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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.
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.
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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.
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.
Copyright terms should be max(author, spouse). When you're dead, it's time to pay society back for what you have built on top of a civilization that was here long before you were born.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
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!
The author isn't protected, the corporation is. Just like every other US law right now.
The idea of copyright as put forth in the Constitution isn't really known right now. Copyright, no matter what your corporate buddies tell you, isn't this idea of "intellectual property" where work is held indefinitely so authors can squeeze every dime from it.
I doubt it would benefit authors at all. Chances are they've sold their rights to a company.
Copyright has been perverted.
Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country, that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator (e.g. the photographer of a photograph or the author of a book) to receive compensation for their intellectual effort
The contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by giving authors control of and profit from them.
I can't fathom how extending the terms after the works have been created is an incentive to create them in the first place.
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.
It's not a surprise with our cuntservative "leadership" kissing American and Israeli asses all the time. :(
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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.
I have a better idea... let them have Mickey forever, but make them work for it.
1) All copyrights last for 5 year terms.
2) Works cannot change from copyright to public domain except at the hand-off from one term to the next.
3) Works cannot change from public domain to copyrighted. Ever. Not even for retroactive legislation.
4) First term is automatic and requires no registration. Authors can pre-empt the first term by releasing to the public domain immediately. This essentially causes a change-of-status at the "hand-off" at the beginning of the first term, invalidating the first term.
5) Second and later terms require registration and a fee.
6) Ownership transfers are allowed on registered copyrights only. If an unregistered, first-term copyright is transferred, the registration must occur at time of transfer. At transfer, the remainder of the current, active term is transferred along with the copyright.
7) Remaining portions of terms are never forfeit except under conviction of fraud.
Now Disney can pay $$$ to the government every 5 years to keep Mickey to themselves, and less-interested parties can allow their copyrights to lapse.
This also allows the US to say that copyright can be within 2.5 years of any number anyone else wants to enforce, increasing compatibility with foreign laws, all while increasing personal freedoms.
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James Bond is actually a really good example. There have been a TON of issues with the rights regarding James Bond. James Bond could also appear as a character in other universes. I would love to be able to watch an episode of Archer in which Archer actually meets James Bond.
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That's natural and fine. A good democratic society is a majority rules as its impossible for everyone to have everything they want all at the same time.
The problem comes in when a small minority has the ability to push for laws that are against the benefit of the majority and the majority isn't given the opportunity to fight back in any meaningful sense.
Copyright is exactly a prime example of this -- a small number of major copyright holders keep pushing for extensions and they usually get them because while a lack of public domain is terribly for society as a whole, it has very little impact on any individual person and the majority ends up not even realizing what they're losing until its too late, never mind being able to put up a meaningful fight against these perpetual extensions.
We do have groups like the EFF and OpenMedia nowadays who are fighting back a little bit, and even having some success in certain areas, but Disney's politician buying power dwarfs the combined resources of all those groups put together, likely many times over. Add in Sony and Universal and whoever else and the playing field is still pretty unbalanced even with public interest groups taken into account.
No. Copyright should be a fixed term from time of publication, period. Having a potential cash cow is a (theoretically) good reason for an author or artist to produce a work. Having that cash cow dry up is a better reason for them to produce a second work than just "more money on top of what I've got."
Of course very few works are still profitable after 15-20 years anyway so the "dry up" phase is mostly implicit regardless and the perpetual copyright terms effectively accomplish nothing except screwing the public domain.
The problem comes in when a small minority has the ability to push for laws that are against the benefit of the majority and the majority isn't given the opportunity to fight back in any meaningful sense.
The part that you're missing is that "minority" and "majority" refer to dollars, not human beings.
Because politicians are only shitty when they brand themselves republican or democrat.
Thank god we don't have either of those up here in Canada. The conservatives absolutely wouldn't cave to corporate pressure on anything like copyright extensions!
If the US ends up with a third (major) political party, the only thing that will really change is that you've got a third group to bitch about when they make laws that go against public interest. The reason small parties can make all sorts of grandiose claims about how they'll fix the system is because they're not in any sort of position to do that -- they don't understand how hard it is and more importantly, they don't understand the kinds of pressures they'll face against change. Compare pre-presidency pictures of Obama to now and see the effect of trying to change the system on the one guy who's (theoretically) most able to do so. Sure its been 7 years but holy hell has that guy aged.
You can't read what isn't available, and without entering the public domain, works become unavailable.
No, the US founding fathers got it right. 14 years from creation of the work, irrespective of the life of the author. Nobody produces content based on expected income in 15 years time.
But this is nothing to do with promoting creative endeavors. It is about protecting libraries held by corporates.
Actually, the US is the leader in caving before stateless corporations.
thepiratebay.se is back, so none of this matters.
Actually the US just basically copied the Statute of Anne which limited copyright to 14+14 years for the advancement of learning. Even then the publishers were pushing for infinite copyright "for the authours" even though even then their business model was to pay the authour a small amount for all rights.
Democracy was also failing then with the elected House of Commons quite willing to grant the infinite copyright and the unelected House of Lords putting their foot down and saying works need to enter the public domain after a reasonable time for others to benefit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Now but wait, according to constitutions all people within a society are meant to be equal. So according to US law if money equals speech than all people by law are required to have equal access, hence you should only be able to spend what the poorest can spend, otherwise you are publicly stating under law that all people are not equal and that some people are by law entitled to much, MUCH, greater speech than other people. So if money equals speech, then by constitutional law and people required to be equal with regard to elections the rich are not by the new interpretation of the law allowed to spend more than the poor on elections. As speech is required to be equal, one person one vote.
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