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Copyright Cutback Proposed As RIAA Solution
An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe proposes a novel solution to the ongoing spate of RIAA lawsuits over alleged music copying. He suggests legislation which cuts back corporate copyrights from 120 years to 5 years. 'We should do what we do to children who misbehave,' he writes. 'Take away their privileges.' Wolfe says this is regardless of the misunderstanding surrounding the latest case, which apparently isn't about ripping CDs to one's own computer. As to those who say copyrights are a right: "That's simply a misunderstanding of their purpose. Copyrights, like patents, weren't implemented to protect their owners in perpetuity. They are part of a dance which attempts to balance off societal benefits against incentives for writers and inventors. You want to incentivize people to push the state of the creative and technical arts, but you don't want give those folks such overbearing protections that future advances by other innovators are stifled." What do you think; is it time to cut off the record industry?"
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
120 years is INSANE.
Everything should go into the public domain after a period long enough to have allowed the creator to profit under most circumstances.
Copyright should also last at least long enough that it discourages companies from just waiting it out.
I figure 10-15 years for most things.
"What do you think; is it time to cut off the record industry?"
Yes. And if I might suggest where to cut them; just south of the beltline.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Seriously? Follow the money in US politics. This will not happen.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
but keep dreaming
Cut back corporate copyrights from 120 to 5 years makes complete sense. Copyrights should be used to protect, but these days they're being used to exploit.
Maybe 5 years is a little too short, it's a little radical, but in general I agree to the argument that cutting back this much should be done to punish the misbehaving kid. Cutting back to 5 years would bring more benefits than drawbacks.
But five years is far too short. Twenty years would make a good compromise I believe. Good food for thought here...
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
corporations abuse the copyrights too much, and they don't do more than distribute really. So, they abuse the people giving them money (the consumer), and the artist as well. Something like this seems more reasonable:
Corporation owned copyrights should be 5 years (with possibly an expensive continuation fee to add another 5 years).
Individual copyrights should stay 15-20 years (again with the possibility of a continuation fee). If any of my books get published, I think 75-120 years, whatever it is now, is absurd in terms of amount of time to keep it copyrighted. 15-20 is a good amount to make it worth publishing. Too many books don't get second prints anyway.
The continuation fees are basically to say "Well, people still find it worth buying, so you can continue to hold the copyright, but not long after that it enters the public domain".
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Anyone know how this would affect the artists? I mean, I know that most of them make their money off of merch and concerts anyway - but I'm just trying to understand who this would really end up hurting. Obviously older bands that still have reasonably good record sales (Led Zeppelin) aren't going on a lot of tours. I'm all for giving RIAA a good gut punch, I just don't want to screw over the musicians I love in the process. I'm no IP / copyright lawyer so I'm looking for some insight here!
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
RIAA is right. Perpetual copyrights, perpetual profits. Suckers. Learn to be creative.
Also, frist p0stage is mine.
The majority of the garbage the music industry is spewing out these days doesn't last longer than 5 years anyway.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Corporate Copyrights are not just Music and Videos produced by Evil Inc. They also include a lot of software, which is the livelihood of many slashdot posters. Are you sure we can live without commercial software development?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
It's not as if anyone in Congress is inclined to reign in one of their most prolific lobbyists. What is the point of such musings?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I don't know if 5 years is the right number, but 120 is ridiculously high. If I invent something, it should be protected for generations and the protection should extend beyond my own lifespan? That's absurd. Currently, a work is protected for 70 years after the author dies. WTF?
As a good first step, the copyright laws should be changed to at least limit the protections that a work can receive to the protection that was in place when that work was created - so we can at least do away with this business of magically extending the copyright protection period every time the copyrights on Mickey Mouse are about to expire.
As a second step, companies that can be objectively identified as abusers of copyright law - such as those who insist that there is no fair use of the works they own copyrights on, or those who attempt to circumvent fair use by encrypting the works and then declaring any attempt to break said encryption to be illegal - should loose their copyrights or have their terms severly restricted.
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
In other words, the copyright ratchet is built right into the Constitution.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If copyright is limited then every creative product will be accompanied by a license that specifies draconian limitations to be visited on the first and all subsequent buyers. Copyright already has fair use provisions that the media giants wish would disappear. In a contract the media companies can probably visit plagues upon the buyer's progeny unto the seventh generation. The only problem for media companies would be decriminalization of copyright infringements but the RIAA doesn't seem to try to jail people, just destroy their lives. It is better to have the wounded walking around as a reminder to others. If they are jailed, they might be forgotten.
If this passes (And I seriously doubt it, knowing the power of The Almighty Dollar), I'll literally shit myself from happiness. All this awesome art of the 80's and early 90's will finally be public domain for us to listen/watch and build upon as we please.
:,)
MacGuyver, A-Team, Miami Vice - once again, we will be reunited!
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
A suggestion like this might solve a lot of the *IAA problems that people have been having.
Maybe if copyright is re-defined as being attributable to individuals only, not corporate entities, as well as reducing the length of the term back to what it originally was, rather than the Mickey Mouse 125 number that it currently is....
---
"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
... but I do write music. Sorry, I have a real problem with Congress taking away my own rights to my own music after just five years. That's a flash in the pan, in terms of my life; for crying out loud, I don't even get some of my own music finished in that short a time. I don't sell my music (or at least, nobody's bothered to buy it yet), but I have a problem with someone saying they can appropriate my own creative works that quickly.
There are other solutions than this that have NOT been tried yet, because the lobby is too big for Congress to act. And this would suffer the same fate.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
So what would it take to enact such a measure? My guess would be a multi-billion-dollar industry of our very own, much like the constituent organizations of the RIAA already have. Without that, this is simply wishful thinking. Are there any ideas to the contrary?
Any ideas on how such a reduction in copyright could be bad?
... just kidding!
If any lawsuit takes place, the individual artist or songwriter should be required to take the stand in each and every case, to present their tale of sorrow and woe about the money they are personally losing. This is who the RIAA is representing, right? Shouldn't the true plantiff take the stand?
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
But you're never going to see it happen.
Too many Congress-critters are, for all intents and purposes, owned by the lobbying organizations that benefit from prolonged copyright limits. The entertainment industries would shit a collective brick, and you'd never see big Pharma get behind this either, as they would consider five years far too little time to make back the costs of R&D (or supposed costs, really, as a number of drugs are minor variations of previous drugs anyway.)
I mean, it would be nice, but let's wish for something that actually stands a chance of happening.
Like a season of Lost making sense.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Secondarily, a straight copyright cutback isn't exactly the answer for unpublished works either -- I can copyright something this year to protect it, and still not have it published for years and years. Do I lose the right to my own work after that?
So how about a discussion about what individual and corporate copyrights should look like, and how to regulate both -- perhaps leading to fair and effective legislation for the public interest and the artists for a change?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
But are they actually suggesting that they reduce an artist's ownership to just 5 years?
I'm no fan of the RIAA, but there are plenty of other ways to nail them to the wall with less collateral damage. It's the method of enforcing copyright that's been so despicable, not the duration of the copyright(for music that is).
I don't hold out hope that these sensible suggestions will go over well with the apparently money-mad accountants at the various mega-media representative organisations, but at least we have people talking. I do believe that this year will see even more erosion of support for the **AA mafia by big media, as it becomes increasingly clear through discussion like this that they are doing far more to sow negative publicity than good. And indeed, I envision a day when bands actually shy away from big record contracts because they see association with the big labels as negative.
Who is this delectable creature with an insatiable love of the dead?
The 120 years only applies to corporate works created more than 25 years prior to first publication.
An example might be a movie that was made but not published until a generation later.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
most of US will have to do with less; our homes, health care, a consistent atmosphere, privacy, etc... a small price to pay so that yOUR corepirate nazi overlords can rule the 'free' world.
if you have any difficulty making the required sacrifices, just follow the corepirate nazi hypenosys story LIEn, whereas anything of relevance is replaced almost instantly with pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking propaganda or 'celebrity' trivia 'foam'.
meanwhile:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071229/ap_on_sc/ye_climate_records;_ylt=A0WTcVgednZHP2gB9wms0NUE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
is it time to get real yet? A LOT of energy is being squandered in attempts to keep US in the dark. in the end (give or take a few 1000 years), the creators will prevail (world without end, etc...), as it has always been. the process of gaining yOUR release from the current hostage situation may not be what you might think it is. butt of course, most of US don't know, or care what a precarious/fatal situation we're in.
for example; the insidious attempts by the felonious corepirate nazi execrable to block the suns' light, interfering with a requirement (sunlight) for us to stay healthy/alive. it's likely not good for yOUR health/memories 'else they'd be bragging about it?
we're intending for the whoreabully deceptive (they'll do ANYTHING for a bit more monIE/power) felons to give up/fail even further, in attempting to control the 'weather', as well as a # of other things/events.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=video+cloud+spraying
dictator style micro management has never worked (for very long). it's an illness. tie that with life0cidal aggression & softwar gangster style bullying, & what do we have? a greed/fear/ego based recipe for disaster.
meanwhile, you can help to stop the bleeding (loss of life & limb);
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/28/vermont.banning.bush.ap/index.html [cnn.com]
the bleeding must be stopped before any healing can begin. jailing a couple of corepirate nazi hired goons would send a clear message to the rest of the world from US. any truthful look at the 'scorecard' would reveal that we are a society in decline/deep doo-doo, despite all of the scriptdead pr ?firm? generated drum beating & flag waving propaganda that we are constantly bombarded with. is it time to get real yet? please consider carefully ALL of yOUR other 'options'.
the creators will prevail. as it has always been.
corepirate nazi execrable costs outweigh benefits
(Score:-)mynuts won, the king is a fink)
by ourselves on everyday 24/7
as there are no benefits, just more&more death/debt & disruption. fortunately there's an 'army' of light bringers, coming yOUR way.
the little ones/innocents must/will be protected. after the big flash, ALL of yOUR imaginary 'borders' may blur a bit? for each of the creators' innocents harmed in any way, there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/us, as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile, will not be available. 'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet, & by your behaviors. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi glowbull warmongering execrable. some of US should consider ourselves somewhat fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate. it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all
If RIAA knows it can only profit from the first 5 years of a song's existence, it will be even more draconian in protecting that asset for the first few years. To reap all it can before the copyright expires, RIAA will become even more aggressive at fighting unauthorized copying of music. DRM and lawsuits will increase. Moreover, shorter copyright durations will push music publishers/distributors more toward the blockbuster mentality of only signing/marketing/supporting artists that will generate high sales the instant the music comes out. Artists that take more than a few years to accumulate fans and a backlist will be worth less to publishers. With no way to monetize the long-tail, the music industry will focus on pushing stars.
As satisfying as "punishing" RIAA might be, I think the plan has unintended consequences that would worsen the usability and enjoyability of music.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
If this were in place, it would say that any books, movies, and music written before 2003 would be free to duplicate and sell today.
I don't see how the book industry should be 'punished' because of the RIAA.
It seems more reasonable to put it at, say 20 years, and then each advancing year shorten the history in a linear way down to some agreed-upon target duration. This would give companies with catalogs of copywrited material enough time to adjust their business model without causing such a shock to all businesses that have infrastructure depending in part on this royalty income. So many companies own media that this would impact the US market as a whole. Of course, that is the same reason why legislation like this would not even pass.
In order for Congress to pass such a law, they'd have to be angry at the RIAA for behaving badly.
In order for them to perceive the RIAA as behaving badly, they'd have to have the same sort of world view as I, Lawrence Lessig, probably most Slashdot readers, and probably most Americans who have any awareness of what's going on with (so-called) intellectual property.
But if they had that sort of world view, they would never have passed the DMCA and the various copyright extensions in the first place.
So, what's the point here? Unless it's a tongue-in-cheek Swiftian "modest proposal."
As a serious proposal, it makes about as much sense as suggesting that Congress pass a law allowing unrestricted legal immigration in order to increase the numbers of young workers and thus solve the demographic problems of Medicare and Social Security.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Patents and copyrights are constitutionally defined as...
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Securing for LIMITED times is the key. Not "unlimited," which a 120-year copyright effectivly is. Where's the motivation to keep up progress if you can make one work and milk it for 120 years while blocking anyone else from building on it? It's too long by an order of magnitude.
Cut the length of the term to 5 - 12 years or so, and we will see a major burst of creativity on the scene.
The whole point of the system is to give authors and inventors a chance to make money for a while but to still have things go into the public domain for others to use later, and to keep the protection period short enough that they keep working and putting out new stuff constantly.
Right now, the motivation is to come up with a huge "blockbuster hit" that can be milked forever, instead of lots of "good" works. So, the net result is that progress is now retarded, not promoted.
Seriously, who is even going to remember who Britney Spears was in 120 years?
Do I actually have to RTFA? Congress isn't about to punish any corporation for anything.
And limiting copyright to half of what it was (IINM) in 1900 is hardly punishment. I think it would be a GOOD thing to limit it to at least 20 years; the present incredibly long copyrights last longer than all non-acid-free paper and longer than any file format or encryption sceme. The present lengths insure that little copyrighted today will ever be seen by anyone after its copyright expires.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
However, the USSC has held that the takings clause applies to anything of value, such as water rights, income streams, etc. Copyright is, IIRC, one specific example explicitly addressed.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
First off, 95 years is too long even without abuse-of-copyright.
However, a better solution than reducing it to 5 years is to expand fair use and provide for mandatory licensing at "reasonable" rates. A "reasonable" rate might be something like:
If I create something that infringes on one or more copyrights and it's not fair use, I must pay $x plus y% of the gross revenue I get from selling my work to a fund. This money is divvied up among known copyright holders in proportion to my use and the value it adds to my work. The portion allocated to orphan works is held in escrow for a period of time, probably 5-10 years, then returned to me.
The devil will be in the details, but it's a good starting point.
Fair use should be more liberal for works distributed for free or for cost-of-publication than for works published for profit. For not-for-profit works, the standard should be "does this significantly dilute the copyright" or "does it deprive the copyright holder of significant revenue." The former applies more to limited-edition works. The latter applies to works where customers will go for the free copies as a substitute for a paid copy. Copyright-holders are entitled to not have their pocketbook impacted.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is just a dumb idea.
1. It really couldn't happen because it would violate more than a few international agreements.
2. corporate vs personal copyrights? A lot of artists when they start make money incorperate. Where do there works fit in?
It is a non solution to a real problem. But lots of people will click on the blog and read the ads and they will make money off it.
Thank you for playing and paying.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The TRIPS agreement, the international agreement on copyrights pushed through via the WTO at US insistence, requires participating countries to provide copyright for at least 50 years. The US goes beyond that. Let's start by trimming that back. We need a "Copyright Term Harmonization Act", which cuts US copyrights back to the minimum requirements of the TRIPS treaty.
Britain has 50 year copyright today. There was a big push from the record industry recently to extend that to 95 years, but the record industry lost. It stays at 50 years. Four years from now, the first Beatles song goes public domain. The world will not end.
This is a reasonable political goal for the US. Five years is probably asking too much, but fifty would work. A big chunk of the history of jazz and blues would go public domain. Early Elvis would come out. Over the next two decades, the early days of rock would be freed.
Maybe US should go back to the original as defined by Jefferson? 14 years copyright upon registration with the Library of Congress(mandatory) and 14 year extension if copyright owner is still interested in keeping copyright nad willing to pay a fee. It was like this until 1920's I believe.
It bears repeating the Solution to the problem:
The artist must register the copyright with a governmental registrar. Filing fee: $1. Copyright duration: one year.
The copyright holder has a right to extend the copyright protection indefinitely. The second year filing fee is $2, the third year fee is $4 and so on exponentially.
Thus 10-year protection costs you $1,023. Twenty years is a million dollars. And if you hit a Mickey Mouse, a billion dollars wouldn't be too much to ask for 30 years, would it now?
The system is perfect: any artist can shell out $15 for four years of exclusive rights. The system finances itself. Those that hit the jackpot can keep the exclusive benefit as long as they like -- for the benefit of everybody! Last but not least: we can easily determine who holds the copyright to the work; if it's not registered, it's in the public domain.
Although I believe copyright should be much shorter (15-50 years, rather than "forever on the Installment Plan"), this reeks of "I Want A Pony". It will NEVER happen. Never. Ever. Ever.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Are you sure we can live without commercial software development?
How did we get from a 5 year copyright term to the non-existence of commercial software development?
I don't think A necessarily leads to B here.
What bothers me is that they have copyright on these materials and can then just sit on them, not making them available to the public. For example, there are many films that are copyrighted but are not available on any home video format.
Because copyright is about enriching the arts, I personally believe that a copyright holder should have two choices after five years:
1) Publish the material for as long as you have copyright on it in the preferred format for exchange. For books, this would be hardback or softcover, for moview it would be DVD or VHS, for audio this would be CD, and so forth. A reasonable price ceiling ($1,000 and less) should be established so that publishers wouldn't be able to price materials they didn't really want to publish at an absurd price.
2) Not publish the material and be subject to a rapidly-rising "unavailable materials" rate. Perhaps something geometrically increasing and levied every year that the material is not published and not reset when the material is eventually published. Non-payment would result in the copyright being voided and the material entering the public domain.
And if independent artists are also limited to 5 years' copyright, what's to prevent a label from discovering them, liking their songs, but leaving them in obscurity for 5 years until they can take their songs and get some pretty boy band to record them?
Sounds to me like you'd be handing the industry a gold mine of free songs and screwing the little guy. After all, which one has the marketing and payola to make sure something is an instant hit? Which one has to struggle for a decade to become an "overnight" success?
Think about it: suppose the law were changed. Corporations, who are very good at making money, would find a way to make money in the new legal environment, probably by thwarting the individual artists until the copyright expired. Sure, I agree, corporate copyrights needs to be shortened to a finite term, and individual copyrights should cease at some reasonable time after the artist's death; however, what we need are reasonable fair-use laws and stiff consequences for abuse of the legal process.
/. community to come up with ways the corps could make money from shorter copyright periods.
One other idea: shorten the copyright time period, but don't start the clock until "successful commercialization" occurs (assuming a good faith effort, of course, to keep people from hoarding)
I challenge the
He made sense till I got to "incentivize".
Verbing of nouns weirds the language.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Give us some contact procedures so we can check you out!
Let's do the Alternate Distribution thing for real, right here.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'd say either 14 years as I've read was originally the caase, 40 years (a generation) or the lifetime of an author, which would be 77.8 years these days. However, perhaps there would be a different copyright for a corporate entity and another one for the author, with the author having a lifetime copyright, but a corporation only one sabbath year - 7 years, allowing the author to renegotiate.
Windows XP would no longer be copyrighted...
Say what we may about it, generally forcing some software companies to release more often to avoid a 5 year expiration date may not be a good thing for the industry at large.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Laws should come from reason, not vengeance. Yes copyright terms need to be fixed, but why does the RIAA need punished? Legislation enabled corporate copyrights to last this long, and they are entirely in the right to defend what is legally theirs. They are pushing the boundaries of what they are allowed to claim, but that is something for the courts to decide, and they are slowly deciding what is and isn't acceptable. RIAA has not done much to deserve actual punishment in the form of reducing copyright so drastically.
Better to push for more balanced copyright. Seeking to punish the whole industry for the actions of a few is not the best way to go about this, and basing legislation on vengeance is really quite the wrong way to do this. Propose a reasonable length of copyright, and fight for that.
Copyrights are a right. They are the exclusive right to copy or authorize copies, and they are granted by the constitution temporarily.
This guy is going about it the wrong way.
I'm familiar with Mark Twain's argument that his daughters "needed" his copyrights to live. Well, (with a father like him?:) that may be true. But needs don't beget rights. What about Edison's and Bell's daughters?
The justification for patents and copyrights is neatly given in the US Consitution "to promote the progress of sciences and useful arts". So what terms are reasonable for that promotion? Once you look at the rates-of-return required by commercial enterprises, 17 years looks generous, at least in prospect. Complaining afterwards for extentions cannot be other than grasping.
Five years from first commercial publication actually appears very reasonable and corresponds to creative project economic horizons. Allowing long copyright may actually _hinder_ "progress" as publishers milk catalogs instead of seeking out new projects.
It's funny really. We have estates worth millions and possibly billions... In law (I am British), a trust must vest within 21 years. It's perhaps a little more complicated than that, but, that's the jist of it.
We have a society based upon individual wealth gained from Queen Victoria's economy. Yet we still limit trusts to 21 years. We limit something that can be individually benefital and commercial useful for decades to just 21 years (hint: it's difficult to leave something in trust to grand children). Trusts can be property, money etc - generally something of tangible benefit...
Now we have patent and copyright. These are not tangible assets. The maxims of equity have shaped hundreds of years of law, ever since the King left matters of natural justice to his Chancellor. We have, in all those years, maintained rules against perpetuity. Little more has shaped trust and equity than codification - statue limiting perpetuity to 21 years. No one has pushed for "big" changes for the simple reason: it's never been worth it, and the longer you wait, the chance a gift will become imperfect in nature and intent.
Now big business, for its own interest, is taking property beyond the mortal lifespan. Corporations now exist far longer than individuals; and most will remain in one form or another perpetually thanks to takeovers, mergers, acquisitions and globalisation.
Trust law would be in turmoil if we ourselves could become a company and evade rules again perpetuity by existing forever. Yet, this is exactly what companies are doing with performers' assets - they, through their commercial might, present something that only exists and benefits mankind for a limited period of time... for decades. Decades are turning into generations, and now corporate greed that views the consumer market place as a source of finite wealth grips this "property" as only to deny others from benefiting from it... or things like it.
If they want to control works of creation, and similar "properties", to truly orchestrate what we do, then the only equitable act is for us to trade and delight equally (Equity delights equally; One who seeks equity must do equity)...
In exchange for fewer freedoms, our loss of control, we should benefit sooner, rather than later. Otherwise pay me.
Matt
I really like this idea of limiting corporate copyrights to 5 years. I think it would be right to allow for certain things such as websites, and some other things to have a slightly longer copyright.
This is easy for me to say though, since I don't write or otherwise contribute.
corporations abuse the copyrights too much, and they don't do more than distribute really. So, they abuse the people giving them money (the consumer), and the artist as well.
I'm all for making copyright ownership a legal thing for individuals only, that corporations would not be able to legally own, or even be able to receive assignment of stewardship of a copyright... some individual within a corporation would have to be the legal registrant and owner of a copyright. This would make that individual very valuable to the corp and if the corp ever tried to screw that individual over, there could be dire financial consequences against the corp.
Most definitely. Long copyrights are counter-productive. For corporations, if you have not realized a business model within 5 years, you should step aside and let someone else. Patent and copyright protection should both be limited to 5 years, except in biotech where it takes longer to develop the technology and do trials. Once again, Congress is mis-aligned with the preferences of its popular constituents, and aligned instead with corporate interests. Someone should conduct a reliable and credible popular poll, to ask the public whether corporations should have such long-lasting copyright and patent protection.
What I would put into law are 2 specific reforms:
1: Copyright cannot be extended beyond its original term. The reason for this is simple. Copyright exists to encourage creation and publication of the arts. Once that art is created under the copyright terms of the time, copyright has served its entire purpose. Anything beyond that is just giving more unnecessary rewards to a few at the expense of the many.
2: Copyright is lost to any item not available for new sale in a 3 year period at a fair price. If you're no longer selling it, then you have no right to prevent other people from duplicating it and keeping it available.
Change on any issue starts when people start talking about it. Let copyright change begin here now!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
In my opinion, Corporations have 2 entities we need to evaluate; the Trademark and the Copyright.
McDonalds has the Golden Arches, Disney has Mickey Mouse, Coke has their bottle design, Warner Brothers has Bugs Bunny and Maytag has the Repair man. I see no reason why these companies cannot keep their respective trademarks indefinitely. No one is suffering because they can't use Mickey Mouse on a non-Disney authorized product. These companies have substantial investments in their trademarks, and continue to use and invest in that Trademark in marketing. Conversely, I can see that these companies could be hurt by taking their Trademark away from them after some arbitrary point in time. An X-rated movie featuring Mickey Mouse (or his image) would damage the 'family-friendly' theme park revenues. Trademarks need to be protected - but also limited. For example, for Disney to claim that all of the Muppets, Disney Charcters and Hanna-Barbera characters are all Trademarks would be an abuse. Mickey Mouse may be a Trade Mark for Disney; but Barney Rubble, Miss Piggy and George Jetson are not.
However, Copyrights are something entirely different. The reason we saw so many old novels come to film recently is due to 2 Hollywood problems. First, the total and utter lack of imagination rampant in Hollywood; and secondly the fact that the copyright on many of these movies has expired, so they can make a movie and do not have to pay royalty fees. 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' compromised many such novel heroes, all of which are now public domain. Make a movie from those characters, and neither the creator, nor his estate will see a dime. Tom Sawyer, Dorian Gray, the Invisible Man, Mina Harker, Dr. Jeckle/Mr. Hyde are all expired copyrighted characters. Do what you will with these characters - they are public domain.
Ah, but when the same law is inconvenient for these same people, they seek to change the rules for their personal needs. That is wrong (obviously).
When it comes to music, one can be fairly certain that the Beatles White Album has certainly paid itself off. Yet, as I write this I see a list price of $34.98 and an Amazon.com price of $24.97. This album was released November 22, 1968 - so it has had nearly 40 years on the market; yet still commands this price. Why? Has the RIAA not yet made a profit on the Beatles?
Now we hear that making a copy of the CD I bought, is illegal. If I buy cake mix, and use the cake mix to make brownies - have I violated some copyright? The RIAA is losing customers, and the more it sues and makes demands from their customers - the faster and more vigorously these same customers will do whatever they can to hurt the RIAA. Personally, I cannot see the strategy. If I ran a business, I would want my customers to like me.
Copyright isn't a right, it's a bargain. We give up the right to copy for a limited time (just as the Constitution requires, LIMITED) in exchange for getting the content at all. The RIAA broke the bargain by asking for unlimited time, and we've been breaking our end of it in return.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Wrong. The original copyright was for 14 years, with an optional 14 year extension. Copyright would expire even if the author was still alive.
I agree with the above "troll". Actually it isn't just "these days" but has always been that way.
Any geezers out there remember "yummie yummie I got love in my tummie?" How about a song called "Timothy" about a couple of guys who get lost in a mine and eat their friend? You kids think today's music sucks (well it does), it sucked just as bad in the '60s.
I have some top 63 lists from 1968, you would not recognize very many of the tunes on them.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Copyright covers far more than just popular music. Books, movies, computer software...
You do need to take all of those into account.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
How well would a limited (say 5) year copyright mesh with long lived popular works, like Star Wars or Star Trek?
After 5 years, anybody can just roll a Star Wars movie?
On the other hand, somebody else might have given us a better Episode I...
This shows why we are not a true democracy. Corporations have way too much influence over legislation. As annoying as unions are, unions used to kind of keep corporations in check, but they have diminished in political power. There is now insufficient checks on corporations' influence over the law and regulation.
RIAA abuses are some of the more visable, but as I learned by following the H-1B visa issue, there are a lot of subtle abuses of power going on that never see the light of day except by a handful of specialists and subject enthusiasts. However, the net effect of their impact on society is large. Big abuses tend to get fixed over time, but lots of little abuses are slipping by unnoticed by most of the news media and citizens.
Table-ized A.I.
...you are not a corporation. Go back and re-read the posting. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
Reading the posts here, it would seem that everybody hates the current copyright law except for the **AA, and Congress. You'd think that would be enough to push a change through.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Copyrights (and patents) should be non-transferable, and only available to the original artist (or inventor).
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Why is it that if I invent the quantum computer and need time to get it from paper to market they give me 20 years max, but when an "artist" needs his 3 minuts of noice to payout they give him 120 fucking years!!? And that in a world where publishing could simply mean uploading to the web, which takes a day on top of post production!!!?? Seriusly the future will not be build on the cds and dvds of yesteryear, why the hell does the mere fact that the music industry makes billions doing nothing warrant it keeping doing that?
If I create a something, Its mine. I created it. I should be able to benefit from my own creativity for as short or as long a time as I see fit. If I want to live off that creativity the rest of my life, I shall do so. If I want to will that right to my children and their children, I shall do so.
What right does anybody have, even /.ers, to tell me that I can only benefit from my work for 5, 10, or X amount of years?
Public good? I am under no obligation to give away my work just because the public finds it useful. If the public finds my product useful enough to buy when it is one year old, they pay for it; but when it is 11 years old, it is still useful, but now they dont have to pay for it? Sounds like the perfect workers paradise. Unless you are a producer of course.
"balance societal benefits"? Screw societal benefits. I don't utilize my creativity for the good of some nebulous "society". If society wants my creation, they can pay me for it. As long as the continue to want it, I should be able to sell it exclusively.
Lets be clear here. Causing patents to expire is nothing less than legalized, government approved, theft.
What right does any /.er, any government, anybody at all, have to steal my work?
It can be go tiem now plees?
Some of what you propose already exists. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license. You might want to also look into how this is done for mechanical reproduction rights through the Harry Fox Agency web site. Then what you can do is read up on how things are done now, and propose any expansion of this you believe should be done. One area I personally believe should be changed is expanding mechanical reproduction rights so that a 500 copy minimum is not longer required.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Mickey Mouse(TM) is already well protected by trademark law. If you are suggesting that "Look and Feel" or heavens-forbid "Image" should be protected under Intellectual Property laws, then just take ten seconds to think how quickly everything would be "ImageMarked" by the scammers and locked up by "ImageMark" trolls who make nothing but sue everyone around for near-misses and co-incidence.
/me shudders...
If I remember correctly, the whole point of IP laws is to foster innovation. If Disney does something new with Mickey, then that is protected. Protecting the old images forever does not serve to foster new creativity.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
A better alternative is to reform recording contracts. The artists generally make very little out of their own works because of the often one-sided recording contracts, as well as by the non-transparency of the accounting for costs, revenues, and royalty payments.
IMHO, the measure proposed by the article won't work because in the end it will only hurt the artists. The artists make money because the corporations buy their product (the copyright on their music, distribution rights, etc.), promote it, and distribute it. If the corporations are limited as the article suggests, then the artist's product is devalued. As reprehensible as the RIAA's conduct is, they still take a risk in signing unknown artists and must invest in the artist even though it may not produce any profit. Without that investment, some artists would never be able to publish their own works. The article's approach seems to me to be analogous to "helping" migrant farm workers by closing down all farms.
"Punative legislation" is rarely good, just see the statutory damages section of the copyright act as an example. Artists have traditionally been at a disadvantage when signing their recording contracts. The playing field needs to be leveled for their sake. Terms of recording contracts should be reformed to make it win-win. Part of that should be ensuring that all relevant operations of the RIAA member companies should be open and transparent to the artists.
Of course, our best hope is the Internet, where the cost structure makes it easier for artists to promote themselves and do away with the RIAA completely. While listeners have widely adopted Internet distribution, the artists themselves have been slow to adopt it. Perhaps part of recording contract reform would be to give liberal terms to artists for any kind of internet distribution.
Regards,
Art
The RIAA would never agree to this as the industry is making the bulk of it's profits now off of back-catalog music that's >5 years old (where royalty contracts have been renegotiated lower or expired completely and the cost of creating the content has long since been paid off).
I think that a copyright should by tied to a person, not an estate or company. If the person dies then his copyright goes with him. That way we can dl dead rockers with impunity.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Author's rights.
The author produces a work, he gets all the rights. He then employs some organization to redistribute it for him (i.e. gives the organization permission to copy his product under certain conditions).
Add to the mix a law which states that rights can't be signed away and you've got a pretty good fix.
Now, corporation X wants to sue, but the artist doesn't feel hurt. Tough luck corporation X, you're just responsible for redistribution.
Of course there should be a reasonable limit for how long author's rights last - reasonable doesn't mean a century in this context.
NOTE: author's rights are quite different as copy rights.
Next I think we should have an in depth discussion of how many gold bars the RIAA should be required to give each and every one of us. I think it could be interesting and nearly as likely to actually happen.
The simple truth is that there is no moneyed interest that is seeking to reduce copyright terms. In many political issues you'll find lobbyist dollars being put out on both sides of an issue and that you can find politicians friendly to your cause. There's a lot of people who profit from the current arrangement and nobody who directly profits from it's destruction.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Anyone who's ever bought one of those El Cheapo PD movies from the bargain bin knows that the public domain isn't necessarily a good thing. It's fine with books where a copy of the text is sufficient to make additional copies, but with films (and to some extent, music) you need the original source material (and for older works, money for restoration) to make a decent copy. Lots of PD companies source films from thirty year old 16mm prints that look like they've been dragged across the ground by a rabid dog. Does anyone want to buy an AAC of "Let It Be" that was downloaded from Kazaa as a 96kbps MP3 and badly converted through a lossy process?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
As you are surely aware, the US does not consider following treaty obligations a serious duty. Rather, when the US determines that a treaty obligation is against national interest, it just ignores it. Besides, given that the infinite copyright terms in the treaties were originally put there at the insistence of the US, the US can easily repudiate its earlier position and ask for everyone to reconsider.
Why does copyright have to have a single fixed period of validity? Why not implement tiered pricing? Have copyrights registered, and allow them to be extended, but charge a greater amount each time to reflect the increasing cost to society of limiting cultural extension. Something like the following (pick whatever times and dollars make you happy):
... and so on.
First 5 years: Free
2nd 5 years: 1,000 dollars
3rd 5 years: 10,000 dollars
4th 5 years: 100,000 dollars
The idea being that everyone should get an initial shot at capitalizing on their ideas. After that, you have to either start turning a profit (and sending a piece of the action back to the public coffers), or you let it go. As time goes by, the cost to society of not being allowed to draw on their cultural history increases - and so the cost to the rights holder of maintaining their monopoly should increase. But if they are doing a good job of capitalizing and/or if it is a really valuable idea, they should have the option to continue to renew their monopoly grant.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Copyright in and of itself, to me anyway, is not as bad as the ridiculous notion that somehow it is illegal or unethical or whatever to do format shifting. I was just thinking a bit ago, how many times am I supposed to re-buy the rolling stones songs again? I think a first copy was on reel to reel (OK, I admit, snagged off the radio), then LPs, then cassette and..I stopped right there because that was the last time I had a cheap way to format shift. (burners and players were expensive when they first came out)What I have on CD is bought used, I just had enough by that point and could see then they wanted a legal lock on technology, advances OK for them, make it as illegal as possible for the common media buyer, plus keep coming up with new formats forever. Now for all practical purposes copyright is indefinite, no outside limit, because they have restrictions on circumvention for format shifting. Ya, you can still do it, but it is highly unclear about the legal status, but I bet it is eventually fond to be in violation of DMCA by some "ruling" from a "ruler". And I see zero hope from either side of the political fence with the mainstream candidates and pols that this will change anytime soon, because the US corporations have done everything they can to bork the manufacturing sector to be replaced with this vague "IP as products" stuff. If anything, restrictions will be getting more severe than even what we have now. This goes along with the proprietary text format fubars article, they want you to re-buy the new format and re-pay to have the same stuff on it, like once a decade a new thing you have to buy, just to have the same content or to view your own docs. Ludicrous, but sacks of cash money talks there at the highest levels,(quite literally, I would bet a year's pay that outright bribery is common) it won't be going away anytime soon, just get worse. (this is all US I mean, other places, good luck, on your own)
As surely as young people swap files without guilt, copyright is going to be reduced or eliminated. It's a matter of time before the broadcast/telco mindset and laws disappear forever. They don't make sense to people raised on the internet. "Don't copy that floppy" propaganda just makes people angry.
This guy is talking down the industry but tell me who's more childish?
A. An industry fighting legally to protect it's product.
B. People who decide that they don't want to pay the price so they simply take what isn't rightfully theirs.
I know it's an unpopular stance and I do agree that copyright could use some revision but this guy is acting like the RIAA made this come about and that the current rate of infringement is justice. Completely wrong.
I've said it before and I'll say it again; if you don't want to pay for the product than don't take it either. Had all the supposed fighters for artistic freedom boycotted the industry instead of resorting to infringement tactics the industry would still be in decline and without a scapegoat. The industry would have adjusted itself at this point and if all the infringers are as honorable as they say they are we'd probably have a more reasonably priced product.
But all the while I still can't help but think that no price beats free. That's the bottomline at this point. For everyone with a legitimate concern of copyright and its effect on society there are probably a couple of hundred that are simply taking what isn't theirs and hoping not to get caught. Sure, the genie is out of the bottle but don't think it isn't going to be messy.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I think the word "corporation" is making everyone think of the big mega-corps (Warner, Sony, etc), but you have to understand that there are millions of small businesses in the USA today. And these are also "corporations". This is the legal name for the business entity, and it itself shouldn't carry the kind of negative connotation that many seem to assign it. Corporations essentially are an agreement between a group of people and the state government, which allows those individuals to work together toward a certain end while guaranteeing certain group property rights (i.e. a corporate bank account, or corporate ownership of a building).
When you increase the fees for corporations, don't forget that you are increasingly punishing the small companies where those fees really hurt, while barely scratching the surface of large companies. This has happened in the field of patents, where it can routinely cost $15,000 or more to obtain a patent. This fee is "trivial" to a big billion-dollar company, but is a huge burden for an individual inventor or small group.
Anyway, I let out a big groan when someone suggests increasing fees as a way to disincentivize copyrights or patents.
--
Microcontroller + LCD + gcc + instructions to help you learn electronics.
It's never going to happen because of the "Mickey Mouse" rule. Music copyright in this country goes back to 1925 because the Disney corporation has copyright to Mickey Mouse, who dates back to 1925. If you were to limit copyright to anything any of us considers reasonable, Disney would lose ownership of Mickey Mouse, which would be huge for them. They've been paying Congress for decades to keep moving the copyright window so they could continue to hold Mickey Mouse. We have the best government that money can buy and Disney has been keeping up on their payments.
Killing off copyright, or at least reducing it to anything less than 80 years isn't going to happen anytime soon.
These sorts of cutbacks have been proposed before, but nothing has come of it. Until we get congressmen who are not in the pocket of the content industries I doubt that we will see any movement in this direction. In other words, I'll believe it when I see it.
'real' art should not need incentives.
Personally, I think we should sue the various "creative" industries for theft -- the constant lobbying for copyright extension is, in my mind, nothing more than legalized theft from the public at large. With appropriate bribes ... errrrr.... "contributions" to the congresscritters as "incentive" to change the law to the copyright holder's tastes...
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Limited times. The current copyright period is already unconstitutional. You can't "take" something which people don't rightfully own.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
If I was king, I'd...
...but I'm not, and neither is this guy. Bloggers spouting off about how they'd change the rules is only news if they have a practicable way to get the rules changed.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
RIAA doesn't need to be "punished."
OTOH, it seems pretty realistic to acknowledge that distribution markets are vastly larger, more efficient, and faster-moving than they were in 1789. If 14 years was a sufficient incentive back then, then today's optimum duration is lower. 5 years might be a good figure, even if he pulled it out of his ass for the wrong reason.
Until someone with a big name like Jobs, or Branson, or some high ranking politcal figure says this needs to be done it wont happen. the **AA got congress to pass such extensions in the first place.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I don't mean this as a troll, but just to air a pet peeve. Sorry that it's off-topic. I hate it when people use the word "incentivize". It's a pointlessly long and clumsy word, where "incent" is a better choice. When I hear "incentivize", it sounds like trendy business-person-speak. It makes me jump to the conclusion that the speaker is caught up in a subculture echo-chamber of moronic business / marketing majors who get so excited about having a new trendy word to use that they use it merely because of its perceived trendiness.
Ok, so the author calls Prince a "forward-looking artist" because he gave an album away to promote his concert. I liked that Prince. I don't like the Prince that aggressively scours the internet looking for any instance of his song being used as background music on a personal video of a child dancing and playing, and then sending take-down notices for a 30 second soundbyte.
Prince, aka The Artist Formerly Known as a Forward-Looking Artist
Hey Prince. Let's Go Crazy! Oh, you are already there.
Considering how things are going with the internet, 5 years might be practical. Don't forget, original authors can still make and sell their old works, they just lose the exclusive rights to the content. If there's an important character or image they use throughout their works it can be filed under trademark law. For example, let's take The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien died years ago, but his family continues to release works, the newer works would fall under copyright as recently released by the family, but the names and images of the fellowship would be protected under trademark law for future properties. At the same time, older books could be distributed freely thus freeing up more work for intellectual property. As it stands the internet is already working as a quick distribution mechanism, and everything gets loose rather easily, but if you reduce copyright to five years the factor of convenience kicks in. Why bother getting sued? Get things five years old or older. Also, artists would maintain copyright to things like director tracks, behind the scenes footage and the like by publication date. So by keeping older unreleased material and adding to the old, they can continue to profit as long as they release "new" content. Anyone can distribute the original work, but only the original author has access to the materials used to create it.
Legislation ought to be aimed toward introducing the concept of reasonability, and other areas of the legal corpus give us some sense.
Pharmaceutical patents extend only to 20 years, after which time bio-equivalent generics can be produced. In practice, this is usually 7-12 years, as pharma companies tend to apply for patents well before drugs are approved for public use.
For income taxes, the statute of limitations is seven years in most cases. For other areas of law, the statute of limitations is even lower. I'm not a lawyer, but I think that only murder has statutes that apply longer than copyright law.
Common sense dictates that there ought to be a much more reasonable limitation on intellectual property (especially considering that it's an arbitrary concept which is artificially created). I tend to agree that five years is plenty - look at the sort of content that is being contested by the MPAA and the RIAA: music and films. Both media are exceedingly ephemeral; they're old news in a year, and out of style fairly quickly. Let the studios make their money for five years, then open things up. Seven years tops. You are correct: 120 year copyrights can be described by a host of adjectives, but sane is not among them.
but reducing it for a written song is not. If I wrote a particular piece of music, then I should be able to collect copyright fees for its publishing when I'm 90. However, a recording is just a particular instance of the expression of that piece of music, and it should not be as well protected - it's just a moment in time.
For those whose work is made IN the studio and has no live correlate or standard notation, then you need to develop a notation system for your work. If you make improvised music with no notation, then you need to hire someone to write it down for you.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The RIAA owns more of Congress than you, the public, does.
Each copyright will be initially assigned to an individual with a role in the creation of the work. Upon being granted, this copyright lasts for the life of the assigned individual, and no longer.
Distribution rights can be licensed from the individual to any entity, corporate or otherwise, but (exclusivity aside) no such right may be contractually removed from the holder except via a full transfer of copyright (so "You allow us to package and sell the work" is fine, but "You grant us distribution rights and agree to halt distribution of your own" will have no legal force). This transfer is permitted, but once a copyright has been transferred, its duration then drops to 5 years from date of first issuance.
Anything else that needs covering/fixing in this plan?
Aside from the length of copyrights, there's a large problem with the amount of damages that can be assessed for non-commercial distribution. That a person is liable for thousands of dollars for each recording sitting in a publicly accessible directory, whether or not any distribution has occurred, or was intended, is pretty outrageous. Damages need to take into account that many people download content that they never would have paid money for, so that every download is not a lost sale. When I explain what's happening to most people they agree that it's unjust, but they don't see how it affects them. When I explain how their children's online activities could end up costing them thousands, plus legal costs, they start to become more concerned. That they should be liable for not only what their children do, but also for anything that their children's friends do on their home network is doubly concerning.
Knowing plenty of authors and private musicians, I think I would be horrified about that. You mean after five years, someone can simply photocopy my work and sell it, make money off it, and I don't get paid for my work? Think of syndication rights for movies and TV shows. That's when the real money is to be made, and these authors would miss out.
...say... $50,000 per year to keep that copyright. After 10 years, the fee would be $75,000. After 50 years, $200,000 per year.
At the turn of the 20th century, copyrights were lifetime + a few extra years in length. For a private author, once they died, no one was left to care if someone "pirated" their work. You want to write a book about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Go right ahead, anyone who would be concerned has long since past away.
Now, imagine if Walt Disney as an individual produced the movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". Once he was gone, no one (except for a few heirs) would be interested in the remaining value of that movie. After Uncle Walt dies (plus a few years), it could easily go into public domain.
Now, here's the problem: The copyright was not owned by the mortal Walt Disney but by the immortal Walt Disney *COMPANY*, and this company is still around, and the asset called "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is still a very valuable asset for this company. Even if the Walt Disney Company does "die" one day, the creditors would be interested in Disney's valuable copyright assets.
So, the copyright laws were originally written with the idea of individuals owning a copyright, and after that individual dies, the value of that asset is no longer owned by anyone. Now, copyrights are owned by corporations that do not disappear after 70 years. For them, the value of the copyright lives forever.
There are several problems: One is the balance of the public interest with private interest: There is broad agreement that this is really out of whack. Prince suing someone who posted a picture of their baby dancing because the music in the background is Prince's music. "Eyes on the Prize" couldn't be shown for 30 years because of copyright concerns. Documentary producers being sued because a scene they shot had "The Simpsons" playing on a TV in the background. Independent producers can't shoot in New York without clearing the copyright for all posters, clothes, background noise, and even buildings. Destroying copyrights won't fix the balance issue.
The other problem is how do we handle corporate copyrights? Corporations never die, thus they really want to hold onto their copyrights forever. Maybe a sliding copyright extension fee could be used in this case: After ten years, a corporation would have to pay
This would allow the copyright for 90% of the assets to expire while companies could keep their most valued possessions safe. Disney may throw "Frankenwienie" out to the public domain (or let it revert back to the original author, Tim Burton, but still keep the very valuable Snow White franchise.
Assuming that the maxim should be applied - people who pirate music are in many cases children who are misbehaving. Which privileges are they going to lose as a consequence of their own misbehaving? Wouldn't this simply from their relative standpoint be a reward for misbehaving?
If I had mod points I would bump you up, this arrangement I think would benefit just about everyone except the mega-corps (therefore it benefits everyone :-). It's also the most reasonable. ... this is especially true for literary works (books, computer programs) where the time to create the work in the first place may be more than 5 years !!
5 years is much too short, I certainly would not want my works (I have dabbled in drawing, photography, programming) to be PD after 5 years. Most of my stuff is released under a GPL or CC-viral license, and I would not want some mega-corp to come along and use my stuff in an advertising campaign (for example) without being bound to my licensing terms. Well not after 5 years anyway
And 120 years is just nuts. Might as well say "Never". Certainly any amount of time that goes beyond a human's average natural lifespan is completely ridiculous, and is obviously there for the sole benefit of those soul-less "people", the corporations.
So yeah, 50 years is a good compromise, and as you pointed out, other countries already have it set up this way (France and Switzerland also go by the 50 year to PD for recordings)
Wow! A blogger with an idea?! I'm sure Congress will drop everything and listen to this asshole with an opinion! I mean, wow, he's a blogger! He has a blog - we're saved!
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Uhm. Is this a trick question?
YES DAMMIT! YES! YES!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Just make all copywrighted works distrubed with DRM that is protected by the DMCA come with an unlimited warranty to the media. Your disk crashes they have to replace the files. Your CD is crushed or melted they have to send you a free one with absolutely zero cost to you(have to repay shipping if you send it to them.) Make the teeth of this that on the third consumer that the warranty is not honored in a timely fashion for the copyright is lost. If they aren't making more CD's if they can't replace what you bought then they aren't profitting from it anymore so it goes public domain. We loose our fair use rights to DRM so to compensate the companies have to warrant all drm'd music against any destruction to balance it out. If they fail then they loose copyright to it so we can legally download it from the internet and so can everyone else. Sounds fair.
it's a double edged sword, it cuts both ways ....
So what? Answer me this: In America, who has sovereignty? We the actual citizens, or foreigners?
Who the hell do you think wrote those agreements in the first place!?The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international agreement administered by the World Trade Organization (WTO) that sets down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property (IP) regulation. It was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994. Its inclusion was the culmination of a program of intense lobbying by the United States.
The United States strategy of linking trade policy to intellectual property standards can be traced back to the entrepreneurship of senior management at Pfizer in the early 1980s, who mobilized corporations in the United States and made maximizing intellectual property privileges the number one priority of trade policy in the United States (Braithwaite and Drahos, 2000, Chapter 7).
You can't take the sky from me...
Slightly off-topic, but I'd love to see a similar system for software: you own the copyright for 5 years or for as long as you're updating the software (to fix security problems, etc.). After that time, the copyright expires, and the software automatically goes into the public domain. The vendor would not be forced to release the source code, but anyone would be free to modify it, patch it, offer continued support, etc.
Unfortunately, this idea (like many others) is too good for people to get passed by our legislature, which is essentially bought and paid for by corporations. Great idea, though.
[...]
What do you possibly feel you have added to the discussion, other than what we all already know? Anonymous pot calling the kettle black.
You can't take the sky from me...
By the same token, is it fair to take a track an independent artist recorded, wait 5 years til the copyright expires, promote, market and turn it into a multiplatinum hit and not pay the artist that wrote and recorded it anything? That's what would happen.
I think Mr Wolfe is proposing that we throw the baby out with the bath water. Changing the law this way would ensure that record companies can subjugate artists even more than they do now, and completely screw independent artists out of their due.
You can't say copyright is bad just because a small minority of people (the RIAA and record companies) have twisted the enforcement of it into what we have now. The law needs to be updated for sure, but copyrights should not expire in 5 years. That's crazy talk. It takes 5 years just for an independant band to establish a good sized fan base. If their 5 year old song hits at 4.9 years, just before expiration, what then?
Sony, BMG, Atlantic all get to take the recording and make millions on selling copies?
Think about the reality of it for a minute... Copyright protects anyone that's creative, not just record companies, or even musicians for that matter. Once again, lawyers take a law meant to protect and twist it into a weapon. Lawyers are bad, not the copyright law.
-AC
I am an independent artist and also run a large online radio station. I cannot stand the RIAA as much as the next person but its unfair to penalize the Independent artists who are working hard only to get crushed by RIAA because they are not with a major label. I deal with this every day but I refuse to let it beat me.
What about this?
You get copyright for 3 years for free, to "test the waters".
For a patent, you need to pay a fee, say, $1000 and you get 3 years of protection. It still counts as if you paid this $1000 for this copyright.
Then you can extend it all, for as long as you wish, by paying twice the previous price for each year you want to extend it.
If it was a failure, you drop it and it enters public domain. If it seems still promising, invest first a little, then a little more, eventually it may take up and return the investment and keep running. If it's a milk cow, 10 years later you're more than willing to pay $32,000 to keep the copyright for another year. If it's a patent that keeps your company running, $131mln to keep the patent through 20th year after purchasing it is not too much.
This way companies wouldn't be able to accumulate thousands of patents portfolios - they would keep 5-6 most important ones and pursue new ideas to get new ones at low price, while dropping the most expensive ones as they stop being financially feasible. People wouldn't stash their patent portfolios for later, they would chase into the market, hurrying before keeping the patent becomes financially unfeasible.
Want to keep your copyright for 40 years? Pay $274,877,906,943,000 and you're free to do so.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm glad that the summary was worded to say "corporate copyrights." I think corporate copyrights, and patents for that matter, should be very limited. On the other hand, individual copyright should be very long. Among other things, this protects them from the interests of big corporations. I'm not sure what to do about individual patents.
:)
Oh, and another good thing would be to have graded patents. You can apply for a short-term patent for less money and have it more likely to be granted, but you only get, say, 5 years. Novelty, by the judgement of the patent examiner, I guess, could weigh in, allowing them to grant patents of different lengths depending on how novel or innovative the patent is. Something like the one-click would have been expired by now.
I'm a commercial photographer, and I'm unfortunately facing some of the same challenges as the recording and motion picture industries. Further, legislation changing copyright affects not only the movie studios and record labels, but often how copyright applies to me.
Now, I think I'm pretty progressive in my thinking on copyright. Does the creator of the work deserve payment for the product of his labors? Yes. Does he deserve royalties forever and ever and ever? Probably not. Does he deserve royalties for some period of time? Probably.
So here's a what-if: I'm out on assignment about weekend outings for a magazine. I am not an employee of the magazine, and there is no permanent transfer of rights for the images I make. I retain copyright and license the work to the publisher for a specified time.
Eventually, I may want to re-license the work to that same publisher or someone completely different. I may want to hire someone to re-license my work (Corbis, Getty, etc.)
Without adequate protection, someone could very easily appropriate my work and use it for their own commercial purposes. Even with protection of the law, it happens fairly frequently.
The problem is, where do I draw the line? As a businessman and artist, I think 'life of the author' is fair. As a consumer, I think 5-15 years is probably fair.
That's where we get into fair use. Atlantic Monthly wants to run a photo of mine anywhere in the magazine? Seems to me that they're profiting from a work I created. I should be duly compensated (in an agreement between myself and the magazine). Your sister has a website where she posts pictures of her cats and pretty sunsets, and happens to like a cat photo I took? Let her post the photo in a non-commercial non-endorsed way, and I couldn't care less. Now, if she compiles a book of cat and sunset pictures that she's found, I want a cut of the action.
We really need to start coming up with some solutions to these problems.
Message contains 1 attachment: spam.gif
It'll never happen. Forget about the music industries, movie industries, and just think about how huge of an effect this would have. If this were to happen, then scholarly journals would lose a ton of their membership because many people could wait it out, and then they would hike subscription dues, which would lose even more people.
If this were a serious proposition, you could safely bet your left nut that Harvard would be sending out their best to fight against it, and they'd probably win.
I totally agree with the bargaining position of 5 years for copyrights, with a final maximum of 15 years with extensions for LIVING artists and their LIVING spouses and children (younger than 25 yo).
In practice, this should end up with a bargained settlement at 7 years, with a maximum of 21 years with extensions for in-print in-media works, which would be more along the lines of what we started with when this nation was founded, as opposed to the Disneyfication we live with at this point.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This isn't terribly novel; the Swedish Pirate Party suggested the same thing almost two years ago.
Blanket gutting of copyright by changing to a 5-year term isn't politically viable, and at any rate it isn't the correct solution. Consider this: you're and indie songwriter and over 10 years you develop songs without gaining any traction with the record industry. Then Gus Van Sant puts one of your songs in a move and it's a hit, and everyone wants your stuff. Since our hypothetical copyrights only last 5 years, all of your material that's older than that is now free to be plundered by the industry and their blessed artists and you don't get a dime. Not cool. What we really need is a more tuned (and tunable) copyright expiration system that fulfills its intended purpose for each type of work, and a more permissive concept of fair use. This probably means different copyright expiration terms for software, works which have been created but not commercially marketed, and corporate-created and mass-marketed works. Software should have the shortest term (and no patents) - I think 5 years is fair here (you're not likely to have a "sleeper" software app that only catches on 10 years after it's written). Unmarketed works created by an individual (songs, novels, etc.) should have the longest terms - for the life of the author plus a few decades. Corporate works (e.g. a pop catalog, or a Disney film) should be limited to at most a couple of decades but that's a huge commercial battle to be waged; they want to keep milking the "vault" for as long as they possibly can, but clearly Snow White and all of Elvis should be in the public domain by now.
Since the real issue is $$$, the solution should also be $$$. Keep your copyright or patent for 17-120 years but each year you pay a 2% Graduated gross receipt tax for the 'PRIVLEDGE', 5 years 10%, 50 years 100% or release it to the public domain. Seems like a simple solution.
Mickey Mouse is a copyright and Disneyland would not exist if Mickey were not protected.
Microsoft might be able to use a 5-year-old Linux? I could live with that. We've come a long way since then. We, on the other hand, would get XP, which they really haven't improved upon since then.
Well, actually, it does make me think that you need to give the copyright office a copy of your source code if you want to copyright it. The binaries aren't that useful.
IANAA (I am not an Astophysycist), but isn't that kind of repetetive?
Or, if I can put it more succinctly, by shortening it to: IANAA (I am not an Astophysycist), but isn't that kind of repetetive?
Cheers
Cheers
To reiterate, the problem is that your average citizen (myself included, unfortunately), doesn't care enough about these topics to actually contact my representative. That, and the fact that there are so many of these topics that I'd have to sacrifice some of my own funding to research them all.
How about we just end the copyright on a song or album the moment its no longer on the charts, lets say the Billboard top 200 for example. If its not on the top 200 popular or within its category then its really no longer deriving meaningful value.
A step further it you can't buy it anywhere because its no longer in print same thing, end of copyright. I have long felt that same rule should apply to books and computer software. If I can't buy it at any price because you longer make it available, then someone else should be able too.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
and i don't see drug companies starving
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yeah, well -- there isn't a really polite way to put this -- suck it up.
I mean this in the nicest possible way, but well, fuck you too.
Nobody keeps paying ME for the creative work I did a month ago in my job.
Nice to know your think-through of policy issues is limited to your own perspective. And your post doesn't even give much indication you've thought that through clearly.
You and the musician have exactly the same protections under copyright law right now. If he writes something while working for an employer, nobody pays him for the creative work he did a month ago either. And if you write something on your own time, a month from now, you totally have the right to negotiate revenue from its use. And either of you might well be able to negotiate rights to work done on company time with your employer, even if that stuff is typically classified as a work for hire.
In short, current copyright law has nothing to do with the fact that an independent musician has a greater claim on future revenue from their work than a clock puncher -- it's all about when and for whom the work was done.
So if you want some parity between you and said independent musician, rather than yanking away somebody else's protection, feel free to "suck it up," as you say, and get out there and take the risk of doing your best work on your own time.
five years is the compromise position, not the extreme.
Five years is much better than 120, but it's a pretty ridiculous compromise position. The apparent absence of understanding of the public benefit side of the copyright equation in discourse in the current halls of power is no reason to throw out the personal incentive/benefit side of the equation.
I seem to recall that the first act of Congress establishing copyright covered it from 17 years;
14.
that still seems awful long to me
There are people whose works don't become popular enough to bring income within the five year period you proposed, and it doesn't always have anything to do with merit. Aside from the fact that some works take years to realize, there's a certain luck that comes to buzz and word of mouth and promotion, and there's enough worthwhile work that doesn't see it inside of five or ten years that you're essentially giving it away for free by making a copyright period shorter than that. Something around 15 years starts to seem like a pretty good spot once you realize that.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
One issue that has yet to be resolved is the ease of false derative works. Let's say the copyright expires in 5 years on a popular song. After five years most people still recognize it - assuming it was really that popular. OK, then I change a few notes digitally and republish it. It is to the ear indistinguishable from the original but now has a new publisher. Are we going to have "look and feel" regulations?
Or, again using the power of digitial editing, I take a popular song and overlay a new word into it. With a very short copyright period even for "current" media I can "stand on the shoulders of giants" and with a trivial amount of work capitalize on their work completely and often destructively. No, I seriously doubt this would be considered to be a legitimate parody. That certainly wouldn't necessarily be the idea or motivation.
The most sane option IMHO is this: if copyright holders want extensive penalties for copyright infringement, copyright lasts a short time. If copyright holders want copyright to last longer, the penalties decrease proportionally.
A few examples:
* Sony declares that it wants the death penalty for copyright infringement. Accordingly, their copyright lasts 24 hours.
* A new band claims it will sue fans for illegally downloading their songs at a fine of $1,000 per download. Their copyright lasts 14 years.
* An author says that anyone can copy her novel verbatim electronically but must purchase a dead-tree copy. Copyright lasts 28 years.
* McGraw-Hill wants to own the copyright on a textbook forever. Penalty for infringement: none.
My examples aren't perfect, but I hope the idea gets across: that is, copyright is part of a larger social contract. It is not meant to screw customers into a state of commercialized serfdom.
I don't know the right length of time, but once a work is out of publication for a certain amount of time, I think it should lose its copyright. We are in an age where some media of publication (e.g, film, tape, discs) have a shorter lifespan than the copyright. Add to that DRM, you have a situation where many works will disappear or disintegrate before it makes it to the public domain.
It is Sci-fi and one of the things I do in the novel is have a world with drastically reduced copyrights.
The basic point is that given real world entertainment (all percentages are wild ass guesses, but I would be shocked if they were far from the truth):
Most works of entertainment don't make money. Copyright on them is just a pain in the ass, not even worth the money it takes to sue.
Of those that do make money, 95% of them never make any money 10 years after first publication.
Of those that do make any money after 10 years, 90% of the cash is made in the first 5 years from publishing.
This pretty much applies to songs, movies, books, plays anything.
Net result is we have a TON of laws preventing enjoyment that do not in any way affect the cash the artists or even the Distributers/Producers get.
So in my fictional utopia, basic copyrights are 5-10 years (5 for shorter things like an hour TV show or a short story, 10 for larger works). They can however be extended for a short period of time if the author creates a sequel or related work. I.E. You write a book you get 10 years. Then you make a 2nd in the series, or even a movie out of the book you get another 5 years added to your book copyright (assuming the movie came out before the book's copyright ended.
This is a simplified version, but you get the idea.
The US won't do that as we still consider ourselves to be the entertainment king of the world and see it as a balance of trade issue. But if you check, you see that Bollywood makes more movies and MORE MONEY than than Hollywood does now adays.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If you want to get rid of the companies, why don't you just go live in North Korea?
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I think it's a great idea - 5 years is plenty of time to make good money from your music.
A couple of concerns though:
1) Making this change suddenly might be more devastating to the business than we intend. The sudden arrival of 120 years worth of legally free music might mean that all sales of under-5 years old music would virtually cease until people have heard enough and are anxious for more. It would be altogether more reasonable to gradually reduce the term of copyrights - say by one decade per year for the next 12 years.
2) Let's be careful here: There are typically three copyrights on a piece of music - that of the author, that of the performer and that of the publisher. In the case of classical music, the author's copyright has probably already expired - the limitation is on the performer and the publisher. However, a great deal of people don't really care who the musicians are. No many of us will rush out and buy a copy of (say) The Four Seasons just because it was recorded by a symphony orchestra that we haven't heard play it before. This means that you'd have a choice between a 5 year old recording from orchestra A (cost $0) or a new recording from orchestra B (cost $20) - it's hard to believe that any classical music would ever be sold again - which would be a lot more devastating to that industry than perhaps we intend here. Hence, this could mean the death of classical music recordings - which would NOT be a good thing. I'm not quite sure how you could deal with that.
That's a key issue right there:
Congress has the right to grant patents and copyrights for only "a limited time" and it's up to the Supreme Court to determine the upper limit of "a limited time."
At least one thought "a limited time" meant "forever minus a day." Others ruled that "a limited time" meant a reasonably limited time but alas 5 of them found 95 years to be reasonable.
If a future Supreme Court rules that 6 years is "beyond limited" then a 6-year copyright will be legally unconstitutional. While that is unlikely to happen, it is very possible, even likely, that a 150-, 120, or even a 96-year copyright will be ruled unconstitutionally unreasonably long.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ideas like this are great. And I agree that a 120 year copyright is a little absurd. But this is a double edged sword. It's easy to point at the recording and movie industries as examples of copyright gone wrong. With the mafiaa claiming every copyright under the sun and some that aren't, they are digging their own graves. Lengthy copyright limits stifle innovation. But so do short ones.
Let's assume that Bob has created a widget that changes the color of the paint in your house with the press of a button. He then patents his idea and creates a prototype to sell to others. But Bob isn't a good salesman, nor a good marketer. So Bob makes very little money on his own. Let's assume that the MegaGlobal Corp finds out about Bob's widget and see's a profit opportunity. Under current law, MegaGlobal must pay Bob either by licensing the patent for his widget, or by purchasing the patent entirely. Now let's assume that the copyright law only protects Bob's widget for 5 years. Instead of paying Bob for his widget, MegaGlobal simply waits for 5 years, and then creates their own copy of the widget. MegaGlobal makes millions, Bob gets the shaft. Now let's assume that Bob has another great idea for a widget that automatically changes your hair style in 3 seconds. But, Bob has not made any money from his previous idea. Not only that, but someone else took his idea after the legal protection of the idea ran out, and made millions. Do you think Bob is more or less likely to create a 2nd widget?
As was stated earlier, copyrights are a balancing act. And care must be taken to protect not only the creators, but the producers as well.
When one of the two authors is dead , Hugo said, the other one -the people - should inherit all the rights . That was a courageous position from Hugo, as his family lived mostly of his own writing rights.
Perhaps it would be wise anyway to have a copyright time of 20 years after the author's death, as he/she may leave a family behind; however extending if beyond that (which is the same duration as for a patent, by the way, except that the protection duration for a patent is from its divulgation and not from its discoverer's death), especially to 70 years or even 90 years as Disney people suggest, looks like a very, very bad joke.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
Any trademarks, patents, or other intellectual property rights required to distribute the work are licensed to the government. The terms of this license should be narrow--only those required to enable distribution under the terms previously enumerated.
This could have the effect of decreasing rather than increasing the "useful arts" thereby running afoul of the clause in the constitution that allows for copyrights in the first place:
What if I'm Coca-Cola and you are writing a play and want to use my trademark in your play and in your advertising. Today, I'd gladly license that to you for a fee.
In this scheme, I would only license it to you on the condition you not register your copyright, OR that if you attempted to do so, the license to the trademark automatically terminated.
Since the license would expire as soon as you signed the paperwork to submit your registration, you would not have any authority to give the government a license to use my trademark. Therefore, you could not license your play, since the government would reject your application for failure to secure the necessary rights.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If heirs and assignees can't hold copyrights, that means copyrights expire on death.
/. post:
Be careful what you wish for or you may see this in a future
1. Find something that's copyrighted that you want in the public domain.
2. Kill the author so the item enters the public domain.
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I thought that corporations were legal individuals, at least for the purposes of Free Speech. If the corporate copyright laws are changed, but individual copyright laws left alone (or if changed, then made more protective) then I suspect the corporations would just use their rights as legal individuals to claim individual copyrights, because somehow whatever it is they're doing constitutes Free Speech.
This is a non-story. This is some guy who has a web log. What real political influence does he have? There are thousands of people who propose ending world hunger and poverty, too.
When somebody in power pushes forth a recommendation like this then let me know. Good luck battling the lobbyists.
Love sees no species.
Just make all the copyright treaties part of the Geneva convention.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The original purpose in the US Constitution seems to me to be still valid: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The current state of the law is very clearly not doing this. Ownership has become separated from the source of creation for most cases. Ownership in such a case is what leads to the hoarding and tying up of wealth that belongs in the public domain. And ownership has created such an amount of wealth and influence that the owners are in arms fighting to keep wealth not created by them (RIAA, MPAA, Pharmas, ...). So, how do you change a system that has gotten corrupted to such an extent?
Machiavelli's comments on change are relevant: "because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new."
The degree of loss of the hoarded wealth and its impact in impoverishing us as a planet is not readily apparent. The incredible flourishing of open source does give us some hint of how huge that loss is in the many areas where there is little or no open source.
So, change in this area is going to be very difficult in a direct fashion. It may come about through disruptive technologies, e.g., open source. The causal factors keeping the status quo and the great loss of wealth have to do with the concentration of decision making into fewer and fewer channels. Oligarchies and aristocracies arise naturally in human affairs. And they are not willing to let go of the reins they have so artfully constructed over decades and centuries.
Thinking at the level of should it be 5, 10, 15, 20 years of IP protection is working at the level of writing code without an architecture, design, or specification. Of course, it is so satisfying to start writing code and one does get the feeling of accomplishing something.
If corporations and all their vast resources and control of the media cannot maximize their sales in a year, then they do not need to have a copyright for five years. 1 year, that's it...
Some states have a personal property tax on intangible assets. It works much like a real-estate tax: you pay $x for every $1000 in property you own.
I don't know if the states or feds tax intangible assets or not for companies.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"Those who whine and mumble "It will never happen" think they are being 'realists', but they are just dragging everyone
...only a slight
difference to you, but it's kindasorta obvious to the rest or us.
...just the thing for
anonymous cow...
...agitated concerned contributors such as yourself. Peace.
down with their own depressive lack of vision."
Are you here to offer us even a ballpark timeline as to when "it" will happen?
"Neil, you are as much a part of the problem as the RIAA and other criminals."
How do you figure that?
Neil has an opinion to offer, as do I, as do you.
"What do you possibly feel you have added to the discussion, other than what we all already know?"
See above. You're really quite upset about his stance aren't you?
"Want to add something other than vague accusations?
Want to print the names of those..."
Egad,...
Calm down. Inhale deep, exhale. By the way, they make de-cafeinnated coffee nowadays.
What about a five-year copyright with a dynamic enactment clause? Individuals and corporations alike could create and copyright original content, but the copyright must be "activated" before the advantages and protection of the copyright could be used. This would enable corporations with mega-marketing departments to activate the copyright immediately upon release of the work, whereas an individual could choose to wait until their work gains some momentum before activating the copyright. There would have to be a grace-period and notification system for copyright-enactment, but this should effectively level the playing field for individual creators while putting American copyright law under a single umbrella.
Silly. Who would enact that law? Congress. Who would extend copyrights? Congress. Congress doesn't pass laws that limit its own power. And even if they did, they could just strike out the prohibition as they violate it. It doesn't make sense.
What do you think; is it time to cut off the record industry?
Time?
More like 10 (or 20) years too late. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
It's not "yanking away someone's protection" -- I will not let you characterize it so. It isn't, and neither you nor all these trolls I'm arguing with (a population I exclude you from) can make it so. I have a right to speech, and this "protection" muzzles that speech. Protection it may be, but it takes the form of special privilege, and it is taken from me and every other citizen of the United States, and I have the right to question the duration of this privilege and the use to which it is put.
That out of the way? Five, fifteen -- you're no doubt correct about the original fourteen year term -- absent any proof, I see no reason to believe that a fifteen-year term will spur the act of creation any more effectively than a five-year term.
It's really the right to modify that I'm after... I hold that if the general public gets the right to take five-year-old media for their own, modify it as they see fit, and reset the five-year clock on the derived work, we'd see some amazing things... enough to outweigh the loss of the ten years we've narrowed the argument to.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
More exactly, this is the same basic point of the proposal I made one month ago at Digifreedom.net: http://digifreedom.net/node/59
I do agree that the length of time a copyright holder can claim ownership is ridiculous in most cases. However, unilaterally cutting that time down to five years is just as bad as expanding the length of time was. The writer of the article seems to think of this as a punitive maneuver, and therefore neglects to see those who would be harmed besides the RIAA and other "evil" corporate giants.
Why must such a broad brush be used to paint the protection of these creative works? According to the article, Disney is the reason copyright ownership was expanded in the most recent modification to the law, because their ownership of the Mickey Mouse character was about to expire. The unintended consequence is that the copyright holder for a magazine article or crappy song whose value has been expended in less than a few years' time maintains a stranglehold on works that should enter the public domain by that time.
It would seem smarter to create classifications for different works and then treat them differently. I think a character like Mickey Mouse, Spider-man, Sherlock Holmes, et. al., SHOULD be owned by the creator (or his/her assignee) in perpetuity. I think it's good for us as consumers when one organization has stewardship over the mythos it has created. It's how continuity is maintained (except where Star Trek is concerned), which can provide for a richer experience for the consumer of the work.
Music, movies, books, etc., are a different story altogether. A work such as one of these has limited lifespan on the market. It becomes popular, the assignee makes money from it, then it sinks into obscurity for the most part. Some works become timeless classics, but most of them follow a typical marketing cycle. So why not supply these with limited copyright lifespans. Maybe a song is 3-5 years. Give a movie 7-10. Somewhere in between for a book. However, one caveat would be that the copyright holder must make those works available for purchase during the copyright tenure, much like auto manufacturers are required to make parts for their cars for a certain period of time. After the tenure has elapsed, shift the work into the public domain. Most music, movies, and books realize the majority of their revenue within a couple of years, so a limit on copyright term has little impact on the owners while providing great benefit to the consumers.
"One size fits all" just doesn't work where there is so much diversity, so it is long past time to revamp the law to recognize that diversity of works protected.
with lots of money to spend on it that could actually get such legislation passed against the opposition of the movie and recording industries?
Yeah, this'll happen WHFO (When Hell Freezes Over)...
Most. Ridiculous. Dollar. Signs. Ever.
How you expect to be taken seriously I have no idea. But then maybe you're just trolling. After all you do post at -1.
Generally, there's nothing wrong with copyrights. If somebody writes a song, a script or a book, then the person should have the right to say who can do what with it. Otherwise somebody stronger comes along, takes the song and makes money with it, leaving the writer with nothing. But I do not see, why they should have this right for 50, 100 or even more years. Just like with patents, give them a few years headstart (where patents are running for too long as well). I'd say 5 to 10 years and that's it. Copyrights should also expire once the creator is dead. Why should we pay for some artist's heir's livelyhood? When I'm gone, do my children get my pension? Did the heirs of the artist do anything creative?
Nope, keep the copyrights but stricktly limit them. I don't see why the Disney-Shareholders should reap the fruit of Walt Disney's work from 80 years ago. That's just ridiculous. 5 Years sounds good, 10 years would be a compromise and then copyrighted Material goes into the public domain. Imagine we'd have to pay everytime somebody takes a photo of some 10,000 years old cave paintings just because one of our early ancestors had a good lawyer and could persuade the tribal elders that his work deserves exclusive rights forever.
An inventor - James Dyson, say - comes up with a good idea, spends a while (years) in secret working out how it would work, files patent forms, sets up a company to produce the idea (or sells it to another company) and has to be able to recoup everything an make his fortune in the 20 year life of the patent - already a long time (how much 20-year old technology are you using besides Windows and its 640k?). An author commits a novel to paper, probably after a couple of years research, persuades an author to publish it and lives on the royalties for the rest of her life and passes 70 years worth of royalties to her estate. A songwriter does the same with a song that took him half a day to write. A record studio get some dope off the street to sing a song on a record in the late 50s and the same singer whines that, in the UK, his right to live of his royalties on that record runs out after 50 years. An RIAA member corporation advances a big royalty to an aspiring rock group to pay for recording and promotion of their record, which it claws back from said group's initial royalties (which in any case are probably only 40% for the first record in the contract, if the group's lucky) while the corp. takes its 60% from the first sale onwards. And the RIAA thinks they should continue to be able to make these enormous profits for 120 years for doing nothing. When are governments going to stop pandering to these thieves.
On one hand, yes! of course we should do this. It's a no brainer.
On the other hand, this is a problem for everyone who has been granted a copyright of 120 years. We can change them going forward, but it'd be hard to impossible to take them away without compensation.
Lawyers, please PLEASE jump in and tell me why I'm wrong. I'd LOVE to be wrong.
Because the entertainment industry has the money to purchase any amount of congressmen and any law it wants. And it will.
In America, this group of people called politicians make these things called laws.
Traditionally, they answered to the will of the people. If the people didn't like what they did, they got voted out. Therefore they tended to do whatever the people wanted.
However, people are lazy. People pay no attention to who does what, 99% of the time because it's a hassle.
Instead, people generally vote for whoever's already in power in the vast majority of cases. This tends to only change when on candidate spends a huge amount of money on advertising, telling the electorate that he did GoodThings(tm) and the other guy did BadThings(tm). This doesn't have to be true, as the electorate's far too lazy to fact check - they'll just believe what they're told.
So the only really motivating force in politics, so long as you otherwise generally keep your head down, is money.
And who gives politicians money? Big companies and lobbying organizations. Like the RIAA. "We should do what we do to children who misbehave," he writes. "Take away their privileges." Two perspectives:
As the public sees it: The big mean RIAA is misbehaving. Let's take away their privileges.
As the RIAA sees it: The naughty public are misbehaving. Let's take away their privileges.
Who makes the decision over whose privileges get taken away? Oh, yeah, that'd be the politicians... who now only care about money thanks to years of voter apathy.
And who gives money to the politicians? That'd be the RIAA.
Who do you think is going to convince the politicians that they're right and the other side is wrong and deserves to have their rights taken away?
And there we have the DMCA, a progressively more conservative supreme court that will back businesses and a media surcharge tax in Canada.
As requested, the naughty ones are being punished... You just missed that your opinion over who the naughty ones are counts for absolutely nothing unless you can motivate the politicians to enforce it - and they listen to the other side because they give them money and we'll give them votes regardless.
Copyrights have been extended at least eleven times since the Founding Fathers set the limit at 28 years. Each time, it has been because some large entity (corporation) has persuaded a politician or a group of politicians to extend their "rights" in exchange for "campaign contributions." Or, to put this in plain English, the corporations bribed the politicians to act against the interests of the public at large, for personal gain, and to increase their profits at our expense.
Now we have a suggestion that would cut these same corporations off at the knees in an environment that is utterly and completely Fascist. And I do mean exactly that: Fascist. Corporatist, if you like, but it amounts to the same thing.
So, what do you think the odds are of this actually happening? Somewhere between "none" and "less than none?" After all, our "elected" politicians can't even try to do anything like this because they would instantly cut off their source of support . . . and become unelectable. And to think otherwise, that our politicians will ultimately "do the right thing" is completely beyond experience.
It ain't going to happen.
Makes a good fantasy, though!
"As a serious proposal, it makes about as much sense as suggesting that Congress pass a law allowing unrestricted legal immigration in order to increase the numbers of young workers and thus solve the demographic problems of Medicare and Social Security."
If the immigrants are stripped of their own rights to medicare and social security, yes. Otherwise, not so much. That's of course disregarding other slight problems with the scheme, such as the US falling apart in swift order while absorbing a billion or so largely poor and uneducated people.
No one is appropriating your own creative works. You still have your copy, right? The proposed solution just says that you don't have the right to reach into other people's pockets and control *their* copy beyond "limited times".
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
But *do* they monetize the long tail? That would entail keeping each and every piece of music ever published by a RIAA member available in CD form. Do you really think that's likely to happen? No, they'd have to accept digital distribution of everything in order to accommodate that. And the RIAA fights digital distribution arm and leg.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Cutting back the length of copyright makes sense to me, in general (though I don't know what the actual length should be; 5 years seems too short). But there are certain cases where songs are used for commercial purposes (such as advertising jingles) where I think the creator of the original tune should get paid (not for 120 years, but at least 30 years (it seems like the sweet spot for advertising jingles is to use hit songs from 8 to 25 years old).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
It's not "yanking away someone's protection" -- I will not let you characterize it so.
;)
I'm not sure how you can stop this -- if you advocate stripping the protections that currently exist, then you're yanking them away, whether you've got a convincing argument for doing so or not.
Protection it may be, but it takes the form of special privilege, and it is taken from me and every other citizen of the United States
Taken AND given to every citizen in equal measure. You have no more or fewer rights than the most famous songwriters in the U.S.
and I have the right to question the duration of this privilege and the use to which it is put.
Sure. But you're going to have to demonstrate understanding and consideration of both sides of the copyright equation if you want to be taken seriously, and I'm not just talking about by me.
see no reason to believe that a fifteen-year term will spur the act of creation any more effectively than a five-year term.
Imagine law or medical degrees were only good for five years. Would it be worth the significant investment to go to school? Most people wouldn't even have the time to finish school, let alone set up a practice and recoup the costs put into going to school.
It takes a serious investment to build up a portfolio of worthwhile and marketable work and do all the legwork of getting into the hands and consciousness of your potential audience. This stuff isn't instant unless you're exceptionally gifted AND blessed with resources and connections. Cut it short to something like five years and in many if not most cases you'll never get the time to pull an income from your work before the right to copy/redistribute it is open to anyone. By keeping the term longer than it takes to work through the higher education system to get a law degree, you leave the field open to people who may, for whatever reason, either need that time to create good work, or need that time to get the word out.
Fifteen years isn't even that long. That's why the original U.S. copyright act allowed for a 14 year extension if the author was still living.
t's really the right to modify that I'm after.
You basically have the right to modify, at least until the DMCA gets further tech & teeth. You just don't have the right to modify and distribute.
You could also gain the right to modify in far more productive ways than putting an extremely short leash on copyright term. For example, you can do this with any song out there *right now* -- you can get a mechanical license for performing any song at what was, last time I checked, a license fee of $.08 per copy. So, you're perfectly welcome to re-write (or simply re-record) "Every Breath You Take" by the Police any time you're willing to put up a small fee. If you wanted more freedom, you could write laws that waived the fee for non-commercial use. Or you could broaden things to generalized mechanical licensing for all audio works if it's samples you're after. That would be a little more problematic, as it would essentially constitute price fixing for recordings, but any of this would be better than having quickly evaporating copyrights.
And changing the law is far, far, far from the only way to create the culture you're looking for. Show people how it's in their interest to do it, and collaboration will follow. The entire open source explosion of the last 10-20 years happened without anyone shortening software copyrights to five years.
Pull the leash short to a chokingly short length isn't the way to get a reasonable term length any more than bidding 2/3 under the starting price will help you at an auction.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
If copyright duration does eventually decline, it'll probably come down the same way it went up, bit by bit. We should make it our ultimate goal to drop it from 120 down to 20 or so, but we'll never get it in one big chop. Too much shock to the system. Instead, we should campaign to reduce copyright duration in 20 year increments. Make Big Media think we only want to reduce it to 100. After we get that, wait a few years, then campaign to reduce it to 80. Repeat until ultimate victory.
If copyright law was null and void, then the GPL would essntially become something more like BSD.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Trademarks and patents aren't as abused and perpetually extended as copyrights has been.
I believe that corporations should have shorter terms on copyright, and endentured slavery contracts that strip authors of the copyright of their works should be abolished and outlawed.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
The purpose of copyright is to protect the recording industry from people who illegally copy music over bit torrent. Yet we get another idiot pundit who thinks the recording industry is overreacting, when if anything, even they didn't envision the scope of the problem the digital age would present in terms of stealing their content.
Well it seems to work quite well in Switzerland. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_Switzerland Without such limitations copyrights runs amuck. Remember we have copyright to encourage creativity. But you do not need copyright on all photos to encourage it. My objection is the extension of copyright beyond its original reason-d'etre.
You know, if this was a group of senators I'd be excited. But it's not. It's some blogger with no power to pass laws. Big. Woopdee. Doo.
I agree wholeheartedly. Still, this amounts to pretty much nothing.
-Tony
How about :
- 5 years if the work involves any work for higher. 10 years if the original authors own it all (no corporations in particular). Here "work for higher" would not include samples and media for which unrestricted licenses were purchased *and* which remain available separately on an open market.
- All damages are limited to income directly related to infringement (i.e. individuals may infringe for personal use). A site like the piratebay could still be sued for their advertising income.
- No copyright protection for machine code unless the source code is also published for the same price. You might try circumventing this by having human compile your software, claiming it was a "performance", but that'd just be funny.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
And that's fine. So I can copy your music/book/movie, yes?
If we're going to use your wardrobe as an accurate analogy of what you believe copyrights to be, then we can treat it the same way as wardrobe, where I can see your wardrobe and build it myself as long as I use labour and materials I've supplied or paid for.
So I print your book using the laser printer that I bought.
And if the company waits 5 years so it falls out of copyright, the company DOESN'T get copyright either, so no monopoly and they've had to wait 5 years to get it.
120 years is way too much. I always thought patent protection time should give an inventor a headstart only so he has an advantage when entering the market. It is not supposed to be a lifetime protection from competition.
Apparently something changed.
But you can't see that because you've mischracterised them. They are protecting their monopoly (which is bad and completely NOT free market, more communistic) and they extend their legal protections for their own benefit.
So, even though they are protecting their legal rights, they defined those rights.
A dictator crushing opponents is protecting his legal rights, but nobody says "well, he's right to do so, isn't he".
Further yet,it's time to dispense with the music industry as a business model.
Music existed long before them and will long after they are a forgotten memory.
The musician now has a level playing field to promote themselves and has no need for a middle man to take his product,money,life and screw him over as well.
It's over,move your crap out of your L.A. highrise office and give up,lackey,no one wants or needs you anymore.
Guess what I have to say about Hollywood,with the same idea in mind.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
In Canada we're fighting the same battle with the RIAA (although here they are called the CRIA). We are dealing with oppressive media that is completely on the side of business, and couldn't give a damn about the average public.
http://www.abandonedstuff.com/2007/12/30/the-internets-enemy-financial-post/
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
1980 called, it wants its question back.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Unless you own a bar. As long as you pay for the tax on your alcohol, and the bank is happy with you, the govt don't care about profit. This is according to my neighbor who operates a bar here in Ohio.
According to my uncle, a part-time artist and full time truck driver, who owned interest in a consignment art store for a while, you can show loss for about 3 years (this may have changed), then he had to show a profit, $1.00. He closed the store the following year. Mostly due to how the other artists were treating the business.
Lastly, a co-worker at a former job was going thru divorce settlement. His ex wanted to keep her business, a bakery, which had his name on the loans. The judge ruled in his favor, closing the bakery because she could not show profit, nor a time frame to start making profit, and ruled the business a hobby.
Of course I am NOT a lawyer, and need to do further research before trying to take a hobby to business status. Yes, I have a hobby that I think can succeed as a business. It may be better to stay a self-supporting hobby, selling off old toys to fund building new toys.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
While I completely agree that copyright length is crazy, there are other considerations. For example, the U.S. is a signatory to the Berne Convention, which requires copyright protection for a minimum of the lifetime of the author plus 50 years. That said, I never understood how the Mickey Mouse Protection act ever survived constitional scrutiny, since it added ex-post-facto restrictions, which are expressly *not* constitionally allowed.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Most software development happens in house anyway.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What is the point of this article?
People in the US can't be bothered to get rid of a President and a political class that is patently screwing them and the world around them.
Are you guys going to fight nail and tooth for a copyright reform? No, not really.
When we see the lobbying efforts in the US congress to bring copyright and patent law in the US to sane limits give us a ring, otherwise the musing of a blogger (from his basement?) amount to no more than a momentary diversion from the traditional political apathy and maniqueism prevalent in US politics.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Steamboat Willie might some day be in the public domain.
Mickey will continue to be a Disney Trademark for the foreseeable future.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Clearly having a reasonable copyright term such as 5-25 years is crazy. Allowing people to have things under public domain is stupid as long as companies can be making money off of the hard work of artists.
But in all seriousness most artists make very little money per cd after the big companies rob them blind with promotion charges costs to make the 10 cent disc etc. Most of their income tends to come from touring, merchandising, etc. I find it too funny that the RIAA thinks it needs such retardly long terms so as to prevent our kids/grandkids from listing to the music we once did. Fact is it is now the information age and trying to hold on to draconian based copyright laws. With the internet and p2p trying to stop information from flowing is as pointless as it is impossible(short of turning off the internet). Instead of trying to adapt to the new digital market the RIAA has done everything in its power to keep us in the stone age like the Dinosaurs they are.
EX: trying to kill net radio
: lobbying stupid lawls like dmca/trying to get it inforced in canada
: trying to force cds on us when digital music is what a large portion of music buyers want(which are of course mostly younger people who have more disposable income.)
The RIAA doesnt believe in public domain anymore just as it doesnt believe in fair use. Ripping a $15-20 cd onto your computer so that when the cd is to scrathed or damaged you can still enjoy your music that you payed for is clearly wrong to them. Of course you are suposed to go buy the same overpriced cd again so you can get the one to 3 good songs on it. They dont understand that people want what they pay for and to be able to use it how they want.(rip it to your computer, download it if you have already payed for the rights to it, put it on your ipod, etc) OR buy just the songs they want and not crap overpriced cds full of crap filler.
But that clearly doesnt matter since goverments care more about money and campain funds rather then rights of the consumers.
This idea doesn't take into account other types of copyrighted work. Take authors for example. Many types of books have a much longer shelf life than five years and, in cases where the author becomes widely read only after years of work, the peak income or at least significant income may come after five years. Not everyone has quick success the way that J.K. Rowling did. I just started reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. If the proposed rule were in effect, he wouldn't have gotten any money for the first three books that I read (which were copyrighted in 2000 and 2001). They were good enough that I'm happy that he got a little of my money.
Also, it's not as if authors have an alternative income source from performances the way that musicians do. The same goes for song writers, T.V. and movie script writers, painters and others.
One may decide that one doesn't care about the creator's ability to earn income from the copyrights of their creations, or that technology will make it a moot point. Consider, however, that while people who create such things may do it for free if they can't make money from it, they won't be as prolific (due to having to work at something else for a living) and may not produce work of the same quality; book editors and record producers, among others, routinely polish rough creations into better versions of themselves.
Having said all of that, I think that life plus 120 years is clearly not in the spirit of the relevant constitutional provisions. A careful examination of the benefits to both the creators and society at large is in order. I'm not holding my breath, but perhaps it will happen in my lifetime.
Contrary to popular belief, downloading songs over p2p is not illegal. What is illegal is uploading (and, as it increasingly starts to look, making available for uploading). To my best knowledge, noone was ever accused of, or convicted of, downloading songs/movies over p2p. Comparing it to stealing is therefore a gross misinterpretation (from **AA's point of view obviously deliberate). A better (although still imprecise) analogy would be selling replica products.
:-). It is just not subject to competition.
Now back to the topic of length of copyrights. From economic point of view, a copyright (also patents and other types of so called "intellectual property") is a government-granted monopoly for specific products and services, meaning that the holder can exclude competitors from the market and earn the monopoly rent. As a result of excluding competition, the prices are driven upwards and quality downwards.
As an anarchocapitalist, I obviously object to government-granted monopolies and other means of forced redistribution. In my opinion, "intellectual property" law, just as any other law, should be produced*) and enforced privately by competing organisations and based on contracts. The "owners" of "intellectual property" should obtain their income by participating on the market, and not by using force to obtain monopoly rent.
*) Upon further deliberation, copyright law is actually produced privately already