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WIPO Talks May Portend Sweeping Broacast-Based Copyright
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the nasty 'Broadcast Treaty' is rearing its head again in the WIPO talks. This would give a new copyright to what is uncopyrighted or out of copyright material to anyone who broadcasts the material. It essentially re-ups the copyright — not to the original copyright holder, but to the broadcaster, without any contract to the original holder."
Copyright is to protect the privileges of the distributor, never the creator...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I was trying to think of a situation in which this makes sense but couldn't.
Scenario:
Download "With The Marines At Tarawa" from the Internet Archive.
Broadcast or stream over the internet. Gain broadcast rights so no-one else can do it.
How does this promote any art or science?
What am I missing?
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Can we at least proofread the headlines? I've gotten used to seeing silly typos like this on mainstream news sites like CNN and the Chicago Tribune, but c'mon Slashdot, you can do better than that! ;-)
I drifted through the various referenced links and don't really see where they came to that conclusion. The links appear to be mostly self referential to other TechDirt articles. I did scan through what I took to be the relevant WIPO section but I didn't get what they got out of it, admittedly I didn't get much out of it at all.
I certainly agree with the point that this would be a Bad Thing(TM).
Out-of-copyright work was given to Google to scan and in return the BL accepted that Google would have exclusive commercial rights to the scans for a while. It's not quite the same as giving over the copyright on the original works - in theory another organisation arrange a deal with the BL to have physical possession of the works for a while at no cost to make their own copies. Good luck with that, non-profits.
Incidentally, the BL estimated the cost of the work for them would have been £6 million, which is not very much by the standards of this sort of work and certainly not a figure on the publications' cultural value. This is just another government gift to a large corporation - indeed, previous meetings and announcements suggest Cameron has a bit of a hard-on for Google.
No law or treaty is being designed to help someone, all of them are being designed by special interest groups and bought by lobbyists to help some massive money mongering corporate machine.
First of all, Google acquired a copyright to the scans, not the work itself. Second, the fact that Google even acquired that is the fault of European copyright law. Europe could adopt laws under which 2D reproductions of 2D originals do not acquire a separate copyright.
As for the British library, it only has itself to blame for not letting other people scan its content. Don't try to turn the arrogance and possessiveness of the British library into Google's fault.
Followed quickly by the Constitution of the United States, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the Bible, the table of logarithms, and "Fanny Hill."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The profitable privileges of the distributor have always conflicted with the free speech/press rights of the people. The US Constitution's original power to Congress to create something like copyright (a temporary monopoly "to promote progress in science and the useful arts") was a 1700s compromise with our rights that never really worked, like any compromise with rights. But it was the best our predecessors came up with in the generations when the publishing business was mostly defined by manufacturing and producing heavy physical products dressed up with the copyrighted content.
Since the 1900s, broadcasting has decreased the dependency on processing and moving matter for sale with content copied on it to make profits. We're far past the point where copyright is necessary for even the original 17 years. In 17 years a generation's new pop culture book becomes folk culture from the previous generation. But that takes only maybe 10 years for a TV show, 5 years for a movie, 3 years for a song, a couple years for a digital game. The profit curves match those pop->folk expirations, so the profits that promote science and the "useful" arts as incentive to create by those who'd do something else if profits didn't incent them also expire pretty quickly. The profits from the folk phase, the "long tail", are a bonus too small to justify to any realistic capitalist financier the initial creation, and are the product of as much work by the audience perpetuating the content as work by the creator or distributor. And of course most artists and inventors create their work not for the profits, but by the compulsion to create, which is typically what drives the creators of the best content - the content created solely for profits, especially large expected profits with no competition - is typically the least valuable creation, and most dependent on an artificial government monopoly to protect income.
In the 2000s, copyright for even the extended periods bought by the copyright industry from successive 1900s Congresses overall interferes with progress in science and the useful arts. It always conflicted with our speech/press rights. There is no justification for extending it beyond the original 17 years except simple corruption: the regulators are captured by the copyright industry, and violate the people's rights to press/speech as well as the progress in science and the useful arts that we need. The copyright changes that can trade progress for compromise of our rights would cut sharply the length of the monopoly, and release the content from control after the time the content has its shot at repaying the investment in creating it.
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make install -not war
How do you get a network bigger than the Internet itself?
FCC licensing, that's how. I'm under the impression that more people in the United States can receive over-the-air broadcasts than Internet streaming video.
Amusingly, as copyright terms under Berne are set on author's life plus a period that varies by jurisdiction (95 years in the US), and as the bible claims to have been either directly dictated by or derived from inspiration of God... if the bible's account of itsself is true, then it's still copyrighted. Conveniently for the believers though, it includes in the new testament an effective licence to copy and distribute. There's even a little bit right at the end of Revelation that prohibits unauthorised modification.
The US dominates the global copyright industry. The WTO TRIPS and Berne convention do little or nothing to protect our free speech/press. The US forcing the global copyright regimes to adopt our protection of people's rights would be a win for both our freedom and for legitimate, sustainable commerce. But if the business as usual of copyright commerce were impaired by new tariffs, that would force content creation back to its basic motives and the higher quality, if lower quantity, that they produce.
In other words, no great loss. Let babylon fall.
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make install -not war
So, the first guy to broadcast something which has either had its copyright expire (or was never copyrighted) now owns it? That's fucking obscene.
Wow, I can see this being a wonderful mechanism by which broadcasters can pretty much steal works just by broadcasting them. Just find something someone else did that is scheduled to become unprotected, sneak in and broadcast, and suddenly you own it for the next 75 years or whatever copyright is at now.
I'm afraid that copyright has gotten completely out of control, and no longer serves the purpose it was created for. This is basically squatting, but made legal through copyright law.
I feel very sad for future generations living in a climate where the corporations control every last thing, and have all of the laws on their side. I think lawmakers voting for this need to be boiled in oil -- more maybe something more evil.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
When are we going to stand up to those corporate thieves. Not only do they want to possess all our money, now they want sole ownership of our culture. Fuck em!
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