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Fair Use Threatens Innovation, Copyright Holders Warn (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader shares a TorrentFreak report: Various music and movie industry groups have warned that fair use exceptions are a threat. The groups were responding to proposals put forward in Australia by the Government's Productivity Commission. They claim that content creators will be severely disadvantaged if fair use is introduced Down Under
. Several rightsholder groups argue that strong copyright protections are essential for the survival of their businesses. This includes a long copyright term of 70 years, as well as the ability to block access to content based on the location of a consumer. In addition, many believe that fair use exceptions will do more harm than good. For example, music group IFPI warns that fair use will threaten innovation and create legal uncertainty. "Licensing, not exceptions to copyright, drives innovation. Innovation is best achieved through licensing agreements between content owners and users, including technological innovators," IFPI writes.
Why would it be called "fair" in the first place if it wasn't actually fair?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They're so full of it. What about licensing brings about innovation? Are they claiming people will only make new things if there's money to be had? I thought we debunked that myth a long time ago. Money is not the only motivating factor of innovation. I'd say it's the least important one, in fact; many people pursue what they do because they enjoy it and/or believe in it. The money's a damn nice bonus, but ultimately the goal of innovation is to improve the work/art in the field. If laws are passed that allow people to borrow ideas and combine them in ways people didn't anticipate, that's the very definition of innovation. Nothing is created in a vacuum, and holding exclusive rights to something for X amount of time only prevents innovation, *not* foster it.
They're a bunch of artless, lying suits, as we've all come to expect from the recording industry.
If licenseing drives innovation, this is a simple problem to solve. Require all copyright holders to use a license that includes some prescribed fair use clause. Done. Next.
There are plenty of business that survive just fine without freeloading on content that was produced almost a century ago. If you are unable to do that, that's a problem with your business and you *deserve* to go under. In fact, we wish you would so that better businesses can be built upon your stinking rotting corpse.
Sincerely,
Everyone.
Copyright extension to 70 years encourages innovation, because of course the original creator expects to still be alive and deriving revenue from their work 70 years later, right? This get one thing straight: Copyright isn't encouraging innovation, it's guaranteeing a revenue stream for the corporation that commissions the work for hire or buys the copyright from the original creator. Oh, and ALL creative works are derivative to begin with, so don't even try to tell me copyright is protecting "original" work.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Follow the money. Are the people making this "fair use stifles innovation" argument the original artists creating new content, or is the argument being advanced by companies that have bought the rights from long dead artists?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Why would they have to protect themselves from large corporations that invoke fair use as a defense? Fair use, by definition does not adversely impact the value of the work in question. If the copyright holders are being harmed in some way by some particular usage, then fair use cannot be deemed to apply in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Fair use is essential.
Corporations exist to disrupt society, not to create it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of everything in this story is true. These "rights holders" can go fuck themselves after they finish spinning this story.
If fair use is hindering their business, how would free use weigh in? Take open source, for example. Microsoft could easily argue Linux is making it difficult to sell their OS for server use. In fact, I'd imagine that if they somehow managed to eliminate fair use, free would be their next target: making it very difficult through restrictive legislation to produce something for free unrestricted distribution without some sort of monetary aspects attached. Essentially forcing all competition to play on the platform they fully control.
There's been some very worrying news coming out of Australia in a steady stream. The Big Brother is certainly on a roll there.
-SR
Many will be happy to produce content with a balanced copyright law with fair use provisions. Those who would not can simply not produce. That will create room in the market for less greedy producers to fill.
John_Chalisque
How Orwellian of them to say so...
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
So, fair use threatens the survival of their businesses. In other news, the automobile threatened the survival of the buggy-whip manufacturers and the integrated-circuit chip threatened the survival of the makers of vacuum tubes.
This one is the most amazing of all: that blocking content based on location somehow encourages innovation.
Of course I don't know why we're even discussing this. This reaction from the big corps is 100% predictable.
What bullshit. The established music industry has already completely killed innovation. They want a nice zero-risk predictable business model based on marketing not creativity, because anything creative is new and by definition unpredictable so a necessarily higher financial risk.
They've been following exactly the same old image-manufacturing process at least since Bill Haley/Elvis/The Beatles.
It's afraid of user generated content.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
We need more works entering the public domain. If creative works enter the public domain sooner, within reason to allow creators to profit for awhile from their works, there will be more derivative works and more innovation.
Which is what we had in the U.S. prior to 1978, when the Copyright Act of 1976 went into effect. I think the terms of the original Copyright Act of 1790 (14 years plus a 14 year extension) were adequate, and further extensions have been a cash grab by creators at the expense of society in general - a very real form of theft. Patents only receive 20 years of protection, so what's so frigging special about copyright? What we have now is an abomination that completely and totally defeats the purpose of the Copyright Clause in the U.S. Constitution, IMO. How exactly does extending protection for works after the creator's death encourage new works by that creator?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
So here is the deal, I will trade you "fair use" for 4-year copyright limits.
However, you can't have 70 year copyright terms and no fair use. That is called unlimited MONOPOLY!
The purpose of Copyright was to give the person who created the work a limited monopoly to earn back their money, not money for their grandchildren.
Imagine if a plumber could charge you per flush for the next 70 years.
Imagine if an electrician could charge you every time you use a light switch for the next 70 years.
It is insane. We need FAIR USE!
Apparently this "threat" has existed for quite a while. How have we ever survived?
From: U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index
Fair use is a judge-created doctrine dating back to the nineteenth century and codified in the 1976 Copyright Act.
And: Fair use
The 1709 Statute of Anne, an act of the Parliament of Great Britain, created copyright law to replace a system of private ordering enforced by the Stationers' Company. The Statute of Anne did not provide for legal unauthorized use of material protected by copyright. In Gyles v Wilcox (1740) the Court of Chancery established the doctrine of "fair abridgement," which permitted unauthorized abridgement of copyrighted works under certain circumstances. Over time, this doctrine evolved into the modern concepts of fair use and fair dealing. Fair use was a common-law doctrine in the U.S. until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Licensing, not exceptions to copyright, drives innovation.
How true! Almost forgotten is the fact that it was only through a carefully structured licensing strategy that William Shakespeare managed to innovate so much.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
We will be so RESTRICTED from artistic and technical INNOVATION that studios will be reduced to producing NOTHING MORE than endless REBOOTS of previously filmed efforts spun-off from ANCIENT COMIC BOOK franchises!
ALL COMMERCIAL MUSIC will be INDISTINGUISHABLE from style and content of hits released circa 2001!
DO YOU WANT TO KILL THIS VIBRANT CULTURE WITH FAIR ACCESS?!!!?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You misunderstand. In their language, "innovation" = "control of everything"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
It seems to me that lots of really fine and innovative work was done prior to the imposition of patents and IP protections. I say drop all protection for everything and let the chips fall where they may. Good people with good ideas will do something with them. The leaches and ten-percenters that live off our currently AFU system will eat dirt and die.
Fair Use Threatens Innovation, Copyright Holders Warn...and slashdot immediately jumps to the chance of parroting that shit.
There will be much digital ink spilled over this, then you'll all mostly go vote for the same idiots over and over...
Until you start voting new people in, nothing will change...
And I don't mean one or two, I mean the majority, you need a new government, but you largely won't get one because "the OTHER guys suck, but MY representative is great"
Something about calling it random doesn't seem to fit...
--- Mercutio was right.
For example, music group IFPI warns that fair use will threaten profits and rent seeking.
All this is, is about monopoly in the form of Copyright. They want the government to protect their failed business model, plain and simple.
This is good news and I was worried that Australia was stitched up by TPP.
As an Australian and British citizen in an IP creating industry I want something that gives me reasonable protection for my IP (and 20-25 years is about right) but at the same time gives me protection against patent trolls.
I voted for Brexit on the grounds that the EU is sleepwalking into TPP and I don't want my intellectual property to be governed by East Texas.
Maybe I should move back to Aus?
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
America has fair use, and it certainly doesn't have a strong music and film industry...
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
mine mine mine mine MINE MINE MINE!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If the recent years have shown, fair use might be the only thing that could save innovation. How many new ideas have been thrown out by Hollywood et al? And in comparison, how many old ideas have been remade, rebooted, rehashed and regurgitated in other ways?
If anyone can regurgitate, i.e. what fair use entails because eventually all those "ideas" will become usable by anyone else again, those great innovative heads can concentrate on creating new and exciting wonders instead of being able to milk the same shit forever.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, yes it is. Please step on it to test it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Please, as if that show didn't outlive its stay already in its first run!
Besides, Hagman is dead.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No need to. Others do that for you without asking you, but also without charging for it.
Admittedly, they charge if you want to access it again... say, that does sound a bit like the content industry, doesn't it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What do you expect from a group that thinks DRM increases the value of content while it's evident that it decreases the content's value? Proof: Everyone would much prefer content without to content with DRM. What's more valuable to you, content that you can put on your media server or content that you cannot?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fair vs. fair. You give me the content I want, I play along the rules. You do not, I won't buy it. It is actually that simple.
I live well without your content. How well do you live without my money?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The system is broken. It can be shown that even if as much as 30% of the people (which is ridiculously many, your chance of motivating any is closer to a high single digit), changed their voting behaviour, the outcome would not change. It might be the other puppet The Party offers, but it still wouldn't get you anywhere.
Forget voting. If you want to change anything, the ballot box fails. Use the next one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Aww, someone sees his money printing business threatened, how cute.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Copyrights and patents have their place. With intangible goods, you have the problem that a lot of money goes into their creation while at the same time they are trivial to duplicate. We have just gone overboard with the time that protection is granted.
In the beginning, copyright was 7 years and you could tack on another 7 years if you could somehow show that it's necessary. We're talking about the 1700s, though. A time when the steps between writing a book and having it published took months, if not years, to complete. Not to mention that information spread much slower and advertising was by no means as pervasive as it is today. Those 7 years, as long as they appear to us today, were pretty much what you HAD to be granted if that law should you actually have a chance to recover your investment of time and money.
As time went by, the time from creation to publication and monetizing shrunk while at the same time copyright was extended to ridiculous proportions. Today you can pretty much create, publish and make it known without HOURS, while at the same time copyright length is "lifetime of the creator + 70 years". That is ridiculous! We're talking about the grandchildren of an author still getting money out of what their grandpa did.
To put it into perspective, "Love me do" by the Beatles was published in 1962. If Paul McCartny AND Ringo Starr dropped dead TODAY, that song would go out of copyright no earlier than the end of the year of 2086, 122 YEARS after its creation. And to put THAT into perspective again, that's like being only able to freely circulate songs that were written before 1892, the year "The Nutcracker" was shown the first time. It is actually THAT LONG.
But since Paul and Ringo don't show any signs of dying any time soon, it's probably going to be way more than 122 years between the composition and their works finally becoming free to be played. If ever. Because they're not longer just songs, they're "assets". Someone "owns" that song. And for at least 70 years this will be someone who has never done anything for this song coming into existence.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Licensing, not exceptions to copyright, drives innovation. Innovation is best achieved through licensing agreements..."
:)
I do enjoy sometimes when they keep trying to re-interpret and re-explain what's what, but it does get boring after a while. And, of course, it's all bullcrap. But I wish they all would be transported to a universe where innovation is best achieved through licensing agreements and have fun over there
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
They are only trying to protect rent seeking schemes that almost exclusively benefit labels and studios and not actual creators. The goal is to maximize access and further creative while rewarding creators. Anything short of that is simply not good enough and introduces too many negatives including limiting how much benefit we can get from our technology and criminalizing everyone who may attempt to fully utilize the abilities of the technology.
"Several rightsholder groups argue that strong copyright protections are essential for the survival of their businesses."
What this means is they don't want to have to deal with someone else innovating and competing in their little corner of the economy. That's not good for business.
I'm not arguing for relinquishing the protections content producers have; "fair use" is narrowly defined for a reason: to ensure proper protections remain in place. What content producers don't want is to give legal protections to those operating within the bounds of fair use. That's just inherently wrong.
I don't get why people think that just because something is X today, that means there's excuse for it to be X tomorrow. There's no reason to expect, and less reason to demand, that.
Copyright holders want to eat more pie?
Let them eat and eat. Let them die.