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J.G. Ballard Dies at Age 78
jefu writes "J.G. Ballard, an author (of science fiction and other fiction) has died. His works include some of the strangest and most compelling novels ever, including 'The Crystal World,' 'Crash' and 'The Atrocity Exhibition.' For a truly weird read, try his 'Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race," compared with Alfred Jarry's "The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race.'" Here is Ballard's obituary at the BBC.
Among his other works, JG Ballard's short story The Voices Of Time had a huge impact on me as a teenager and has haunted me thru this very day. IMHO the VERY BEST SF story depicting man's place in an uncaring universe. Farewell, JGB, and thanks for your works.
Ballard's writing for me was always the epitome of supremely ironic indifferent technophilia and, as such, a template for our hyper-connected present. Considering he first realised his vision during the 1960s, this makes him even more of a legend. The Drought or The Crystal World are just fucking classics. So many Sf writers, and even "non" writers like Cormac McCarthy with The Road, are just excavating the upper layers of mine shafts that Ballard plunged into decades ago.
Da Blog
Crash--a cautionary tale about our love of technology, and a science fiction novel written in the present, with no fictional technology, blew my mind and changed my life. A worthwhile read for anyone (it takes some guts sometimes), but especially for tech people. Give it a shot.
You realize that the same theory applies to real estate, right? You don't "own" real estate, you own "title" to real estate which may or may not be in your possession (i.e., which you may or may not inhabit and protect through fences, locks, etc.), but since you can't put real estate in your pocket, the whole concept of owning it is abstract. Paying a kind of property tax on "intellectual property" would put it in the same category as real estate and automobiles (unlike cash savings, for which you do not pay taxes - only income). Twenty years after death is a little short. I'm all in favor of going back to death+50. Except in the case of Walt Disney; their copyrights should all expire immediately just to spite them.
Some of us take more than 14 years to finish our creative works. Sorry if your flash animations aren't as hard as painting a building sized mural by yourself or writing a field guide on all known North American bird species. While we can certainly adjust it so that when you're finished is when the clock starts, going from one project to another if it takes more than 5 years to complete is not very economical. I assume for a steady income we'd like to have royalties for at least as long as it takes us to make another project that can produce steady income.
I'd argue 5 years for corporate entities, and 20 years for individuals. With no extensions possible. If you need to protect your work for more than 5 years, you'll have to figure out a way to tie trademarks into it and protect it the hard (and expensive) way.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
How to provide for my family in case of my untimely death.
1) Set aside a percentage of my paycheck into savings (cds,savings accounts,mutual funds,stocks... etc), and make sure that my written will is up to date
2) Perpetual copyright
3) Stuff matress full of scratch off lotto tickets
4) Government Bailout
I'm leaning toward three, what do you think?
If you make the time too short, then you can actually encourage people to just wait. Even 14 years will likely be short enough for the vultures (ie. large publishers, film studios, the chronically unhip and cheap) to opt out of bothering until the copyright runs out and they can do whatever they want.
Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I won't wade into the length of time debate, but I am a strong believer that we don't need extensions. Authors should be allowed to create a new edition of the work (creating a derivative work could mean changing as little as a few words or adding a new forward or afterward) and then they can be given a full new copyright on the "new" work.
This is what copyright was supposed to be for... to encourage new work. I guess I am just singing to the choir when I mention how perverted copyright has become... a copyright is not supposed to be an unending stream of cash for a corporate organization.
In these arguments about copyright terms, I am always stricken by two things: the general assumption that all copyrights should be identical and that copyright is binary.
We could have different copyright terms on different creations... entertainment software could be 5 years, serious commercial trade software like CAD/CAM or 3DS Max could be 15. Reference materials like your guide on N.A. bird species could be the life of the author or 25 years for the publisher. Textbooks similar. Movies 10 years. Etc.
Further, copyright doesn't have to be absolute. As in my above example, after 3 years, all entertainment software could go id-style where the engine is pretty much free and mod-able, but the art remains under control for the duration of the 5 years. Another case that comes to mind were the lawsuits over Harry Potter guides. Say Harry Potter's copyright is 12 years, but after 6, all of this control over derivative works goes away.
I'm not really asserting that this is the right way to go or anything, but it seems obvious to me that a lot of these problems are the result of lumping all copyrightable material into one set of rules. Should flash animation be legally the same as a mural in this context? I don't ever see anybody really asking these questions directly.