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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).
Seriously? Follow the money in US politics. This will not happen.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Twenty is too long, but I agree that five is way too short. I'd go to seven with an optional seven-year extension (for a total of fourteen) much like the original copyright scheme used in the US.
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
In other words, the copyright ratchet is built right into the Constitution.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
... 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
For corporate copyrights, 5 years is fine. Maybe a fee to continue the copyright for 5 year increments beyond that (to encourage continue publication of the media as long as it is copyrighted, and public-domaining as soon as it isn't profitable). Corporations are too abusive to give long copyrights too.
Individual copyrights for 10-20 years are fine, IMO. It forces the corporations to answer to the artists if they want to save on copyright fees, and the artists will probably be more considerate to the consumers.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
The lifespan of software is pretty short anyway. A 5-year protection cycle is a huge motivator to get a new product out the door on a regular basis and keep the programmers employed.
Individual copyrights for 10-20 years are fine, IMO. It forces the corporations to answer to the artists if they want to save on copyright fees, and the artists will probably be more considerate to the consumers.
I'm all for an extension fee but make it non-trivial in cost for corporations AND make it geometrically progressive so that they can't just keep paying the fee forever.
Because you know as long as they can pay a small amount to retain their stranglehold they will do so.
"Bah!" - Dogbert
The distinction between corporate and individuals wouldn't be effective. Some company exec will just hold the copyright personally, and license it exclusively to the corporation for the full 20 years.
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).
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!
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
My proposal would be different than just capping Copyrights at 5 years (or 10, or 120).
Similar to trademarks, and to a lesser extend patent continuations, I think copyrights should last as long as the work is being actively revised, promoted, and/or otherwise used commercially. But if the work languishes or has had no creative augmentation, the copyright should expire in 5-10 years. That leaves Disney in the clear to keep their copyrights while at the same time allowing the zillions of obscure books, songs, and material to enter the public domain instead of being lost forever.
It's not a perfect solution, but one I think that's substantially better than what we have now AND could actually make it through Congress (after all, Disney would suddenly get the perpetual copyright they've been lobbying for so long-- except that it wouldn't ruin it for everyone else).
E pluribus unum
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.
A 30 year old cobol program running on a mainframe is the ABSOLUTE LAST thing that should be entangled in copyright shenanigans. This is THE perfect example of something for which the owner of the copy should have the ability to fix and maintain the program. Quite likely, the individual or company that original wrote or sold the program is gone, LONG GONE.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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?
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.
Cut back corporate copyrights from 120 to 5 years makes complete sense
That's one of the many reasons it won't happen.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
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.
What right do you have to say that other people aren't allowed to play with an idea? To present an idea? What right do you have to limit the expression of others? After all, that's all that music and books are.
I don't think so. Most people are mad at the US, not because we break treaties (which has traditionally been done in compliance with the actual treaty) but they are instead mad because we won't SIGN treaties that we know we can't live up to, like Kyoto.
Then again, the US was the first to ban aerosols, has significantly cleaned up our lakes since 1970s, just recently upped the CAFE standards for gas mileage in cars, and subsidizes alternative fuels. Far from perfect, granted, but we have still done more without a treaty than most with one.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
That is actually untrue, which is why I disagree with the rest of your post. The protection is to provide incentive, but it does not specify in the law what way the creator should use the protection as incentive. Plenty of authors use their copyright in ways that derive no profit, but they would still potentially wish to renew after a shortened term. Many authors of software under the GPL, for example, would fall into this category.
I especially don't see any reason to provide a discount for profitable works. Aren't those likely to be the ones that the public domain would benefit the most from? The fee should be the same for all works, and then it should be up to the creator whether continued protection justifies the fee. We shouldn't be putting terms into the renewal that give preference to commercial uses of works over non-commercial uses.
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
While I fully agree, it is a double edged sword, your example is poor. Why would MS want to steal 5 year old software? It's probably obsolete. It doesn't even take them that long to replace their own software. On top of the fact that MS wouldn't exactly be stealing it if the copyright expired.
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.
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.
With the new targets being significantly more modest than the European equivalents.
Also, most people are not too upset about the US finding it difficult to cut greenhouse gas emissions. We can understand that. What we are REALLY pissed about is that your government has decided to launch a corrupt attack on the scientific process rather than admitting they have a problem and that it is hurting the entire globe. The disinformation they are promoting in order to save their own face is making it difficult for countries that DO try to make a difference to explain it to their population.
In short, the Bush administrations anti-scientific propaganda is causing Europeans who don't know better to reject their local governments attempts at curtailing emissions. Thus while they may just be doing it to save their own face, their lies are causing major trouble across the globe, and it is pissing of a lot of people.
It doesn't matter, at present, if two works are similar or identical. If two people happen to write the exact same poem, BOTH people are entitled to, and hold, copyright.
Your music example is easier to understand. If an orchestra records a performance of Beethoven's 9th, the orchestra holds the copyright on that recording. If a different orchestra records the same tune, it holds the copyright on its nearly indistinguishable recording.
I don't see why we'd need special "look and feel" regulations just because the term drops from 120 to 5 years -- especially considering that existing copyright law handles examples like yours already.
Required reading for internet skeptics
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.