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EU Copyright Reform: Your Input Is Needed!
An anonymous reader writes "The European Commission has finally (as of last month) opened its public consultation on copyright reform. This is the first time the general public can influence EU copyright policy since fifteen years back, and it is likely at least as much time will pass until next time. In order to help you fill out the (English-only, legalese-heavy) questionnaire, some friendly hackers spent some time during the 30c3 to put together a site to help you. Anyone, EU citizen or not, organization or company, is invited to respond (deadline fifth of February). Pirate MEP Amelia Andersdotter has a more in-depth look at the consultation."
No, seriously. Copyright does more harm than good. Just get rid of the whole damn thing.
Obligatory reading.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Share it compulsively. Do not modify it and leave it in the original artistic form but share it with as many people as you can without detonating any copyright reform trip wirees.
"Your input is needed!"
Thanks for the laugh.
Do *NOT* create any kind of web interface which automatically will send a letter to them based on some kind of template.
Someone who was very well meaning in Canada did this during our copyright consultation and the results backfired heavily... they received a staggering number of submissions, but because of the lack of effort that it takes to simply use a website, fill in your name in an appropriate field and hit "submit" without altering any of the letter content, and the fact that a very significant majority of the letter submissions were unaltered verbatim copies of one particular website's letter, the government chose to completely ignore those submissions... although the remainder of submissions that said similar ideas but were not based on that template still accounted for a majority of the total submissions, discounting that many submissions entirely almost certainly had a negative impact on how the government interpreted the consultation and the actions that they took in the aftermath of it. If even a quarter of those so called automated submissions had been an original letter from a concerned citizen which expressed the same basic ideas, I expect that the government may have interpreted the results of that consultation very differently than they did.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Most of the EU contries are signatories to the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) treaty. That sets a minimum copyright term of 50 years. Many EU countries now have longer copyright terms, after heavy lobbying from the US music industry.
So suggest that the EU should harmonize their nations' laws by using the 50 year TRIPS limit. The EU can do with without renegotiating any external treaties. Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, and longer terms just keep many works orphaned and forgotten, rather than in the public domain.
This would set a de-facto worldwide standard of 50 years. The US, with its much longer terms, would then be the major exception, and would be under pressure to reduce its copyright term.
It's a goal that's within reach. Whining about "copyright is evil" wiil get nowhere. Asking the EU to harmonize their laws with the WTO standard has a good chance of playing well in Brussels.
Whatever the US suggests or has in place do the opposite.
Copyright was originally 14 years, renewable once. But that was back before movies, radio, and TV. Typesetting was done by hand, books were distributed by horse-drawn carts. In this day and age 5 years is more than enough time to display your work and make a tidy profit. See also What Would You Ask For in Copyright Law?.
Copyrights (and patents) should last for 20 years. Period. No extensions. No life of the author + a billion years. Nothing. No minor change and now it's protected again for another forever. NOTHING.
20 years. End of discussion. You get 20 years of protection for your idea/creation/invention and that's it. After that it's fair game for anyone to use anyway they want without paying a dime to you. 20 years is plenty long enough. 20 years is enough time to create another human and release it to the world. 20 years for an IDEA is more than enough time.
This needs to be done worldwide for any real change tho. With one stick up the ass group like the united states fucking it up... Pretty much ruins the whole idea.
How do you interprete referenda results in individual member states over an EU vide issue? Don't forget that there where several referendums in the same question that resulted in a yes.
The correct way to approve it would have been parliamentary approval in the states and en EU vide single referendum. The current rejection was more or less a joke on democracy....
Copyright is made out of people. This isn't a joke or being funny, by the way and as a result it will NEVER be "right".
... because there are always at least 2 angles for exploit (the too lax exploit and the too strict exploit). This will, in fact, be a perpetual issue ...
Since copyright is made out of people, and people come up with laws to try to maximize productivity and creation, there will always be scavengers and predators looking to exploit copyright for private gain.
Google, for example, loves weaker copyright protection so they can sell 3rd party content. Media companies and small-time authors love copyright because it rewards the creation of works.
Meanwhile, fans dislike copyright because it creates an imbalance between quality vs. convenience (cracked software is ALWAYS better) or availability (a movie or game isn't available in a certain region or is no longer sold).
Because copyright is made of out of people, there isn't going to be a "final solution" --- it must always be subject to revision because any legal system is subject to exploits.
I'm not implying "you shouldn't try", actually I'm saying you always SHOULD try to improve it.
But the results will be imperfect next time too
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
There's only one month left, don't procrastinate too long.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
This would set a de-facto worldwide standard of 50 years.
I appreciate that there is an element of fighting for what you can realistically achieve in political matters. I'm also generally in favour of retaining the basic principle of copyright, at least until a better idea for promoting the creation and distribution of new works comes along.
Even so, I think the fundamental problem with your position is that it still implicitly accepts that a copyright term comparable to many humans' adult lifetimes is reasonable. With the rise of modern technologies, a much shorter term would still provide a substantial commercial incentive to create and share new works, without locking up aspects of our culture to the same degree. I'm open to discussions on the specifics for different types of work and for special cases like orphan works or works that continue to be developed over time, but I would expect a period of no more than 10-20 years from public disclosure should be more than adequate in just about any case today.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
So suggest that the EU should harmonize their nations' laws by using the 50 year TRIPS limit. The EU can do with without renegotiating any external treaties. Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, and longer terms just keep many works orphaned and forgotten, rather than in the public domain.
This is an OK suggestion, with the caveat that the TRIPS limit should be a limit cap, not the actual limit, since the effect of setting it to the TRIPS limit would be immediate and incessant lobbying to raise the TRIPS limit. This is a likely outcome of setting the TRIPS limit as a cap as well, but then there would be no obligation on the part of the EU to raise their limit, should such lobbying be successful.
Assuming this is done, there should also be a proviso that, should the TRIPS limit be lowered, that the EU limits are also automatically lowered, while any raises in the limit should require explicit EU legislation to match. So if the EU "harmonizes" to 50 years to equal the TRIPS limit, then the TRIPS limit goes down to 40 years, the EU automatically goes down to 40 years, and if the TRIPS limit is then jacked back up to 50 years or higher, the EU remains at 40 years, low watermarking the EU limit.
This would set a de-facto worldwide standard of 50 years. The US, with its much longer terms, would then be the major exception, and would be under pressure to reduce its copyright term.
This is highly unlikely; the two California Senators with the most power in regard to U.S. Copyright law are strongly incentivized through campaign contributions from the movie industry bodies (MPAA, et. al.), and, to a lesser extent, since it is less localized to California, the music industry.
In other words, there would be about as much pressure on the U.S. to lower its limits as there is for Disney to put Mickey Mouse in the public domain, and about as much as there is on the current WIPO to lower the TRIPS limits -- which is to say "effectively none".
Nah, those that would enforce it here ran off to be gmen/spooks and fight some corporate war for oi... err middle eastern mob... err terrorists, yeah, that's it, terrorism...
-And I wouldn't really take anything the U.S. has to heart on pretty much any subject these days, they're nuts here, I mean flat ass nuttier than squirrel shit, bat shit crazy.
Please add these provisos:
(1) If a work is explicitly placed into the public domain, then it receives indemnity protection equivalent to that provided by the BSD two clause license, so that authors are not *required* to keep a work out of the public domain and place a license on it in order to obtain a legal "hold harmless". Most BSD licensed software, for example, would have been placed in the public domain, rather than licensed at all, if it were not for the need for the author to disclaim legal liability.
(2) If a work is placed in the public domain, it shall not be legal to place it under other terms; it remains in the public domain in perpetuity. You can't just take a public domain work and slap a license or DRM on it; for example, a book placed in the public domain can not be converted to a DRM protected eBook format which would prevent further dissemination of the work (e.g. no grabbing Joseph Conrad from Project Gutenberg and making it non-redistributable).
1. Burn copyright law
2. Profit!
Table-ized A.I.
really? did i neglect to notice that teleportation to an alternate universe? corporate interests have so much riding on stronger copyright laws and longer copyright terms, that the "general public's" opinions won't matter, at all, when all is said and done. after all, it is the corporate interests that permit the government administrations to exist.... might be an american thing, but still holds true in europe as well.
If you won't make your content available in a convenient form in a timely fashion, you lose the right to complain when someone else does.
abolish the fucking thing. Get rid of all copyright and patent government intrusion into the free market.
I appreciate the sentiment. Often I promote getting rid of coercive copyrights and patents. Which is to say, I emphasize that these concepts could exist as private concepts that each of us negotiates on our own terms as if we were a nation.
Want to work at Disney? You may have to agree to respect their and their consortium's copyrights. There would be benefits: better media access, job, and your own copyrights respected by reciprocity (in theory, of course). As civil law, criminal penalties would not be honorable unless rising to some nth degree (fraud, contempt of court judgements, etc). More so since the goal is to increase signatories (sic?) and not pay money for jails that could go to profits and content creation, there would be little incentive to build in criminality.
The same could work for tech companies and patents. If you're an individual with a process patent idea, then you could approach the large companies who use or could use that process AND belong to your patent consortium. If a company like GE decides they'd rather not join such a group, then you know to keep your idea far, far, far the fuck away from them. Instead you take it to DuPont that belongs.
If either idea doesn't work because nobody agrees, then - IMO - QED - then copyrights and patents weren't all that important to begin with (as concerns product/art development). This wouldn't surprise me in the least.
In any case, individuals and companies can reject onerous terms.
Another thing to point out is that when the framers wrote the constitution, they didn't have the type of government we have - duh. But I mean to say maybe they couldn't raise the funds to develop high tech (space, bio, weapons). For better or worse, our governments can so they don't need this indirect mechanism to reward indirectly. They can just buy the shit outright. Not that I advocate the gubblemint funding a new vaccine, it would be better to pay for it with tax revenues than to "protect" or "encourage" with patents. One cost is direct and auditable. The other is indirect and a greater affront to our liberties (IMO) than taxation.
It is the use of coercive force in copyrights and patents that ought to be rejected 100%. IMO!
Which is why the EU needs to tell the US to go fuck them selves when the US demands longer copyright terms.
this will probably be studied by the various copyright holders, and used against the populace. They will find all the direct reasons why people hate them, and use that in some more insane marketing strategies and enforcement.
nah, we would just bomb the EU into submission, or do something stupid like ban / embargo stuff.
50 years is already way beyond any sensibility. 50 years might have been sensible in a time when it took ages from conception to publication to penetration, but in a time when the time between conception and penetration, given rapid development tools and distribution and advertising venues like the internet, could be measured in days rather than years, anything past 10 years is already an abomination.
In this fast paced world, you will rather not invest in an artistic venture where you cannot regain your investment within a year. Not 10. ONE. Or do you remember who won the American Idiot show 2 years ago?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This would set a de-facto worldwide standard of 50 years. The US, with its much longer terms, would then be the major exception, and would be under pressure to reduce its copyright term.
This is highly unlikely; the two California Senators with the most power in regard to U.S. Copyright law are strongly incentivized through campaign contributions from the movie industry bodies (MPAA, et. al.), and, to a lesser extent, since it is less localized to California, the music industry.
In other words, there would be about as much pressure on the U.S. to lower its limits as there is for Disney to put Mickey Mouse in the public domain, and about as much as there is on the current WIPO to lower the TRIPS limits -- which is to say "effectively none".
Would the US limits really matter? If everybody else has a 50 year limit and the US has much longer ones their content creation industry would have two choices:
1) Not sell media outside the US and forego the profits thus creating a booming content smuggling industry.
2) Create a firewall around the US (unlikely) to prevent us citizens from getting material that is expired elsewhere in the world for free.
I think you missed the point of what you replied to.
Nobody Seems To Notice and Nobody Seems To Care - Government & Stealth Malware
#
In Response To Slashdot Article: Former Pentagon Analyst: China Has Backdoors To 80% of Telecoms
(The reader should know this article was written and distributed prior to the "badBIOS" revelations.)
How many rootkits does the US[2] use officially or unofficially?
How much of the free but proprietary software in the US spies on you?
Which software would that be?
Visit any of the top freeware sites in the US, count the number of thousands or millions of downloads of free but proprietary software, much of it works, again on a proprietary Operating System, with files stored or in transit.
How many free but proprietary programs have you downloaded and scanned entire hard drives, flash drives, and other media? Do you realize you are giving these types of proprietary programs complete access to all of your computer's files on the basis of faith alone?
If you are an atheist, the comparison is that you believe in code you cannot see to detect and contain malware on the basis of faith! So you do believe in something invisible to you, don't you?
I'm now going to touch on a subject most anti-malware, commercial or free, developers will DELETE on most of their forums or mailing lists:
APT malware infecting and remaining in BIOS, on PCI and AGP devices, in firmware, your router (many routers are forced to place backdoors in their firmware for their government) your NIC, and many other devices.
Where are the commercial or free anti-malware organizations and individual's products which hash and compare in the cloud and scan for malware for these vectors? If you post on mailing lists or forums of most anti-malware organizations about this threat, one of the following actions will apply: your post will be deleted and/or moved to a hard to find or 'deleted/junk posts' forum section, someone or a team of individuals will mock you in various forms 'tin foil hat', 'conspiracy nut', and my favorite, 'where is the proof of these infections?' One only needs to search Google for these threats and they will open your malware world view to a much larger arena of malware on devices not scanned/supported by the scanners from these freeware sites. This point assumed you're using the proprietary Microsoft Windows OS. Now, let's move on to Linux.
The rootkit scanners for Linux are few and poor. If you're lucky, you'll know how to use chkrootkit (but you can use strings and other tools for analysis) and show the strings of binaries on your installation, but the results are dependent on your capability of deciphering the output and performing further analysis with various tools or in an environment such as Remnux Linux. None of these free scanners scan the earlier mentioned areas of your PC, either! Nor do they detect many of the hundreds of trojans and rootkits easily available on popular websites and the dark/deep web.
Compromised defenders of Linux will look down their nose at you (unless they are into reverse engineering malware/bad binaries, Google for this and Linux and begin a valuable education!) and respond with a similar tone, if they don't call you a noob or point to verifying/downloading packages in a signed repo/original/secure source or checking hashes, they will jump to conspiracy type labels, ignore you, lock and/or shuffle the thread, or otherwise lead you astray from learning how to examine bad binaries. The world of Linux is funny in this way, and I've been a part of it for many years. The majority of Linux users, like the Windows users, will go out of their way to lead you and say anything other than pointing you to information readily available on detailed binary file analysis.
Don't let them get you down, the information is plenty and out there, some from some well known publishers of Linux/Unix books. Search, learn, and share the information on detecting and picking through bad binaries. But this still will not touch the void of the APT malware descri
Take out all the parts that were lobbied for.
Take it back to something reasonable, like 20 years since creation. Perhaps require copyright registration so there is a place someone can go to check if something is under copyright.
That, or adopt the Marshall Islands copyright laws.
My suggestion would be to let people use any material without having to worry about copyright as long it is not used commercial. Copyright owners tend to use the fact that they lose a lot of profit from the internet. However, there have been studies showing that because of the internet several things get popular. For example Game of Thrones, it is released in the US, if only the US could see it (in fact only those who paid the subscription in the US) there GoT would not be the success it is right now. HODOR COPOR
Maybe. On the other hand, 10 year terms means no movie company ever has to pay the author of a book for making the movie out of a book, or adher to the authors wishes. Just wait the years out.
Democracy - rule of mob of idiots. The idiots choose leaders which lie cheat steal.
Few works over 50 years old generate significant revenues, [...]
The limit should not be decided around when a work has stopped generating significant revenues, but by when it has made the creator a reasonable return on their investment [of time].
That way it actually works as an incentive to keep creating.
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)
Anything else is going around the bushes. Abolish it.
You are aware that two countries with nuclear weapons are in the EU?
With the Asian markets getting more important, the effects of an US embargo would diminish. Also, the EU would certainly put counter-embargos. Imagine an embargo on Hollywood movies ... maybe coupled with a selective non-enforcement of copyright on them ;-)
Actually I think the length of copyright should depend on the type of work. A book from 30 years ago may still be relevant. A software from 30 years ago is utterly outdated and mostly worthless.
That's what trademarks are for.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. Let the market for the work drive it's copyright term. I think most copyrights should be registered in a database, the only exceptions being works with exteremely short life spans such as news items. Rights holders should get a certain short period of free protection, where the length of the period is dependent on the nature of the work (music recording, video, novel, poem, song lyrics, news broadcast, combinations thereof). The period would be determined factoring the costs of production for the type of work, and the general longevity of the work, e.g. movies aare expensive to make compared to a music album, but less likely to be popular 5 years hence. Production costs proportionally increase the period length for the type of work, and potential longevity proportionally decreases the period, because longevity in popularity extends the commercial viability of the work. At the end of the period, the rights holder may renew the copyright registration for a significant cost, for the same amount of time. At the end of the second period, renewal costs double, and double again for the third renewal etc. In this way the length of a copyright term is tied to the specific work's contribution to society via a market mechanism. As long as the work is profitable, which is an indication that society in general finds it worth while, it is worth while paying the renewal costs. Consider some examples:
1) A successful popular music album. The artist creates the album, registers the copyright, and gets 1 year free copyright protection. In the first year it makes a lot of money, and is still selling well towards the end of the year. The artist renews the copyright for a fee (say 100 euros). At the end of the second year, sales have started to taper, but the artist still feels 200 euros (doubled from 100) is worth paying. At the point where sales drop to a level that the ever increasing renewel cost is more than the profit made in a year, the artist is encouraged to produce a new work, if they haven't already.
2) A news broadcast or article. No need to register because it would take too long, but they are only covered for a month. After that, registration is required to renew. The financial potential of news works diminishes rapidly, and it is in the public interest that it falls into the public domain equally quickly so that it can be discused, analysed, and derived into secondary works without limit as soon as possible.
3) A film. Production costs are high, and the chances of becoming a classic are low, so we would have a long period for films, say 5 years, which should be enough to recoup the production costs and make a profit. If it isn't, then film was likely a commercial failure anyway. 5 years should be enough time to determine whether a film has any value as a so called cult-classic in the era of digital distribution and social media. Renewal costs for films start at 10,000 euro though because the term is so long.
In each of these examples, the length of the copyright is regulated by the perceived value (where entertainment is also considered valueable) of the individual work by society at large. This also encourages rights holders to make their works as widey available as possible in the shortest amount of time possible, and makes rent-seeking behaviours un-profitable very quickly. Finally, it ensures long term availability by making sure the work fall into the public domain as soon as the rights holder no longer deems it profitable, which is exactly how long copyrights should last.
P.S. If you like this idea, or even have improvements and/or comments, don't just make them here, go and fill in question 74 on the questionnaire. Even if it's the only thing you fill in. You only have to answer questions on which you have an opinion.
One of the things Amelia Andersdotter suggests people say 'yes' to, is required copyright registration. I'm sure the idea is that it makes it harder for some random person or company to come after you for placing their image (usually with all credits cropped out, if posts on imgur and such are any indication) on your blog/tumblr/whatever.
Of course this does cut both ways. If you take a news-worthy photo, you'd better register the copyright first - which takes some time and I have no doubt may eventually lead to some processing fees - or every news outlet in the world is just going to yoink it, use it, may not even bother with attribution, and enjoy all the advertising income it helped generate.
Maybe you don't mind, maybe that's what you want to happen for your photo. Then again, maybe you do mind and only want 'the little guy' to use it and not the big media companies (think BSD-type licensed software and some people complaining about companies using that without giving back, with the usual co-comments 'should have used GPL instead').
Slapping a CC-BY-NC type license on an image previously got you the best of both worlds - at least where the license is respected.. the 'little guy' can still drop it on their tumblr, while Fox News, CNN, etc. will have to contact you and at least request permission first.
That is an immediately available choice that required copyright registration takes away entirely, and puts up a barrier (be that in time taken for the registration or, and don't think it wouldn't happen, a processing fee required to be paid) for most other avenues.
I understand her goal with this (one more step to abolishing copyright - and I'm in favor of that, but also in favor of more stringent distribution rights - via making sure that anything not registered is essentially public domain), but I disagree with the method. If anything, it favors big media.
That your right as copyright owner are the only rights that matter.
Why is it that the right of a minority voluntarily making works that require the abrogation of everyone's right to private property and self expression overwhelms the rights of the majority who do not get a choice as to whether to be under a law abrogating their right of private property and self expression?
We should distinguish between the end user and a commerical user.
While I don't think there is much to be made from the early Beatles albums (first 2 albums are now over 50 years old), I don't think anyone should be allowed to use one of those tracks in movies, adverts, etc without permission or payment.
So 50 years for sales, 70 years for commercial re-use.
If their bits are still their bits when copied on my HDD then I want to be paid rent.
However, the fact is that they are not THEIR bits. Therefore they and you should have no right to ownership of them.
How about different terms depending on whether the rights owner is a person or a company?
For instance, physical authors, whom may want to ensure survival of their direct descendance, could enjoy up to say thirty years from death (or less if all immediate descendants have become adults able to sustain themselves), whereas companies, which seek profitability, would only enjoy at most 10 years from publication (or less if profitability has obviously been reached eariler).
Of course, actual criteria for either case could be discussed. I chose the ones above as examples only.
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)
Indeed, at least in France: we have "moral" rights (correct attribution of the author, respect to the author's work) which cannot be sold or otherwise taken away from the author (even after their death and even beyond the 50 years limit), and there are "patrimonial" rights which govern anything related to commercial use of the work, and which can be sold.
In 10 years, 50 Shades of Grey, as an example, will be a long-forgotten memory. Just last year it was THE book to be reading (although probably not on public transport). If they make a film out of it in 10 years, it might just help shift a few extra books.
I'd hazard that the same would be true for Harry Potter. I seriously doubt it'll be a popular book in 5 years, and so making a film might give it a bit of a boost. Shame they already used up that option though ;-)
You are assuming that the only factor that motivates studios is avoiding paying authors. While it's certainly a big factor, you have to keep in mind that they would also face competition since other studios could make the same work, there are often limited shelf lives for maximum commercialization, and involvement and endorsement from the author can be quite valuable.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You can't fix something that is incapable of working. If we hold that copyright is a fundamentally flawed concept, then there's no way to fix it, just as there's no way to fix phrenology.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
submit_button.onClick() {
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}
Copyright essentially exists to support two business models, only one of which is workable in the modern world. The first is to make money by charging people for commercial reuse. This is still viable, but needs a lot of work to support it, so that it's easy to discover who made what, and what is effectively now ownerless, etc. The second model is to make money by charging people for access to your work. In an age where almost everyone can copy almost everything a near-infinite number of times and distribute it globally at near-zero cost, this is not a viable business model, and the law needs to change to reflect this ASAP, giving current businesses a reasonable time to adapt (but if you don't force them, they will continue with the current game of spending vast sums of money trying to continue with their present model, because it's cheaper in the short run).
In other words, copyright is not completely dead, but the maximum protection available on new works should be something like CC-SA-BY-NC, and people who previously raised money by selling product need to start looking hard at models such as crowd-sourced patronage.
So what's the problem?
Also remember that in 10 years time, EVERY movie company can make the movie of the book.
A movie company willing to pay the author will be able to get the sole rights for several years. There is plenty of benefit to paying for the rights, even if it's a 10 year copyright.
Meanwhile, at 50 years, no movie company ever has to pay the author of a book for making the movie out of a book, or adher to the authors wishes. Just wait the years out.
This wasn't a problem today, was it?
I appreciate the work of sites like http://copywrongs.eu/ but you cannot simply reword the questions to a questionnaire to your liking without influencing the result. The people who created the questionnaire probably send a lot of time to tweak the exact wording and should in the analysis of the results take the introduced bias into account. When people start building websites that hide the original questions and instead replace them with their own questions, they are basically trashing the data. They have the best of intentions, but come on, you cannot rephrase what was supposed to be an objective question to 'Someone stole my content OMFG'. What the hell are they thinking? If I were to analyze the results of the consultation, I would definitely disregard this data, as it does not reflect the answers to the questions we asked, it reflects the answers to questions some other guys asked. I would encourage people to fill in the original form themselves. Sites like http://youcan.fixcopyright.eu/ offer the original questions, with some additional explanation. That is much more fair to the people who designed to questionnaire.
What's missing was the following:
Is it really too much to ask for slashdot to have an "edit" link on a person's own posts, that can stay active for the first couple of minutes?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The limit should not be decided around when a work has stopped generating significant revenues, but by when it has made the creator a reasonable return on their investment [of time].
Actually, it should be based on when a work is no longer likely to generate significant copyright related revenue. You forget that the vast majority of works are flops with no significant copyright related revenue ever. Something like Gigli will never make a reasonable return, yet it's stupid to grant it a perpetual copyright as a result.
Further, there should be a distinction between copyright for the purposes of acknowledging a work's creator (which should be automatic, and not expire), and copyright for the purposes of commercialising the work (which should be opt-in, and short). (I believe EU copyright already makes this distinction to some degree.)
Why?
We don't have this in the US, and yet we have loads of authors making loads of works all the time. Other countries that do have this don't appear to be doing better than the US because of having this. Clearly it isn't necessary to incentivize authors to create and publish (which is all we want out of them) and clearly it limits what the public can do, which is inherently bad.
It sounds nice but it accomplishes nothing useful while still bogging things down in limitations and rules.
Moral rights are not useful to the public and are basically bunk anyway. Even the Europeans don't really believe in them.
-- 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.
Hi! Original submitter here!
Have you visited the site at all? The front page allows you to choose a number of grievances that you would like to address (e.g. Youtube videos not playable in your country), after which the site present the relevant questions (verbatim) from the questionnaire, and gives a number of hints on what the questions mean, basically translating the legalese into plain english.
At the end, you get a copy of the questionnaire with your answers filled in to download, which you then need to e-mail to the EC yourself. It is unlikely that these are going to be easy to distinguish from "properly" filled-in questionnaires, but if you do find something, please do point it out.
There is also a link to the full questionnaire, optionally with various comments from different organisations. Which incidentally seems to be the exact same as the link you offered :)
Well, it probably was capable of working. The only problem was they kept making it more and more invasive and pervasive. If it had stayed at what was originally agreed was sensible, none of the current major issues that people have with it would even exist (there would be no DMCA, no region-coding of DVDs, etc.). We've not had a long-enough running experiment to test whether the original concept is viable, due to corporate greed.
Just look at the geke.us venn diagrams showing the overlap between content creators/distributors and the US government for some insights into why these changes may have occured there. Alas the EU's rather weak (some states less so than others), and tends to follow the US's lead, no matter how dumb it is. (I had to pay piracy tax on the blank DVDs I use to back up my own work, for example, when I was in Finland.)
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Agreed. If you're genuinely interested in people's input, you organize a referendum. Anything else is pretty much a joke.
"copyright is supposed to encourage those who might have otherwise kept their stuff secret to publish them by giving them some assurance, for what is supposed to be a limited time"
And the time is not limited by any measure.
The deal was broken by the copyright holders and the exchange has never been one to the public's benefit.
Of course their bits remain their bits. However, the bits on my HDD or in my computer memory are my bits, not theirs.
The price of software is to BUY that software, not to rent.
Otherwise I'm not giving you money for the stuff, I'm merely giving you a loan.
I think you are being far too generous. You are assuming that it would work if kept in check, but we have no good reason to believe it would work. Copyright was invented as a means of censorship, and was later adopted (at least nominally) for a more benevolent purpose of the advancement of learning. However, it's still a tool that was meant for another purpose, and we have no reason to believe it performs its new task at all.
Also, the EU was for a long time much stronger on copyright than the US. From the Berne Convention until the 90s, the US had basically the weakest copyright law of western nations. In that time we had a booming film and music industry. To this day there are a number of exceptions that are much stronger in the US than abroad. That's the problem. It's an international scheme of collusion, and it makes use of a ratchet mechanism to keep making it worse. There is no single country to blame.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You're indeed right and make some very good points. I had presumed that Steamboat Willy (nearly) expiring was the trigger for the US racing ahead, but instead it was just barely catching up. Thanks for the correction. Of course, things have spiralled quite insanely since then in the field of IP law.
However, everything that has been relevant to the above paragraph - 1886, 1909, 1976, etc. are all irrelevant to my initial idealistic (perhaps naive) point - as all of those codify terms which are way longer than the kinds of terms that were originally discussed as being reasonable. In the absense of any actual numbers in the US constitution's Enumeration of Powers clause, the US's 1790 Law is a good thing to fall back on as "original" - there they decided upon 14 years (+14 if still alive, notice that offspring weren't considered relevant - quite the opposite). That matches the UK's 1710 law. That number worked fine for 119 years (in the UK it lasted for 132), and I see no reason why it wouldn't also have worked as is for the 105 years since that - as long as every other country had done the same.
And yes, it is indeed an international collusion, as it's an international market.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
We need a different scheme for "design patents", or "design trademarks" so that one can retain the style of a certain mouse so long as you're doing business with the mouse, but lose it if you stop using it.
Trademark works very much that way, but doesn't protect artistic designs. Design patents exist, but don't deal with the rodent use case.
Having done that, the pressure to have silly periods in copyright can fall to zero.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
Maybe. On the other hand, 10 year terms means no movie company ever has to pay the author of a book for making the movie out of a book, or adher to the authors wishes. Just wait the years out.
Is that a bad thing?
On the other hand, 10 year terms means no book author ever has to pay the movie company for making a book out of the movie, or adher[sic] to the companies wishes. Just wait the years out.
Is an explicit understanding of the (very minor) crime of theft of a single copy. "Copyright infringement" needs to be defined as repeatedly copying a work for the purpose of commercial distribution in order to get the heavy fines. Meanwhile, copying a work once (ie downloading) should be defined as having a maximum penalty of perhaps EU 300 or so.
That comment enabled PDF the EU supplies is dreadful done. It too try after try to get the fields to work.
If you're stupid enough to wait out the 10 years to make a movie on a bestselling book, I'll butt in and pay the author to make one while it's still hot. You can come out with your movie 10 years after mine when nobody gives a shit about it anymore.
I doubt anyone has a problem with that.
Never underestimate the power of competition. If you're willing to wait, someone else certainly won't be.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Copyright is not a right, it is a privilege.
Intellectual property is property. Tax it.
Rational copyright holders will willingly donate the property to pass irrevocably into the public domain when the tax burden exceeds expected future income.
And make the holders declare their ownership and pay the annual tax, lest they immediately lose the privilege irrevocably for non-payment.
Setting the tax rate might be difficult. Due to Hollywood accounting, probably it should be based on the first few year's gross.
This is too simple to happen.
--
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I'm not sure if you're suggesting that's a bad thing?
It means films can be made for books without inheriting families or copyright hoarders blocking it unnecessarily or with unrealistic demands. It means people outside Hollywood can have a go at making films based on books without needing Hollywood style fortunes to barter for a license.
It sounds like a very good thing IMO, sure it may mean more crap films on famous books, but it also means more choice, and amongst that choice will be a bunch of gems that would never otherwise be able to be made.
It sounds like a very very good thing for culture to me.
That's what they want. Just tick all the boxes - I guess that blanket statement outha get the message across.