Slashdot Mirror
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.
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'
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
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.
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.
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. . . .
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..."
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.