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Consumers vs. IP Owners: The Future of Copyright
conJunk writes "The BBC has a thoughtful article about new challenges in copyright. The problem: The rights to the audio recordings of the Beatles first album will expire in 2013. While consumers stand to benefit from competing releases of the materials, the copyright owners are of course terrified. And the artists? This one doesn't even seem to affect them."
Thats the entire point of copyright- a limited monopoly in exchange for greater incentive to produce. It is expected to eventually run out. The problem here isn't that its going to run out, the problem is that its been over 40 years and it hasn't run out already!
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
To get the laws changed. More than enough time. Ask Disney.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Please, stop using the words "owner", owns" etc. when you're talking about copyright and similar things. For that matter, please stop talking about "intellectual property", too - there is nothing here that's property or being owned.
What copyright *is* is a time-limited monopoly granted by the state, with the expectation that you will use this incentive to create stuff that society as a whole benefits from; it's not and never was supposed to be a never-ending money making machine.
Using words like "property" and "own" to describe copyright just reinforces the (wrong) idea that copyrights should not ever run out in the minds of the general, uninformed public.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Limited copyright is an essential element to maintaining a consistent creative human spirit. By allowing works to be protected for a limited amount of time, the artist can comfortably turn some profit on their creation. But by allowing that protection to lapse, another creator can pick up the work of the original artist and manipulate it, turning it into something different. The whole of human creativity depends on building upon the works of others.
It's pretty frightening to think about the incredible lengths that IP holders are going to these days to increase the length of copyright ever further, all in the name of limited, short-term profits. They represent an immeasurable threat. Think about it: if copyright never expired, where would the motivation to innovate come from? There would be none, if you could indefinitely profit from one or two ideas.
Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig has some very enlightened analysis on this subject.The Constitution reserves for Congress the power to secure "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
A lot of copyright problems would obviated if this were enforced as written. The Beatles' works for instance would be controlled by Sir Paul and Ringo. Mickey Mouse would be in the public domain because his inventor and author is dead. Bands, not labels, would control their music. Inventors, not IP holding corporations, would control their inventions.
You cannot sign away your inherent legal rights--no matter how many contracts I sign with you, it does not allow you to act fraudulently or negligently toward. Imagine if copyright worked the same way--if it were illegal to sign away your copyright. A lot of bullshit would be avoided IMO.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This about those who would treat copyright as a pure property right vs. those who don't. Almost everybody who wants copyright treated as a pure property right doesn't create anything. They are a publisher or corporation who aggregates the copyrights of all its employees, or some other entity concerned with the accumulation of coprights.
Accumulating an asset that has a built in time when it becomes utterly worthless is a very unpleasant proposition. It is much nicer and more convenient to treat the asset as some sort of durable good like a box of bolts or something. In fact, copyright has the potential for being the perfect asset since it doesn't decay at all!
But, the people who do create know that being able to create relies on a rich environment of ideas to draw from. Treating copyrights as a pure asset destroys that environment and creates an environment where the only things that get created are those the primary holders of copyrights are willing to allow to be created.
It really irritates me when I see the word 'consumer' when I hear talk about copyrights. There are no 'consumers', there are people. Everybody writes things and says stuff, and many people sing or dance or make up silly lyrics or any number of things.
This isn't about 'consumers', those incredibly dumb entities that eat products and shit cash. Casting it as that kind of a fight is inane.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Copyrights on songs by the Beatles are about to run out but Robert Jonhsnon's lyrics are still copyrighted? Robert Johnson died during the 1930s and his works should be public domain but apparenlty aren't. And who owns the copyright anyhow? It damn well can't be his heirs because he didn't have any (legitimately that is... you know how bluesmen are). Is Robert Johnson's work relevant now? Ask Eric Clapton. And since they aren't RJ's heirs why should they have the copyrights anyway? I mean, I can understand Janie Hendrix having the copyright to Jimi's work but someone unrelated to him decades from now?
As to the Beatles copyright holder being terrified... too bad. Want to make money? Do something! I haven't been living comfortably off something someone else did for decades, why should you? Why should anyone be able to do something like write a song or a book and live off it their whole lives when the rest of us can't live off a few months of work our whole lives? That's why the entire system is completely screwed. I don't know how many times every day it's pounded into our heads "think of the artists" but if they've made plenty of money off of something already why should I care? Not only that but some corporation can apparently just take the copyright to a dead man's work and keep it out of the public domain decades after it should've passed into that as well. The original 14 years is plenty of time and no one but the heirs of someone should be able to have the copyright after their death. It may be legal but as far as I'm concerned this is just copyright theft.
Think about that the next time someone calls file-sharers thieves. Legally, a corporation can own the copyright long after the person who made the work is dead. They can legally steal from us, the people, but we can't legally steal anything back.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Precise discussion about law uses words defined in the letter of the law. The statute in question, 17 USC 101 et seq., defines and uses the phrase "copyright owner".
This important distinction bolsters the grand-parent's point (well regarding the term intellectual property at least). One may own the copyright to a piece of creative work, but one does not own the idea. (Of course one may own any expression fixed in a tangible medium, because then we are talking about property.)
There is no property in expressions and ideas. The term "intellectual property" is loaded in terms of public debate.
I'm not debating your valid point that copyrights can be owned and have owners in the same sense that any monopoly may be owned and traded.
Anyhow, if we're going to go with the language of the statute we're all going to stop saying "IP holders", "IP owners" and "music owners" and start saying "copyright holders" or "monopolists" (or "exclusive, time-limited rights holders"). Well that will never happen, because the moderators of public debate are the monopolists (i.e., corporate media). YAY!
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Which is a sad state of affairs. When I was a kid, people talked and wrote about the "copyright holder", not "copyright owner".
Copyright is a limitted monopoly, granted by the public. If you are given one, you get to hold it for a number of years, after which, the monopoly is disolved, and the work becomes part of the public domain.
At least, that is how I remember how things used to be. I am sure whoever sponsored changing the language from "holder" to "owner" was intentionally slanting the language in this war of perception, much like the push to stop calling things "infringement" and instead "theft".