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Optimum Copyright Period Decided by Math
An anonymous reader writes "So how long should a copyright be valid for? A Cambridge student has stepped into the discussion with a dispassionately calculated estimate of the optimal period a copyright should be granted. Ars' point of view: 'Neither the US nor the UK are in any danger of rethinking copyright law from scratch, but if they were looking for guidance in how to set up their systems, Pollock has it. He develops a set of equations focused specifically on the length of copyright and uses as much empirical data as possible to crunch the numbers. The result? An optimal copyright term of 14 years, which is designed to encourage the best balance of incentive to create new work and social welfare that comes from having work enter the public domain (where it often inspires new creative acts).' The original paper is available (pdf) online."
That the founders of the United States were geniuses... or lucky bastards.
The optimum copyright period is decided by Disney.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
My daddy had a hit song on the radio, so I deserve to never work a day in my life!
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When formulating policy the key variable to consider should be social value, which is the sum of commercial value and user value, rather than commercial value alone (in economist's terminology: welfare rather than national income).
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When looking at the value of knowledge goods in general, and the public domain in particular, policy makers should take account of the value generated by complementary products and services.
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Historically, innovation policy, particularly in relation to intellectual property, is characterized by extensive rent-seeking activity and significant imbalances in power. It is important that this be taken into account in policy making, for example by the provision of a clear set of principles that could safeguard groups that are poorly represented (such as the general public). The public domain while very important to society tends to lack a concentrated set of stakeholders to defend it, compared, for example, to the copyright-based industries.
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For some of the categories of works currently covered by copyright, for example music, the introduction of open access along with some form of alternative compensation system promises to deliver significant gains both to creators and to consumers.
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Access and preservation of older copyrighted works is a significant problem and should be addressed. This could be done in several, potentially complementary ways, including: introduction of a registration requirement, orphan works provisions, and a reduction in copyright term.
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In areas such as open source software and technology standards the first principle should be "do no harm". In particular, it is imperative that policy makers maintain, and strengthen, the exclusion of software and business methods from patentability.
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Make public sector information open. This is one of the most direct, and straightforward actions governments can take in promoting the public domain, and it is one that the available evidence suggests will have large benefits both to industry and to the general public.
He also attempts to show through economic theory that "that a dominant firm may engage in considerable expenditure to maintain its position and the welfare consequences of so doing may be considerable.Also interesting is that he conjectures that the burden of proof of ownership in intellectual property should be placed on those attempting to acquire the IP, not anyone else.
He has a paper detailing a model where innovation occurs without intellectual property in an attempt to show that the assumption regarding IP's relationship to innovation is false.
Very interesting stuff, to say the least, most of it quite logical which means, of course, that it will be completely ignored by politicians and policy makers.
My work here is dung.
...a dispassionately calculated estimate If only all important political discusions and decisions could use techniques like this. It's refreshing to see someone take some of the "but artists are starving and may soon be forced to eat babies" out of the debate.Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
The lest optimum copyright period is decided by Mugabe.
Since we know that Disney (and others) will lobby against anything other than their eternal copyrights, we need to plan for that.
If you have have property that you want protected, then you should PAY for that protection after the standard protection period has expired.
99%+ of book titles won't be sold 15 years after their release. So there's no financial incentive for their authors to protect them. But with Disney and others, their "property" is worth millions of dollars. So charge them 5% of the estimated value. Every year.
If you are an author and you want to keep protecting your book, are you willing to pay 5% a year of the sales from the last year? Or should it be 1%?
Otherwise it falls into the Public Domain.
Somebody suggests something that's on middle ground and reasonable to both sides. Watch him catch flak from both sides for not seeing it Their Way and therefore Wrong.
It opens with: We also survey the activity of Microsoft in order to put flesh on the bones of theory and to provide motivation for the model. The behaviour of Microsoft has now, in consequence of the antitrust suit, been the subject of voluminous comment1. There has been significant dispute among economists over the facts of the case, their economic interpretation, and most importantly of all, the ramifications for antitrust conduct and enforcement. An element central both to the Judge's analysis of the case and to subsequent discussions has been the, so-called, 'applications barrier to entry' (ABE) and strategic behaviour by Microsoft to maintain the barrier. Sorry, I don't know how I missed putting that link in there.
Most books (not talking about the superstars here) are out of print within 3 years. Most publishers, maintain the copyright on the book until it is no longer in print (or something like that). Then the copyright reverts back to the original author. However most publishers won't admit it is no long in print for years and years after it is long gone.
Most authors have no problem with making copyright much shorter. I've heard values as low as 3 years, with 5 to 10 being the usual suggestion. It's only the Disney's and other superstars of the publishing world that want copyright longer then the normal human lifespan.
42 years!
is he might be made to disappear/not exist like how they did to DeLorean when he left GM. (w00t, first car analogy :P )
I find quite ironic that people capable of understanding a 30-pages plain-text article full of mathematical formulas still cannot understand the difference between copyright and patents. :)
They're not deciding anything, they're just following the good old nuclear fusion approach:
It's just twenty years away
The headline is misleading, there is no mathematics in the manuscript,only economics. If submitted to a mathematics journal in its current form the paper would be most likely rejected; however it is publishable in an economics journal. The style of the manuscript is not that of a mathematician but of an economist. The asumptions are not set in an axiomatic way and no theorems are formulasted or proven. He employs elementary mathematical techniques used by economists (optimizations, etc) which are closer to accounting than to real mathematics.
Although the process is slow, policy makers do eventually catch up with new realities. Or rather, they retire and die and are replaced by younger minds that think differently.
What we're looking at, IMO, is the transition of social, economic, and finally, political power from the industrial revolution to the digital revolution. People like Rufus are today defining the theoretical basis for laws that will be enacted in twenty or fifty years' time.
What is happening, broadly is that a new society is forming around the digitalisation of culture. This society is vast and now includes perhaps half the world's population (3bn SIM cards are in use globally). The new society drives new businesses like Google and Ebay, and in a decade, this digital economy will have become more important than the industrial economy. And at some stage the digital economy will reach for political power.
This happened before, in the industrial revolution, and at that time the old upper class - landowners - tried to stop the growth of the new industrial middle class with laws like the Corn Laws. They ultimately failed, and the urban middle class finally got the vote.
My prediction is that the digital revolution will culminate in a transfer of power from the old political / industrial elite (who are the ones that made today's copyright and patent laws) to a new elite that will create new models of property that suit it much better.
It is feasible to already implement 14-year copyright today, by private contract. E.g. this could be implemented in a GPL-style license. It may be that private legal systems like the GPL become the laws of tomorrow.
Rufus has done a brilliant work in turning the "more is better" dogma of IP upside down and giving us a tool to quantify exactly what is needed.
My blog
Incidentally, 14 years is what the US law used to stipulate a long time ago! I guess people were using their brains a lot more back then.
In Soviet Russia, copyright optimizes you!
Isn't keeping 95% of your sales better than not having any sales? I mean, even if you're only selling $5,000 worth of merchandise annually, it might be worth renewing through this scheme so that you can keeping get (most) of that $5k. I'd suggest modifying your scheme with a flat fee of a few thousand dollars plus 5% of revenue, or something like that.
Of course, all of this assumes that the copyright is mainly intended to protect sales, and although that's probably the case for most instances, it's not the case for all instances.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Not sure how someone can "calculate" an optimum when so many of the variables are not hard facts, but opinion.
For example, let's take "Spiderman." Spiderman has been around a lot longer than 14 years, and recently Sony has made a ton of money for Marvel and its own investors with three hit movies. If Spiderman had already fallen into the public domain, those films might not have been made, and therefore that wealth not generated. Increased wealth for moviemakers benefits the public because it enables moviemakers to create other films the public will enjoy, which increases public welfare (Pollock's "W" variable).
Disney$$$>math
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
First of all, it points out that what is optimal for one medium (writing) might not be optimal for another (photography), even if in this case it might be. Secondly, if you have an old photograph of your parents, grandparents, etc., that you want to copy, you shouldn't have to worry about tracking down copyright permissions.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
We see dozen of example every day. To have the most creativity from an pop music "artist", you need to have them produce everything they can within 2 years then trash them.
/.ers understand something as simple as:
The reason is simple:
-before one year, they arent that cool anymore.
-after 2/3 years, megalomania and cocaine had destroyed most of their tallent and they apprear more often in the tabloid than in the charts.
after 5/10 years, the lucky/clever ones flip burgers in Alabama, the other ones now being homeless crack whores and even the worst tabloid won't make a line on any of them, except maybe if he dies in a very funny way.
MAFIAA producer already know these facts for decades, why couldn't higly educated
1- Buy copyrights from the artists for next to nothing
2- Make them work like slaves while they're cool then dump them
3- $$$$
Forgive me for not having read the fine article, but I even think 14 years is a relatively long time. For software, 14 years is like eternity. It seems to me that you can't put one final period to all kinds of innovation. Pharmaceuticals, software or mechanical devices are all very different in terms of development, research, testing, productizing. Regulation bodies in certain domains are more rigorous than that they are in others. To me, any study that shouts "14 years" is just the same as it is saying "it's green"!
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Hardly worth making OSS if I can never make any money from it. By following that example you wouldn't be able to post this on slashdot.
Well, gee what about Shakespear, Bethoven, and Mozart? They actually were brilliant, and their works have lived on for hundreds of years.
Those albums are great - but I doubt they'll be playing 200 years from now. I mean, how often to you hear "I've got a lovely bunch of Coconuts" on the radio?
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Hardly worth making more music if you have a perpetual copyright on earlier works. Why take any risk?
I don't know, but I feel that as long as you use/enforce it semi-regularly, you should be able to keep it, but copyrighted material shouldn't be allowed to die in obscurity.
To make a parallel of the gaming world (which is relevent, copyright is copyright), it would be freakishly weird to see Sony and Microsoft be allowed to make Mario and Zelda games already, but at the same time, obscure games from 25 years ago that no one hears of anymore should be freely available as ROMs, its too late to just come back and say "oups, I want to sell that game again on the Wii's VC!".
So as long as you use it, its yours, and if you don't for X (short) amount of times, its everyone's. I'm sure there are flaws with this, but it would be a start, and make everyone happy, to some extent.
Please remit 5 rubles via Paypal to yakovsmirnoff@hotmail.com or face his hilarious wrath!
When it comes to "optimal," we have to consider more than just two parties, what the layman would call "the producer" and "the consumer." In an area as complex as content creation, copyright definitely harms more people than it helps. Many people will say that copyright helps "the producer," but in reality the monopoly of force that copyright provides helps the distributors more than the producer. It harms the consumer (prevents them from using their talents as they decide their time is worth), it harms other producers who also are restricted in how they can use their time most optimally as judged by themselves. It also hurts the original producer because many distribution markets are monopolized because of copyright.
Look at what Prince just did -- he disturbed the distribution monopoly's hold on music sales, and they're PO'd about it. Instead of hoping for sales for an album he knows is already online and in the hands of fans, he used the music he created as a "loss leader" to drive sales to a market he can control -- his own time. Instead of hoping to make millions on an album (which anyone can copy, using their own time, their own equipment), he can now make millions selling something unique -- HIS time in front of his fans.
Albums are quickly becoming marketing structures to get people to attend your live performances. Many new bands give away their music via MySpace and PureVolume in hopes of getting people to come to their shows -- where they make the actual dollars doing actual labor on an ongoing basis.
I'm an artist, and I produce some musical acts myself. I've convinced most, if not all, to tell their crowds to go and copy the album they buy at the show for friends, so that the band has a bigger pull the next time they're in town. My own brother's band, Maps & Atlases, is now doing that to great acclaim (MTV2, college radio, and a large tour pending) with hopes of making their money on beer cuts, T-shirt sales, etc. Copyright is useless to them. They won't sign a contract to the various labels chasing them unless they are allowed to distribute their music in any way they want (including Torrent, free MP3 on their sites, etc).
What is optimal is a market that a producer and a consumer can both dictate what terms they want for a transaction. If an item has the chance to be infinitely available, the cost drops to zero. CDs can theoretically be nearly-infinitely available today. The cost should be close to zero. The time an artists can serve their fans is not infinitely zero (at least not in a live performance, face to face). This is where money can, and should, be made. That is optimal for all.
Imagine if copyright lasts only for 14 years, Microsoft could use all GPL'ed code written before 1993.
Lots of physicists, chemists, engineers, economists, biologists write down equations and solve them yet they do not do math but stuff in their own area of research. In general for them mathematics is not enough, it is just a tool among many others and many times not the most important tool.
Saying that a physicist or an economist using equations for studying their own problems do math is equally offending both for mathematicians and natural scientists; all areas of research are equally important and deserve equal credit.
I am a theoretical physicist doing research on genetics and I am surprised and shocked if laymen call me a mathematician (it happens now and then, for example while writing equations during a flight). It takes much more being a mathematician than writing long equations on a sheet of paper!
In the US, the lifetime of copyright is decided by Disney.
In Soviet Russia, the lifetime of Disney is decided by copyright.
Strange... did our economy turn into communism? I kinda feel this might hold some water here, too...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
work copyrights you
Bite my shiny metal ass.
How about using the money for paying down the national debt. Oh wait that's about as much of a pipe dream in this country as actually getting copyright reform passed that isn't bought and paid for by large companies.
We shouldn't simply assume that just because the author used math, (and we like his conclusion, ) that his conclusions are accurate.
1. The author built a mathematical model of the world.
2. Then he performed (presumably) valid math within that model.
3. But generally, all models simplify, often over-simplify, the thing they describe.
4. So even if all his math is valid, his results may be inaccurate.
We also can't simply ignore the fact that the objective function he was trying to maximize embodies a particular notion of what "good" is. But we know that the idea of "good" varies from person to person, even amongst Slashdot'ers, in major ways. So just because we like the fact that he used math, and we like his advocacy of shorter copyright, we maybe should seriously disagree with his conclusion of "about 14 years" being optimal.
Remember that with a 14 year copyright, copyleft licenses such as GNU GPL would cease to apply. As a result, this software would become public domain after 14 years.
I haven't thought it through, but this doesn't strike me as a bad thing.
This is nothing new. William Landes and Richard Posner (two U Chicago Law Professors) made almost the exact same claim in 2002. See it for yourself here: Indefinitely Renewable Copyright
Why not? Many films are made based on stories that are in the public domain.
The situation is exactly the opposite from what you mention. Being in the public domain makes it easier to create derived works, since no licensing is needed.
Using masth: almost everybody does this, physicists, engineers, economists, biologists, chemists, even laymen balancing their checks
Doing math: very few people do that, usually trained mathematicians
But in the real world, pretty much all political questions (including this one) are about values and morals. There's no scientific answer to them.
well at least there was some method for coming up with this number-- beats just pulling a number out of someones asshole.
Does modifying a work affect its copyright date? If I update a piece of software 7 years after I release it, would the copyright on the entire work be let up 7 years later? or would version 2 be considered a seperate work and be copyrighted for another 14 years with the first version falling out of protection halfway through that term? I worded that kind of crappily but you get the idea. Under this scheme would some of the older parts of Linux no longer be protected while the newer parts are protected?
Don't any of you get it? Infinite, retroactive copyright extension is the ONLY way to enrich our cultural heritage of creative works. If the rights-holding corporations like Disney ever lose control of their money-making "intellectual properties", then some day they are likely to go bankrupt (fiscally, that is). And when that happens in our bleak dystopian future, their angry stock-holders will seize a time machine, go back to the 1920s, and convince Walt to never create his characters in the first place, since it clearly won't be a worthwhile investment of his effort.
Sheesh, why do I have to spell this stuff out for you people? It's the only logical conclusion.
People always assume that anything that lasted for that long must be genius but remember the barrier for entry for composing and writing was comparitively much higher during the period these artists worked. These artists from an objective point of view could have such longevity jsut because there are so few extant examples from their time period.
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
Actually, it looks to me like just a variation of the popular "have a pre-conceived result you want to reach, then massage logic and numbers to reach it." In this case, outright proposing "my formula says get rid of IP completely" (which he seems to be busy arguing the rest of the time) would have looked suspicious, while "hey, the original 14 year idea was right, let's go back to that" is something that's actually very easy to swallow. So let's massage the maths to support that.
I'm sorry, I'll
A) have trouble taking someone seriously as doing dispassionate objective maths when the rest of the time they're on a crusade against copyright and copyright extensions. It's akin to trusting a Sony fanboy to give you a scientific and dispassionate estimate as to which console is the best. But more importantly,
B) the data he feeds into those formulas is based on guessed numbers. E.g., for the rate of decay, depending on who you choose to believe, in his own paper the estimates range from 2% to 10%. He chooses 5% as the number to go with, but the important thing to realize is that it's just a guess. The accuracy of that number is remarkably low.
To give you an example of how inacurate that is: for something that decays by 2% per year, after 16 years you've lost only almost 28% of the original value. At 5%, after 16 years you've lost 56% of the original value. At 10% in 16 years you've lost 81% of the value. (I'm using 16 instead of 14 just because I'm too lazy to do more than press the X^2 button in xcalc 4 times. Should be enough for example purposes.) The effects being literally exponential, such a wild inaccuracy is multiplied incredibly. You can produce a wildly different "ideal number of years" by just choosing slightly different guessed numbers to input in those formulas.
C) I see nowhere a calculation of the error margins. As a corolary of B, what's more interesting for such a calculation with wildly guessed numbers isn't just one value reached with the most likely guess, but what is the _interval_ of plausible results. If you've fed data which could be anything between 2% and 10%, then what is the result for 2% and what is the result for 10%, for a start. Don't give me the result just for 5%. And that's just one of the values there.
Basically what I'm saying is that even if you trust the formulas to be correct, the insanely large intervals of believable values means you can get almost any number you want to get there, just by picking different guessed numbers. You can use the same formula to get any number between 2-3 years (if you chose to believe everything devalues extremely fast, and everything creates incredible value in derivative works) to well over 50 years (if you choose to go by the idea that even though some crap devalues faster, the most deserving protection are the masterworks that devalue very slowly.) Pick your own pre-conceived number in that range, and there's a valid set of guessed numbers that produces it.
Anyway, it's used all the time. E.g., if you work in most large corporations, you must have seen at least one (but more likely dozens) of baffling decisions that go somewhat like this:
How it's supposed to look from the outside: some manager (A) saw that problem X exists and is really a problem, (2) analyzed which products solved that problem, (3) made a list of features and performance characteristics, put them in numbers, and assigned them weights according to their importance in the actual case at hand, (4) dispassionately calculated the weighted score for all of them, and (5) the result happens to say that, objectively, product Y from supplier Z is the perfect choice.
What really happened: was that the manager had already decided that he wants product Y or just to buy something from company Z, for entirely other reasons. Often (but not always) he even had to scratch his head to figure out a problem X that fits that solution. At any rate, from there the analyzed features and their weights are juggled and massaged until product Y ends up on top. There you go, now the cold dispassionate numbers support it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's not like either of us copied your idea. I will even assume that he didn't copy my idea, because my idea was a flat fee after 20 years instead of a percentage (which makes much more sense). Maybe next time you can patent your idea, (we'll call it the intelligent reform of IP law Patent) and then sue everyone else who thinks of your simple, logical idea.
On a serious note, I do think that a system like this is the best way to deal with copyright madness. Because of the Berne convention it really needs to be a flat fee after 50 years, but even that would free up works written/filmed up to the 1950s. Basically, though, this system would open up a lot of IP and still keep Disney and similar companies reasonably happy- they can afford spending a few million dollars a year to protect Mickey Mouse, as it's only slightly more expensive than buying congressmen anyway.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
"Hardly worth" ???
For such artists, 14 years from their first album is long enough to grow from obscurity to superstardom, become stinking rich, stop making music, and then die of drug overdose. Heck, some of them could do that in a single year.
I am exaggerating a bit, but really, if an album is worth making at all, then it is worth making even if you can make money from it for a couple years. Can't (and don't) they make new albums during 14 years ? In fact, such rules would make a financial motivation for them to keep creating further artworks all the time - and that's a Good Thing(tm).
included in the calculation. This is the only reason that the copyright period was extended in the first place. Copyright is no longer about giving the artist a period to profit before the work goes into the public domain. It is a now used to ensure that the work never enters the public domain so that the company that holds the copyright (the artist isn't really part of the equation anymore) can continue to profit.
Two completely facetious and irrelevant statements:
Wealth was generated for the companies involved in making, distributing, and showing the movies. Dismissing it as simply redistributed is silly. That's like complaining when someone says, "I made a chair," telling them, "No you didn't, you simply rearranged some wood, nails, and lacquer into the shape of a chair."
Technically, society would be just fine without all movies, books, music, and other forms of art, but it certainly wouldn't be better off. That's a baseless opinion that has absolutely no relevance at all. Unless you're arguing that copyright terms should be based on how good or bad a movie or other copyrighted work is, in which case, since the vast majority of the country happens to disagree with your assessment of these movies, I suppose the copyright for them should last pretty much indefinitely.
What was the point you were trying to make, anyway? I'm just curious.
Well, I do not really follow the sales of "Smells like teen spirit", but for some odd reason I don't think they're so incredibly high anymore...
... then again... considering just how many crappy cover versions clog our radio today, maybe it's a blessing that it ain't that easily done...
If anywhere an effectively unlimited copyright makes no sense, it's music. Someone could take a bad song and actually make a good one out of it. Or build on top of it.
But
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The article claims to maximize "welfare" by maximizing production of works. Why not simply force the producers to produce, by threatening their lives ? Oh the welfare of the producers would diminish ? By how much ? How do you compare the welfare of different people ?
There is no such thing as "welfare". Copyright is a matter of *right*, not of regulation. The article also omits to mention the cost of enforcement which can be tremendously high.
\u262D = \u5350
I have never heard of this notion 'economic theorem'. Anyway I think that the word 'theorem' should be exclusively used in mathematics.
Regarding the use of mathematics, another post on this thread emphasizes that 'using masthematics' is not the same as 'doing mathematics'. Physicists, economists, engineers, do not do mathematics, they use it.
Real math ? for example analytic number theory, functional analysis, topology and other high stuff like that. Elementary arithmetic is definitely not real mathematics. Balancing a check is not real mathematics, accounting is not real mathematics, computing the square root of 7 is not real mathematics
Actually, I have a proposal of my own that doesn't involve setting any numbers in stone.
Before I start, let me define the assumptions and problem, the way I see it. My problem isn't money. I'm perfectly OK with the creators receiving adequate compensation for their work. My problem is the fact that copyright is (intentionally or accidentally) used to bury some books or movies alive. Someone can buy the copyright to something just to stop more copies from being made, or in Disney's case to prevent some embarassing old cartoons from being seen. I'm sorry, but that was not the spirit of copyright law.
In other words, my purpose is to make sure that a work remains available to everyone, and doesn't effectively exit the culture. It shouldn't be possible to "unpublish" a work, and certainly not possible to use copyright law to that effect.
So my own idea of a "fair" proposal is to basically let everyone decide how long they want to keep selling it, for no more than the original price modified by inflation.
I'm not even putting any restrictions on the choice of medium, other than that it must be usable by the average person at the time. So a book could be on paper, or PDF, or scanned, or whatever they choose, as long as you can still buy it from the copyright holder. Music, well, it better not come on phonograph cylinders: digitize it to CD, or make an MP3 out of it, or whatever. Anything that a modern computer or home entertainment centre can play, really. Movies, ditto: if it only exists on some cinema reels, well, then it either should still be possible to buy cinema tickets to see it, or digitize it to MPEG/DVD/whatever. Etc.
Entirely reasonable restriction, I should think, since the purported purpose of copyright law is to encourage creating works for the use of the general public. If the general public can't use that work, then we're already outside that intended scope and effect.
But the keyword is: keep selling it. The moment something becomes unavailable for more than, say, 1 year, then it should immediately and irrevocably become public domain.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
How about some economic and philosophical proof that copyright and patent cause technological and artistic stagnation in absolutely every case? What about proof that contrary to the original Constitutional justification for copyright and patent, to promote and advance science and the arts, the actual result is the exact opposite of the Constitutional justification?
/. complaining about people "stealing" their work are in absolutely every case similarly copying the work of others. They didn't invent the programming languages they program in. They're using someone else's work to create new work. Imagine if it was illegal to write new programs because code and the programming language were "copyrighted". It's quite obvious how much poorer society would be if we used copyright and patent violence to prohibit others from working in new ways, or prohibit others from copying others, just like they do when they live in homes with windows and doors.
I just have to laugh at all those who think "copying" is a bad word. All these programmers on
If you want to do an economic or mathematical analysis, you start with the super simple observation that violent offensive force is necessary to prohibit others from copying. It's an imposition of silence. By definition, forcing people to be silent, forcing people to be deaf, dumb, and blind to what exists is a net poorer society.
There isn't a single person alive, nor will they ever be a single person alive, that is not copying others. Copyright and patent are the exact same thing as the childish game of "jinx", with bigger and badder violence backing up the claims.
How many remixes have been forsaken? How many movie spin offs and new creative stories involving copyrighted characters have been supressed? Would the gaming world be better off if nobody could copy the format of "increasing stats" and "random number generators"? All these big massive mmmorpg games raking in the hundreds of millions are copying each other, increasing competition, giving consumers better quality for a lower price. How much more cumbersome and less simple are computer programs because people have to tip toe around legal minefields? How much time and energy and resources are absolutely wasted with legal shenanigans?
A 14 year optimal compromise? How about some proof that 1 second is too long? Every great innovation has "stood upon the shoulders of giants", has copied. The greatest gift those of the 21st century could give to themselves and to future generations is a constitutional ammendment banning all copyright and patent protection. Everyone would be instantaneously wealthier (nobody can produce more content than they receive in return) and the rate of technological and artistic advancement would soar.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Call me crazy, but I've always had this dream where important parts of my generation's culture entered into the public domain while I'm still alive, allowing other people to contribute said culture. That said, 14 years (28 with an optional extension) sounds like a great idea.
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
They were neither geniuses or lucky bastards - they were thieves. That figure of 14 years in the Copyright Act of 1790 was most likely copied - no, STOLEN - from England's Statute of Anne, dating to 1709. What a blatant violation of intellectual property!
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Actually, it does:
Now, this is a different kettle of fish entirely:
What you're arguing in effect precludes any notion of objective truth, since every assertion is either an assumption or based on other things that are. And every person who argues anything at all has some personal biases. However this doesn't make his arguments empty or imply they must be biased by his personal preferences. This is a familiar position to me from arguing with my postmodernist friends. I'm not against postmodernism, Like Milton, I think any idea is healthy food for a strong and healthy mind. Yet I find that people exclusively educated in that style lack a certain respect for the value of data. And how we handle data is very important to whether we are being dispassionate or not.
This is one of the big problems with the modern media: it cannot distinguish balancing facts from balancing opinions. If they feature a evolutionary biologist, they "balance" that by presenting a creationist, as if their views were equally valid alternatives. In part this is driven by economics: weighing facts is much harder and slower than trotting out somebody who simply disagrees. We're talking about the difference between building something with legos and building them with raw stock and a machine shop.
The problem with strong emotions is that they narrow our ability to process information. In the grip of passions, we unconsciously filter out data which would alter our emotional state. When we're angry, we ignore data that would calm us and focus on data that makes us angrier. When we're fearful, we focus on data that scares us and disregard data that would make us feel safe.
So a dispassionate argument is not one that has no viewpoint; it is one that is impartial with the facts. It may discount certain facts and place greater significance on others, but it does so consciously with an identifiable justification. It is therefore negatable by negating its justifications and altering its selection of facts.
For that matter non-biased doesn't mean right either. It is quite possible to disagree with the conclusions of a dispassionate and unbiased argument, provided that you (a) have facts available to you that the person arguing does not or (b) disagree with explicit assumptions the person is working with.
Example: people who believe in intellectual property as a fundamental but alienable right (like most people consider the right to personal property) might well agree with every fact in this paper. But if they disagree with the assumption that copyright is about maximizing utility, the argument while valid, is wrong. It wouldn't matter if he showed that copyright terms of any age were automatically harmful to the public good because their assumptions is that the public good does not take precedence over individual property rights in any situation.
Now we all engage in wishful thinking, in which we can have our cake and eat it too. We can believe that rights are paramount, but that pursing individual rights always maximizes public utility. Or vice versa. But this is biased, passionate thinking. We have a powerful, unjustifiable and implicit axiom at work, which is that our preferred approach can give us everything we wish for. That is when we should be called out for bias.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
His distain for pure mathematics,
and his unique geometrical insight,
left him well-equipped to face those demons down.
He saw that infinite complexity,
could be described by simple rules.
He used his giant brain and he turned the game around.
--Jonathon Coulton
On the other hand, the surviving members of Nirvana wouldn't have to ask Courtney Love for permission to do anything with works they, and not she, co-created.
I'm an anti-copyright activist (as much as my time allows, anyway), but I know very well that the extinction of copyright is something that probably won't happen before I die (legally, at least).
What's the alternative then? For the time being, I really think the most feasible solution would be a system of renewable copyright. Make it so that any copyrighted work can have its copyright renewed after 'n' years if and as long as the holder thinks it's worth the effort, with the first renewal being free and subsequent renewals costing progressively more (in real valuation, already taking inflation into account), without an upper limit. This way, works whose authors don't mind becoming public domain will enter it pretty fast, and those that are valuable will also at some point enter the public domain once the renewal costs more than the profit that could be made from it.
Doing this wouldn't damage the huge corporations (Disney) who already spend tons of money in extending their own copyrights through lobbying, so they would have no reason to oppose it, while at the same time solving most of the problems seen in the current system. Why don't we start defending this instead of just complaining about the extension copyright currently has?
Let "them" have their Mickey Mouse, Jerry Lewis, Madonna and Luke Skywalker, I don't care. My problem is with the rare books, videos and musics that for no good reason won't be legally available to me for decades upon decades upon decades...
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
That optimal copyright period of 14 years is nearly exactly the minimum length of a human generation. The last generation's pop content is the next generation's folklore. By the time the next generation has it, more of its value has been produced by its consumers, repeating and referring to it, than by its producers.
I note that the original US copyright period was 17 years. That period was also consistent with a human generation in the late 1700s, when the American government recognized marriage at about age 16, and the first birth of the next generation about a year later. After a couple of centuries, marriage is not as firmly recognized as the limit to human reproduction, so the biological minimum is more the controlling period.
How about some US Conservative politicians, who publicly worship the wisdom of the founders, rewriting US copyright law according to some "originalist" principles, instead of just whatever today's lobbyist writes them in the envelope with the unmarked dollars?
--
make install -not war
interesting indeed. I don't really think that it would matter though, as far as the GPL is concerned. The GPL exists mainly as a weapon, a weapon which we only need because of the situation which "they" (Disney or whoever...) have got us into. It exists because we don't want what we do to become part of a tool of oppression of ideas. So really the first issue fades a little. We could worry a lot less if everyone was playing by fair rules of the game - a shorter copyright would benefit us all so I'm sure people would be happy.
The second issue also is not so much of an issue because of the open source method. People are free to use the source code, look at it, etc. Public domain does give you more rights so someone might have an interest in looking through the code to pull out the Public Domain stuff - but thats not really our problem (maybe it might be nice to include a more detailed history of when each section was last amended). So long as the whole lot wasn't in the public domain the copyleft would still apply.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
If he were an economist he would use Microsoft Word. He also tries hard to make the paper as mathematical as possible, even though he probably knows that this is a hopless task. Give him a break and say with me "HE IS A MATHEMATICIAN"
I would propose:
Copyright protection to run for ten years from the date of receipt of the first royalty payment, or ten years from the date of publication if no royalties are ever paid in respect of the work. Rationale: If a work earns no royalties in ten years, it's never, ever going to. Quit flogging a dead horse already.
After the ten years are up, if and only if royalties have been received, renewal of copyright in annual increments. The first year for a fee equal to 5% of the sum total of all royalties received to date in respect of the work. Every subsequent year's protection for a fee equal to the sum total of all extension payments made to date. Rationale: Works which are still capable of raising revenue can be protected for as long as they remain lucrative. Works which have ceased to be lucrative need to be fast-tracked into the Public Domain.
Derivative works based upon a work already in the Public Domain are themselves in the Public Domain and cannot be copyrighted. Rationale: Obviates the need for the GPL. If you wish to make something Free, just set it free.
Copyrights to be subject to lien and expropriation, exactly as though they were tangible, perishable goods. A court order forbidding a person from benefitting from any copyright for a stated period. Rationale: If "intellectual property" is to be treated as property, it should be possible to use it as collateral for a loan -- and the lender needs to be given the choice to extend copyright or allow it to lapse at their own option (imagine you had acquired a load of food in return for an unpaid debt. Depending upon the circumstances, it might be economically viable to pay to keep it under refrigeration, preventing it from spoiling and so improving your chances of selling it; or it might be better just to accept the spoilage and write off the debt. You, as the creditor, need the power to make that decision). Where intellectual property has been misused, it might be best to allow it to be seized and handed over to another person (or, in some cases, reverted to the Public Domain). In particularly outrageous cases, courts should have the power to bar a person from owning "intellectual property" altogether (cf. orders forbidding the keeping of livestock).
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
...we'll have intelligently designed laws (and I don't mean that religiously) and we'll have actual expiring copyrights and patents. But as long as corporate money trumps all interests, that just isn't going to happen. Bummer. I would like to say, I love that there's work like this guy's efforts around--so now people can say there's scientific, mathematical, empirical support for a 14 year expiring copyright as the right way to go.
The paper proved something even more fundamentally important. That as technology makes copying easier, it is more beneficial overall to decrease the term rather than increase it.
"It's only a model..."
Arthur: "No, on second thought let's not go to Camelot. 'Tis a silly place."
Like - WHOA!
Just as easily as statistics are used to prove anything, they are disproved with the simple wave of a magic wand....
...would you rather the research be accomplished by a complete moron with no knowledge of the topic whatsoever?
Person X is biased!
Person X estimated number Y! Yeah, as if the current system wasn't based on estimates. Unless you cna prove his estimate was wrong the fact that he chose a median value is irrelevant.
I'll give you that any good statistic research should include the interval for which it is valid. This is a glaring omission. The rest of your complaints are dubious at best.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
He's basing the rate of decay off actual data: What books remain in print after X years, etc. I don't have a problem with his numbers- he even shos that depending on the numbers you can get a range of 3 to 50 years. My problem is not with his numbers, it's with the assumption that the goal of copyright legislation should be maximizing the welfare of the public.
I know that sounds odd, but what's in the best interests of the public is not really fair to individuals. For instance, let's look at George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire , an amazing fantasy series. The first book in the series was written in 1996. He'll probably finish the series in 2015 or so. With a 14 year copyright, half of his series (3 books out of 7) would be in the public domain by the time he's finished writing, which means that the publishers will be selling the first 3 books still at discount rates, but Martin won't be seeing any of the profits. To me, this seems as unfair as taking half of Gate's wealth and forcibly donating it to charity- while it may promote the public welfare, it isn't fair, at least how most of us see fairness. What's worse (to me) is that Martin would probably have written a much less epic fantasy if shorter copyright terms were involved.
To conclude, even if 14 years is optimal for public welfare, I feel that artists/authors deserve more. (As did several of our founding fathers, who had 28 more serve as the duration of copyright). If you're going to attack the article, I would do it on those grounds than going after their reasonable numbers.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Informatus Technologicus
Having only read the story, not the source papers, I can only say as an artist, there is absolutely zero "social welfare" that comes from depriving me of the right to control my work and profit from my efforts during my lifetime.
By that logic, the first of the Harry Potter books will soon be entering the public domain. Granted, Potter is a phenomenon, and Rowling has been lucky enough to make a boatload of money off of her work, but a copyright term like this would nip that right in the bud. Fan fic of the most vile nature could take its legitimate place right next to the canon, if someone were to publish it. There would be no reason to pay the author one more dime going forward. Limiting, if not eliminating, any incentive for them to put their blood and sweat into continuing their work. What kind of socialist fantasy is that?
From the summarizing article, this concept seems to apply ONLY to corporate producers and has no appreciation for the poor individual whose very existence is determined by their ability to profit from their work. I'm sorry, but having the ability to throwing rotten eggs against a wall in an artistic universe that someone else created does not even remotely count as "inspiring new creative acts".
whey the feck is the public paying for it?
Look, art only has value because the public are willing to pay for it. That is all.
Now, copyrights are one method by which this payment can be assured. Not the only one.
However, copyrights are not only the method to ensure the public pays but also require the payment of the public to ensure it works (enfocement). Now if that isn't a small enough charge that everyone doesn't mind the charge, that's OK. But if it ISN'T to the benefit of the public, why doesn't the copyright owner pay for it? They can hire goons to protect their revenue stream and leave the police and courts for the important things that benefit the public instead. If it's done for MY benefit, then I will pay for the court time/police work/etc for copyright enforcement.
So you're wrong: if it isn't for the public benefit, then the private individuals should be paying for it. This isn't some sort of communist welfare state!
I thought the life of copyright was determined by the age of a sketch of some stupid mouse ears.
If you can make money off something you created for 14 years, you're doing pretty well. Most of us have to keep showing up at work for 14 years to receive income for that same amount of time.
That said, I would support a copyright span for 28 years, as in the original US Constitution. That would address your concerns well and keep the public domain alive.
WTF? There are many thousands of works by other composers and authors from "their time period." Hundreds of thousands of original publications and even autograph manuscripts survive from this era. These guys lived around 200-400 years ago, not during the Paleolithic era.
What happens is that over time the wheat gets separated from the chaff, and the "works of genius" endure while lesser works are forgotten (but not necessarily lost - check out the special collections department at a major research university library sometime). While not perfect, overall this filtration process is pretty accurate, with an excellent s/n ratio.
Journey onward.
Optimal For Whom ?
Clearly not the owner of the works.
I fail to see why Disney should allow anyone to copy and sell their movies after a period of time. They made them they own them.
Would you hand over your house after 56 years ? Even for the good of society ?
Maybe it would be optimal for society if people living in large houses in prime location had to give up their houses so that society could benefit.
Hmmm - I guess that happens too....
Oh well.
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
I've been thinking along the same lines myself for a number of years now, but my take was that IP laws should define a formula for calculating the protection term for the categories of IP that they protect based on, say, the median number of protectable works per capita.
I would like to see something like a monotonically increasing (progressive) renewal/filing-fee every five years, where the first five years would cost $1, the second $10, the third $100, and so forth. To get 15 years (pretty close to 14), the cumulative cost is on $111 which most will agree isn't much money. To increase that to 30 years, three more chunks would cost $111,000, which would be more than the marginal value of almost all works. Another four renewals to bring it up 50 years is going to cost $1,111,000,000, which is absolutely insane. No work would be kept out of the public domain that long.
The advantage of this system is that the copyright owner has some choice as to how long to keep it protected/monopolized. If a work is profitable, then the owner can decided to invest in it and extend the copyright for a while. Due to the ever increasing cost, sooner or later extending the copyright will be a bad investment and then it goes into the public domain.
A pet peeve of mine is non-original ownership of copyrights. I can see where Walt Disney (the individual) wanted exclusive rights for his work with Mickey Mouse, but since he is dead, any new Mickey Mouse material is made by someone else. I don't see why the Walt Disney corporation should have any more rights than anyone else. I understand that companies might own the rights, but that should be to shelter/protect the individual creator so he can milk that cow a bit longer. But once anyone else gets involved in the creativity process, is should be fair game for everyone. Too bad that isn't how the modern world works.
- doug
It didn't disappear! It just went back in time to 1955 with Marty, and caused his dad who worked for GM to get fired, so he never invented it in the first place! !! (ba-da-bing. its lame joke Friday!)
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
Interesting corollary. Essentially this system would be promoting the equivalent of binary freeware. After the copyright has expired, you would be free to send all of your friends copies of the software and install it on as many computers as you have, but you will be unable to modify the software itself.
Not an entirely dismal rule in my view. Open source software can still continue to exist and people can still have access to applications to view whatever format they got locked into if need be. It also doesn't put pressure on any one to force them to keep the original code around, so if something disappears they aren't legally required to store the code to give away later.
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
which is the point of the article. That is, society as a whole was better off for Spiderman being made into a movie. Sony & Marvel, of course, got money. It is fairly clear that they feel that they are better off, since not only did they make a Spiderman movie, but then they made two more.
Now, you may say "well, for every dollar Sony got, Joe Public had to spend one", and that it really just balances out. But that is a fallacy. Joe Public saw that the price of a ticket was $10, or that you could rent it for $4, or buy it for $15, or whatever. Joe Public did so. And, although some people wish they hadn't, most people feel that they got some good out of seeing it, or owning a copy. When you buy a $10 movie ticket, you admit that you think you will be better off with $10 fewer and having seen the movie. Of course, you may be dissapointed, but judging by the number of people who went and saw the second and third movies, it looks like people got a bargain.
The article talks about this in economics terms: it's called surplus. If I am willing to buy something at a certain price, that is because I think it is more valuable to me than the money. The difference between what it actually costs and what I feel it is worth is the "consumer surplus". For some people, it is low. For a product of somewhat unknown quality, it may even end up being negative. But, for the most part, the surplus is positive. The "producer surplus" is similar, although you are probably familiar with it by a more mundane word: profit. These two surpluses are the only reason why people buy or sell anything: because both sides feel that they will be better off for making the transaction.
Now, this doesn't mean that society would have been better off if the original Spiderman copyrights had expired, and the movie wasn't made. Perhaps the combined surpluses would have been larger if we'd all gotten cheap copies of the old comic books. But, given that the movie was made, it *did* leave society better off.
Although, if Spiderman was public domain, Sony still could have made a Spiderman movie; they just wouldn't have had to pay Marvel as much. All other things the same, with lower costs they likely would have done a combination of lowering prices (to increase demand) and pocketing some of it. Which would have increased the wellbeing of *both* Sony and moviegoers.
http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyr
Disney does not appear to be one of its users.
Paid Q&A/Research
Think of the wonders this could have on software development. 14 years after the release of Win98 we point budding software developers at code for Win32 and say "never, never code like this." It's a virtual "what not to do" list.
Seriously though, for posterity and the future development of software in general, governments should require that all protected code become public domain after a given amount of time. This would be the "price" of receiving protection. In fact, this should apply to all IP copyright protection from business models, to novel ideas, to ways of doing thing. There's no point in governments protecting what cannot eventually help the entire economy.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
The argument that works passing into the public domain are somehow stealing an author's wealth is the same one used by advocates of infinite copyright. The problem is that there's no ending to that--if you think that intellectual property should be treated the same way as real property, then it's always wrong for the government to come in and socialize your stuff so that some punk kid can score your music for free.
If you're not arguing for infinite copyright, you can't argue for the inherent wrongness of the public domain's existence. If you're arguing for the benefit of the creators, you're going to have to explain why the government has an interest in enriching them at the expense of everyone else. If your response to that is that having active creators benefits everyone, then you're not arguing from the creators' benefit any more.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Ok, if you want to discuss debatable assumptions, it's a valid point to debate. It even worse than what you mentioned. (I should probably mention first that I'm not against reducing copyright as such, but I do have a severe allergy to bad science and to using maths as smoke and mirrors.)
What does he calculate there? It's not even "how much would the artists be motivated/rewarded?" or "how much better would our culture be if we had cheap access to more books earlier?" That's not what he calculates there.
The whole number is calculated, basically based on "how many derivative works could have been written in that time." I'm sorry, but are we actually losing something worth anything there? We're not talking valuable original works, we're talking, basically, mashups based on wholesale plagiarism, if only copyright law is what keeps them from being published before copyright expires. Seriously.
If you just use a similar plot device that someone else used, no law prevents you from doing that. If it's _copyright_ law that prevents you from publishing your own novel, then you've copied whole pages verbatim. It's that simple.
Basically the whole underlying idea of that maths is that all works are created equal. That's how they can be put in such a "dispassionate" sum as equals. The underlying assumption is that (A) if I copied two chapters from Tolkien and a chapter from Stephen King (with the character names changed, maybe), then my book is as valuable a novel as any other novel, and (B) that there's a big loss if I can't publish that plagiarism. In fact, that society should alter its laws precisely to avoid missing out on such masterpieces.
Does that assumption even hold? How many novels _are_ published that plagiarize other novels wholesale anyway? How well do they do? Would anyone give a rat's ass about losing that source of literature?
I mean, seriously, there already are a lot of novels which are out of copyright. There's nothing to keep one from copying Shakespeare's works and selling them as your own, or even much more recent stuff. Does it happen on any significant scale? If you did, would people consider it a valuable addition to culture, or, more likely, "bah, I'm not wasting my money to encourage that kind of plagiarism?" If we shorten copyright terms, how many such literary mashups will get published based on newer works? I'm guessing not many publishers will want to print your book if it's that non-creative. Are we losing that much by not encouraging plagiarism of more recent works?
Or take comics. Let's say we pass a law that limits their copyright to 14 years. So let's say I start copying Dilbert comics from '93, maybe change the wording a bit 'cause it's more fun to change the whole thing to childish fart jokes, and submit them to newspapers or publish them on my site as my own. Is it that big a loss to everyone if I don't? Is such a comic of equal worth in any way to the original, as to be worth putting both as a 1 in that sum?
Basically the whole formulas are based on an assumption which is flawed to the extreme.
Again, I'm not saying that copyright necessarily should or shouldn't be shortened, I'm just calling bull on the maths used to calculate the "ideal duration." That 14 years value is based not only on bad guesswork numbers, but on some very flawed assumptions that went into the formulas themselves.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Disney copyrights YOU!
Copy rights YOU!!
The original paper will be available online ... in 14 years. ;-)
I still don't see why the Slashdot crowd cares one way or the other about the length of copyright terms
Discounting the general ideological issues for a moment, I think most sensible people are (and should be) at the very offended by the fact that corporations can clearly purchase laws at will to artificially protect particular business models. I think everyone with any sense (except perhaps Disney execs) would at least like to see this corruption and "crony capitalism" brought back under control, and the cry for copyright period "reform" is an expression of that.
Now, ideologically, I'm not convinced anymore that we necessarily have a right to "demand" the complete opening of someone else's work to us ... I'm currently leaning toward a perhaps libertarian-like view whereby the content creator should be the one who decides, at time of creation, how long the copyright period should be for that work. If I write a novel or a software program or create a cartoon character, and I believe in that "social welfare", then I should be able to write on my work "Copyright (C) 2007 Beanthere, period 14 YEARS", and that should have some legal weight behind it as an expression of how long I wish the copyright on my work to last. It's my hard work, after all, and nobody else lifted a finger, so why shouldn't I decide if I want the copyright to be five minutes or five years or five thousand years? At least in principle.
An interesting question would be, would almost all content creators just write "FOREVER". (Obviously not all would, as OpenSource software proves.) And if so, would that be bad? If so, for who? Who would be locked out - those who don't create anything and want "social welfare"? Or could there be some kind of "brownie points" systems whereby those who have created something of value could "exchange their points" to get access to the protected works of other content creators. (Oh wait, I think there is such a system already, it's called "currency".)
The answer is 42.
It doesn't matter whether or not authors think copyright law is fair. Mark Twain thought anything short of infinite copyright was immoral. But it's not up to the authors to decide that; they can hate the length of copyright as much as car manufacturers hate mileage standards, and it shouldn't have any bearing on how the question is decided.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Could it be true that there does exist a person who has not read "the Guide" on Slashdot and does not understand the humor of "42 years"? I almost can't believe it!!!
Heart be still...
Which of course, in Soviet Russia, logically means I can't spawn derivative works* (child process) without my work's (employer's) approval. I know sysadmins bitch about having no life outside of work, but that's getting ridiculous!
*(The younger of my two sons so obviously takes after me that he is clearly a derivative work. Yet my wife doesn't see the humour in referring to him as ver. 2.0(beta))
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
That is the rub... things from decades ago that are a part of American culture are simply gone. Walt Disney's first live-action movie, that included animated elements (the combination being a first), Song of the South is simply gone. It's part of American culture, a childhood memory for some, and if they wish to share it with their kids, they can't, because it's gone.
//c. I'm sure that the 5.25" disks were tossed at my parents house, but even if not, that's not usable directly on modern equipment. I was able to download images and an emulator to play them, but legally, that can't be done. If I wanted to show my son one of the first computer games I played, I don't have that ability, and it's tragic.
The real tragedy with it taking a while to work itself out is that certain elements that were never sold to the home (movies before VHS/DVD), they can simply vanish because the copyright holders wants them to.
Taking a stroll down memory lane, there was a series of Text adventures that I played on my Apple
I think that if a work isn't commercially exploited for some reasonable amount of time (3 years? 5 years?) the copyright should be lost. In this day and age of digital distribution, there is no reason why works can't be commercially available indefinitely. There is a minimum run for DVDs (enough to cover the cost of mastering the DVD, which has dropped, but for a while kept niche markets like Anime in VHS for a while), a minimum run for VHS, but a iTMS movie? Simply upload and sell.
I think that 1 year is a bit short, things may need to be retooled, etc.
However, it kind of worries me that large chunks of American culture can disappear... the film reels not maintained, and nobody can do anything. Sure it hit the public domain almost a century later, but if the work was destroyed, it's gone.
Movies, old computer games, old video games, its kind of tragic. Now take Nintendo, their popular franchises are re-released on their hand-held units (can play all the old SMB games on Gameboy Color/Gameboy Advanced), so I don't begrudge them keeping their copyrights, they are still exploiting the works. But if it's not being exploited, let it go, and keep out culture.
Which, by the way, is in line with the length of the lifetime granted to patents, an alternate form of intellectually property.
I have been saying for years that intellectual properties are similar enough that they should be treated equally. The lifetime of patents and copyrights should be equal. The extendability and transferability should also enjoy the same rules.
I am sick to death of seeing the technical works of scientists and engineers forced into the public domain only a decade after their invention while "artists" enjoy protection long after they're dead. The lifetime of a patent is often not sufficient to secure a profit for the inventor since often the invention is created long before its time. By the time other technologies have caught up to it so that it can be used effectively of cost-efficiently or before somebody has found the best purpose for the invention the patent has expired. Therefore the profit for the inventor is lost.
The only rationale I can see for the current system is that the technological properties are required for survival, or at least highly useful at improving quality of life, while the artistic properties typically improve the enjoyment of life. As a result the public mass demands, by vote, immediate access to the required intellectual properties and is less inclined to demand such access of the artistic items since they can live without them. That, or the artists/distributors are in the sweet spot where they make enough money to successfully fight for better protections while not presenting a product that the public unanimously demands and cannot survive with out, which would overwhelm any amount of money spent trying to legislate protection for it.
It's stupid the way science and its achievements are back-burnered and taken of advantage of in favor of artists, sports and celebrities.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
"Pollock has been an advocate for restricted copyright terms and stronger public domain for years".
So this is a BIASED story.
Coming to that conclusion would have required seven and a half million years of deep thought.
that it's about the only thing your President will use his Veto on. Coupled with the fact that he feels he's above any laws Congress happens to pass, and that it's the generals who are running the war, and Congress needs to STFU and sit down until they're ready to talk to him on his terms.
Amen, brother. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Good to see I'm not the only one who sees it like that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Well, hmm... ok, 1 year may be too short, though technologies don't change over night and it's possible to plan ahead a bit. It's possible to plan for the emulator while the old computer is still reasonably available or in use. But ok, let's say 5 years.
In fact, how about the following setup:
1. if the first publisher makes the work unavailable for 5 consecutive years, or more than 50% of the time in a 10 year interval, the copyright reverts to the author. Just so an author isn't shafted by a publisher who bought the work with royalties promises and buried it.
2. If the author or the second publisher makes it unavailable for 5 consecutive years, or more than 50% of the time in a 10 year interval, it becomes public domain
It should give everyone ample time to retool, remaster, whatever is needed IMHO. And it gives authors a second chance too, if the publisher shafted them. After all, the idea of copyright was to encourage the creation of new works, and the authors are the ones who actually do that.
The provision for 50% of the time is because the more I think of it, the more it looks like just "5 consecutive years" begs for the loophole of uploading it to the site 1 day every 5 years, somewhere 20 levels deep where noone would reasonably find it, and without advertising it anywhere.
Should be fair, right?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Why is he claiming movie production costs are going down, when they are clearly going up?
So you think that Condorcet (and other ranked choice) methods are proportional representation? You clearly don't understand them. Please read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method
The Condorcet method is much better at being fair than our pluratilty system. In case you don't feel like reading the article, I'd like to point out the Condorcet principle: If any on candidate would win in a one on one election against any (read all) other candidates, he is the condorcet winner, and must be elected. That is only fair and very reasonable. Our current system does not even come close.
The Condorcet method (and other ranked choice ballots) would still result in a two-party duopoly (I believe), but it would be much easier to change which two parties were in power. There are only two good reasons not use use a varient of the Condorcet method. (1) difficulty in tabulation. Since we do all our tabulation electronically nowadays anyways, this reason is defunct. (2) The parties in power don't want to make it easier to be supplanted. They are perfectly happy with the false dicotomy of "Democrat v. Republican".
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
On a discussion list at http://questioncopyright.org/, I wrote this in response to this paper:
Just scanning the paper, I found it hard to tell what goals he thought
we should be optimizing for. Production of new, original works?
Production of original and derivative works? Does the ability to copy
have a value in itself, and is that value factored into the equations?
Without a clear statement of goals, it's hard to see how these kinds
of calculations mean anything for policy.
It looked to me -- and I only scanned, so I could be mistaken -- that
he thinks we should be optimizing for "production of new works". If
so, that's a massive assumption that will affect everything about the
outcome of his calculations... yet (I would argue) it's not the right
goal.
Wish I had time to do a more thorough analysis of the paper, and perhaps a critique if my fears above were to prove correct...
-Karl Fogel
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
I hope that others pick upon on this work and come up with more reliable input numbers. That's how progress is made.
Yea, but if you duplicate his works within 14 years, he's gonna sue your pants off. in 14 years, that will be the perfect time for progress to be made on this copyrighted mathematical reasoning!
(Yea, I realize that it's not copyrighted... Shush)
Hey, not everyone drinks coffee at the end of the galaxy.
I actually meant it as a true sentiment, if you were wondering.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Or maybe you do -- but it's totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.
The only way to avoid being "deprived of the right to control your work" is to absolutely never, ever release it to the public, ever. This is not only basic meme theory and historically verifiable, but common sense. Nobody controls information they release into the wild. Period. Copyright merely grants the originator a short-term legal monopoly on profiting from the work.No. No it doesn't. Copyright can grant such rights to the originator, but quite often -- as in the case of work for hire -- ownership is transferred to or held by another party.
You seem to be confusing copyright with patent, since the definition you supplied is exactly the purpose of the patent system. The purpose of copyright is to protect a form of expression from others taking advantage of it, or ripping it off. If I write a book set in a fantasy universe with a lot of very particular rules of behavior, this is a very specific artistic creation and is protected by copyright. You have exactly zero legal right to come along and say, "Hey, that's fab and groovy, I think I'll use that as the backdrop for this story I was thinking about." Whether I spent an afternoon or a decade creating my fab and groovy universe, you don't get to help yourself to it. Go build your own.
So back to this "short term legal monopoly" issue. What's your definition of "short term"? Before the recent legal revisions, the term in the US was 28 years -- and it could be renewed for another 28. Theoretically, that's enough to cover the lifespan of an adult creator, but even if the law hadn't been revised, I'd hardly call that short term. On the other hand, 14 years is absolutely short term.
Copyright does not mean that I can profit from my work. I can profit from it, or I can not profit from it. Whatever I choose. What it does explicitly mean is that you can't profit from it, so long as I retain legal control of the work. And who are you (or the author of this study) to tell me that I am not entitled to do that for as long as I see fit?
It does not grant or describe any sort of natural right ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness")to somehow magically "control" information.I'm sorry -- who said that it did? Maybe you could keep to the issue?
I find it interesting that you continually use the term "information" -- as if protecting information is the point of copyright. In the US, raw information does not qualify for copyright -- thus lists of things, like the phonebook, or databases do not qualify (though there is certainly a push from corporate interests to change this). The purpose of copyright is to protect the artistic expression of a thing. Is the Mona Lisa nothing more than information to you?
It is merely a social contract to encourage social welfare by encouraging the creation of art, literature, and science. Look it up.Look it up? In what tome of wisdom do you propose I do that?
Copyright is not "a social contract to encourage social welfare by encouraging the creation of art, literature, and science". Copyright signifies ownership. Copyright is not the same as a license to use (or haven't you bothered to read the GPL). Depending on how someone chooses to license a thing, copyright is a legal protection which allows someone to profit from their artistic work without having to worry about someone coming along and ripping them off. By the same token, someone can give away a thing for free and still retain the copyright.
So, in a way you're right: the benefit to social welfare is not from depriving you of anything; it's from granting you copyright, and for making that copyright of limited term.There are many instances of writers taking many years to finally break into the publishing world, and by this logic, their work could be in the public domain before they ever got the chance to profit from their work.
There really is a simple and elegant optimal solution that would be a huge boon for innovation, yet still serve the public interest: 1) Allow copyrights to be forever.
Having no tyme limit doesn't encourage creativity and innovation, it stiffles them. To encourage the creation process you want to encourage people to constantly create, which means putting a short tyme limit to both. Having a short term means a person has to constantly create to keep the money coming in. However with copyrights and patents lasting forever once a person creates something that sells well they never need to create again, financially. Also with a short tyme limit another person could then use what is out of copyright as a basis for creating another thing.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Because financial independence gives you the freedom to take risks?
It's the mature Spielberg who produces Schindler's List, not the young director of Duel.
That the founders of the United States were geniuses... or lucky bastards.
Had they truly been geniuses in the sense you suggest, they'd have specified the algorithm for determination of the copyright period, instead of just the value.
Though I don't know how he came up with it, Thomas Jefferson used an actuarial table to determine the length of tyme copyrights and patents should last, which was 14 years with one 14 year extension possible.
FalconShould there be a Law?
What if a writer only makes $4000 off a piece? Or even $1000? They loose their copyright because they can't afford to pay? Though some writers may make a lot, some even get hugh advances, many writers don't make much on each piece they write. For instance people who write articles for magazines. For first periodical publication rights a writer may only get a few hundred dollars per piece. They may be able to get another couple of hundred for second periodical rights. Then they may be able to get say a 5% royalty for combinating a series of articles published in book form.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The original copyright term was for 14 years with the option to extend another 14 years at the end... It's time we took back the public domain... Also I think copyright must be updated for software. Currently you must only send in the first and last 10 pages of source code. This is ridiculous. The source code for countless works has been lost, and it was never made available to the public. In 100 years when the copyright runs out in Windows Vista (if they don't extend it again), we still won't have the source code available in the public domain. We won't be able to even install it anymore since the activation servers will no longer be running. The public is losing information... I think that if you wish to receive copyright protection for software, you must send in the entire source code. The Library of Congress could store it digitally until the copyright expires and it enters the public domain.
I'm of the opinion everything should have the same copyright length. Suppose I record a song and license it to be used in a movie. I continue to renew my copyright but the author of the movie allows their copyright to lapse. Does my song enter the public domain? What about the movie?
I'd be happy with a two-fold Copyright. A small amount of time based upon publishing, 3 years, 5 years, whatever, and a longer time if you register. If you got 5 years, renewable every 5 years (with an increasing fee) but had to place a reproducible digital format with the Library of Congress, I'd be okay with longer periods of time. My concern isn't stopping Disney from capitalizing on Walt's characters, but rather, protecting our culture.
A retool of Trademark/Copyright could work... Disney isn't actually concerned with losing Steamboat Willie, they are concerned with protecting Mickey Mouse. If Steamboat Willie entered the public domain, and everyone could download, cut, edit, their own 8 minute shorts, but couldn't commercially capitalize on Mickey Mouse, Disney would probably not object.
My wife is an amateur composer. One of her current projects is she is creating cel phone ring-tones based upon arranging some historical ethnic music. Armed with a fake book to get a starting point, and heavily arranging things, she is creating some new works using the public domain's creative commons. However, the fact that she can't use tunes from the 30s, 40s, and 50s is kind of a shame. Why is it that we can't take WW II era propaganda films (which have no commercial significance anymore) and use them to create new works. Whether lefties parodying our current events, or people simply looking at that period of time, the situation sucks.
WW II is a significant cultural event, and not being able to use things from that era upsets me.
While I don't like never ending copyright, I also understand why some authors think that it is their property and should last forever (I think that they are wrong, but I respect that view), so with that in mind, I'm completely okay with a compromise that lets commercially valuable works be protected nearly in perpetuity in return for releasing things that aren't commercially valuable entering the public domain. Given how much the IP Cartel companies benefit from the public domain, they might be okay with a solution that lets them keep their commercial works and characters protected forever in return for other loosening to build the public domain.
While I feel on some level that Disney's classic animations SHOULD become part of our public domain at some time, I'm willing to yield that (and even grant a perpetually renewable scheme to get their buy in) to worry about my bigger concern, cultural preservation.
If a video game maker goes under, happens all the time, I realize that their assets need to be sold to pay creditors. However, if the work isn't being exploited, turn it over to the public. Right now there is no provision for this, because even if the thing has zero value, since you get nothing for giving it to the public domain, fiduciaries want to protect it forever.
Perhaps some scheme could be devised that uses the fees paid for registration to A) pay for archival, and B) pay small fees to "purchase" the old works into the public domain. Perhaps something like 5% of sales could be used... That would no doubt get companies that have archives of old software to pony it up... Makers of CGA/EGA DOS games might be willing to pay someone a year to pull all the software out of the archive and "sell" it to the public, for small amounts.
I'm less concerned with breaking Disney's monopoly than preserving our culture. The rhetoric of those fighting copyright extension suggests the same, which is why I think a compromise might be reached. America's economy depends heavily on IP exports, so Congress isn't going to break that to serve some nebulous public good, and I can't fault them, but Disney might WANT to get more IP (that isn't theirs) into the public domain for them to exploit, and some method of preserving our culture should be reachable.
i.e. keep Dumbo forever in return for a small fee every five years PLUS a digital archive that you update on each release, but release stuff you don't want to exploit. OTOH, they might not want their name associated with less politically correct works from WW II. However, the fact that we are losing that part of our heritage SHOULD concern SOME members of Congress.
Do we need to wait for the law to change? Surely artists, coders or any creative can set a duration on their rights, and as the artist owns the work, not the parliament or congress which passes copyright laws, the shorter duration would apply.
;-)
I suggest that, if you support this rational approach, where you can you should tag all your commercial work as having an abbreviated rights period. Should give the lawyers something to scratch their heads over
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
Most of it came from a legal brief in Eldred v. Ashcroft. Start at paragraph 61. The bit about foreign authors I found while researching the post. I may have embellished his statement (first bullet point) a bit. Finally, the bit about when the life + 50 years law took effect came from memory.
That is mostly correct. In fact, you have to register in order to bring suit, and you must register within five years of authorship in order to receive a legal presumption of ownership. If you don't have your copyright registered, the case can get thrown out. If you didn't register within five years of authoring the work, you must prove that you are the author.
I'll have to look into it at some point.
The original method of electing the president and vice president is in Article 2 section 1. Though reading it again I left out a lot. But like I said Amendment 12 - Choosing the President, Vice-President changed it, the political parties wanted more power.
FalconShould there be a Law?