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Former GOP Staffer Derek Khanna Speaks On Intellectual Property
cervesaebraciator writes "Tim Lee over at Ars Technica recently interviewed Derek Khanna, a former staffer for the Republican Study Committee. As reported on Slashdot, Khanna wrote a brief suggesting the current copyright law might not constitute free market thinking. He was rewarded for his efforts with permanent time off of work. Khanna continues to speak out about the need for copyright reform as well as its potential as a winning electoral issue and, according to Lee, he's actually beginning to receive some positive attention for his efforts. 'I encourage Hill staffers to bring forth new ideas. Don't be discouraged by the potential consequences,' Khanna told Ars. 'You work for the American people. It's your job, your obligation to be challenging existing paradigms and put forward novel solutions to existing problems.' Would that more in both major parties thought like this."
Did anyone else read that as "Former GOP sufferer"?
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
Would that more in both major parties thought like this.
Isn't that sort of problem? People who do think like that get kicked out of their parties. Serving their constituents isn't the purpose of the modern political machine, that's just something they need to do enough of to retain power.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I've thought long and hard about copyright law, what the problems are, and I've come up with some solutions.
The problems with copyright are obvious. We now have a system where copyrights almost never expire anymore. There are two extremes, the protect copyright until the end of time crowd and the lose it right after you publish crowd. I think there's a reasonable medium.
First of all lets deal with copyright terms.
I think ten years of protection after the initial publishing is a great start. Many people think this is good enough, however I don't begrudge an author profit because something was written too long ago. Stephen King is making all kinds of money off of 30 year old books and I think he deserves it. There's a difference between his 30 year old books and say the 30 year old books by many other authors. He's actually still selling his.
Use it or lose it.
To protect people who actually still are selling their works I propose production based protection. For physical media at least 5,000 copies must be produced during the two years preceding the expiration of the 10 year term. This prevents the company from making five copies in a "production run" and giving them away to contest winners or putting them on eBay. It makes them actually produce a volume they will want to sell. If they don't then it's public domain. I really hate "hard" numbers like 5,000. That's nothing to a big guy but huge to a small publisher, I just can't think of a reasonable alternative. Every time a production run of at least 5,000 units is made the copyright is automatically extended for five years, assuming of course that run was made before the copyright expired.
Upon the death of the author the estate has 1 year from the time of the authors death to make a last production run to secure five more years of copyright protection. This allows widows and children to receive some going away royalties. If the author dies 10 years to the day after the only production run of his work this give the family a free 11th year to do something about it. Barring a new production run the copyrights expire naturally or 1 year to the day after the authors death should they expire within that year.
As for electronic distribution not only must it remain for sale it must remain for sale in formats supported by technology that can still be purchase. It had better work a Kindle, PC, Nook, iProduct or something being produced. Selling a game on Nintendo's virtual console can protect the original. This may even motivate Nintendo to make or officially license other companies to make classic hardware like Sega and Atari do just to cover all the bases as selling cartridges for an Atari 7800 today benefits next to no one. Selling a "digital copy" of Pong for $25,000 is out of the question as well. Digital copies cannot exceed the original MSRP adjusted for inflation by more than 10%.
This would do away with lost works, like Marble Madness 2 where only two copies were ever actually known to exist. Under my rules the game would be public domain now (it would just be up to the rest of us to persuade one of the two people who own copies to upload them). It would also allow fans to scan in copies of Omni Magazine and the like to be shared with the rest of the world. Heck, you could look forward to a monthly release cycle of expired magazines.
Corporations have a maximum of 50 years copyright on any production since they are theoretically immortal entities. If a corporation chooses they may designate a director, actor, writer or someone as the possessor of the copyright and they can maintain exclusive publishing rights from the individual. This may pay off in the case of a child actor, but it's a gamble for the company itself and it leaves room for a disgruntled copyright holder to take his movie elsewhere. Copyrights transferred from a corporation to an individual (except by lawsuit which involves infringement) shall still be subject to the 50 year limitation to prevent a company from transferring a 49 year old movie to
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Didn't RMS just tell everyone off the other day for using that term? :)
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
I couldn't agree more. A "use-it-or-loose-it" model is desperately needed for copyright. I also agree with the sentiment about arbitrary number requirements. I've seen proposals that get around this by making is a variable factor of the original run to help cover indie releases. I would also like to see public performances addressed as well. I think the death of single screen theaters has a lot to do with the fact that they can't compete on price for blockbusters and have little other choices to bring in an audience. But let us not forget patents. I really think that the only real borked up part of the process is that prior-art, obviousness, and novelty requirements are just too damned low. How many different shapes are there to make a computing device? Not many, and any engineer should auto-deny a patent on a shape of a device. Trademark, on a stretch maybe; patent, no.
"There are two extremes, the protect copyright until the end of time crowd and the lose it right after you publish crowd. I think there's a reasonable medium."
The opposite is true, moderates like yourself in the past said the same thing every time copyright legislation came up for debate over history. See below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
The moderates have been defeated and absolutely ROUTED repeatedly. With such defeats the moderates at this point have no credibility.
The beginning of copyright began as a moderate thing and as always when you give an inch of power to ANYONE they will never give it back and will seek to increase their privileges as we've seen. If you give ANY privilege at all it will be expanded on, this is the historical norm. The moderates have no historical evidence that moderation is even possible because corporations have the money, time and lobbyists on their side to undo any moderation if it ever was enacted as the evidence of history attests.
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Use it or lose it is already a farce. Authors make deals with publishers requiring publishing runs or the author regains control of the work. As you've alluded to the publisher will produce 5 copies in a run and claim they're still being published so they can retain the rights. If you require 50 trillion copies per run minimum then they'll simply spin off a shell company who buys the books with the money the parent company gifted them. Require physical copies and they'll just make 10 copies and run the fake customer gambit 10 trillion times.
Look, copyright laws were enacted for the benefit of society as a whole. We have no proof that they're needed. How will authors and artists get paid? The same way a car mechanic does. They simply don't do the work unless they have a contract to get paid for the work. Instead of selling a piece of software I can simply say: Look, here's my idea, I'll make this for $X, that'll cover dev costs and a bit of profit. People like the idea, they agree to pay, I make the software, I get paid, everyone gets the software for free afterwards (since the work has been done and paid for). No more piracy at all; That's because there's no more artificial scarcity.
The only difference between that and the current system is Publishers. If I make software working under a Publisher, I still get the same $X to do so. The only difference is that after I'm done a Publisher uses legally enforced artificial scarcity to try and get lots more money without actually adding anything of value to the product. They're leaches, they don't need to exist.
This is the Information age, everyone is a publisher and distributor now. That's why the original strict copyright laws are obsolete. These laws were created to protect authors from greedy Publishers, and in a time when copy machines were few and expensive. The founders thought that 14 years would be plenty of time back then, when making duplicates was tough. Now there are digital copy machines in nearly every household item -- Even some magazines themselves! Thus making EVERYONE subject to the strict laws that were meant to apply only to the professional Publishing houses. Now that copying is easy copyright terms span 3 to 4 generations of humans?! You & your life, then 70 years: Have kids @ 30, they die 30 years after you die, and your grand kids 30 years after that... Ten years after your grand kids are dead THEN the work MIGHT enter the public domain -- providing there is a readable copy somewhere... No, this isn't what the founders meant by "a limited time".
You give the publishing creeps an inch and they'll take that inch an infinity number of times, then claim they're only taking an inch! They have teams of lawyers just to find loop holes. Meanwhile they've managed to turn copyright laws on its ear, they figured out ways to ensure the Authors never reclaim their rights after publishing, and they've applied the laws meant to restrict them to everyone, even teenagers!
I'm sorry pal. There is no proof that Copyright is doing it's job, providing benefit for society as a whole and promoting the arts an sciences. We need a new approach to laws: Stop operating under unproven hypotheses. It's unscientific. ASININE. No engineer or scientist would allow themselves to be ruled in such a way. Until you come back with PROOF that in this day and age copyright law is beneficial to society, I'm sorry, get bent. Laws based purely on speculation with no proof they're beneficial should be abandoned as unfit theories until they're tested.
Don't you believe in the scientific method? We must abolish them to even see if they're beneficial. WE HAVE TO DO THE EXPERIMENT.
Note: If you come to the bargaining table with your best offer out of the gate, then you'll get talked into a deal you didn't want. Aim for the price better than you want, and you'll strike a deal much closer to what you wanted. The way to get reform is to point out how ridiculous it is and insist on scientific proof of merit before re-enacting the laws. THEN we might see some loosening of the laws. I'm not a fool for overshooting my aims, you're the fool for asking for what you actually want to happen!
So when is he going to post his epistle on the door of the cathedral? Is he going to suffer the diet of worms?
Maybe not in your universe, but to everyone else this is Teh Internetz.
Sounds like an argument from a mumbling clown to me. Use your brain and apply context. Yes, I did arbitrarily chose shorter, which is still longer than the original terms of original US copyright. Of course original US copyright tapped out at 14 years, this one goes for as long as the author is still alive if they want it to. It's a middle ground alright, one that is significantly long for a flop, or even a newspaper. Should it bother anyone if I scan a newspaper article about me from December 2002 and put it in the back pages of a book I publish about my life? It was over 10 years ago, the newspaper isn't selling that article anymore, and a newspaper article about me from 2002 has no significance to anyone besides me or anyone involved with the events being described. It won't impact that newspaper in the least if I do it, it may even count as advertising for them - if that dinosaur still operates that is.
My post was not written in legalese. Had it been I would have accounted for the clown segment of the population and come up with something along the lines of "published in a format compatible with common commercially available rendering devices manufactured and sold during the year of question or in such a way that no additional rendering device is needed". Of course somewhere else in the document I would define common.
There is NOTHING preventing an individual from selling his rights exclusive rights to publish, rights to characters, or right to make new stories based on the authors old ones ANYWHERE in my proposal which was written to be thought provoking, not an actual draft for a new law. The copyright still dies with the author even if he does effectively sell his works to someone else. I however seen no problem transfer the rights to a corporation, in which case the copyright will expire on date of original publication +50. The author might still be alive when that date passes, the author may be dead for 49 years when that date passes. Instead of screaming BULLSHIT BULLSHIT BOLLOCKS! Why don't you make a helpful suggestion like I did to my own thought provoking draft?
You are very obviously a nitpicking asshole. Do you yell and scream at your own mother when she puts the wrong number of sugar cubes in your tea?
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You've missed the point completely.
If Copyright lasted 2 weeks, he could still be making all kinds of money off of his books.
You hidden assumption that Copyright == right to sell and that no Copyright means loss of ability to sell is false .
This is what the R1AA (, etc.) wants people to believe. What (the current) Copyright deprives us is the amazing
spin-off products that could be possible but are stopped.
Copyright was retroactively applied, illegally I might add, to many works that had already passed into the Public Domain (in the U.S.).
But consider if Copyright had existed in it's current form back in 1925 (I don't know the exact "Mickey Mouse" year),
does anyone really believe we, as consumers, would have the choices that we have today? Steve Jobs did NOT come up with the
idea of rounded corners, he simply applied it to the iThings. Look back through any old magazines, and you see so much conceptional
prior art on that design - you can't believe how clever your grandparents really were.
Too, for example, much of the music from the 70's was built on music from the 60's built from the 50's, and so on. Each and every
interview I have ever seen with a musician has always asked the question who/what influenced your/their style. No one has ever
responded that they pulled it out of thin air. Ever! That 1-4-5 progression - their would be only one song that actually had it, all of
the others would be an infringement no matter what lyrics or tempo applied.
So, you call BS - you don't hear of that now with the "new and improved" Copyright system and there is a lot of music that "sounds"
alike already - what are you talking about? People seem to forget that there's only a few houses that hold Copyright on music now,
BMI, Sony, and others amounting to a small handful (relative to the amount of works produced). Remember too, that Copyright
protects the PUBLISHER, not the original author. So, getting back, Sony's not going to sue itself for infringement, etc. And the
big publishing houses "work" with each other in this regard. That's why things "appear" to work.
Consider The Lord of the Rings - pretty original, right? Well, maybe. I'm sure trolls were mentioned in other prior works - so that
would be infringement, wizards too. Let's face it, Gandalf was pretty standard as far as the "wizard" template goes. He performed
magic, cast spells, and was great with the pyrotechnics. Not, it's not silly - double dare you to produce a book/movie about a man
who was bitten by a spider and has the attributes of that spider - let's call him Webman - let's see how far you get with today's Copyright laws...
The founding fathers (of the U.S.) understood a lot more than we give them credit for -- which is why Ex Post Facto was added
(sadly, this is being largely ignored by our current group of elected officials) to the U.S. constitution.
CAPTCHA = certify
A single painting is not published so there is no original publishing date to consider. Legal matters having to do with an unpublished painting go back to other laws. A painting that has sold prints on the other hand would fall into the published category.
My main reason for the "use it or lose it" approach is "abondonware", I don't think The Adventures of Bayou Billy for the NES really deserves much copyright protection right now. Nothing to do with it has been published since 91, I don't care if every author to contribute to the game is still alive Konami hasn't "used it" so I see no reason why it shouldn't freely available on emulators. As for the Millennium trilogy - I know nothing of its back story - who submitted it to be published? See, one of the things that happens in our current system is derivative works get new protection. If it was one of the authors kids they wrote a forward saying "my dad died, here's what he wrote before then" Bam! Additional data, new copyright. Sam Clemens actually had the idea of doing George Lucas style revisits and expansions to old stories to keep the copyright alive, since in his time the copyright expired using it or not, my version allows the same basic idea without actually having to create new work.
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Interesting question.
How about we count the album as a whole and count exerts as selling the album? After all a song is just an exert when you count it as a whole.
I would be willing to say selling license to play could count as selling digital copies, that doesn't work well under our current radio licensing setup but it wouldn't be much of a stretch. If there's going to be a "best of" it's bound to get radio play, and the compilation itself could count as a published exert. I'm on the side of the copyright holder here, as long as the holder is still alive.
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To be honest, I'm not really surprised that Derek Khanna lost his job. Some rather large GOP supporters are rather pro copyright law and staunchly so. You can no longer pin down the goals and objectives of either pary because they both do the opposite of what they preach, or worse, don't follow through at all.
I have one issue with this argument. Replication - a mechanic or a doctor can keep repeating their act all their lives (on different people/machines) and get paid every time. And each act of theirs takes a few hours, or a few days at most. A programmer, an author, a research scientist have to do something new every time to get paid and each act of theirs takes weeks, months or in some cases years, to complete. And paying once irrespective how useful it is and how many people use it seems illogical.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Damn right it ain't. Free market applied to intellectual works is trade-secret protection. If you want your information non-disclosed, you only communicate it to people prealably bound by non-disclosure agreements. If there is a breach, the discloser owes you the indemnity that you had agreed upon initially, which represents the added value of creating the works in the first place. That's the whole of it.
That's how it works within the prestidigitation business. That's pretty much the model that the education world applies: teaching essentially IS a business of distributing non-copyrighted intellectual works. Even certification courses that teach things that the teachers do not want disclosed around, aptly have non-disclosure agreement requirements upfront.
Intellectual property only makes sense in auniverse where someone has to redo the work of (re)inventing the intellectual work over and over in order to sell it over and over - a universe where ideas are rival. That's not the universe we live in.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Except constitution stays nothing about "deserves". From the original memo from the guy from subject:
Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it
It’s a common misperception that the Constitution enables our current legal regime of copyright protection – in fact, it does not. The Constitution’s clause on Copyright and patents states:
“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;” (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8)
Thus, according to the Constitution, the overriding purpose of the copyright system is to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” In today’s terminology we may say that the purpose is to lead to maximum productivity and innovation.
This is a major distinction, because most legislative discussions on this topic, particularly during the extension of the copyright term, are not premised upon what is in the public good or what will promote the most productivity and innovation, but rather what the content creators “deserve” or are “entitled to” by virtue of their creation. This lexicon is appropriate in the realm of taxation and sometimes in the realm of trade protection, but it is inappropriate in the realm of patents and copyrights.
The problems with copyright are obvious. We now have a system where copyrights almost never expire anymore.
As far as I'm concerned, copyrights are unlimited. A copyright will NOT expire within your lifetime, they currently barely expire within TWO lifetimes. I can't believe this is what the "for a limited time" means. A limited time should be within a lifetime. I don't know the exact time, 14 years? 28 years? I don't know. But something less than 75 years.
You should probably have taken a moment, before you wrote your post to consider the purpose of copyright: what is the basis of "reasonableness" on which you judge possible copyright terms? You've gone into a lot of detail about your proposed copyright scheme, but all you've done to justify it is to assert that it's "perfectly reasonable", without any explanation as to why this should be so. Why, exactly, is your proposed solution better than one in which copyright lasts for a century, or for a week?
My own feeling on this is the same as that specified in the US constitution: that the purpose of copyright is to encourage the production of new work. None of your "he deserves it" arguments: the term of copyright should be set as a compromise between failing to incentivise new works by being too short, and failing to allow new works to become available to the public by being too long. And, possibly, it shouldn't apply to pure entertainment at all: it's meant to apply to the "Useful Arts".
IRV is a step in the right direction, but there is math which shows that it tends towards the same two party system we have now. There is also empirical evidence to back this up. I am for voting reform, but I think IRV would essentially be shooting ourselves in the foot. If it were successful, we wouldn't see the kind of change we want (i.e. better representation) and the two party system would be strengthened. After all, we would have IRV and they would still be winning (to the chagrin of many of their "constituients"...)
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Read the Wikipedia article on voting systems. It is very fascinating. There are a variety of better systems out there than what we have. My personal favorite is Range Voting. Range Voting allows you to score each candidate (e.g. from 0 to 10). The candidate with the highest average wins. There is a caveat to keep someone with one vote of a perfect score from winning (or similar). It is a great system. It allows you to vote your conscience without giving the advantage to the "other team" by "throwing away" your vote. I believe this system would incubate viable "third" parties and shift our political discourse away from the "them vs us" nonsense we have now (e.g. voting against a candidate).
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
It's entirely possible that Khanna doesn't actually have any personal investment at all in what he proposes, and is simply using his "novel solutions" as a means to stand out and make his mark within his chosen (Republican) tribe. And stand out he certainly has. If Khanna actually felt that strongly about current IP law being unethical, he's chosen the wrong tribe to give a larger voice to it and he would know that. It's already well established that the sort of people most strongly drawn to corporate boardrooms and government are sociopaths, so if Khanna eagerly chose the path he's on then he's likely more interested in furthering himself than IP reform.
Not even that; they just have to say they will.
How many campaign "promises" are actually implemented, by any politician, in any country? Generally very few, from what I can tell.
Personally, I think that, at the end of an elected representative's term, they should be held to account in a court of law for every campaign "promise" they didn't fulfil; each such incident bringing a charge of fraud and/or treason.
You've actually outlined a lot of my reasoning.
"He deserves it"
Pick that apart for a moment. Does he deserve it for writing good books? Debatable, I like his work, literary snobs hate him so deserves needs to have a different meaning. He deserves it because he's still selling books and people are paying for them, that's why he deserves it. It's perfectly reasonable to make money off of your work as long as you are selling it and people are buying it.
If he is getting paid for his work it absolutely is my "he deserves it" argument, he deserves to get paid for his work to encourage him to write more. Well gosh, I'm still making money on my old book, but the income is tapering off a little each year, why not write a new one! I don't care if the new work is another Castle Rock series book or an almanac, deserves and motivation go hand in hand.
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Citation and/or clarification needed. Sure, *somebody* is making money... but unless it's Dickens' estate, then it doesn't benefit the creator of the work (at least, not monetarily) and therefore "no possible way to make money" is, hyperbole aside, correct. I suspect you'll find that the only people making money are those who take the works of long-dead authors and re-publish them, pricing the result below new publications because they don't have to pay royalties to anybody or secure the rights, they only need to avoid making the books so expensive that another publisher doesn't undercut them.
Now, that doesn't mean that it isn't, in fact, perfectly reasonable for there to be companies doing this (re-publishing public domain works and profiting off of them). However, the central tenet of your argument is "authors still make money without copyright" and yet you've presented absolutely no evidence in support of this. If copyright expired quickly, slightly-older works would be substantially less expensive, and the bulk of the money being made would go to the publishers (or public domain content) rather than the authors (who only receive payment when they sell something that's more expensive than the older stuff).
There's probably a reasonable middle ground - could be anything from a hard limit (anywhere from the US's original 14 years to something like a century is justifiable to one degree or another) to a wildly sliding scale based on something like the number of copies being published annually by the creator (note: not by re-sellers), or the value of those sold copies (but that gets tricky with open source... which, you should note, is usually not successfully sold for money because it's just so easy to undercut the price).
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Khanna got fired for proposing a change less drastic then you are supporting. The big media companies are outrageously evil with respect to copyright law. They will not stop until they get the surveillance state needed to get us to pay them what they think they're entitled to.
And, possibly, it shouldn't apply to pure entertainment at all: it's meant to apply to the "Useful Arts".
No, that's a common mistake. Copyright is meant to promote the progress of science, while patents are supposed to promote the progress of useful arts.
In the late 18th century english in which the constitution is written, science means learning or knowledge, while arts refers to skills and applied technology. Since then the two words have come to be more associated with other things, such that they get confused easily as has happened in your post. Some vestiges remain, though: patents are meant to deal with state of the art technology, and are required to be written so as to be instructive to a person having ordinary skill in the art, but cannot be issued if previously invented or obvious after looking at pre-existing technology known as prior art.
Plus inventions usually have utility patents and must be useful for something; if they don't work, they can't be patented. This is why perpetual motion machines never get issued patents. Copyrights OTOH are sometimes not granted if the work is useful, because they're not supposed to overlap with parents. (A similar doctrine exists for trademarks)
The meanings are also clear if you look at the structure of the copyright and patent clause, which goes in order, copyrights then patents: authors, writings, science; inventors, discoveries, useful arts.
So ultimately, no, mere entertainment still contributes to human learning and knowledge and should be copyrightable if we're to have copyrights.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I agree in the fullest.
Then again I'm no longer a member of the GOP in any capacity nor does my employment depend on keeping the assclown division of the big media companies happy.
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What about a painter who produces just one copy of a painting? Shouldn't that retain copyright protection for a while? What if that painting hasn't been sold yet after 15 years (not unusual with artists, and it doesn't mean it won't be sold), do you want copyright to expire even before the artist has sold the work? Not everything works with the volumes and the time scales of mass produced works.
True, but in the world of the fine arts, provenance, which cannot be copied, is usually more valuable than the copyright.
For example, the Mona Lisa is worth more than a perfect copy of the Mona Lisa. A Van Gogh painting of sunflowers sells for way way more than a nice poster of the same thing.
So long as there are laws against counterfeiting -- which is a type of fraud and not related to copyright at all -- fine artists will usually get along okay. They don't rely much on copyrights, which really do exist for mass-produced works, and which don't protect the value of selling original copies. Many of the greatest works of art are in the public domain but can still command a fortune when put up for sale. No one in that market cares about the t shirts and picture postcards.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
My idea would be to revert copyright back to the original 14 years. If the copyright holder wanted to, they could renew for an additional 14 years. Maybe you could allow a second 14 year extension, but that would be it. Total copyright time: 42 years. (Cue "Answer To Life, The Universe, and Everything" joke.) Plenty of time to draw a profit off of your works.
The advantage to this would be that it would naturally move abandoned works or works that are no longer bringing in a profit into the public domain. Star Wars? Profitable and would be renewed. (Until 2019 when it would be forced into Public Domain.) Death Bed: The Bed That Eats? (Yes, that was a movie released in 1977.) Probably not renewed and in the public domain.
Of course, corporations would complain about existing works being forced into the public domain immediately so we could provide a "transition extension plan" for any works already released. Every two years a decade's worth of material (starting from the 1930's) enters the public domain. So the 1930's would enter in 2015, the 1940's in 2017, the 1950's in 2019, etc. By 2033, we would be all caught up.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Even under the current rules, copyrights are only granted to the original portions of works.
Thus, if you write, copyright, and publish a short story in 1950, no matter how many times you reprint it, the key date for the copyright is 1950; nothing you can do (other than lobbying Congress) changes anything. If you expand the short story, only the new material is covered by the new copyright; the portions that are from the previous work only ever fall under the earlier copyright.
And if you create a new compilation of works including the story, the new copyright covers the compilation, i.e. the choice of those works and the arrangement in that order, but not the pre existing works themselves, which still fall under their own, older copyrights.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Personally I think something along these lines is perfectly reasonable. Also lets not forget that just because something goes out of copyright doesn't mean that the original author, or his heirs, can't continue to exploit it. They just can't exclusively exploit it. So somebody else could come along and say do a reprint or something. Doesn't mean the original creator couldn't also come along and re-release it. Though it may require him put in some sort of value add to compete vs. other people publishing the same work. Something like additional material, background material or something to set his version apart.
The real problem is that there are many rights holders, among them many very rich people and corporations, who have literally billions of dollars a year at stake in the current system. These people will fight to the death to keep their gravy train running. Most elected officials realize this. They realize that if they pander to these people they can get a lot of money. If they challenge them they can crushed when they spend vast sums supporting their opponent in the next election. Under circumstances like that the general welfare just becomes secondary to the political survival of the politician. I just don't see a reasonable way to change this.
You haven't addressed sinecures after retirement from public office, which seems to be popular these days. (Especially since the party providing it doesn't have to do so unless the recipient has performed)
You also didn't address corruption of non elected persons, but it happens with military officers, bureaucrats, staffers, appointed officials, etc.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I say we let the market deal with. You get 14 years on Copyrights and Patents. After which you have a choice you can release the IP into the public domain your start being assessed taxes on the value of the asset. The rate would start a %2 and be increased by %2 each year, that is year 15 the rate is %2, year 16 the rate is %4. Until the rate reaches 100% or the owner releases the work to the public domain.
How does the assets get valued? The owner must set a buyout price each year and this would be a matter of public record. The owner would be obligated to accept payment of this stated price from ANY entity and upon payment release the IP to the public domain.
This way creators still get compensated for their creations, unencumbered for a time. If they are still extracting great value from them they can keep them protect but society will gain as well ( gets to collect taxes ) or the owner will be compensated for the residual value of the work and society as a whole will than get benefit from its unencumbered use.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
One major issue I have with current copyright laws is that it seems that characters can be copyrighted. It's common knowledge that Congress keeps extending the copyright age so that Disney can retain the right to Mickey Mouse. It seems the idea is that once Steamboat Willie passes a certain mark, anyone and everyone can create new and original works for Mickey Mouse. So why don't we separate copyright from authorship rights? Change copyright back to 7 years. But create the idea of authorship. Disney creates Steamboat Willie, he has 7 years to control how copies of the actual work of art are distributed. He also has 7 years over any new work over any new noun that was created in the show (ie Mickey Mouse). Any time Disney creates a new work of art which extends the story of any character, place or thing, from Steamboat Willie, the authorship rights of that character, place or thing, gets extended. But once 7 years pass, any publisher/distributer can create and distribute infinite copies of Steamboat Willie, but only in it's original form (No "Steamboat Willie DreamWorks Edition"). I think this way works of art will enter the public domain, and authors will still have something valuable they can work on, so long as they keep working on it.
Uh ... why? You left out the why. You said "so", but nothing you said before that led logically to your conclusion. I don't claim it is possible to define "mere entertainment" and treat it differently from other work. I just don't think the above thought has any place in rationalizing the system.
You also lost me with "Copyrights OTOH are sometimes not granted if the work is useful". Copyrights are not "granted" through any process. By the Berne Convention, copyright is AUTOMATIC on creation of the copyrightable work in physical form, and requires no registration or copyright notice.
I like this suggestion. I pay property taxes on my property (and in VA, that includes my cars).
Why shouldn't IP be taxed? It certainly requires a lot of government to maintain.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Thank you for the links. I am eager to read up on how your system works.
I have been reading on various voting systems and also on things like PR. I would be very curious to hear what you think about http://rangevoting.org/AustralianPol.html which purports that IRV yields the same duopoly we have in the US. I would also like your take on this http://rangevoting.org/AusIRV.html which talks about it in a different context. And this http://rangevoting.org/WhyThirdRange.html which uses the 2007 election to say IRV doesn't help third parties as much as it should.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." -John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton - 1887
Life is not for the lazy.
I think there's a reasonable medium.
I used to think this, but I believe I've learned better. To see why, let's see what imaginary property really is.
You have some paper. You have a pen. What can you do with these two things? The natural answer is that you can do anything you want, because it's your property (short of damaging somebody else's property with it).
But here's what imaginary property says: "We as a State are going to take away the real property rights of three hundred million people to arrange that ink on that paper how they see fit, for the sake of one individual, to whom we will grant a monopoly for certain arrangements. If anybody disobeys this rule we will hurt (or ultimately kill) that person for such an infraction".
People used to think we could make society better by acting this way. The original ideas were to do things like protecting writers from publishers. It was a low-information, high-scarcity, low-technology society four hundred years ago, and perhaps the idea was a decent hypothesis at that point. But it still offered immoral means, so it shouldn't be surprising that the power was ultimately corrupted. All attempts to reform that power will still fail because it's based on immoral means.
There are better options available today, and the imaginary property system is now damaging to society. Time to discard the obsolete systems. Check out Stephan Kinsella in print, online or video. He's spent a ton of time identifying the problems and developing alternate mechanisms to reward creators, but based on non-zero-sum means.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Certainly, first past the post is objectively worse than many systems. I would also like to see any of the better systems in place. It seems like IRV has made the most progress in being implemented. I am still persuaded by the range voting people that their system is better. But I am open to re-evaluate my position.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
http://rangevoting.org/TarrIrvSumm.html. Also, check the "more detailed look" link at the bottom. This lays out the case that IRV leads to a two party system.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
What points do you disagree with in this open letter to IRV and why?
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
Here is open letter to IRV supporters.
One last thing: Sometimes I wonder; "Is that someone's signature? Or do they type that at the end of each post?"
I have one issue with your counter argument: Its not true.
Just look any major bridge. It takes the people working on it months. And each project entails creativity and unique challenges. It takes months or even years to build it, and even the architects and engineers who designed it... they all get paid exactly once. Regardless how useful it is, or how many people use it.
Tell me again what makes a programmer or author different?
I didn't say fine artists made much, I said that they typically make money from the sale of individual pieces, rather than from exploiting copyrights.
Also I'm not sure if your choice of Van Gogh was a good one. He famously only ever sold one painting during his life for an amount equal to about $1000 in today's money. He was a colossal failure and his works really only became valuable after his death. But even now, an original Van Gogh is worth far, far more than a poster of the same thing. It's not so much the picture as it is that it was made by his hand that is considered valuable. If people only cared about the art itself, the world's great art museums would largely exhibit high quality copies to save on the expense, and collectors would do the same and not value originals too highly.
Suppose you're an artist, have trouble generating an income from your art, and see that your work is used in an ad for a large corporation without anyone paying you for its use. Would you think that's all right? I wouldn't.
That's irrelevant. Copyright isn't about what's right. In fact, morality isn't even a factor. It's about what's most useful to society. If fine artists will create and publish (where we define publish quite broadly) without copyright, because they have sufficient incentives to do so anyway, why bother to give it to them? And should copyright have an incentivizing effect after all, we should carefully tailor the grant of rights in such a way as to produce the greatest public benefit for the least public detriment. As the mere existence of copyright is harmful to the public, the benefit will need to be fairly substantial.
I think this is possible, that we should offer some sort of copyright to fine artists, and I think that copyright is a basically good idea that merely needs to be implemented better. But it's all about utility; not fuzzy-headed pathos.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
How many people think their individual representative actually represents their constituency rather than the wishes of the party?
I'm in Canada, and on any really critical issue the vote is almost always "whipped", which means that the representatives vote the party line or risk being thrown out of the party. It sucks.
I think your point of view is more reasonable, but still unreasonable (as my blog title would indicate).
These works are our culture--and they need to be freed *much* sooner than 50 years under any circumstances.
Personally, I also think your system is too complex. I think it would be simpler to simply expand fair use to include any non-commercial use. That also narrows the targets for lawyers to people who are actually using a work to make money without authorization--as opposed to, you know, everybody.
Piracy for no profit would still be illegal under your plan, which is what I think makes it untenable.
expandfairuse.org
Those engineers and architects are employers or contractors of the bridge's developer. Yes they only get paid once.
Just like computer programmers who are employees or contractors of software developers only get paid once.
But the developer of a bridge, who creates it for himself and owns it, keeps on getting paid tolls.
Just like the software developer. Be it the boss of a company, or an indy working on his own.
The two industries are indeed similar.
Actually cheating on paying tolls is not a bad analogy for software piracy.
It get's let loose into the public domain. ;-)
www.Buy-Proxy.com - A "buyer-driven" global marketplace.
But the developer of a bridge, who creates it for himself and owns it, keeps on getting paid tolls.
But the ENTIRE point of the post i was responding too was that the so-called creative people were somehow different from regular workers.
What you are describing just proves my point. The people reaping the perpetual reward in this case aren't the creative ones at all.
So ultimately, ... mere entertainment still contributes to human learning and knowledge and should be copyrightable if we're to have copyrights.
Uh ... why?
The purpose of copyright is ultimately to serve the public good by promoting the progress of science (which as has been explained, means knowledge). Are you saying that our total knowledge is not increased by new works of entertainment?
Copyrights are not "granted" through any process.
Not so. Copyrights may automatically be granted by the federal government when certain conditions are met, viz. a copyrightable work is fixed for the first time into a medium of expression, but they are nevertheless granted. In the absence of a grant by the government, there'd be no copyright. It's not as though authors create copyrights.
Registration and notice (and deposit, and domestic printing, etc.) were formalities that once upon a time were additional conditions that had to be satisfied, but dropping them as requirements doesn't change the fact of the grant.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Absolutely not.
This is the libertarian in me speaking. I see no reason to compulsorily hand any government/governing body money for any reason that does not directly concern them as an author. If I am suing someone I will pay the court fees to do so. No compulsory money should ever be collected for the purpose of supporting the arts, with the notable exception of art being commissioned for public buildings or property otherwise. I should not have to pay protection money to protect my work, it's bound to violate RICO laws to do so under our current system.
No, if the book is available for print on demand or digital distribution it settles what I'm after (substitute applicable formats for non-book media). The 5,000 copies was an arbitrary number and "available" is what I was really after. If I ever post this again I think I will make "available" the wording I'll use.
I found another loophole in my original. "Original costs" - they'll just start selling the books for $100,000 each the first week and lower it to the going rate during week two to get around the outrageous pricing proposal I originally came up with. I'll address it in my fantasy book of law eventually.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Wasn't copyright an invention for kings to benefit from and censure publications?
Perhaps we should find an arrangement for _democracy_?
Defining Statistics and Social Research