. So initially, prices would be high, but after 14 years they would probably hit rock bottom when other companies can undercut the price and get in on the action.
Now which would you rather have, knowledge controled and exploited by the few for as long as it takes someone else to learn that knowledge, or a set amount of time for whoever made the discovery to profit from it before it becomes available for free to everyone.
A patent system allows a winning situation for everyone. Without one, many people wouldn't want to spend time researching a discovery if everyone else will be able to steal it and profit from their hard work. Essentially, the patent system allows for capitalism to work well, provided the patent system isn't screwed up horribly.
...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
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.
That guy has no natural rights to the material. It was meant to protect his incentive to continue creating. With the entertainment industry being the multi-billion-dollar-a-year behemoth that it is, we don't need to protect their incentive any more.
Copyright was also meant to protect the consumer, that is, from other less-inspired legislation that would turn it into some perpetual monopoly ala the crap that goes on in the country we broke away from. As copyright has been mutilated, it has protected the consumer even less. And don't let me get started on how badly it has fucked the historian....
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).
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!
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
No one has any natural right to any possession. Fundamentally, my property is defined by what I can either take and hide, or take and defend by any force I have available.
Government, via "social contract", creates and protects property rights and acts as the sanctioned force used to enforce those rights. The question then becomes, "what defines property, what defines fairness, and what limits and enpowers those rights?"
And that's why there's any argument at all. All the players in the intellectual property game have different and sometimes opposed ideas of roles, rights, and responsibilities. Fairness begins to boil down to "fair to who?", with the answer becoming "whoever can influence government to protect their interest best".
Explicitly, copyright was used to create and protect possession of the intellectual expression of a creator's ideas to allow those creators to profit for a short time by creating artificial scarcity and temporary monopoly. (Ideas and their expressed artifacts, uncaged, tend to flow around and multiply without regard to their creators' wishes to make a buck by them.) This was explicitly intended as incentive to publish, to share with culture the product of a creator's mind. The consumer's "right" to that creator's creation were deliberately circumscribed during the copyright time period. After that, the creation escapes into public domain.
Now, however, the rights of creators (or more specifically, the rights of those media corporate entities who co-opt the creators and wield their rights by proxy) have placed their profit rights well beyond the reasonable scope of incentive and, as you say, into the realm of perpetual monopoly, at the expense of the society which was intended as the primary beneficiary.
Sad, truly sad.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I think you are confusing copyrights and patents. These are two different things. Patent terms have not changed much. Copyright terms have. You cannot say that mickey mouse is helping cure people. Therefore, you arguement is meaningless.
copyrights != patents
yeah, that's about it
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
Let me repeat that since people seem unable to grasp it so often:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...
Promoting the arts is the goal, protecting the rights is the mechanism!
That is only the guise of it all; it's what they use to justify it. It actually doesn't mean a goddamn thing to the people with money. Copyright protects profit. That's all. No RIAA exec really cares about the promotion of arts--if they did, they'd see that art has EXPANDED through the use of piracy, because more people have access to more art, inspiring more people to create future art. Art has little to do with copyright and most pop artists wouldn't know what art is if John Cage walked up to them and smacked them in the mouth... without making a sound.
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this: that you are dreadfully like other people. - James Russell Lowell
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.