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Eternal Copyright: a Modest Proposal
New submitter SpockLogic writes "The Telegraphs has a tongue in cheek essay in praise of eternal copyright by the founder of an online games company. Quoting: 'Imagine you're a new parent at 30 years old and you've just published a bestselling new novel. Under the current system, if you lived to 70 years old and your descendants all had children at the age of 30, the copyright in your book – and thus the proceeds – would provide for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. But what, I ask, about your great-great-great-grandchildren? What do they get? How can our laws be so heartless as to deny them the benefit of your hard work in the name of some do-gooding concept as the "public good," simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written? After all, when you wrote your book, it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works – you owe nothing at all to the public. And what would the public do with your book, even if they had it? Most likely, they'd just make it worse.'"
You call it sarcasm, they call it talking points. Stop giving them ideas, asshole!!
Copyright technically won't be eternal, but its duration increases linearly over time in a way that it never ends.
Oh please let this be satire and not something serious
I kept waiting for the baby eating, but it never happened.
. .
Why does my random great-great-great-grandchild deserve my brain's creation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_bono
Palm trees and 8
Clearly you didn't read it, or you can't read.
Since it had such a jab...
What we really need is a special copyright for Mickey and the rest of the Disney characters
so that The Walt Disney Company can stop lobbying to extend all copyrights.
more cowbell
simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written?
How does 120 years equal a century and a half? You have children at 30 when the book was written. Grand-Children 30 years after the book was written, Great-Grand-Children 60 years after, Great-Great-Grand-Children 90 years after, and Great-Great-Great-Grand-Children 120 years after. If you die at 70, copyright would last another 70 years, so your copyright would expire 110 years after the book was written, 10 years before your Great-Great-Great-Grand-Children are born.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works
Whatever story someone writes, is based on stories that come before it. ALWAYS. Even the most original pieces are based on language, something that has evolved in *public domain* for millenia.
And if you create something so unique you do not need copyright to protect its value. See paintings by Picasso. The originals are quite expensive. Copies, much less so.
There is to much abandonware as there is now and the last thing we need is longer copyrights that will let to most lost software / books / movies that should be in the open but can't be due to copyrights.
I'm all for eternal copyright. However, after a certain amount of time (say 20-30 years or so), you would have to start paying a fee to the government to maintain your copyright. This fee would increase at an exponential rate for every year after that. This way companies that have a valuable copyrights could hold on to it for at least some time, but the vast majority of creative works would be converted to public domain within a reasonable time frame.
(I also think patents could work similarly, except that the exponential fees would start at say 3-5 years and with a fixed timelimit of 20 years after which the patent will expire.)
Maybe Micky Mouse should be protected by trademark?
Sheldon, mathematical liberties are allowed when used in hyperbole.
Sometimes it feels like satire is a lost art.
Here's a small hint: just putting 'horrifically' in front of the thing you're arguing for, does not make for a clever read.
sic transit gloria mundi
The could be accounting for an assumed extension of the copyright period.
And I really hope so. Otherwise, I will have to accept that there are people who truly believe that:
"it will be difficult to enforce due to the inherently criminal nature of digital technology"
I didn't know it was inherently criminal until few minutes ago. Someone please save me.
Its hard not to comment on the entire , prevalent these days, rent seeking behavior from some distant heirs. I do not five a flying rat's ass about descendants of Jane. She wrote the classic. Not the heirs. What did they do exactly?
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Copyright should be 5 years, penalties for violating copyright should be large enough to discourage willful copyright violations (i.e criminal, not civil). After 5 years, copyright is gone, want more money? do more work!
My other sig is extremely clever...
To re-establish the aristocracy and it's permanent claims on resources. Family dynasty money.
How about we change copyright to being perpetual, but require that all previous public domain goes back to copyright as well. All of the descendents of the authors those public domain stories that Disney used for its movies can sue Disney for royalties.
If you refuse to give back to the public domain, then the public domain should never be accessible to you.
Check your history. This is the way it was in Britain. Until a Judge ruled otherwise.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
1. From my knowledge most copyrights are owned not by individuals but by corporate (greedy) hands. Don't count on them supporting your heirs. 2. What do you want as grandchildren? A bunch of lazy trust-fund-ish narcissists. 3. If you want to provide for your children who follow you, then teach them the intangible things about yourself that made you the rockstar worthy of a copyright. Think of teaching them how to fish instead of giving them fish (which by that point would be REALLY old fish).
I am sorry. I did not RTFA. I have been thinking along the lines of the author for a while.
Here was the idea my wife and I came up with: Follow the original terms of copyright (20 years) for exclusive production, then after that time allow derivative works but allow the original to be retained for whatever term is chosen (for example, the current 70 years after death). What does this mean? Star Wars would have been in public domain. Allow Lucas to keep the rights to the original and the manipulation of it, but the setting and characters become public domain. A simple addendum to this: derivative works have limited copyright protection - direct replicas of the work cannot be produced, but derivative works can be produced from a derivative work (ie, a word-for-word book of a derivative film might classify as a direct copy, but a sequel to the book would not).
For a serious question to the legally savvy: If a corporation gains the copyright to a product, and since the corporation has personhood status, does that mean the copyright is retained by the corporation for 70 years after it is dissolved? If so, where do the profits go since corporations don't have offspring - or are subsidiaries considered offspring in this case?
That's it. Long enough to achieve market dominance (if you've got half a brain).
After that, its fair game.
I've never had an employer who continues to offer me ongoing royalties for my suggestions on how to improve their business. In fact, they require me to sign away any rights I hold to any ideas I may have.
Imagine you are a kid and in 30 years you have kids yourself. You want to sing them a song your mom sang to you as a kid, but you can't, because there is a copyright on it for 30 years.
So you wait another 30 and want to sing it to your grand child, but you can't, because there is a copyright on it for 70 years. So you wait another 30 and just before you die, you want to sing it to your great-grand-child, but you can't, because there is a 70+70 year copyright on it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It... wasn't supposed to be funny?
This is irony. It's supposed to make you outraged. Swift's "modest proposal" wasn't exactly a knee-slapper either.
Make copyright permanent. Oh yea and lets make it retroactive at the same time.
Never again will we have to watch another rendition of Snow White, Cinderella, or any other story.
Maybe then we can get something original.
While considering this most modest proposal of 'eternal copy rite' I think we should also take pause to consider another terrible form of piracy so frequent today. That of creating a body of work, that's soul purpose is the critique of an existing piece of work. Obviously any monetary benefit derived from such a work , would not exist without the author of the original work. So much so that such works are derivative works par excellent of the original. Since the comments are bound to do nothing more then make the original less useful and worse then it's initially concise and proper format the author should retain control over Removing or modifying any comments not fully in the spirit of the original.
After all, all freedoms have limits , and freedom of speech certainly is of a lower value then an authors freedom to create wealth and provide a viable income to her/himself and future descendants.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
At least in my home country, trademarks cannot be used to extend a copyright. Dastar v. Fox.
"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."
So that's how the constitution reads...I was asking one of the younger attorneys at the firm about the "limited time" if the application of the Sonny Bono copyright schmutz didn't make copyright, in effect, unlimited.
His response, verbatim...and I am not shitting you:
"Unlimited is a limit."
The law is whatever they want it to be folks.
Imagine being sued for writing something similar to what someone else wrote say, 1000, 4000, or 10,000 years ago. Pick your timeframe, it doesn't matter. It would be impossible for anyone to do enough research to make sure their work hasn't already, at some point in history, been done by someone else. As Soloman said, "Nothing is truly new under the sun."
Until they respect the public domain as they should, I have no respect for copyright. I haven't bought a single music CD in over 12 years and have only bought movies out of the $5.50 bin at Walmart if i buy them at all (about 10 over 12 years).
Sorry, but until copyright is restored to 14 years with only a single 14 year extension. I feel obligated never to obey it. Sucks for them even more now that I pretty much quit watching TV and listening to music entirely for about two years now.
I refuse to even buy movies or music for my friends and teach them how to get it without it, especially if it is over 28 years old, I flat out tell them not to buy it and I will give it to them. Sorry, but if the music is that old, it should be in the public domain by now, they made their money, now time to uphold their end of the bargain for their limited time monopoly on it and allow it into the public domain.
Edit: Capcha: Mortared
...is a decree from Emperor Obama...
"On this day, February 20th, 2012," [black history month is ideal month for Emperor Obama to make this decree as it would add to Black History] "I, Emperor Obama do hereby proclaim that any copyright over 100 years old is officially null and void."
The first archeologist to discover the copyrighted works of humanity will be summarily executed by Automated Copyright Enforcement Mechanism.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
...when it says...
"This law, also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or as the __Mickey Mouse Protection Act__"
sonny bono was a recording artist, etc. this seems like a conflict of interest to me.
Seriously, there are plenty of great being talked about here on how to improve the system... so how many of you have the money to pay a few million bucks to bribe your congressman into passing one of these proposed solutions into law?
Yeah, I can't afford it either =(
Since there are only seven basic plots to stories the entertainment side would run out of steam quickly.
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html
Imagine this applied to other patents as well, a World of lawyers.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I've got my own modest proposal;
If you wish for your creation to provide for your offspring to the fourth and beyond generation, establish a trust or foundation to accept the proceeds from the sale and use of your creation, invest it as necessary to preserve the contributions and what interest is not too risky, and hope that it does indeed provide enough income to fund this before a reasonable copyright runs out.
Because, it seems to me, the past function of copyright is to protect the interests of the creator, the author, inventor, what have you. NOT their children's children's children's children's.
Perpetual copyright is the equivalent of perpetual patent. At what point are we no longer protecting the original holder, and are perpetuating a stream of income forever to those whose only interest is in being born of someone born of someone born of someone who was born of the instigator of the whole darned thing?
And if the initial proposal is acceptable, to perpetuate copyright forever, then clearly it must be assignable, so that one could even grant it in perpetuity to a mere friend. Or their dog. And their offspring. In perpetuity.
Time to really consider what copyright should be. Notice there are no corporations out there with perpetual licenses to prosper? They have to provide value to survive, even if that value is only to their shareholders or management and employees. So what of value does perpetual copyright provide to anyone other than the spawn of the initial holder?
I know. Money. Wrong answer. I pay copyright holders liberally for their work. When they are long gone, I just can't summon up a reason to do so.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Maybe they could finally prevent us from not only using the Constitution to protect ourselves, but we would not even be able to read about the past when we had rights.
I find XKCD.com and HTG2tG to both be very funny most of the time. Ellen on the other hand is a good reason to bbq the tv.
Parent beat me to a similar joke/point.
Heh, parent beat me.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
Although your decendants could be having children as early as 12 (more or less) or as late as 40, assuming reproductive technologies aren't used which could extend that to something way the heck out there like 70 or 90 if the other medical techs keep up. (Most people seem to currently have their first child at around 20, but that's just my observation, I have no idea what the statistics are on that one.)
Yeah, the article already covered that idea.
Since when is the right to property absolute? Why doesn't this fellow relocate to that famed isle of meritocracy and absolute rights to property: SINGAPORE. Is there something in his products that would not be permitted there? Would not dynasties of wealth created by perpetual copyright create benefits of merely being born into the creator's family? IMHO, the title was a mere distraction. I would take the position that the fellow means what he says for he and his family would stand to benefit.
It is unlawful to leave anything of value to a person more than 2 generations away, e.g.
you can leave something to your child or their child, but you cannot legally leave anything
to that child's child. Hence, this is a limit for copyright and it cannot usurp the current law.
At least to the extent that the work is completely creative and does not rely on prior art.
So, we must exempt the use of previously used words or phrases. Or, the use of characters or glyphs previously invented. Using those borrowed ideas, which are in the public domain, should place any derivative works also into the public domain.
Get lost, really, get lost. Who taught you to write? to read? Who protected you from preditors? You owe you very existance to the public. But why don't you sail into the sun set and create your "Brave New World?"
They want to treat copyright like a house? Fine, let them pay tax on it. In every country where the copyright is registered they would pay an annual tax based on the value of the work. You can even let them set the value of the work if you limit all copyright fines and damages to that amount. And if you don't pay it goes into the public domain immediately. Free software of course would be taxed on a value of zero (no tax).
Some people have kids at 20. Also life expectancy is above 70.
The copyright lobby wishes all creation to be like GOD: divine birth, and eternal life. In reality, any copyright lasting more than 20 years is being too generous. One generation, full stop. The next generation can improve on it.
I just had to post this.. It's some kind of inaccurate logic sophism in the author's "thesis". Hypothetically, this "model" of eternal copyright would have been the case since the very beginning of written transmission. So this would imply, that everyone who would have ever wanted to read a book or any written transmission would have had to pay for doing so. So without any money, noone would have been able to basically get their hands on any "copyrighted" work, may it be mathematic, physics, biology, chemistry, philosophy, belletristic, astronomy etc, etc, etc. So what.. 60% of the "poor" would have never read any descend text in whatever form? What would this mean for the entire race of human kind or all civilisations? It would most likely mean that most of our current population (just in case it would exist at all) would be very, very, very stupid. Not able to perhaps build one single piece of a complex machine. Not to speak of any code to provide this here, etc.. Of course this was hypothetically spoken. As a remark, I more and more get the feeling that this odd kind of philosophy conveyed from these copyright advocates (which basically make use of old public domain knowledge to develop to the point of their rather dull existence. So without public domain knowledge, they wouldn't have been able to state this kind of "nonesense" (I don't mean to offend here, sorry if I have).. And if their model would have been applied, I would not had to worry or even write this text which comes to an end now.
Of course, this could only be a likely scenario. (No proof reading here, btw.. )
I think the author missed an interesting point here. If an author was single and had no kids or any direct kin, the STATE will inherit his eternal copyright.
This means that after a few generations, this state income could surpass taxes and thus alleviate taxpayers. It's win-win for everybody!
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Copyright and patents have been misused and misunderstood since their invention.
Copyright, designed to protect the creator's investment, rapidly was usurped by publishing companies, and until the middle of the 1900's, it was more common for the author of a work to sell the work entire for a one-time payment than it was for them to accrue and long-term benefit.
The purpose of copyright is to promote the creation of new works.
Patents are government granted monopolies on the use of your invention for a set period--in return for making your invention public. The purpose is to stimulate useful inventions.
Like any organization, these things can, and have been, subverted from their intended purpose from time to time--corruption is everywhere.
The perversion that began in the mid1900's was in the second part of the agreement--disclosure, most patents today do their utmost to prevent disclosure (disclosure should mean the ability to replicate the invention from the patent documents.)
A recent trend has been towards awarding patents for things which appear quite obvious to those in and out of the field. A perversion of the granting process.
The major problem from the viewpoint of small inventors is that copyright and patent violations, despite being effectively crimes of theft of IP, are not handled as any other criminal matter. Prosecution is handled as a civil matter, which means the entity with the largest budget wins.
Since such actions are truly much more like criminal cases, the government ought to prosecute these cases just as any other Federal crime.
This would remove the current "as much justice as you can afford," model of jurisprudence, and prevent what is in effect bullying of small entities by larger ones.
The latest perversion, changing from first inventor to first filer, is a license to steal ideas under development. Since most complex inventions cannot go directly to a patent filing because they still have issues to work out, any industrial spy can file first and obtain a patent--even if the other inventor began work years earlier.
Like the rest of our government, corporations are favored in IP over real persons.
I think what we need is the exact oposite.
If I write a book, and earn a lot of money, I'd love to give my kids a good start in life, and set them up so they can write their own books and earn their own way through life, why should people earn millones because their grandfather wrote a book? That's monarchy, and there's no merit in that. We need to start looking away from monarchies and those sort of things, and start looking more at meritocracies.
a roomate's mother-in-law makes $65 hourly on the computer. She has been fired from work for seven months but last month her income was $16822 just working on the computer for a few hours. Read more on this site http://lazycash25.com/ then click on home income system to start. Get paid thru paypal every week just for an hour a day work.
No, see, you don't get it. Those things are popular, therefore they aren't funny. Being popular is absolute proof that something is stupid.