Slashdot Mirror
Canada, Japan Cave On Copyright Term Extension In TPP
An anonymous reader writes Last month, there were several Canadian
media reports on how the work of Ian Fleming, the creator of
James Bond, had entered the public domain. While this was oddly
described as a "copyright quirk", it was no quirk. The term of
copyright in Canada (alongside TPP countries such as Japan and New
Zealand) is presently life of the author plus an additional 50
years, a term that meets the international standard set by the Berne
Convention. Those countries now appear to have caved
to U.S. pressure as there are reports that they have agreed to
extend to life plus 70 years as part of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership.
Despite protestations to the contrary, and US Supreme Court legalism, copyright is now perpetual.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Appear to have Caved
The American people don't want this.
The music corporations are entirely non-US companies.
Copyrights are not beneficial to Search or Share Internet industries.
The only remaining beneficiary is the movie industry, a relatively small group of people.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
In the abstract, the situation seems obvious. First, it's ridiculous to think that there are any marginal artistic works which are only created because the extra 20 years of protection in US law make them profitable, whereas they would not be made otherwise. Moreover, any such works can't be any good, so why worry about them? Second, it clearly makes no sense to extend the term of protection of already-existing works: they have already been created, so we don't need to provide the artists any extra motivation to create them.
What matters here, however, is not the setting of incentives for authors, but the incentives of trade negotiators. Here, the US is behaving rationally: if the US negotiators convince Canada and Japan to keep Mickey Mouse under protection for 20 more years, then more royalties will flow from Canada to the US. This may be bad for Canadians, but not so much for US citizens. More generally, since the US is a large source of popular entertainment but a (relative to its size) a small importer, it wants other goverments to fleece their own citizens in favour of US interests.
While I'm sad that Canada caved on this, Canada is a (relatively) small country next to a big one, and (for example) trade restrictions on lumber are far more significant to Canada than the copyright extension. I stil think they should have stood firm, but it's not such an obvious call as it seems.
Life plus 70 years.
That's 3 1/2 generation so statistically you got too split the gain between 10 persons. Chances are great that this will fell below the minimal amount required to get a check by the copyright society.
So this would not benefit authors but only major and copyright society.
Plus this will require more and more work to get consent from those persons to make derivative works.
Why an author should be "protected" 70 years after he's dead when the life of a patent is only 20 years ?
its like commercial capitalism doesnt learn. Healthcare for example got so bad, so reprehensible and so broken in america that the federal government damned near stepped in and nationalized it. Internet access in america became so godforsaken slow and corrupt the government not only redefined the legal definition of broadband and tripled the speed, but re-classified internet service as common carrier. The institutional precedent for profiteering not withstanding, you'd think more multinational conglomerates would take a step back to avoid losing a large swath of their monopolies but no.
TPP proposes copyright legislation that could render generic pharmaceuticals nonexistent. It ships jobs away, strengthens corporate personhood, and turns regulations like the FCC, FDA, and OSHA into things that can actually be sued if they cause a loss in revene for a company. If you consider unemployment in america to include the legal definition as well as "jobless" which isn't typically counted, america hovers around 24% unemployment largely systemic and driven by things like NAFTA so what does the TPP mean in the long run?
Piracy can and will continue, and in large part may even become legitimized. Large scale work strikes and protests will likely see the return of unionization if recent protests are any indication. And finally if you grow the unemployment rate enough, you'll enjoy another round of occupy protests that might not be as peaceful as the last ones. But ultimately pushing this type of trade serves to de-legitimize american capitalism. You can no longer, with a straight face, stand in front of a room full of children and commend a system that will render so many of them unemployed and poor that to say it was their fault for being lazy would be a comic farse at best, and a grave insult at worst.
Good people go to bed earlier.
It may be spelled "Trans-Pacific Partnership", but it's pronounced "Greater Pacific Rim Co-Prosperity Sphere".
-kgj
Further, the European Union initially demanded that Canada extend the term of copyright in the Canada – EU Trade Agreement, but that too was effectively rebuffed.
The EU wanted the extension too. Maybe the EU alone could not apply enough pressure but it looks like the EU and the US can. The US is such a good target but they are not the only bad actors.
PS. I am Canadian
The grandkids I don't have yet could be in their 70's by the time copyrights on my work expires. They could be kicked out of their old age home! You wouldn't kick a senior out to the street would you?! This is a necessary change to protect future generations, and I applaud USA for being so forward thinking!
This is literally why little to no one in the US will respect copyright, even as they get older at this point.
Crooks stole it from public domain so not really feeling bad about getting it for free anyways.
It doesn't surprise me we are being asked to bend over. We do have Harper as the Prime Minister and he would have us bow down and take it from all our capitalist overlords. The Conservative Party is big business, thus they don't care about the 99.99997% of people in this country. (I estimated there are about 1000 big business owners)
Face it, we started taking in the ass the second the Conservatives got a majority government. It wasn't if this was going to happen, just a matter of when and how big would the objects be.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
I think it every day, but today it had to be said.
You voted for this. And every vote for a republican or democrat is another vote for TPP and all its baggage. If you really don't want this you will vote them out! Otherwise all your complaints are just noise.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It's not a surprise with our cuntservative "leadership" kissing American and Israeli asses all the time. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This isn't just about a few early 007 tales going public domain. James Bond as a character in books and movies is only fully protected if the entire series is in copyright, as the Conan Doyle estate found out about Sherlock Holmes.
In the end, this kind of scheming and legal pressure is disgusting. There's no sane nor sensible reason for copyrighted material to fund a life of ease for anyone past the lifetime of the author and often elderly spouse. Let the kids, grandkids and so-forth go out and work for a living. It'll do them good.
And tying up all copyrights to protect a few lucrative ones is bad for society and authors. With little demand, books that might have remained as available in the public domain (i.e. Gutenberg) become unavailable. Everyone loses.
My own attitude is that past a certain point that's several decades less than copyright now covers now, copyright should become pay-to-keep. Let these estates keep their precious little money machine in copyright another 50 years or so. But require them to fork over say a flat amount plus 25% of the resulting income to be used for literacy projects, restoring old films, and creating high-quality digital libraries.
Most works would then go into the public domain while the greedy few (i.e. Disney) wouldn't have to buy off politicians and get every copyright extended just to extend theirs.
People push for laws that benefit them
I hate the TPP and copyrights in general, but don't worry. 99% of what we get is recycled crap, so this problem fixes itself in 20 years. I guess they have to just keep extending it... Life + 1000 years coming next.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Just remember this next you attempt to complain about your works being pirated.
It isn't OUR doing, you have only the government to blame.
If you refuse to pay for copyright protection for 70 years after your death, then don't bitch when I say my check for your work won't clear for 70 years after your death either.
(changed from 2014)
If I were on the Supreme Court of the United States and was asked to rule on the Constittuional limit of copyright of "a limited period of time" I would say that 9 months after the last person who was alive* when the item either entered copyright or when it was published anywhere in the world whichever was earlier is the absolute latest date at which the US copyright protection must end.
Why? Because a creative person might legitimately plan to 1) impregnate his wife/get pregnant, 2) want to create a financial legacy for the child that is on the way, and 3) create something for the financial benefit of that child or publish something in the US that he previously created that was not under a US copyright (perhaps something he created before moving to the USA and which has never had a US copyright).
* When we get to the point where people are living longer than 125 years, I would put a hard cap at 125 years UNLESS people are living past that age without the assistance of technology. Why 125 years? It's a nice round number and it's slightly longer than the oldest confirmed lifespan of 122 years-and-change (see Jeanne Calment (1875-1997) ).
If I were asked what should be a good maximum copyright term I would say a good term is the number of years of the longest average life expectancy for anyone born in the last 125 years (which is probably the average life expectancy for someone born today, or about 79 years) minus the age of legal majority (18 years). 79-18 = 70. So, for any work that is still in copyright today which is 70 years old or older SHOULD immediately fall into the public domain. I would also reintroduce some form of mandatory renewal so works that are not renewed either fall into the public domain or if that is politically infeasible they fall into a mandatory-licensing regime so anyone and everyone can use them by paying a reasonable fee, similar to mandatory-music-licensing.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Actually, the US is the leader in caving before stateless corporations.
I'm not even dead yet, and you'll make my works live into the 22nd Century if you permit this insanity!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
thepiratebay.se is back, so none of this matters.
Not for the free films.
Not for the free books.
No. This makes me want to pirate something out of pure spite. Call it a protest.
If you were to graph increasing intellectual property restrictions vs how much copyrighted material I have purchased, you'd see over time that I have purchased less and less. And while I don't download illegally, I don't really see anything wrong with it. Copyright has gone too far and I do not see why anyone should respect it in its current state.
The Berne convention and its restrictive policies were passed in 1886 and widely implemented and adopted by Europeans; the US only joined the Berne convention in 1988. Automatic copyright under the Berne convention is probably the most destructive provision. In addition, Europe has other stupid provisions, like the "droit morale" that effectively gives artists eternal control over their works. Europe pushed for these restrictive copyright policies because they thought they had locked up the market for music, literature, and entertainment in perpetuity. A century later, however, US culture dominates. It seems rather disingenuous for Europeans and Asians to have pushed for this lousy convention and then complain when the US succeeds based on it.
So, don't blame the US. In fact, if the US were to push for shortening copyright terms or loosening the terms of the Berne convention, European publishers would be screaming bloody murder and European governments would condemn the US position. In fact, it is likely that a lot of the US position is based on lobbying by European publishers who find it easier to push for these kinds of extensions in the US than in Europe, where they might get a bad name among their primary customers.
A trademark cannot be used to extend the term of an expired U.S. copyright. (Dastar v. Fox.) So once the original Mickey trilogy (Plane Crazy, The Gallopin' Gaucho, and Steamboat Willie) enters the public domain about a decade from now, others will be free to make and publish derivative works of those films and the characters depicted therein.
copyright should become pay-to-keep.
The feasibility of that depends on whether the Berne Convention considers payment of tax a prohibited "formality".
the Constitutional maximum should be the longest period of time that any halfway reasonable person would allow for realization of financial gain
I'd put that at twenty to thirty years
This is probably true for most things but there are some projects that get funded by investors looking beyond 20-30 years. For projects right on the edge of being funded, a copyright term of 50 or more years vs. 20-30 can make the difference. Church hymnals are (or used to be, pre-cheap-overhead-display-technology) typically designed with a 20-40 year lifetime in mind and there is enough of the music in them whose rights won't expire during those 20-40 years to ensure continued sales. Granted, such cases are rare but not so rare as to be worthy of discarding completely.
There are also projects in which the copyright is used primarily to protect the integrity of the work, not to make money. Many people release items into the Creative Commons under a "NoDerivatives" license for this reason. I'm sure a significant number of people would not want to see their works mis-used within their lifetime and are grateful that at least in the USA and most other countries, single-author works enjoy legal protection until after the author dies.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.