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The Case For Perpetual Copyright
Several readers sent in a link to an op-ed in the NYTimes by novelist Mark Halprin, who lays out the argument for what amounts to perpetual copyright. He says that anything less is essentially an unfair public taking of property: "No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind." This community can surely supply a plethora of arguments for the public domain, words which don't appear in the op-ed. In a similar vein, reader benesch sends us to the BBC for a tale of aging pop performers (virtually) serenading Parliament in favor of extending copyright for recording artists in the UK. Some performers are likely to outlive the current protections, now fixed at a mere 50 years.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
Update: 05/20 22:50 GMT by KD : Podcaster writes to let us know that the copyright reform community is crafting a reply over at Lawrence Lessig's wiki.
thats the stupidest fucking thing ive heard since i started at microsoft
...except for secrets. If you tell me something, it is no longer yours. Everything protection beyond that is a deliberate incentive to create, not a right. Prolonging copyright does not provide a bigger incentive. In my opinion, copyright is already extended too long to work as an incentive: If you can milk old stuff without end, why should you create new stuff?
In exchange for you making your creations public. Society has to benefit, but it was also recognized that without copyright there would be less incentive to work on certain things.
So society promised authors/creators/artist a limited time monopoly as incentive and society gets the benefit of the artwork/creation and later having it in public domain.
Don't forget, having copyright in the first place causes a strain on society. IP is not a natural right. Copyright is a mutually beneficial contract between creators and society. The article's author wants to subvert the contract completely in the favor of one side. In U.S. contract law, for contracts to be valid, both sides have to have had a clear benefit for the contract to be considered valid.
Copyright already has been subverted to the one side so often (copyright extensions) without any clear benefits given for the other side, I would have to start arguing that the contract is not valid anymore. I don't believe anybody is owed rights that place an undue burden on society unless society also benefits in some way. This is not the case here.
If you want your thing protected forever, lock it in a vault, don't let it see the light of day, and don't tell anybody about it. Let it die, along with you eventually.
Strange, in his article Helprin doesn't mention anything about HIM paying royalties to Shakespeare's descendants for his use of the title Winter's Tale for his novel (it is the name of, and a reference to a Shakespeare play). Presumably he should cough up something for the use of a similar plot device too.
No mention either of what he should be paying the descendants of every innovator in printing technology.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Why is it always authors who come down as the hardest advocates of strict copyrights? I'm not trolling, it just seems that among musicians (classical and pop), painters, photographers, etc there is way less of this mentality of locking everything down and severely punishing anyone who steps out of line. It is especially disappointing among sci-fi authors. For instance we had Harlan Ellison suing AOL for the contents of the newsgroups and dragging that out for like 5 years (it could still be going on now for all I know). Then I believe it was SM Stirling (I could have the author wrong) ranting that people who upload his novels to newsgroups deserve to be anally raped in prison. It is sad since these people are supposed to have, you know, a bit of vision. My only guess is authors are so used to getting screwed by their publishers and don't get to interact with their fan base the way a musician might they are led down this RIAA-like path where they feel the only way to protect themselves is to lock things down entirely. Either that or its just all about the money for an author.
Obviously there are exceptions, people like Neil Stephenson have certainly embraced the future (well more like the present).
The author forgets that tangible objects are taxed at their current valuation. Copyrighted objects rarely are. Another minor fact the author missed is even property can be eminent domain'ed away, or if a govt collapses completely, the new govt will likely re-distribute the land. Ask the indians.
Speaking of Disney and copyrights, I found a nice movie about copyrights made from small parts of Disney cartoons on BoingBoing, here.
-- Cheers!
Disney and the other corporations will simply buy the public domain. What was once a public resource will be auctioned off to the highest bidder and people will have to pay. Apparently, denying everyone access to something creates economic value (if you ignore the costs to the public). Sound familiar ? I wonder how long until we will have to pay for the privilege of merely existing in a particular space. All of those roads, sidewalks, and parks could be sold off, and we could implant chips in people to debit their bank accounts to the owners of that property. You already pay rent, isn't it just an extension of the same thing ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind
I agree entirely, there is no good reason to put physical limitations on ideas and doing so degrades them. Good ideas can be immortal, a story is retold, a song is sung, inventions are shared and implemented long after the death of the person who conceived the original. As one candle lights another, ideas flow between people and enrich all. A society that would put unreasonable restrictions on these things will extinguish them. The ultimate reward for any author is recognition and imitation.
Perpetual copyrights will be used to crush people with new stories, songs and ideas. "What is yours next to our collection, which [contains tens of thousands | spans the entire history of recorded music | includes the work of Einstein]?" they can ask before dismissing you. Every day we come closer to losing the right to read.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I think it's more than just a culture committing suicide; perhaps all of humanity is trying to destroy its own free will in favor of a strict rulebook governing what happens and when.
Unlike physical property, "intellectual property" actually infringes upon others' right to think.
Imagine the future. It is clear that some day, maybe soon or maybe distant, we will know how to interface computers directly with the mind. We will quite literally expand our own minds. What is the difference between a book stored in your digital memory and a book stored in someone's birth-given photographic memory? What is the difference between DRM in a computer and DRM in a mind? How can you have preemptive systems that stop the transfer of information without affecting the computers connected to our brains? This is, literally, the path to third-party mind control.
Are we going to have "intellectual" laws that make it illegal to remember something for too long, or too precisely? Will we have laws that make it illegal to communicate something you know? Because, at its base, this is what intellectual property is. It will become more and more evident as humans gain physical control over their own minds.
Greed, however dispicable, is unsurprising.
The copyright is already too long by about 50 years (in the US). I can imagine detailed arguments over the fine details, but 10-20 years is the right range. And corporations should not be allowed to own copyrights, only to license them from the owners for a limited period of time. Also copyrights should die immediately when the owner of the copyright dies. Families don't have any respect for the artistic integrity of the works of authors, so why should they be allowed to control it. (Sometimes I don't like what an author does, and prefer an earlier version of his work, but I respect his right to alter it. I don't respect the grant of that right to the works of dead authors for people who don't bother to read and understand the original. Here I'm thinking of Eric Flint and the incongruous prequels to the Dune series. E.E. Smith, OTOH, did have the right to write "Skylark DuQuesne", however much it mutilated the world of the previous Skylark books.)
I will grant that this will mean that families won't be able to protect the integrity of the works of their ancestors. They don't anyway. They usually don't appear to even understand them. (Christopher Tolkien may understand, but he's not the writer his father was.)
Also, neither Cinderella nor "The Beauty and the Beast" were Walt Disney originals. Finding the original sources, however, has become a challenge. Or try a somewhat tougher one: What were the traditional words and tune to "Geordie" (not the Joan Baez version). The indefinitely extended copyright has caused it to be VERY dangerous to attempt to create music on a traditional basis. Somebody is likely to have copyrighted a part of any variation of it that you can make (which also sounds good). Actually, they're quite likely to have copyrighted the traditional version as their own. Proving this, however, is difficult. A copyright that expires in a reasonable amount of time minimizes this problem (and it's quite reasonable that ressurecting a traditional favorite DOES deserve SOME reward...but not an unending copyright.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Go ahead and skip paying the property taxes (unless you're a church) and see how long it takes the government to take those away.
If you want to treat "intellectual property" the same as physical property, then let's start with taxing it. Even if it doesn't make a profit for you. If you've released it, it goes into Public Domain unless you keep paying the taxes on it.
I actually believe that this would be the best "middle ground" between the the two sides. 99.999% of the stuff published would NOT be valuable enough to keep paying taxes on, year after year after year. Say $5 per item (single song, single story, single program, etc).
The items that ARE that valuable are so valuable that the owners (not necessarily the original producers of the work) can BUY legislation that extends copyright indefinitely for EVERYTHING. Even the 99.999% of stuff that isn't worth it.
I find this suggestion outrageous. My earliest [technical-professional] articles etc came out in 1980, when I was 30. As things stand now, if I die when I'm 70 (i.e. 2020, the copyright won't expire until 2090, 110 years after they were written! That in itself is preposterous. The original term was 17 years with an optional 17 year extension. I have no problem with that stuff being in the public domain now. the purpose of writing it was to communicate information in the first place. If it's not, why bother? Doh.
I'm inclined to suspect that this is a trial balloon floated by the big publishers & Disney-oids to complete the rape of the pubic domain. How long before things like Shakespeare, the Illiad, the Bible, Darwin's work are auctioned off to big money (in return for big campaign contributions) and stolen from the public. Hey Halprin, if you don't like finite copyright, DON'T PUBLISH! Shove it up your ass, instead. That'll fix us. Who are you, anyway, your stuff seems to be almost invisible to Google. One unrated listing on Amazon. Not the next Shakespeare or Toynbee.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
I'm so sorry that he feels he doesn't owe society anything for his "great" works. That without a stable society with culture and intelligence, people wouldn't be buying books or listening to music. Does he gather inspiration for his works of the "spirit and mind" from nothingness? What role does society play in the creative arts?
If you can't stand the thought of society getting something after you are dead, after you so clearly benefited from society. then you are simply an arrogant spoiled human being. Being selfish and having an obsession with ownership are not exactly redeeming qualities.
Profit from your toil while you are alive, then pass that profit on to your children if you wish. But a baker cannot make a loaf of bread and sell it many times over on into many generations. But she can certainly create wealth around baking and establish a business that can sustain her children into old age as long as her children can be smart enough and work hard enough to maintain this means of production.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A lot of the comments here presume that the intent of copyright was to provide people the incentive to be creative. Copyright is nothing of the sort. Copyright was intended as a means to prevent monopolies on publication and distribution. Look it up. The presumption has always been that there will always be artists and creativity and that it's not necessary to provide incentives for creativity.
In fact, in light of the original goals of copyright, it's hard to argue that copyright is even necessasry anymore. Thanks to technology, everyone has the means to publish and distribute their works.
Personally, what I'd like to see is not longer copyrights, but shorter ones that may extended for a period through a for-fee registration process. If you really believed copyrights are intended to provide incentive to create, then they ought to expire quickly so that people need to create more often to reap the benefits. In a practical sense, it's quite rare that a copyrighted work yields profit. Of those that do, most realize their commercial value within 10 years.
I'd also like to see copyrights made non-transferrable rights granted to the author(s). "Works for hire" would cease to transfer copyright away from the author, but rather represent a limited-term exclusive license arrangement (for example, a record company would never own an artist's work, they would just receive a limited term exclusive right to marketing and distribution). Group authorship should be treated as each individual as an original author and a licensee of the work (like a work for hire).
Why is it fair for artists to have a permanent revenue stream based on their copyrights? If copyright is extended permanently, then every year you should have to pay the architect and builders who constructed your house for their work. You should have to pay the company that built your car a fee for their work on your car. If you've ever bought anything from a fast food restaurant, you guessed it, you should have to pay.
Note too that the artist with the perpetual copyright would in fact need to pay a fee to the manufacturer of the paint he or she used. After all, the work that the paint company went through to create the paint needs to be recognized.
If I do some work, I get paid for it once and that's that. What's so special about artistic work that means artists should get paid again and again and again for the same bit of work?No, of course not. He has the right to sell the paintings he paints, and his descendants have the right to sell any paintings he didn't sell in his lifetime. Just as an author has a right to sell the stories he writes. Just as a builder has a right to sell the houses he builds. That's all perfectly fair.
However, I don't believe a painter's descendants have a right to demand money every time someone looks at one of his paintings, and I don't believe an author has a right to demand money every time someone reads a story he wrote. They can make money by doing work and then selling it. If they then want to make more money, they can do more work, just like everybody else has to.And they manage to make a living just fine without perpetual copyrights, so what's the problem?Why? What the hell gives a child the right to earn a living from his parents' work? If you want to have a living, you should have to do your own work and earn your money, not sit back and expect money to roll into your pockets because of someone else's hard work. Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing? What's fair about that?
There are six billion monkeys on this hunk of rock already, and most of them have access to typewriters.
If you don't want to share freely, don't do it at all. You're not a special and unique person, and you have nothing earth shattering to say that would justify participating in a system that restricts access to information and culture based on money for no justifiable reason whatsoever.
If you have so little passion for what you think and so little pride in what you create that you would prefer not to share it with the rest of us unless you are bribed to do so, then I would suggest you go get a job at MacDonalds and spend you free time on the beach working on your tan.
You're just contributing to the ever growing pile of soulless trite commercially driven crap that dulls the mind and obscures the work that has merit anyways. We won't miss you.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth