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Music Industry Asks US Government To Reconsider Website Blocking (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: At the start of this decade, U.S. lawmakers drafted several controversial bills to make it easier for copyright holders to enforce their rights online. These proposals, including SOPA and PIPA, were met with fierce resistance from the public as well as major technology companies. They feared that the plans, which included pirate site-blocking measures, went too far. In the many years that followed, the "site blocking" issue was avoided like the plague. The aversion was mostly limited to the U.S., as website blocking became more and more common abroad, where it's one of the entertainment industries' preferred anti-piracy tools.
Emboldened by these foreign successes, it appears that rightsholders in the U.S. are now confident enough to bring the subject up again, albeit very gently. Most recently the site-blocking option was mentioned in a joint letter (PDF) from the RIAA and the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), which contained recommendations to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Vishal Amin. The IPEC requested input from the public on the new version of its Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement. According to the music industry groups, website blocking should be reconsidered an anti-piracy tool. "There are several changes that should be made legislatively to help legal authorities and third parties better protect intellectual property rights," the music groups write. "These include fixing the DMCA, making it a felony to knowingly engage in unauthorized streaming of copyrighted works, and investigating the positive impact that website blocking of foreign sites has in other jurisdictions and whether U.S. law should be revised accordingly."
"As website blocking has had a positive impact in other countries without significant unintended consequences, the U.S. should reconsider adding this to its anti-piracy tool box," the RIAA and NMPA write.
Emboldened by these foreign successes, it appears that rightsholders in the U.S. are now confident enough to bring the subject up again, albeit very gently. Most recently the site-blocking option was mentioned in a joint letter (PDF) from the RIAA and the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA), which contained recommendations to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Vishal Amin. The IPEC requested input from the public on the new version of its Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property Enforcement. According to the music industry groups, website blocking should be reconsidered an anti-piracy tool. "There are several changes that should be made legislatively to help legal authorities and third parties better protect intellectual property rights," the music groups write. "These include fixing the DMCA, making it a felony to knowingly engage in unauthorized streaming of copyrighted works, and investigating the positive impact that website blocking of foreign sites has in other jurisdictions and whether U.S. law should be revised accordingly."
"As website blocking has had a positive impact in other countries without significant unintended consequences, the U.S. should reconsider adding this to its anti-piracy tool box," the RIAA and NMPA write.
The felony part will change stuff from civil to criminal courts where the standard of standard of evidence is a lot higher
the constitution will make it hard to block an site as that is an 1st issue
Music industry (i.e. record labels) is obsolete and haven't mattered since artists went digital. Why are they still being listened to?
It's becoming clear that protection of intellectual property (IP) is costly. In the physical world, people pay a property tax for fire & police protection. Maybe it's time for IP property holders to pay a tax on their property as well. Any IP whose tax is unpaid reverts to the public domain, and the pool of IP taxes collected can be used to defray the costs of protecting paid-up intellectual property. Go ahead, shoot holes in this modest proposal!
Taking away people's right to vote and own firearms because of streaming? Wow, talk about overreach. This should get laughed right out of Washington. Problem is, there's enough money behind it that it probably won't.
It does seem like prior restraint to me. The last time that was a big issue was when the government was trying to hide bad actions form us, but that was before many of you were concerned with anything beyond your next meal. Without looking it up first, I bet a quick look into 'prior restraint' will help you consider of this is a good thing or not.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
A strange game.
The only winning move is not to play.
#DeleteFacebook
That was my first thought as well. You could have a group of people who have lost their right to vote because they had a P2P program running which accidentally or purposefully shared their music folder out. I'm of the opinion that copyright violations are wrong and should be punished, but definitely not with the level of fines we have today and absolutely not with a felony charge. (It should be something more along the lines of 10 times the market value of the copyrighted piece shared. So if you share a hundred songs which sell for $0.99 each, you'd pay a $990 fine.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It's the legal streaming sites that are killing the music industry. Local artists were able to make a living and even thrive 10 years ago during the period of rampant piracy. Streaming seems to do well for the top 100 artists, but is killing the local music scene. One local artist laments "This song has been in the TOP 20 charts (CBC Radio 2 & 3) for 10 weeks, climbed to #3. In 2018 that equals $44.99 in sales."
This is an artist that was previously able to make a living through digital downloads. The ecosystem was much healthier in the rampant piracy years of the 2000s.
The Music Industry has ZERO usefulness to society vs. the internet... tell them to kick rocks.
I'd disagree. With copyright, I can publish a book and be assured that someone else (say, a large publisher) won't just grab the text of my book and sell it without giving me any money. I can also be assured that a potential movie produced from my work would earn me money instead of a studio simply taking the work and making a movie without paying me anything.
The real problem is that the length of copyright protection has been abused horribly. Copyright serves a valuable purpose as a LIMITED monopoly, but large corporations have essentially removed the "limited" portion. (Yes, it's still technically limited in that you can wait for about 95-120 years to use the work, but that's literally a lifetime so it might as well be forever.)
Copyright should be reverted to the 14 year span plus an additional 14 years if you renew the work. I'd even be willing to compromise with the large companies who would suddenly see a huge amount of their work entering the public domain. Everything produced up to the start of the "Original Copyright Term Length Act" would be assumed to be automatically renewed. Furthermore, we would phase it in for old works. Start with everything produced in the 1920's and 1930's that is still under copyright protection. Then, after 3 years, everything from the 1940's. And so on until everything is either Public Domain or covered under the new law. Yes, it would take 27 years to completely catch up, but it would give businesses time to shift their strategies to accommodate the new (old?) laws of the land.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
It will *also* open up the door to abuses using the already overworked public defender system, in which everyone who cannot afford a personal law-firm of their own will be told
"uh yeah the evidence is overwhelming so uh your best bet is to plead guilty, anything else your life is basically over lol"
as has been rampant across the US.
It also *further* shifts the burden and costs away from the music industry by having the government - and therefore taxpayers - cover everything; prosecution, defense (in many cases), and the costs of the carceral punishments afterwards. This makes it likely that the music industry is pushing this in conjunction with GEO and/or CoreCivic, backed by quite a few employees/investors of the latter two in the senate.
Those involved should be dismantled and sold for parts.
"As website blocking has had a positive impact in other countries without significant unintended consequences, the U.S. should reconsider adding this to its anti-piracy tool box," the RIAA and NMPA write."
https://www.engadget.com/2017/...
the constitution will make it hard to block an site
So about that...
You can debate it forever, but I think we're sitting about like this:
1st: under assault
2nd: partially gone, remainder under assault
3rd: intact
4th: entirely gone
5th: mostly intact
6th: intact
7th: intact
8th: partly intact
9th: entirely gone
10th: entirely gone
I'd rate it at about 5 and a half remaining of the original 10. You could argue it up or down a little, but the point is, the BoR cannot be depended on to protect you in the future.
It's always being chipped away. Exceptions put in place which nowhere appear in the document.
And it's not even clear "being able to visit internet sites" is a 1st amendment issue to begin with.
Exactly. Then there's the group who might technically even be innocent but enter into a plea bargain because they cannot afford a proper defense.
The punishment for copyright infringement should be a sensible, reasonable fine. Not a life ruined for sharing a couple of songs. Especially when we're talking people simply using a P2P program, rather than people sharing because they are motivated by profit (large scale sites)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Unfortunately it is the sign of the times. With the options available, we now try to choose the ones that hurt people the most.
I had a friend get a DMCA take down on a video he posted (about his pet rats) just because he had some music playing in the background. The video wasn't about the music, the quality of the song wasn't great, and it wasn't the full song.
A just justice system needs to take in account that there can be a lot of laws, and while ignorance of the law isn't an excuse, the context on how and why such law was broken should be factored in. We don't need a binary legal system. With just harsher and harsher sentences for violators, thinking that it will stop a person from committing such a crime if the punishment is bad enough.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"As website blocking has had a positive impact in other countries without significant unintended consequences, the U.S. should reconsider adding this to its anti-piracy tool box," the RIAA and NMPA write.
Positive impact without unintended consequences FOR THEM I'm sure. Otherwise that statement is the steamiest of wet bullshit.
the automatic and complete forfeiture of copyrights to the public domain IF a even a single false infringement take down notice is filed on behalf of a copyright holder.
;)
Just my 2 cents
As long as it becomes a felony with mandatory jail time for abuse of the DCMA process. I'd love to watch Warner Music be jailed for 90 days.
Copyright is rent-seeking and harms society as a whole. It should not exist at all.
Really? You've found a solution to the free rider problem as it applies to creative works? Please publish it and collect your Nobel Prize in Economics immediately because nobody else has found a better solution.
Copyright needs some serious reform and much shorter protection periods but to claim that it is harmful in general is a claim not supported by the evidence.
Umm... That would be a $9.90 fine. You're asking for 1000 times at $990.
You need to check your numbers. That would only be 10 times on one track. He said a ten times on a hundred tracks so .99 x 10 x 100 and that makes 990.
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I don't know about the US specifically but moving minor crimes to a higher court increases the chances of having it dismissed.
A judge accustomed to murder cases probably doesn't want to be bothered with kids running torrent sites and will probably do their best to get them dismissed ASAP in order to deal with serious affairs.
In fact, in France, the strategy is the opposite. Instead of pushing for severe punishment, the music industry wants enforcement to work more like parking tickets: a small fine that is usually payed without even an audience.
If this changes to a felony charge, then I hope my neighbors have a good lawyer. ;)
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Copyright is rent-seeking and harms society as a whole. It should not exist at all.
hmmmm, I dunno about that. It is overused and massively abused and in it's current state does more harm than good but there is ultimately a reason for it, in theory at least.
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Here's one.
Ditch the double standard regarding websites.
If a website exercises editorial control over what its users posts, then it is liable for what they post.
If a website doesn't exercise editorial control over what its users post, then it is not liable.
As it stands now, a website can exercise editorial control over what's posted, but when called out on copyrighted material, shrug their shoulders and whine that they can't control what's posted.
Pick one, then enforce the laws.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Hollywood accounting is straight up fraud, nothing to do with copyright. Except when they sell the copyright to themselves at massive cost then rent it back from themselves for even more to hide a bunch of money from the net profit but that's by the by.
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Taking away people's right to vote and own firearms because of streaming? Wow, talk about overreach. This should get laughed right out of Washington. Problem is, there's enough money behind it that it probably won't.
Taking away people's rights after they have served their time for a felony conviction is the overreach. That's some bullshit, right there.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Taking away people's right to vote and own firearms because of streaming? Wow, talk about overreach. This should get laughed right out of Washington. Problem is, there's enough money behind it that it probably won't.
Does anyone have a clue how this particular felony sentence would compare to - say for instance - finding a lawyer working for the MPAA and beating his head into a nice homogeneous pink pulp?
You try to go to the pirate bay, it's blocked. You go to google and type pirate bay proxy and you're back in business. It's a token effort at best.
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There are to many ways to work around a site block that the only people being blocked will be those that wouldn't go there anyway. Piracy was happening long before the internet was even a thing
Correct. For all intensive purposes Florida is a blue state from here on out, due to the large number of minorities and hence Democratic voters in the prison population.
As if it's a mystery as to why those minorities don't generally vote for Republicans. And the phrase is "for all intents and purposes".
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I do not see why they continue to try this.
It is so easy to get around blocks.
TPB still hasn't died.
http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
Agree with you on most of the amendments... 5th is waaay down, for the count. A twisted torturous tangle of cases and opinions mean you as a citizen need a 5 page flow chart just to navigate your rights under the 5th.... Most likely you will trip up and then you are done.... But not for anything you did or didn't do.... Fuckers. Kill all the lawyers...
Net neutrality got squashed which would have led to them doing this exact think so now they want to act like this is somehow in the constitution to protect their "content".
remember your have the right to jury trial in an felony case.
What the authors of the website-blocking approach conveniently neglect to mention is that other countries do not possess the 5th/14th amendment protection that government cannot deprive any person of "life, liberty, or property" without due process of law. Website-blocking violates these amendments, which is why the public at large objected to SOPA and PIPA in the first place.
Attempts to criminalize copyright infringement by proposing felony penalties have never succeeded because copyright infringement is a civil offense not a criminal one. There's a fine line between them, and not every foreign country recognizes that.
The authors have banked on the short term memory of the public, but they have sadly made a bad gamble.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
but will Comcast send an tech to court that can say beyond a reasonable doubt that IP = that user?
and when crossed examined be able to explain why they can do that but can't get the cap meter right
If your system can show that IP = that user then why does also show that users to have used there internet on a day that they had no power and there modem was off?
You just have to point to cases in where the ISP systems where off to make the reasonable doubt part kill the case.
http://www.dslreports.com/show...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
https://arstechnica.com/inform...
When that purpose is intense, man!
Yes, heaven forbid that the Republicans might have to rethink their platform and direction. That would be flip-flopping!
A Republican leaning police force and justice system would never, ever frame someone with a felony, for voting Democrat. Would they?
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
It didn't stop them from implementing FOSTA-SESTA. They've got their loophole: the government doesn't censor the site directly, they make the ISPs liable if they don't censor it for them.
Music industry business model is just not supported by reality, and opposed by the majority of people in practice, if not by words. Piracy being rampid is a direct demostration that the people do not support the concepts of intellectual property. Businesses are not people. I be owned by people but unlike a person it's okay for any business to go out of business while it is not okay for us to just let people die.
My sentator was a sponsor of the bill that would do this. I wrote to her. Here's the reply.
Thank you for contacting me about S. 978, the Commercial Felony Streaming Act. I appreciate hearing from you and especially appreciate hearing the concerns you have raised. Please know that we will continue to makes changes to this bill to address your concerns.
This bill passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan basis without objection. The bill is designed to go after online thieves who steal other people's works, like books, commercial music, and movies, including foreign piracy. It only covers commercial theft, not people posting their personal work on the web, such as YouTube videos or videos of people singing or lip-synching. As the Department of Justice has noted, this legislation "does not criminalize conduct that is not already criminal." It simply changes the classification of the most egregious commercial thefts which are already considered criminal misdemeanors under the law.
As Congress continues to debate the larger issue of piracy, we must always balance concerns about how to protect people from online piracy, particularly from foreign piracy, without limiting web-based innovation or a free exchange of ideas. I welcome your thoughts on these important issues and have encouraged my colleagues who are leading the larger bills to listen to them as well.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me. One of the most important parts of my job is listening to what the people of Minnesota have to say to me. I am here in our nation's capital to do the public's business and to serve the people of our state. I hope you will contact me again about matters of concern to you.
Sincerely,
Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator
This is far from getting laughed out of washington.
Pirate sites will just change hosting providers when they're blocked, just like they do now. Or they'll move to the Dark Web where it's almost impossible to find them anyway. Meanwhile the fucktard music industry (and whoever else would pile on) will leave a trail of broken, blocked hosting providers behind them.
Just GIVE UP, RIAA/MPAA; why can't you see that what you're trying to do is impossible in the long run? You could kill the entire Internet, and people will go back to SneakerNet. You couldn't kill off mixtapes/mix CDs, you won't kill this off either. All you're doing is wasting your time, money, and energy, and meanwhile pissing off the people you're NOT trying to go after.
The big problem is that, if the music industry gets to write the laws, they'll make it so "we see this IP address" is proof enough of "it was you who uploaded those songs." Having an open router, a hacked computer, or simply a roommate won't be a defense if the RIAA/MPAA get their say.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
We should have PSAs run showing Nazi, pedophiles, etc. saying to the camera "I'm voting!."
If you are a nation of bad people, then the government should reflect their choice. The government represents it's people... Yes, Trump is America. The darker side of it you don't want to admit exists but that is just hiding from the truth. Dictators are also; just not by direct consent.
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
-Frederick Douglas
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And yet somehow the Fashion Industry survives without copyright
The fashion industry absolutely does use copyright. Clothing is generally specifically excluded from copyright protection as a functional item but it does apply sometimes when the design rises to the level of a creative work. Sometimes it can benefit from design patents or trademarks as well. Furthermore you are comparing apples to oranges. Replicating an article of clothing has a substantial cost, especially at scale. Perhaps you have never seen how clothing is made but it is a laborious process and requires substantial amounts of specialized equipment, fabrics, chemicals, and skilled labor. Replicating written words costs far less and replicating written words digitally is inexpensive as to be approximately zero. Tangible objects generally aren't subject to copyright because the cost to replicate them makes copyright largely irrelevant. Copyright is for protecting intangible works. It isn't the book that is protected by copyright, it is the words in the book that are protected. I can produce a book that is physically identical to The Hobbit just so long as it doesn't have the same words printed in the same order in it.
In school kids are taught to share their toys.
Which is completely irrelevant to this discussion. Sharing is for things you cannot copy. If you copy it by definition you aren't sharing it. Sharing means you give someone something and deprive yourself voluntarily of it (in part or in whole) for a time. You can say you are sharing an idea but what you really are doing is providing a copy of the idea.
As adults digital sharing is illegal and (excessively) fined.
It's not sharing. It's copying. And copying WITHOUT PERMISSION is what is prohibited because of the free rider problem. You can go ahead and get permission and then you can copy it all you like. Without such protection, a lot of creative works will never get made because it's FAR cheaper to copy someone else's idea than it is to come up with it yourself. Only someone very naive will think that economics plays no role in the creation of artistic works.
There are lots of people here who will be happy to inform you that the free rider problem is not a problem at all, but a birthright.
A lot of people think a lot of very stupid things. Having an opinion doesn't mean it is objectively correct. A lot of people think crystals have magical healing powers. Doesn't mean I should take them seriously without evidence.
The fact that you loose these rights is a whole different discussion and gies againt: no taxation without representation.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
can ... be assured that someone else (say, a large publisher) won't just grab the text of my book and sell it without giving me any money
If you mean plagiarism, the solution to that is digital notaries. Ought to enhance them and raise their profile. If you mean, selling a print run, or even selling ebooks, there's stuff we can do about that too, without resorting to copyright and all its baggage. However, the end game is for selling of copies, particularly digital copies, to be allowed to die of obsolescence.
There's just way too much "Mother may I?" about the current system. And it's largely because so many people are so afraid they might somehow be losing the profits they deserve for making it big, however illusory their bigness and profits are. Fear, loss, and fear of loss really pushes those emotional buttons. We could have a system in which a book printer runs whatever they want, no permissions required, and the authors are compensated through funds tied to various measures set up for the purpose of figuring out who is deserving of compensation, and how much, for measurably adding to our culture.
It would be a great help if these rights proponents would promote systems and business models that actually can work, instead of continually trying to put the digital genie back in the bottle. They wail as if copyright is the one and only thing that can possibly keep artists from starving, and that's been debunked over and over. Seems the reasons they keep trying to propagandize in support of copyright is control and sheer greed. These days, a person can carry their entire collection of music and books discretely on their person on one flash drive, and the whole thing can be copied in a few minutes. That was utterly impractical in the days of the vinyl LP, and even in the 1990s with the mp3 codec and CD burners, it was still not quite there. Video is about the only thing that's still a little too big for casual throwaway handling, but storage continues to improve.
Understand that pro-copyright is anti-education. Seriously. Holy Copyright has become the justification for locking knowledge and culture behind paywalls, controlling access down to the individual level. The school textbook market is one gigantic racket, in which the public is gouged repeatedly for knowledge that is in the public domain. Research is another monstrous racket. The public pays for research that academic publishers then lock away and hold for ransom.
I really think copyright is doomed. It's only a question of when.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
It's many times worse than peopel 'accidentally' downloading. I run torrent to do things like download LibraOffice and Linux distributions. From time to time I get a violation notice from my ISP. Once they even cut me off and I had to call them.
Someone claimed that they had proof I had downloaded specific files, porn files, at specific times. Luckily I log my traffic. When I called the ISP their first answer was I shouldn't be running Torrent software, which I use for legitimate purposes. Their next was for me to directly contact the shills who claimed I had infringed. They were a company whom I know have a history of instituting lawsuits against innocent people and then leveraging $5000 or so from them to go away, as opposed to spending tens of thousands in court opposing them. They send out thousands of infringement notices without proof hoping to get a couple of hundred fools stupid enough to contact them directly.
When I told the ISP I had logs of my traffic and that I would be dealing with them over this, not some random IP troll they decided to turn me back on.
No blocking of access should even be considered until the IP owner can prove a violation has occurred. That means tying it to a specific individual, not IP address or MAC access. If they can't do that tough.
Meanwhile these IP trolls should have to pay fines for every false claim they make.
The danger here would be to establish a precedence.
I tend to rant.
In an criminal jury trial you need to prove that evidence is linked to an person and not just an account. And what are going to do fill up jails with people waiting years for the back log of cases to work thought the system. Hell most cops look the other way on small possession pot as the system will get very over loaded if they booked people on it.
I don't think that can make so that some can get an felony photo ticket to an rent a car user with out them being able to question the people who give the court that info.
Also that FBI / bestbuy case with Mark Rettenmaier was dropped before they even got to court so that evidence was not tested in court.
"2nd: partially gone, remainder under assault"
Amendment II: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Without the framers defining "Arms", this will always be under attack. Does that include any and all weapons? Can people own nukes? Should we be able to buy hand grenades at Wal-Mart? Can I "keep" claymores in my front yard in an effort to keep "the security of a free State"?
This also doesn't say anything about background checks, restrictions on minors and/or felons, and any other limitations around said "Arms".
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
You'll get no argument from me that people who serve their time for non-violent felonies should have their voting rights restored instantly. I might even be able to be convinced for violent felonies as well, but we could take the "easy win" of restoring voting rights to people convicted of non-violent felonies after they've served their time.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
But you also don't want any government assistance in its enforcement (outside of courts hearing cases). You want it completely free of any outside influence on its economics.
The basic premise behind IP is that the value created by the temporary monopoly exceeds the cost to society of that monopoly. Since the value is given to the IP holder, that gives us a perfect benchmark against which to measure the costs of enforcing that IP. If the IP holder cannot afford to enforce its IP rights, that is a clear indication that enforcing IP costs more than the value it creates. And thus constitutes mathematical proof that IP is no longer useful, and should be abolished.
What the IP holders are trying to do is externalize the cost of enforcing their IP rights. First they wanted ISPs to bear the cost. Now they want the U.S. government to bear the cost. Taxing them gives them the wiggle room to claim the government should enforce IP rights for them. That spreads the cost/benefit analysis across two different entities, muddying the calculation of whether or not IP is worth keeping around.
I don't mean plagiarism. That's something else entirely. I mean specifically publishing a version of the work without the author's/artist's consent. For example, I self-published a novel. I own the copyright on it and all money from the sales (after Amazon's Kindle cut) comes to me. I get to decide what price to sell it at, where it's available, what the cover art is, etc.
Now suppose a major publisher discovered my book and loved it. However, instead of offering me a publishing contract, they decided that they're a large publisher and I'm just a small fry so they bought a copy, ripped the text, and made a new version of the book. They then could put it on Amazon and sell it. Suddenly, I'm competing against my own book. I happen to have published my book two years ago, but the big publishing company could do this instantly. And since they're a big publishing company, they can get the book in book stores (something I can't do right now) and earn money from those sales as well as online sales. Even people who thought they were supporting me might be, instead, sending money to a big publisher who wasn't paying me anything.
I could take the big publishing company to court and under the current laws I'd have a strong case. Suppose, however, that we ditched copyright entirely. What would be my recourse? I could sue them but without copyright law to rely on, I wouldn't have much of a case. Without some system in place to protect authors/artists, the big companies would just repackage and resell everything and keep the money for themselves.
Like I said, I don't think copyright should be forever. I'd be perfectly happy keeping copyright on my novel for 14-28 years and then turning it over to the public domain. That would be more than enough time for me. However, without a replacement system in place, abolishing copyright will just help big corporations and hurt artists and authors.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Find a big target and litigate. Lose that case and have it reopened at a higher level. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Find another target and litigate. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Find a backer for a cash injection, find another target and litigate. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Find another backer for another cash injection. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Hopefully, after much litigation, the result will be that they go out of business permanently.
Just think of the wonderful people behind all those SCO lawsuits and how they tenaciously pursued their "Intellectual Property".
Shrug. Sure, music industry. Give it a whirl. You'll stop nothing. There's always another solution, even if it means a new internet.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
While we are at it, why don't we go ahead and repeal the DMCA, citizens united, drop software patents, and set the copyright term back to 20 years with no extensions.
You know, actually move in the direction of fixing things instead of further in the wrong direction?
Copyright is an artificial extension of the natural right of exclusivity of control over who could copy a work they had created if the creator never allowed anyone to access the work in the first place. In theory, copyright exists to give people incentive to publish and share their works with other people while still enjoying a limited form of that original exclusivity insomuch as it can be enforced by law.
Without copyright, it's pretty much a given that people will resort to self-censorship as a means of protecting their control over their works, and it will, in general, be more difficult to acquire such works in a fashion that will be readily consumable. You might be able to freely copy any work you could get your hands on in the absence of copyright, but I dare say it would generally be harder to get ones hands on works that had any appreciable quality... the best works would generally be effectively held under lock and key and only given to specially selected people instead of the public. If you think the signal to noise ratio on the internet is bad now because of all the crap on it drowning out any of the good stuff, try and imagine it being a hundred times or so worse.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
In theory, copyright exists to give people incentive to publish and share their works with other people while still enjoying a limited form of that original exclusivity insomuch as it can be enforced by law.
You are confusing means and ends. Copyright is a temporary monopoly that is granted as an incentive to the creation of works that ultimately are turned to public domain and benefit society as a whole.
Let me stress this: copyright exists to enrich the public domain. If it fails at that, it has no reason whatsoever to exist, and must be abolished.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Oh I'm sure that will work really well. Authors will love writing books for free. I'm sure they will all find other ways of feeding themselves while they write.
All of them. Unless their business focuses solely on producing compilations of public domain material, in which case they will know exactly who did the compiling.
Absolutely. You'll get no argument from me.
This is, I think, throwing the metaphorical baby out with the bathwater. While the implementation of copyright today is atrocious, I do not think it is so bad that it it merits the abolishment of copyright entirely. Certainly it would be preferable for copyright to be dialed back to durations that are more in line with the the concept of, what you say, having the concept of being a "temporary monopoly". Technically speaking, however, even the absurd duration that is on copyright today is, in fact, still temporary.
And to that end, I believe that absolishing copyright entirely would actually cause more problems than it would actually solve. Abolishing copyright would, I think, result would be a society so entirely filled with self-censorship that only the very rich or elite would ever tend to get any access to newly created works of any appreciable quality. To an extent, sufficiently skilled (and altruistic) people outside of this group might be able to effectively obtain copies some of these works as well and distribute them publicly if they so chose, but you can bet that the groups that controlled access to the content would be doing everything in their power to keep that from happening, and would certainly put into effect whatever measures were possible to minimize its frequency, even if they could not actually entirely eliminate it. The result would be a vastly reduced amount of works with any quality, and public domain would become effectively synonymous with "useless tripe". In general, the only things that most people would ever openly publish are the things that they had no interest in ever claiming authorship of in the first place. Over time, rather than benefiting society as public domain should, the availability of such works that nobody had any interest in claiming originality for in the first place would tend to result in the dumbing down of society - the very opposite of progress and enrichment.
While you'll get no argument from me that our current (and for the forseeable future) implementation of copyright is abhorrent, I believe that its abolishment would be orders of magnitude worse in terms of its impact on public domain and how it can enrich society.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Why not set it equal to 10 years. And you can renew every 10 years until the end of time but the cost of renewing doubles every time. Say a copyright costs $100. For 10 years, it's $100. Next 10 is $200. Then $400, $800, $1600, $3200, $6400 after 70 years.
After some point, the value of a property is going to not justify the costs of renewal. Maybe the major rights holders keep holding on to properties indefinitely in hopes of a remake/cover/etc. But so much of that stuff will be a cost sink that rights holders will have to let some things go.
Maybe the rate increase isn't high enough. Or perhaps the initial cost to file a copyright isn't high enough. But surely we can come up with something.
I'd be perfectly happy keeping copyright on my novel for 14-28 years and then turning it over to the public domain.
Have you ever done that? Or have plans to release all your works to the public domain as they reach the age of 14 or 28 years?
Without some system in place to protect authors/artists, the big companies would just repackage and resell everything and keep the money for themselves.
We'd all like to be safe and secure from big thieving bullies, but the price of some forms of protection is too high. Authors deserve and need compensation. Protection from that particular scenario you mentioned doesn't directly lead to more compensation for authors. The point of replacing the copyright system is freedom of knowledge, as is our natural right. These big publishers won't be able to repackage and resell, not when the people can simply bypass them and visit an online public library for the same works. We want these gouging, thieving private publishers permanently removed from any and all possibility of setting themselves up as the monopoly gatekeepers of knowledge and culture, able to hoard artistic and scientific works and refuse to release them for anything less than a supplicant's left arm and first born child.
As for fairly compensating authors, that's what we should be working on. Need more crowdfunding, more public patronage, and need systems in place to keep fraud to a minimum.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I haven't released anything of mine into Public Domain, but then again my first novel is only 2 years old. Talk to me again in 12-26 years.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.