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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).
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
... 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.
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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!
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?
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
I just thought I'd attack the first cynical apologist for no good reason other than I don't like people like you.
Those who whine and mumble "It will never happen" think they are being 'realists', but they are just dragging everyone
down with their own depressive lack of vision. Neil, you are as much a part of the problem as the RIAA and other criminals.
What do you possibly feel you have added to the discussion, other than what we all already know?
Want to add something other than vague accusations?
Want to print the names of those you accuse of corruption?
Want to cite some examples of their criminal behaviour?
Your hand waving dismissal just insults us all.
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."
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.
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!
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.