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Samsung Forced YouTube To Pull GTA 5 Mod Video Because It Showed Galaxy Note 7 As Bomb (redmondpie.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Redmond Pie: The Galaxy Note 7 wasn't just recalled, it was cancelled. For good. And that makes Samsung very cranky indeed. So when YouTube user HitmanNiko created a video showing a Grand Theft Auto 5 mod in which Galaxy Note 7 handsets can be used as grenades, it's perhaps somewhat understandable that someone inside Samsung took offense to the idea. What's incomprehensible though is the fact that Samsung has apparently set about trying to erase that video, and presumably others like it, from the Internet. The first step? Forcing YouTube to remove HitmanNiko's video. Trying to view the video now does nothing but display a message which says that the video is "no longer available due to a copyright claim by Samsung Electronics America" which leaves quite the bad taste in our mouths. The biggest issue here is that this is arguably the worst misuse of the DMCA we have ever come across, simply because nothing was copied, unless Samsung is trying to claim that by making the in-game grenades look like Galaxy Note 7 smartphones then the video creator was in fact in breach of copyright.
(uh... oops...)
In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work.
Source.
If that video isn't parody I don't know what is.
Someone set us up the Note 7
they got no signal, however.
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
And that's the problem here and in other cases like it.
It has to be checked-off by a court to say exactly that. Only after that step can the guy turn around and sue for damages and lost wages. It's as backward as you can get. It's putting the onus on the defense to prove that they're _not_ infringing. Assume guilt much?
Copyright law needs a top to bottom reform. Period.
We already know your products suck, too late, the cat is out of the bag.
Coming down like a totalitarian nutjob only makes you look even worse
using copyright as a friendly kudgel to silence "creative" speech online is a time honored tradition embraced by some of the largest multinational media companies in the world (AKA your friends.) But remember, its only successful when youtube posters remember to cower in fear, recoil in shame, and sink into remorseful consumption of approved content and products offered through their favourite online vendors and endorsed by their favourite super celebrities and brand icons!
Never use the tools provided by Youtube to challenge your DMCA takedown, and whatever you do, try to ignore the crushing blowback of the Streisand effect that inevitably comes surging through online media outlets --seemingly unstoppable in its pervasiveness-- in response to friendly DMCA takedown notification. Surely a nasty review or, heaven forbid, inventive online gaming content, wouldnt be instantaneously copied, shared, and disseminated endlessly online as a response to whats widely perceived as an "abusive cabal" of "predatory media conglomerates"
Good people go to bed earlier.
I, too, believe it's Fair Use, and he has a right to counterclaim. But this takes money, and the desire for a long fight, going through Discovery, showing damages, and all the other processes of tort law.
It's better to raise this issue and show that Samsung did the totally wrong thing, starting at their bad QA, bad engineering, bad process control for field testing, and an even worse procedure once the problem was found.
Corporations don't like to eat humble pie, eat crow, or whatever metaphor you'd like to use for admitting they screwed up. This is a PR disaster, IMHO.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Before taking it down it would have only gotten a handful of views, and I probably would have never seen it. Now even I wanna see this video! Anyone got a link to somewhere they haven't taken down yet?
When my S4 dies of old age, maybe I'll get a LG instead of another Samsung.
Has nobody heard of the Streissand effect?
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Trump needs to do what? Get a GTA V mod video pulled from YouTube using a DMCA complaint? Make a GTA V mod video with exploding Note 7's?
Um, sure...I'll see if they can get right on that, and I'm not prying but aren't you supposed to take your meds today?
Solidify my decision not to use your products! I avoid all things Samsung like most people would avoid a rabid dog or a disease-infested needle.
No, you just need to STFU. For fucks sake, does literally every god damn thing have to mention the election? No, no it doesn't. I get it, you're a small minded individual, and this is all you can think of to say. But shut the fuck up. We're what, a bit less then three weeks from the election? Everywhere you go all people are talking about is how much Trump sucks or how much Clinton sucks and on and on and on. I think I speak for most people when I say we're fucking sick and tired of hearing about it. This story doesn't involve Trump. This story doesn't involve Clinton, Fuck you for trying to bring them in to it.
This was a trademark violation. And likely taken down under that context, not copyright. And it's legitimate if they used the word Samsung or Note 7.
So, let me get this straight. When Apple sues Samsung over the "rounded corners" look and feel thing (stupid as that is/was) they were telling the courts it was all bogus; fair use, an abuse of the system, etc., etc. Now that they are abusing the system to suppress what is an obvious fair use parody - and as such should be protected anyway - of their phone's appearance, that's all fine and dandy? Maybe the Note 7 isn't the only thing at Samsung overheating at the moment...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
The design of the Note 7 is copyrighted, just as any other product. To reproduce a likeness of a piece of "art" without permission is infringing (just ask the US Post Office). How accurate was it? Could it be identified as a Note 7? If so, then it's a by right thing - it IS infringing.
Now, Hitman Niko can absolutely pursue this in court by re-publishing on a non-common carrier platform and having Samsung sue him. He may then, and only then, proffer his defense that the use falls under one of the Fair Use sections of copyright law. If the judge/jury concludes, based on the evidence, that it meets the test of fair use, then he will win the case. But he can't claim Fair Use as a right, only as a positive defense to an infringement claim. Copyright law is a bitch.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's putting the onus on the defense to prove that they're _not_ infringing. Assume guilt much?
I agree it is a problem but not for the reason you give. Samsung will still have to prove that the defendant infringed their copyright. The problem is one of risk. The cost of the court case is the problem here. Samsung is, for the moment ay least, a multi-billion dollar company with huge pockets. Win or lose the cost of this type of court case is a blip in their budget. However for the defendant the financial risk is huge: he could lose his life savings on a case like this.
This is the serious problem with the law today. Corporations can afford to bring frivolous cases knowing that the defendant cannot afford the time and money risk. What we ned to have is a system where the financial risk is comparable. For example perhaps if a corporation loses a case like this they should be required to compensate the defendant with one years salary of their highest paid employee. Who knows perhaps this might also help limit currently insanely high executive pay.
Enjoy video of this clever and humorous mod!
https://youtu.be/6EK-Qy_UZX4?t...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Nope, a DMCA counterclaim at this point is simply writing out a statement and sending it to, in this case, youtube, stating that you believe, under penalty of perjury, that the content is parody in nature falling under fair-use.
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guid...
Copyright law needs a top to bottom reform. Period.
Here's my proposal: sed '/^/d'
Seriously, copyright brings us exactly as much good as patents, and for the same reasons: a king of England got greedy and devised a way to gouge people for even more moolah while enacting censorship -- and then it got worse. The exact law differs (Statute of Anne that gave a monopoly and censorship duties to the Company of Stationers vs random "letters patent" monopolies) but their aim was the same.
Creative writing/art/etc was doing well before anyone thought of copyright.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Use the dmca to remove any video that shows him acting in a way that hurts him.
That is not the original one, it now looks like there are many different ones now though.
I've had a Youtube video taken down years ago for a claim, and got it reinstated. It didn't cost me anything, in fact I think when I got notice of the take-down I was given a form to fill out by Youtube to challenge it. I simply copy-pasted a few statements from Wikipedia about fair-use and a few days later it was brought back to my account. So unless Youtube has changed since then, it shouldn't take money, just a bit of time.
I believe the original is on this page: http://fraghero.com/gta-5-mod-... scroll down a bit.
Samsung is, for the moment ay least, a multi-billion dollar company with huge pockets. Win or lose the cost of this type of court case is a blip in their budget. However for the defendant the financial risk is huge: he could lose his life savings on a case like this.
Isn't Youtube the defendant here? Google could step in here.
For example perhaps if a corporation loses a case like this they should be required to compensate the defendant with one years salary of their highest paid employee.
But if you don't have the money to fight a corporation, how does getting a lot of money (if you win) going to help you?
Creative writing/art/etc was doing well before anyone thought of copyright.
No, actually it wasn't. Before copyright, writers got no credit and no money for their work. Most of the works surviving from the middle ages we don't even know who wrote them-- the authors are called things like "the Pearl poet" by scholars, because all we know of him (?) is that he (or she) wrote the Pearl sequence (and Gawain).
Copyright law might be broken, but no copyright is not the solution.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Wrong. There is no confusion with the few seconds of satirical game footage to a real product that happens to catch fire. A product I might add that is so bad, every single device made has been recalled and the manufacturing of it stopped.
I'm guessing that you're heavily invested in a datacenter company and are trying to lower the cost of hard drives by causing Youtube to flood the market with all of the excess drives they'd have in such a scenario.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I don't think copyright is totally bad. For example, I recently published my first novel. Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it. I'd wind up competing with my own novel. Then there are issues of film studios being able to take anyone's work and make movies based off of it without compensating the author at all. I'd have to spend a lot of time and money filing lawsuits to make them stop and, without copyright law, I might not be successful.
The big problem with copyright law isn't its existence. It's the length. Copyright was originally 14 years plus a one-time 14 year extension. This isn't so bad. The novel I just published would have until 2044 (assuming I renewed the copyright) to make me money. Then, the book transfers to the public domain for others to build on it. Very few works still make money after 28 years - and I'd wager most of the ones that still do (like Star Wars) partly keep making money because of new material being added.
However, over the years, copyright terms lengthened until now it's 70 years after the author's death. If I die at age 90, my novel will be protected by copyright until 2135. At that point, my youngest son (now 9) would be 128 - and likely deceased. If my youngest son had a child at 30, his child would be 98 when my copyright ran out. I don't need copyrights on my works lasting until my great-great-great grandchildren are born. That's not giving me incentive to create new works. 14 years + 14 years would be plenty.
If copyright law was reset back to 14 years plus an optional one-time 14 year extension, a lot of the problems with copyright would go away.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Good to know. Glad it was easy as that.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
So... all of them?
It's not a violation of your trademark to use your trademark to refer to your brand. Otherwise, every time anybody used any brand name it would be a trademark violation. Deception must be at least attempted for trademark violation to occur - that is, the violator must make some pretense that the usage is known to and endorsed by the owner of the trademark. Perhaps Samsung could argue that the use of their trademark might confuse people into thinking that this GTA mod was sanctioned or released by them. I think such an argument would at best get them laughed out of court and at worst get any lawyer Samsung sent disbarred and maybe jailed for contempt; but they could at least argue that.
Do *you* think anybody could have reasonably been confused by the use of these names in a GTA mod showing them being used as grenades? No? Neither would a judge or a jury.
Their engineering is sub-par these days. Whether it's failing over-the-range microwaves (5E ERROR), burning washing machines, or these phones.
This was a trademark violation. And likely taken down under that context, not copyright.
The purpose of trademark law is to make it clear that the item is the actual item, not a fake masquerading as the item, so when a company establishes a reputation, people can know that they are buying the real goods, not an imitation.
So this really isn't what trademark is for-- this is a parody, which is protected under US law.
And it's legitimate if they used the word Samsung or Note 7.
Well, the mod is named "GTA 5 Mod Samsung", so, I'd say yes...
Samsung is, for the moment ay least, a multi-billion dollar company with huge pockets. Win or lose the cost of this type of court case is a blip in their budget. However for the defendant the financial risk is huge: he could lose his life savings on a case like this.
Isn't Youtube the defendant here?
No, it's not.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Wrong.
It's like none of you guys even bothered to understand the basics of DMCA Takedown rules.
All the guy has to do is say to Youtube: nope this is all good. The video is then restored no questions asked.
If the original Takedowner insists, that's when the courts are involved.
Well not exactly, l the DMCA has a 7 step procedure that ends in a court battle. And is supposed to favor the accused until then.
I don't remember the steps exactly, but it's something like this:
Accuser files claim
Content removed
Accused contests claim
Content restored
Accuser reinstates claim
Content removed
Accused recontests claim
Content restored
Accuser is now supposed to file suit, and the outcome decides who owns the content and weather it remains up.
Problem is youtube only implements up to the 3rd step. (And sometimes even that is not available.) Basically they allow the first contestion, but do nothing about it, and your content remains down. This forces you to bear the burden of filing the lawsuit, and even if you win they make it difficult to get your content back up. Not exactly what the DMCA outlines, and favors the Accuser far more. This is also we whay makes it profitable to use it use bots to file claims. (If only it were illegal to implement it only partly)
Samsung is, for the moment ay least, a multi-billion dollar company with huge pockets. Win or lose the cost of this type of court case is a blip in their budget. However for the defendant the financial risk is huge: he could lose his life savings on a case like this.
Isn't Youtube the defendant here? Google could step in here.
Nope, as long as YouTube abides by the terms of the DMCA, they are shielded from liability. This means they must take down the video when they receive a copyright claim, but must reinstate the video if the author files a counter claim. At that point, Samsung's recourse would be to sue the author.
this is arguably the worst misuse of the DMCA we have ever come across
Good grief! it's a minor spat about a device that the public will have forgotten all about in a few months. Hardly worth raising your blood pressure over - let alone using superlatives about.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
But then there will be movies where Donald Duck has a huge, um, duck, and mows down ducklings with a flame thrower.
CEPH needs lot's of disks on many nodes. Then we can do the updates that need reboots with out having storage go down.
Heck just allowing unlimited 14yr extentions, but only if filed by the origonal author would be enough. That way you could protect your copyright as long as desired. If you die then your copyright will expire at most 14 years after death.
And remove that provision that allows companies to be treated as individuals. If the work is pivotal to long term success of a company they should get other options such as trademark etc...
I understood that Disney was one motivator behind the extension of copyright, otherwise the mouse would now be in the public domain.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
This is all defined by the law to give companies like Google safe harbor from lawsuits for publishing or copying someone else's work. It still ends up in court if the original claim is pressed, but Google is off the hook.
This, by the way, is seen as spurring the great growth of a bunch of the Internet by US companies, allowing them to protect themselves. Many Euro and other countries allow good old fashioned suing of these sites. All this crap of news sites suing to get a cut of Google profits just for being listed in a search result comes of it, as one tiny indicator of what might have happened.
No company would have risked investment without it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
but it is fucking funny when it shows SAMSUNG real close.
As I understand it there currently is *no* defendant - there is only a DMCA take-down notice claiming copyright infringement, and Youtube taking down the video to avoid risking becoming the target of a lawsuit as per DMCA safe harbor provisions.
I think the only way it goes to court is if the person who posted the video decides to sue Sony for making a false claim against them. And since the law is extremely lax about allowing such things (as I recall, no one has *ever* been punished for issuing a false take-down notice), the best they could hope to get for their expense is to get their video back up again.
Or alternately, if they contest the takedown, and Youtube agrees with them, the video could go back up, and Sony could then sue them and/or google or copyright infringement, with all the unrealistic statutory damages that puts on the table.
Basically yes, the US legal system is tilted heavily in favor of corporations - even when there is a potential payout, reaching it could easily bankrupt the person first. One of the advantages of "loser pays" systems - far more lawyers are willing to take a solid case on "commission", knowing that the corporation will be required to pay their fees in full once it's been defeated. Which probably makes corporations far more hesitant to bring nuisance lawsuits in the first place as well.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Your post pairs nicely with your signature.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'm pretty sure that Barbara hasn't.
You forgot to mention that you ANAL, although to be fair nobody thought otherwise.
Yeah whatever. I bet you can't think of another as funny or effective way to ridicule Samsung for their failure. Would you want to live in a world where the strong can't get ridiculed for doing stupid shit and failing? Me neither.
But what Samsung maybe could do is subpoena the IPs of the video posters and if any of them are affiliated with Samsung competitors, then that's pretty clear intent of harming Samsung's brand.
It is not fair use nor satire anymore if the posters are getting paid by Samsung's competitors, is it?
The story here is that the minimum wage Indian slave labor that processed this DMCA request isn't even trained in the fundamentals of the copyright law he/she is charged with enforcing. If they were. they would have informed Samsung about parody and commentary and told them to go sit on a Note 7.
I am betting that they can still take it down on group of defending their trademark. The way I read it he was using the likeness of the object. And like it or not , the look feel and name are trademark. So it is not as simply as reusing copyrighted material as this is also about trademark to which the copyright laws do not apply. The DMCA was probably used because youtube has only 1 takedown form "copyright" not "trademark".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If youtube was taking it as it legal value, yes it would be for a court to decide. But youtube , as a private entity, can STILL decide to accept take down request in spite of the court , and still remove video from their private property. And it is quite clear that youtube has taken this direction, not carring about the takedown requests validity. In fact they could rename it as fluffy-fluff-take-down-request if you prefer and have the same process and no court could tell them what to do.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Youtube can decide to have their own private process which is "better" (at least from the claim side) than the law. In fact they could stop at step 2 and not care about the accused's side. You are thinking this is a process youtube should follow. No it is a process they can utterly legally within their TOS cut short in favor of the claim.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Repost To YouTube. Much quicker than fucking around with paperwork.
Sony have form in being the bad guys in DMCA crap like this, and there's plenty of mud-slinging in their direction, but this time they aren't involved.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Copyright law needs a top to bottom reform. Period.
The people who own the government strongly disagree with you. Empirical evidence demonstrates that the only reform will be to make it worse.
With the current system in place.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it.
You should look into Creator Endorsed.
Only asshole people will buy from a rip-off publisher. But asshole people will also elect a government that will enact things like a DMCA, so they're going to screw society either way as long as they have the government stick to wield. Not having the government-enforced copyright also eliminates problems like this Samsung* one, so you get multiple benefits from that strategy. It's risk-management, not risk-avoidance.
* guess whose phones I won't be buying again in the future?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
But was the outage enough to break the 'viral' effect in this case?
Samsung and Sony are both South Korean companies so the confusion is understandable. Most South Koreans can't even tell them apart!
Not that I disagree, but how do you handle the situation where a company (many, many people) are responsible for the creation of the work (such as a movie)? If you assign copyright to every single person that worked on the movie, how do extension requests work?
Samsung can hardly take all of them down if people keep putting them up.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Steamboat Willie would be, but Mickey himself is trademarked, so while (if the copyright ever actually expired) you would be able to make something derivative of SW (like a remake with other characters, or using clips of it in something), you'd still have issues making new stuff claiming to use Mickey Mouse as a character.
It took 20 days from the mod being released (Oct. 1st), and maybe two or so weeks since it got some attention and started appearing in videos for these guys to issue the take down. And, not even going after the mod itself (I think), but only a video of it. That's some grade A lawyering we got here.
Its a good thing you posted AC because you are a fucking idiot.
The DMCA was design to protect the host seving the data while allowing copyright holders to identify the person that posted the material so they can be sued. Its a process whereby the copyright owner sends the host a takedown notice and the host removes the data. The poster can then respond to the host claiming the initial claim is in error and provide all their contact info. The host is now free to repost the material without any liability, the copyright holder now has the contact information of the poster and can sue properly to obtain a real legal injunction.
Thats the steps, not some ridiculous multi step take down, repost, take down 20 times made up process you pulled out your ass.
You know, everyone at Slashdot that keeps harping on how litigious and "controlling" Apple is, needs to take a hard look at a company (Samsung) that really DOESN'T have a sense of humor (nor decency).
When Apple brought out Final Cut Pro X, the Conan O'Brien Show (which is apparently "cut" on FCP) did about a 10 minute sketch, supposedly depicting technical glitches that were caused by the transition to FCPX. Apple didn't sue. Didn't make Conan issue a retraction. Didn't anything. Instead, they went back to the labs, and fairly quickly addressed most, if not all, of the concerns, and even let customers continue to purchase FCP 5, so that their workflows wouldn't be affected while they fixed FCPX.
When "Antennagate" happened, heck, not only were there SEVERAL YouTube videos about it, I think that someone even wrote a frickin' SONG about the issue. Did Apple rush out with its army of lawyers and issue DMCA Takedown Notices? No. They grinned and bore it along with everyone else. Then they went back to the labs and fixed the problem.
That's just two things I can remember off the top of my head. I'm sure there are other examples.
Sony is Japanese.
But they do both start with an S, so the confusion is still understandable.
I am not a gamer and would never have seen the video unless Samsung DCMA'd it. Corporate arrogance/stupidity seems to know no bounds. (No more Samsung products for me...)
These guys are behaving almost as stupidly as Trump. This aside, who will want to be seen with a Samsung handset from now on? I mean, if you want a handset to make a social statement, the only statement that you will be able to make is that you have a handset that might explode at any time. Probably not many are interested in that social image. Samsung is toast in the ego mobile phone market.
The design of the Note 7 is copyrighted, just as any other product. To reproduce a likeness of a piece of "art" without permission is infringing (just ask the US Post Office). How accurate was it? Could it be identified as a Note 7? If so, then it's a by right thing - it IS infringing.
It is a generic, thin, rounded-rectangle with a black "face". I can't even remember if it says "Samsung" on it.
But since every single Smartphone looks identical to the iPhone of the same generation, it really could have been any Smartphone, if not for the context.
IOW, it was overreaching on the part of Samsung to issue a DMCA Order. And definitely within the bounds of a "satirical work".
But the cool thing is, now they have breathed new life into an internet meme that had all but died-out... Hahahahaha!!!
Then why don't studios trademark all their intellectual property rather than just copyright it?
I used a Youtube video downloader (I'm not going to say which one in order to *protect Youtube from targeting and disabling it) and saved a copy so I can spread it around. Companies have to learn that the internet does not forget *yes, I've worded it correctly, remembering how companies said they would "protect" us from doing stuff THEY don't want us to do a few years back.
Because they can't. Trademark is for a specific subset of IP. You can trademark Mickey Mouse ears or Spider-Man's mask, but you can't trademark a Mickey Mouse cartoon or a Spider-Man comic. You can copyright those things, of course, but that's a different animal.
Lets say we do away with copyright tomorrow and all of my novels have that creator endorsed marking on them. The big question is whether the book buying public would even care. My novel sells for $7.99 (paperback). Suppose HarperCollins decides to publish an edition of my book without my approval. Thanks to copyright going away, there is no legal recourse for me to tell them to stop or to compensate me. Being a bigger publishing house, they might be able to undercut me on price. Now, my $7.99 paperback has to contend with their $4.99 paperback edition. Plus, they are able to get their version of my book into all the bookstores while mine is still limited in scope. (My book is only available from Amazon at the moment.)
The big question is: Would the buying public care that my book has the "Creator Endorsed" logo on it or would they flock to the cheaper copy to save some cash?
As much as I'd like to say people would go with Creator Endorsed, I think they'd go with the saved cash and I'd wind up losing sales. (This is the only time when I'd call "lost sales" an actual thing since the person actually bought a copy of the book but did so from someone who was selling their own version without getting approval/providing compensation.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The damage to your name is done. It's going to get around in FAR more places than a YouTube video or gaming mod. It's already public knowledge. It has hate, love, jokes, stories, tabloid material.... Just give it the eff up already. Something happened and it's done. It can't be undone. All you can do is compensate and move on.
Maybe you should try playing on the negativity as a way to assist advertising safe new products. When a company jokes about themselves about external things that were forced upon them (the public view, not the hardware failure-that's bad decision), people get a laugh and eventually get over it (the harmed aside, of course).
Don't go all 'iddqd' to get God Mode and pull SCO-like crap for years to try any force your name back into superiority with court rulings and forced censorship. It shots you in the foot every..single..effing..time you do it.
This isn't a copyright violation, it's a trademark violation at best. If the mod wouldn't have explicitly pointed out the manufacturer of the phone, we all would have still got the message and Samsung, or any other manufacturer couldn't have done anything to stop it. Samsung's legal is still wrong and the tactics of lying will backfire. Our collective hive mind will make sure of that.
And the answer is no of course.
I mirrored the video as a mp4. Feel free to share this far and wide.
https://www.btfh.net/GTA5_EXPL...
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Actually, you'd still be able to make money after that. It's just that after 2044, other people could too. The only thing you would lose would be the monopoly on that novel. It's important to remember that this is the actual job of copyright - incentivizing contributions to the public domain with temporary monopoly power.
As you correctly note, it's the effective removal of the "temporary" part that's a problem. When the monopoly is effectively permanent, the copyright holder isn't keeping their end of the bargain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enK5XGETCZM
As an author, I think your message "we should take away copyright, because authors would keep on writing even if they got no money and no credit for it" to be, basically, utterly and completely despicable.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Are you kidding? Most people would never buy a non-Creator endorsed version of your book for $4.99!!! We wouldn't give away are money to evil publishers like that.
We would just download it for free from some torrent site.
Now if you were to provide a Creator endorsed torrent link, I am sure it would be at the top of the google search results. So, problem solved.
Even in the case of very highly-paid CEOs though, the annual salary of that employee still won't sting a big corporation like Samsung very much. Now, make it 1% of their annual revenue, and then we're talking.
Personally though, I think the DMCA could be fairly easily reworked to put some parity between the parties into the system:
1) Forbid any automated, multiple, and/or electronic takedowns. Each takedown should be for a single alleged infraction, and delivered by registered mail, FedEx, or some other similarly-reliable delivery service that provides evidence of delivery.
2) Those claims of infringement need to be made by a single, identifiable, individual. It doesn't matter if that's the actual owner or their lawyer; so long as the claim can be traced back to that person claiming, under penalty of perjury, that the content is owned and infringing.
3) Give the "under penalty of perjury" part some teeth. If the content is not actually owned by the claimant, covered by fair use, or in any other way determined to be non-infringing; the individual from step 2 above goes to jail for perjury. I think a nice schedule would be:
1st false claim: 30 days in county.
2nd false claim: 90 days in county.
3rd false claim: 1 year in state, plus felony conviction on their criminal record and disbarment if the claimant is a lawyer.
Three simple steps. And I'd bet that we'd eliminate nearly all false and frivolous DMCA claims; but, more importantly, equalize the risk and power differential between the plaintiff and defendant.
Imagine all the people...
Seriously, this... very much this. I don't think I'd even go so far as 28 years though, or require anyone to go through the hassle of filing for the extension. I'd just go with a flat 20 years. For the life of me, I can't think of a single good reason that a copyright should last any longer than a patent.
Imagine all the people...
Jason Levine is exactly right. A second critical change needed is to eliminate the Berne Convention from the US. That copyright feature forces copyright on everything you jot down. Whether you want copyright or not. Copyright should be, again, something one requests through specific action (such as writing it in the work) rather than being automatic.
Trademark doesn't prevent people from distributing the original.
The problem I am having with thin devices has little to do with traditional complaints like easy to break or battery life but how well the devices sit in my hands. Parts of my hands keep curling over onto the screen.
Then I suppose you ought to take your post down. After all, you uttered the phrases "Samsung" and "Note 7".
To be fair, Samsung did get sued for making a parody of the iPhone.
I don't think copyright is totally bad. For example, I recently published my first novel. Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it. I'd wind up competing with my own novel. Then there are issues of film studios being able to take anyone's work and make movies based off of it without compensating the author at all. I'd have to spend a lot of time and money filing lawsuits to make them stop and, without copyright law, I might not be successful.
That is a good point. Without copyright, not only would you compete against yourself when selling your own book, it would annihilate any control directly related follow on work -- movies, book sequels, etc.
Removal of copyright would have far reaching consequences to the entertainment industry and software industry. Many people here on slashdot think that software patents are mostly bad, and we should fall back on copyright. Well, gee, do we really want to categorically remove the concept of intellectual property?
If that was to be the model I think it would be reasonable to allow an author to sell a single 14 year copyright installment to a corporate entity as it would give authors flexibility. E.g a 70 year old author might wish to sell a final 14 year term for a lump sum to fund retirement in a predictable way rather than hope for sufficient income over the next 14 years.
Also you need to work out what authorship actually means as there have been many cases where it has been far from clear if a contributor was an author or merely offering work for hire.
They never learn.
This is 'almost' as bad as Sony root-kitting peoples PCs to prevent copying. Not quite as bad, but now I see Samsung in same sleazy slimy light I see Sony.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
And, just in case people somehow think that individuals or small businesses would prosper without any copyright, who would be the ones to quickly churn out a movie or book sequel based on an authors (instantly copyright-less) book? Big media companies. So I publish my novel (Shameless Plug: The title is "Ghost Thief"). MGM somehow gets wind of it and decides to do a movie based on my book. They don't consult me or compensate me. In fact, they mangle my work entirely. I might be able to sue them, but without copyright protection I'll be an individual bringing a flimsy case against a large media powerhouse's army of high priced attorneys.
On the flip side, if someone made a fan film from a "previously copyrighted" work done by a big media company, the big would likely still threaten a massive lawsuit unless the fan took down his work. The lawsuit threats might be unfounded, but they would be able to bully people into settling out of court and/or taking down their derivative works.
In short, a world without copyright would be one that the big companies exploited even more. What we need is copyright to stick around, but to be limited in term.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You mean like all those assholes who Upvote reposts on reddit? People wont go through the effort to find the original author/publisher.
You may not like it, but the phone and it's look are samsungs IP, you can't just go using it without permission, especially in a non-positive way..
So you're saying that I can't make and publish a video featuring any recently designed object. I have to blur the passing cars, for example.
Ezekiel 23:20
that this is arguably the worst misuse of the DMCA we have ever come across
I see this is your first time on the internet. Welcome. It's a shithole ruled by corporations. No this isn't even the arguably the worst case of DMCA misuse. It is however just the latest in a long string of similar examples of corporations and sometimes even private people using this law in an entirely irrelevant way to censor content.
You can do anything you like, but you might be sued for it. IIRC, the current condition allowing the photographing of buildings in Europe (yes, they are designs of an architect and carry copyright protection) are only temporary (or, perhaps were as of last year). Copyright is out of control.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Say someone took your novel and used it as a book to give exorcisms in a game instead of say a bible. Do you feel you should sue the game maker for parodying your novel as a bible for exorcisms? Or would you instantly DMCA the entity doing the parody? If you sent a DMCA it means the game maker must now go to court to prove that it was in fact a parody, even though you've provided 0 evidence it's not.
The point is, 'copyright holders' have all the rights and those who use the laws fairly have no rights. It has nothing to do with the length of the copyright.
3) Give the "under penalty of perjury" part some teeth. If the content is not actually owned by the claimant, covered by fair use, or in any other way determined to be non-infringing; the individual from step 2 above goes to jail for perjury. I think a nice schedule would be:
1st false claim: 30 days in county.
2nd false claim: 90 days in county.
3rd false claim: 1 year in state, plus felony conviction on their criminal record and disbarment if the claimant is a lawyer.
Those teeth are too sharp. You would swing the balance too far in the opposite direction, which would gut any industry that legitimately relies on digital copyrights having value. Conceptually, the DMCA is a necessary thing, and legitimate claims are beneficial to society at large. It just happens that it was written in an absurd way that allows incredible levels of abuse, and that needs to be fixed.
IMHO, either 1 or 2 that you suggest would effectively solve the problem, though I think it would be better if 1 were simply made more sensible, rather than removed completely. Not requiring automatic take downs would stop the lions share of false claims though, and requiring legitimate identification would make counter-claims much more effective.
If you really want to add teeth, provide a mechanism for determining an intentionally false claim, and make issuing one wire fraud. Then you get sensible criminal charges for intentional abuse of the system automatically.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
You say that like it's a bad thing.
There is no good reason everything made by the Beetles and Elvis shouldn't be public domain at this point.
Copyright is transferable. OP's suggestion changes nothing about that aspect of the law. Such works are produced under contract, with the copyright going to whatever entity produced the film (studio, uber rich guy, whatever).
So for example, take Mickey Mouse. That original creation, and all of the films produced involving MM, was owned by Walt Disney. He didn't personally create most of it, but the people who did create it did so under contract, transferring their claim of ownership on to him. The MM copyright therefore lasts until 70 years after his death.
Incidentally, this is why Disney re-releases, re-masters, and re-imagines all the old films every few years. They are creating a veritable minefield of copyright, so that when the original claim is no longer valid in 50 years or whatever, any independent attempt to re-create these stories will probably run afoul of one of their copyrighted works.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Maybe you have noodle fingers. I heard that others posters mom will like that. Or sausage fingers.
nt
No company would have risked investment without it.
Revisionist history if I've ever seen it. By the time the DMCA turned up on the scene, companies were already heavily invested. The DMCA did nothing to foster that. As written, it merely serves to provide content owners more power over anyone they claim is abusing their copyright.
Note that "claim" is not the same as "can prove"; and that is where the DMCA falls down IMO. The burden of proof should be on the claimant, not the target who can be so simply and expediently silenced simply because someone doesn't like what they have to say.
As this issue has very clearly shown.
-- sigs cause cancer.
> Those teeth are too sharp.
If not jail time, what punishment would you suggest for people who file fraudulent DMCA claims then? If you take the automatic mass takedowns out of the equation, and make the individual content owner or lawyer responsible for reviewing and filing the claim; you take any chance of an honest accident out of the equation. So false claims in this case would be, at the very least, willful negligence in the case of a more mercenary lawyer who just went: "Ready, Fire, Aim" at the orders of his client without verifying the claim; or in the case of the content owner himself, or a lawyer who does do due diligence and yet files a false claim anyway, acts of deliberate and malicious fraud and/or perjury. So why hold back on punishing those people.
Imagine all the people...
Heh heh. Fair enough, not sure how I flubbed that detail.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The absurdly long duration of copyrights, from the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension act, is indeed absurd.
A good discussion, how can we fix copyright without telling artists that they don't own their own work, would be useful.
The fact that copyright law has problems, however, does not mean that it has no value and should be discarded entirely. Except on slashdot, where any problem whatsoever can only be seen in black or white, a complete dichotomy: if copyright law isn't perfect then it's useless, no other possibilities.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The design of the Note 7 is copyrighted, just as any other product. To reproduce a likeness of a piece of "art" without permission is infringing (just ask the US Post Office). How accurate was it? Could it be identified as a Note 7? If so, then it's a by right thing - it IS infringing.
Now, Hitman Niko can absolutely pursue this in court by re-publishing on a non-common carrier platform and having Samsung sue him. He may then, and only then, proffer his defense that the use falls under one of the Fair Use sections of copyright law. If the judge/jury concludes, based on the evidence, that it meets the test of fair use, then he will win the case. But he can't claim Fair Use as a right, only as a positive defense to an infringement claim. Copyright law is a bitch.
By that argument absolutely every manufactured object in the game that has a recognizable brand is infringing.
You are an idiot and I'd mod you a Troll if I had points today.
The very concept of copy"right" is an attack on ones liberties and freedom. It's contrary to the notion that libertarians hold in that government should not be able to utilize violence to achieve political goals. Laws should be restricted to those whom have commuted violence, fraud, or coercion. No victim no crime. Copy"right" is little more than an artificial construct which today does little more than benefit a select elite. You can argue that individuals utilize copy"right" as well, but it's not in 99.95% of the populations means to have there copy"right" enforced under the laws. It's outside of the typical artists means. The answer to the problem is to end copy"right" and socialize the concept of tipping artists just as we do for waiters and waitresses. You don't even need tipping to succeed as an artists, but rather a workable business model profit off ones work (selling advertising, merchandising, connecting software with a physical hardware product or service, etc).
A few liberty oriented organizations and sites involved in the migration of liberty-minded people to New Hampshire for the purpose of limiting government in the pursuit of maximising liberty and freedom (end the state, end copy"right", end "intellectual property", end laws that only create victims out of those who don't comply, like drivers licenses, government schools, taxes, social security, vehicular registration, etc):
http://www.freestateproject.org/ http://www.freekeene.com/ http://www.freetalklive.com/
* To respond to those who criticize the idea I'll point out that it's a long term goal and New Hampshire would have to declare independence first. In response to that being unrealistic it doesn't matter as one does not need the majority to be ones side to succeed. One need only have an undue influence on the political system and therefore people willing to move, activists, will have that undue influence even as a minority in the population.. The majority of those imprisoned are imprisoned by the states and not the federal government. Therefore we can conclude that maximum benefit will likely be from conquering politics at a state level regardless of the success of any succession movement that exists. There is a succession movement in NH, but it's mostly made up of people with more realistic prospects in getting people to become aware of where the most active liberty-minded people are moving and to have influence via other means within the confines what is possible today or will be in the near future thanks to all the people who have moved already and are planning to move in the next 5 years. There is no place in NH you can move today and not run into libertarians on a daily basis (if you leave house). There are multiple activists groups across the state in every small town and city.
YouTube has definitely changed between now and when you are referring to.
Not that it costs money, that still isn't the case and hasn't been for over a decade.
But that form you filled out to counter claim is no longer in use. Submissions are ignored.
The only way to counter claim is to call or email your YouTube account representative and convince them the claim has no merit.
Claiming fair use is not accepted as a valid reason.
Claiming the time code in your video does not contain the work named in the original take down is not acceptable as a valid reason.
You also don't get an account representative until your channel reaches a certain number of subscribers. That number has changed a couple times each year for the past 2-3 years.
You can record a 10 second video of you against a blank white backdrop, saying the words "I like hotdogs", with no other audio.
Such a video was taken down by "E L holdings co." for containing the content "The Witcher 3 soundtrack", and it will not be possible to counter claim.
That's the state of YouTube in 2016
If not jail time, what punishment would you suggest for people who file fraudulent DMCA claims then?
How about statutory damages to the person the complaint is against to compensate them for their time fighting it and any potential damage caused? If you wanted a bit of poetic justice you could set the damages using the same formula for the ones the typical complainants use when claiming damages against something that actually is infringing. It would be very hard for them to argue against that without saying that their own claims are massively inflated.
You're forgetting that on slashdot, everyone downloads everything they want, then if it meets their exacting standards they will send the original author a personal cheque in the post thereby avoiding all the evil publishers, agents et al who exist only to cream off money for cocaine and underage hookers.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
No it's not legitimate if he merely mentioned either. Merely mentioning a trademark doesn't mean you're in violation of trademark law, otherwise you wouldn't be able to talk about most commercial products. The precise restrictions on trademarked word use are best described by a lawyer, but remember the intent of trademark law is to prevent people from passing an item off as something associated with the trademark owner, not to restrict people's ability to talk about products they've seen or owned.
For more information, visit Bing and google "trademarks".
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And they would be if copyright was 14 years + a one-time optional 14 year extension. If this were still the length of copyright, everything from 1988 and earlier would be in the public domain. Everything from 2002 and earlier that wasn't renewed would be in the public domain as well.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I don't think copyright is totally bad. For example, I recently published my first novel. Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it. I'd wind up competing with my own novel. Then there are issues of film studios being able to take anyone's work and make movies based off of it without compensating the author at all. I'd have to spend a lot of time and money filing lawsuits to make them stop and, without copyright law, I might not be successful.
The big problem with copyright law isn't its existence. It's the length. Copyright was originally 14 years plus a one-time 14 year extension. This isn't so bad. The novel I just published would have until 2044 (assuming I renewed the copyright) to make me money. Then, the book transfers to the public domain for others to build on it. Very few works still make money after 28 years - and I'd wager most of the ones that still do (like Star Wars) partly keep making money because of new material being added.
However, over the years, copyright terms lengthened until now it's 70 years after the author's death. If I die at age 90, my novel will be protected by copyright until 2135. At that point, my youngest son (now 9) would be 128 - and likely deceased. If my youngest son had a child at 30, his child would be 98 when my copyright ran out. I don't need copyrights on my works lasting until my great-great-great grandchildren are born. That's not giving me incentive to create new works. 14 years + 14 years would be plenty.
If copyright law was reset back to 14 years plus an optional one-time 14 year extension, a lot of the problems with copyright would go away.
Nice analysis, but...
Corporations are effectively immortal, and are being imbued with the legal rights once reserved for humans. Well, at least in the US anyway, thanks to recent court cases like Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. Not sure about the rest of the planet, but I'm certain the success of American corporations in getting legislation passed to favor their interests (or prevent legislation inimical to their interests, see below) is not lost upon the business communities in Europe and Asia.
As it stands, copyright law was written long before the rise of corporations and their political influence. It was created in an environment where people had a very finite window to create and profit from a work, as your cogent analysis makes clear. If a corporation is effectively immortal, though, then this underlying assumption about finite windows is no longer valid. Existing copyright law would need to change to reflect the fact that corporate copyright holders are not constrained by the same finite windows that humans are. Lo and behold, that is exactly what is happening, via laws enacted to extend the length of time the copyright can be invoked.
You make very valid points about the copyright period, but your solution doesn't take into account the needs of corporations, who have a vested interest diametrically opposed to your solution. Any attempt to roll back the current time limits on copyright would be resisted by corporate copyright holders who would stand to lose hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of potential profit. Corporate copyright holders would act to preserve the status quo, and would prevent any such legislation from ever seeing the light of day. Again, I can't speak for Europe and Asia, but it is certainly clear that the interests of corporate copyright holders in America are already well-represented in Congress -- that kind of legislation wouldn't even get out of committee, let alone make it to the floor for a vote.
It's back up on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GhODn4FRoE
http://bgr.com/2016/10/21/samsung-note-7-exploding-bomb-gta-5/
They don't have to put the video back after a counter-claim. What that does is shield them from any liability from the person who posted the video, which presumably doesn't exist under the terms of service.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That's not going to work, since in most cases it's impossible to tell if it's infringing.
Whether a work is infringing is not necessarily clear, and some of this stuff gets the court involved and making independent judgment. In particular, US fair use law is deliberately vague, and two reasonable people could easily wind up disagreeing whether something is fair use or not. A lot of the takedowns I've read about have concerned incidental use of something, meaning that whether the work is infringing depends on whether it's fair use or not.
It might be possible to require a statement under pain of perjury that the work would infringe if there was no fair use, but some court would have to impose a criminal penalty under your plan, which requires that public prosecutors get involved in DMCA takedown cases.
Also, this can be offshored, which means that the complaintant will not necessarily be subject to US law. Since plenty of overseas entries hold US copyrights, that's a real problem.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sure, but he should be able to get Youtube to reinstate it without a court order.
I don't know if he really can, but that's how the SafeHarbor act was written.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
With the exception of the background wallpaper, what copyright is involved? The shape of the phone would be subject to a design patent, not copyright. The Samsung name would be subject to a trademark claim, not copyright.
Is making false takedown claims actionable yet?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Except that it's not. The only products that can get copyright protection seem to be ships of various types.
(Technically, the plans of buildings are subject to copyright, so reproducing a building, requiring plans, often has similar protections)
Your ad here. Ask me how!
When I was young, I could look at the copyright date on a book, say, "That was over 28 years ago", and know it was out of copyright. I really like that sort of certainty. Nowadays, I have to find who had the copyright and when they died. With life plus 75 years, it's not even worth bumping the author off to shorten the copyright.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
When the Lord of the Rings was published in the US, there was a legal technicality, and it wasn't under copyright in the US. Ace books produced their own unauthorized version, and Ballantine produced theirs, more expensive (95 cents vs. 75 cents a volume), with what was essentially a "Creator Endorsed" logo. I don't remember the sales figures, but that's the only case of such a thing I can think of.
The technicality was soon dealt with, and Tolkien held the US copyright to the books, ending this.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Those teeth are too sharp. You would swing the balance too far in the opposite direction, which would gut any industry that legitimately relies on digital copyrights having value
The human lifespan is finite, and rational cultures all over the world and throughout history tend to look at stealing a portion of one's life as being a negative thing. In a sense, it's a lot like robbing somebody at gunpoint, since whatever is taken has probably required the expenditure of a portion of one's life to earn. That's the philosophical reason that robbery is criminal.
Hence, stealing a portion of somebody's life can be called kidnapping. We imprison people for that when it is done by force - and the legal system is backed up by people with guns, so everything done by the legal system is done by force.
Thus, making false DMCA claims absolutely should be viewed as criminal conduct akin to kidnapping. The sentence time might be on the short side, compared to other forms of kidnapping, since the actual amount of time stolen from somebody's life isn't that large (though it could be, given the massive ethics problems the US system has).
Making negligent DMCA claims - or even ANY error in claim - should be the tort form of kidnapping, in other words making the corporation or individual liable for both actual and punitive damages, including all legal expenses, and full compensation for an individual's time and the stress associated with having to fight the legal battle to get justice.
Further, legal professionals are in a position of ethical conflict of interest with respect to aspects of the legal system that steal a portion of somebody's life, as legal professionals are frequently hired to be intermediaries in such situations. If we allow the legal profession to construct or operate the legal system in such a fashion as to allow people's time to be wasted, then we're condoning and even encouraging unethical practice of law - no society can afford the social and economic consequences of doing that.
Since the DMCA is merely an act of Congress, and since Congress is not the highest law in the land, and since the DMCA does allow people's time to be wasted by bogus claims (with some organizations make routinely, often as part of an extortion scheme), and since the right to ethical practice of law is certainly a right protected under the 9th Amendment, that makes the current DMCA illegal. The DMCA comes into conflict with the Bill of Rights, in violation of the right to ethical practice of law, and hence is an illegal law. The logic here is undeniable, so the real question is, what do we do to those lawyers and others who are currently violating other people's rights "under the colour of law", i.e. by means of an illegal law?
A related problem involves getting judges - who are lawyers, and hence in a position of ethical conflict of interest with respect to allowing illegal laws that work to the benefit of their profession - to act as their oaths require in these matters. Never forget that associations of lawyers provide huge campaign contributions to the politicians who select judges.
I found a reference for this: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/unauthorized-lord-rings/
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
The big problem with copyright law isn't its existence. It's the length. Copyright was originally 14 years plus a one-time 14 year extension. This isn't so bad.
The big problem with copyright - as it is currently implemented - is not just the length, but the fact that the current implementation is illegal and unethical.
The right to ethical practice of law arises under the 9th Amendment, as a right "retained by the people". Copyright law is a mere Act of Congress, and thus inferior to the Bill of Rights. There is no doubt at all that current copyright law (both the original law, and the DMCA) violate (in many ways) the right to ethical practice of law (as well as other fundamental rights) - which makes both general copyright law and the DMCA illegal. This has been discussed at length in previous Slashdot discussions, so I won't belabor the point.
Lawyers, of course, are in a position of ethical conflict of interest with respect to acknowledging this - which no doubt is a large part of the reason that copyright continues to be a mess. The US legal profession is terrified of the public taking a close look at legal ethics, which has been broken since the days of slavery. Huge campaign contributions are made by associations of legal professions, preventing long overdue reform in every major area of law, including copyright.
Reducing the length of copyright would reduce the negative consequences of this legal ethics problem for society, but it wouldn't cause it to go away.
We could in fact have a copyright term that lasted the lifetime of the author (or even a little beyond, for situations like untimely death, to allow an author's kin to be provided for). But doing this would require addressing the legal ethics issue. One approach would be to have all contracts regarding the work terminate after 14 years. At that point, the author would be due a share of all commercial transactions involving the work, but could not enter into any new contracts restricting the work or transferring ownership. In a sense, the copyright would revert to the author after 14 years - but what the author could then do with it would be limited. Removing even the possibility of controlling the work by contract beyond the initial term also removes most of the demand for the services of legal professionals, and thus one of the major sources of legal ethics problems.
This solution would avoid the awkward problem of somebody making money off somebody else's work, without the original author receiving a fair share. At the same time, third parties would be free to develop new commercial versions of something without complicated negotiations with the original author and lots of lawyers. If video or audio standards changed, for example, or a software vender wanted to do a new version of a product, they could do so without lots of hassle and expense - but the original author(s) would still get a share of that product (possibly a diluted share as more people contribute).
There might be a need to have some "moral rights" retained by the author.
Long term contracts in general pose a legal ethics problem - they effectively complicate the legal system. Note that transfer of say, land, can be viewed as immediate, and thus is not a "long term" issue, except when encumbrances on the transfer are involved - these should also be limited in duration (with some provision for utility access, which could simply be a matter of local law and not contract).
Twaddle. It defaults it, but you still have the right to waive it if you want.
I hereby waive all rights to this post. Not hard, was it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If anything, it should be shortened to 7 years with an additional extension. Distribution and physical production used to take years, but now can be done almost instantly.
An additional idea would be for the copyright to last the length (or double the length) of documented development time. So if you took 5 years to write a novel, then you have 10 years of copyright. If you fired off a news article in a day, then you get a couple of days of protection. Perhaps a minimum would need to be added (e.g. 6 months) to prevent periodicals from sitting on an article and then stealing it.