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There Is No "Next Great Copyright Act", Remain Calm
Lirodon writes: A YouTube video has gone viral, particularly around the art community (and the subsection of the art community populated by the same type of people who tend to spread these around to begin with), making bold claims that a revision to U.S. copyright law is being considered, with a particular focus on orphan works. Among other things, this video claims that it would require all works to be registered with a for-profit registry to be protected, that unregistered works would be "orphaned" and be usable by "good faith infringers" and allow others to make derivative works that they would own entirely. Thankfully, this is all just hyperbole proliferated by a misinterpretation of a report on orphan works by the U.S. Copyright Office, as Graphic Policy explains.
Random Youtube video found to be distorting facts and be less than insightful. I never saw THAT coming.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
From the summary it sounds like good reform
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
"Thankfully, this is all just hyperbole proliferated by a misinterpretation of a report on orphan works by the U.S. Copyright Office"
Why 'thankfully'?
If anything, the digital dissemination of copyrighted works, on the whole, increases the speed with which they depreciate, since more people who desire to purchase a legal copy of a copyrighted work can do so much more quickly than was previously possible, and since legal copies of copyrighted works don't degrade in quality over time (if you have a good cloud to store them in). I think that copyright term should be reduced to account for this.
Orphan works wouldn't even be that much of a problem if Congress didn't keep extending the copyright term. Most of those orphan works would be in public domain by now, and commercial entities could appropriate them to their heart's content.
The last 20 years of copyright law has been a vast collection of Evil Genius Plots To Take Over The World, with no small number successfully being implemented.
People can be forgiven for believing the worst without checking the facts.
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Jurassic world cost an estimated 150 mil
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03...
People love making things too much, and they love doing it even if they aren't the exclusive owner
People might still love making things, but you are going to have a much harder time getting people to pony up 150 mil
but if it doesn't make that back in 14 years, is it ever going to?
abandonware issues and old IP being split up to muilt owners putting it in a messy limo.
>> require all works to be registered with a for-profit registry (Google?) to be protected, that unregistered works would be "orphaned" and be usable by "good faith infringers" (Google again?)
Isn't that pretty much what Google did with books a few years ago?
but if it doesn't make that back in 14 years, is it ever going to?
A lot of franchise-oriented work these days takes longer than 14 years to even wrap up, as a series/format. There's no reason that someone deciding to risk tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and untold thousands of man-hours on a project that they hope will launch another Potter/Star Wars/Trek/Marvel/Whatever franchise wouldn't be thinking in terms of the work still paying back that risk for fifteen, or twenty years. And why shouldn't they? Playing long ball with creative franchises is perfectly reasonable, if you can get your investors to look at it that way, too.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It's called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Extends the copyright term to 120 years, eliminates fair use as a copyright infringement defense, and institutes extrajudicial legal proceedings that allow copyright holders to seize your property if it is being used to "infringe."
No, if you haven't registered the work, you're only able to get actual damages (which is something like your 'customary rates' but it depends on what you can prove) rather than statutory damages and attorney's fees. Actual damages are close to what you said, but statutory damages are not "punitive" damages at all.
But don't take my word for it, read the actual law on the subject.
Oh, and it so happens that you can register just before filing suit, but a registration that isn't timely doesn't have the same presumption of validity that it would if you were registering long before there was a lawsuit close on the horizon.
Then why should it get a benefit of a monopoly rent and free government support at the expense of free expression?
For the same reason that you get it, when it comes to your own works.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Life without Jurassic World movie... oh noes...
Some francise-oriented work goes on for 14 years. Not a lot.
And they aren't going "well, this first one bombed, but we'll go ahead with the other 6 anyway".
The first one makes a jillion, then they go ahead with #2. And sometimes, if #1 is a really huge hit, they'll go ahead and film #2 & #3 at the same time, particularly to make the movies cheaper and retain the characters at the same age. If #1 bombs, the rest don't ever see the light of day.
The VAST majority of the money received for 99.99% of all movies are received in the first couple of years after the movie is released.
Past that, for movies, music and books, it's a lottery ticket. Every once in awhile, it winds up being popular for longer than that, or it comes back into vogue. Basically a fluke.
Nobody OK's a movie based on the financial returns of a 90 year copyright term. They go ahead if it projects to making a good profit inside a couple of years. After that, it's straightup gravy.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
"... because the typical person does not benefit." Utter bullshit. Anyone creative enough can obtain a copyright, patent or trademark and benefit from it. If someone writes a book, without copyright protection the first lazy moron who comes along can take it and publish it as their own.
"People get paid by the fact that only they can create a particular piece of art or item, up against true competition." This time shallow bullshit. Without protections, the moment any creative item is available a *corporation* could simply abscond with it, out produce the individual and take it from them.
Same old screed from those who can't create - "I want access to yours for nothing."
This is how copyright should be changed: give every 'work' ten years of free protection - plenty to understand whether it is making money or not. And beyond that, allow for infinitely repeatable five-year terms, paid for at a progressive rate. That way everyone can be happy: basic protection is in place for free, and anything that is valuable can be protected up to its economic value but not beyond.
Copyright owners can be happy: they finally have their infinite copyright - or at least as it makes sense economically.
The public can be happy, as older works will eventually fall into public domain.
The government can be happy, as copyrighted works become a steady source of income.
See, everybody is happy!
So what is wrong with the first lazy slob coming along and copying it?
I just don't see why book writers won't continue to write books but do it for free or little return.
I also believe in ditching capitolism entirely and moving to pure communism. The kind where there is no money or class system, and everyone works for free but also gets everything provided for free such as housing, food, education, healthcare, clothes, transportation, and everyone gets the same amount of it.
Pure communism has never existed but it is the best most advanced form of socialism. And better than capitolism. Capitolism is an enslavement system, where people with egos get to think and live that "we are better than everyone else" when they really aren't better than anyone.
Why would I want that? You can quote my posts here for free, I don't care.
Utter bullshit.
This is about term limits for copyright. 20 years seems reasonable, 90 does;t.
Same old screed from those who don't create - they believe creation must be done in a vacuum without any influence from prior works.
The OP said "Not only copyrights, but trademark and patents. Gone. For ever."
That doesn't sound like a limit, but an outright elimination. That was the mindset GP was replying to.
This should not be modded troll, you're spot on, dude. The only people who don't understand this are a) non-artists and b) cheap assholes who like to steal whatever they can get away with.
Man, I hope you're being facetious.
Well considering it lost money, perhaps we would be doing the investors in discouraging these scams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
There's trademark law to cover franchises. eg James Bond is trademarked so no-one else can make a James Bond movie even when the books are out of copyright.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Then why should it get a benefit of a monopoly rent and free government support at the expense of free expression?
For the same reason that you get it, when it comes to your own works.
What kind of a reason is that? It sounds like you're saying that we should just set limits based on whatever the greediest want -- after all, it means it applies to everybody, so it must be fair, right?
There's a phrase for that: tragedy of the commons. Our shared culture, of which creative works are a large part, is being gobbled up and locked away behind effectively infinite imaginary property laws. Just because anybody can do it doesn't make it right or acceptable.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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And what's the most common counter-argument? That the moment an artist creates something, it's part of the shared culture and the artist has zero claim over its use. Which is worse - a system that allows someone who spends a lifetime creating something of value to still have control over that as part of the career and estate that she's built ... or a system where essentially every creative professional is chased out of that line of work and into flipping burgers because millions of idiots feel entitled to free entertainment from their music, prose, and film slaves?
Right. That's a false dichotomy. But it has to err on the side of defending the rights of the people who actually create things, not the leeches who want to rip things off in the name of free entertainment.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why Thankfully?
We wouldn't need things like Jurassic World if we had decent tools that helped us overcome whatever handicaps we have in making decent content ourselves. However there is plenty of free work out there legally already that I personally don't need Jurassic World.
http://www.qb64.net/forum/
http://sourceforge.net/directo...
http://freebasic.net/forum/
But they do want to take giving your time to whomever, whenever, as you see fit. They do it every time somebody said what you wanted to say first.
This is the video I watched on the subject. It seemed more than plausible. I didn't get all the way through - only about an hour.
http://gurneyjourney.blogspot....
Let's look at trademarks first. They don't stop you from doing anything other than misrepresenting the stuff you're selling as somebody else's. They're beneficial, since they make enforcing the misrepresentation a lot easier. Trademarks are artificial monopolies that apply only to artificial distinguishing features. They do not stifle honest competition.
Patents are much abused nowadays, but there's a lot of work that wouldn't be done without patents. One example is pharmaceuticals; it takes a LOT of money to go from a drug that has promising results in rats to a drug that can be sold for use on humans. It isn't always successful, either, so the successes have to make up for the failures. Without the ability to make a lot of money from the drug for a few years, pharma companies couldn't afford to research new drugs.
Copyrights aren't so necessary to keep people creative as to get people to make quality products. It's fun to write. It's much less fun to edit, fact-check, and typeset, and people who do that generally want money for it. Without copyright, competition doesn't matter for financial purposes, because nobody makes money off their creative endeavors. The difference between a great author and a bad one would be how many copies of their works were made, not that one would make more money than another.
Let me tell you how I benefit from these laws. If I buy something, I can look at the trademark, and if I know something about the company that owns it, I can draw some conclusions about the quality. I get people to write books and make movies that I like and am willing to pay for. I can use new drugs for medical conditions I have.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Your welcome to live your own life. I happen to like big budget movies that are made really well.