Fair use is not a right. It's a defence to copyright infringement. No, copyright is not a right. It's a limited monopoly granted by the public to encourage the arts. Read the Constitution some day. Congress is allowed to grant limited monopolies but not required.
This entire matter has been stood on its head by greedy corporate bastards who produce nothing. The artists are not be protected nor benefiting any more than the public is. It's time we realize that we grant copyrights.
MS is going to lose a lot of their market share in the next few years, with Linux picking up most of the server business, and the Mac getting the desktops and laptops. Funniest thing. People are crawling out of the woodwork to ask about Macs. All those years of telling them, "You should have got a Mac" and having them roll their eyes but here we are.
Even my step-dad, die hard Windows geek for years on end, suddenly needs a Mac. Why? Customers demanding support and he can't help them because he doesn't know OS X at all.
Something's up. I catch myself telling people, "Didn't I tell you this more than a decade ago?" You have to wonder if Vista will someday be known as MS' Waterloo.
Consensus science isn't science, it's politics, and that's exactly what the Global Warming debate is about: politics Riiight. When almost all the experts agree on something, it doesn't mean anything. I mean, what do the people who've spent their entire professional lives working in a field know about it anyway?
Remember Ma Bell? Ah yes. I remember the $2/month charge for a "color" phone when the actual dye was no more expensive than the old black dye they used to use universally. Or the charge for touch tone when electronic switching systems saved them money. Or the time the local Bell office responded to a problem with--and I am NOT making this up--"if you don't like it, go to the competition" and a sneer.
And then there's the legacy of SouthWestern Bell (now SBC, now AT&T, now "We're baaaaaaaack") where you can live thirty minutes outside the capitol of the state of Texas and have phone lines and equipment last worked on by your grandfather. Or my personal favorite; there are actual phone numbers I cannot dial. Dial 1+, area code, and number, you get "you do not have to dial a one or the area code" message (okay, but which is it, the one or the area code or both?). Dial sans the 1+ (which some numbers in that same area code require) and you get "your call cannot be completed as dialed." So you try 1+ sans area code. You get "cannot be completed as dialed" So you try just the seven digit number but get interrupted three digits in with "cannot be completed as dialed".
To call my mom, I have to remember that one number in her house requires 1+ dialing but the other requires the area code but NOT the 1+. In the same freaking house. And her husband's number is one of the ones I cannot dial at all. Not just same area code, same house.
SWB was known for letting equipment go for as long as they could manage to duct tape it together but charging for everything in site. Now, years later, the Texas telephone infrastructure is only barely better than the old Soviet Union's.
Though growing up under the SWB monopoly was at least entertaining. Dialing a number was a lot like playing slots or something. You never quite knew what was going to happen or who you'd be connected to. Great way to meet the neighbors I suppose as, quite often, two people dialing at the same time were connected together for no apparent reason...
Alternatively, the broadband provider could actually improve its infrastructure so it supports advertised speeds for all users. What??? Spend money? But the CEO wants a new yacht!
local Zoo's AHHHH!!!!
An apostrophe is usually a marker of possessiveness. It is NEVER used for plurality.
This is basic English. Please learn it. For values of "basic" approaching "confusing".
Face it, English is a kludge so confusing and contradictory, it's amazing it works at all.
If they simply auctioned them then the squatters would bid each other out of business. They do auction them. TFA tells about such an auction. Domain names for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. And yet profitable. Crazy. I suspect the OP meant the registrars would hold auctions. If so, I think that rather makes some sense. Why are the registrars forced to sell for cheap if the domain names they handle are so valuable? I mean if we're going to have an "auction" system, why shouldn't the registrars make the money instead of idiots who swipe other peoples' domain names and put up stupid, useless "search" pages?
I personally am unable to draw a parallel between a company which artist enter into a voluntary legal contract with and a company that resells another persons intellectual property with permission and without compensating the creator. When it comes to the RIAA, I wouldn't go so far as to say "voluntary legal contract". Or "voluntary" anything. They're essentially a monopolistic cartel that's been exempted from anti-trust. The "entertainment" industry has far, far too much power in DC. Even weirdly out of proportion to the actual economic value of the "industry". The consumer electronics industry and the computer industry (separately and together) dwarf the entire entertainment industry (tossing in the MPAA companies even) like Jupiter dwarfs a flea.
I've always thought it was weirdly fascinating how the gigantic consumer electronics and computer industry didn't just squash the RIAA and MPAA like bugs in the "piracy" fight. In terms of money, there's just no way the entertainment industry could have kept up. Even today, they could go after the RIAA for all kinds of obvious anti-trust issues. Such as the obliteration of the "CD single" to force everybody to buy entire albums, not just single songs. Or keeping the prices of CDs from falling (instead, they often rise) even when production costs were plummeting.
Of course, the consumer electronics giants (like Sony) bought up most of the studios. Considering that sales of music (and movies and what not) are tiny compared to the sales of consumer electronics, I still don't understand why the giants don't run the music industry as a "loss leader". Cut the price of the entertainment to "the bone", keeping just a small margin, and use that to entice people into buying more widgets.
I dunno. I remember once, when Valenti was running the MPAA, him bragging about the collective revenues of the movie industry. I don't remember the exact figure, and sure it was in the billions, but only just. My thought at the time was "it's like looking at the total toilet paper budget for the electronics industry."
The whole thing is like watching one of those old cartoons with an elephant jumping into a chair and screaming in fear as he's threatened by a mouse.
But "voluntary" anything in the entertainment industry? Doesn't exist. The RIAA companies are screwing the artists over as hard or harder than they're screwing the public. Even big name, wealthy artists have tried fighting the corrupt contracts the RIAA forces on musicians and most haven't made any real headway. The industry is rife with stories of acts that had big, successful albums only to end up almost broke and in debt under their contracts. Fact is, part of the "piracy" fight is a struggle to maintain a monopoly. If Internet distribution is allowed to succeed, it could undermine the RIAA's draconian power.
See, they're just getting started. Going after more obvious "unauthorized distribution" was just a first step. Not the last. Notice that now they're taking aim at radio stations?
Not to defend either side (or any sides) in all of this. The entire system is busted and if we had a responsible government, instead of passing every law the RIAA/MPAA hands them, they'd wipe the RIAA and MPAA off the face of the Earth and tell the industry to act like real capitalists for a change instead of some Soviet Ministry of Entertainment. But that's a big if...
I believe the author of this article is right. I think its fair to have perpetual Copy write. The work that that artist went through to create the work needs to be recognized. Its a compilation of words yes but words are his tool for creating his art. Would you deny a painter or his decedents the right to make money just because he didn't make the paint he used. Its the same thing. Furthermore I feel that copy write has had a bad shake recently with all the piracy going on today. Music, movies, computer programs, and books are being copied all the time. Not enough is being done to stop it. I feel people have a right to make a living off their work if they so choose to do so. So do their children and grand children if their work goes beyond their life.
People who didn't do anything in the creation of the work have a "right" to milk it until the sun explodes? Why? And how does that create incentives for people to do creative work? And why are you excluding other creative people? Plumbers are creative. Should they have "rights" to the plumbing in your house and royalty payments in perpetuity?
And in case you haven't noticed, it's not the creators of works nor their families who are benefiting from the current push. Take the Disney example. They rammed through a massive extension of copyright that granted themselves 95 years after death of the creator (creators of works get 20 years less mind you). Walt is dead. He's not getting any money. His family was pushed out of the corporation. They don't hold the copyrights, the corporation does. Perpetual copyright will result in the Disney corporation "owning" Mickey Mouse forever. The actual Disney family is being pushed out into the cold.
In recent history, very recent, music corporations tried to have all works over about 35 years old declared "work for hire." Which would strip all rights from the actual artists and transfer them to the music corporations who then would have rights to the works until 95 years after the death of the artist. The artist would receive no royalties ever again.
How about the Star Trek folks? The actors, directors, writers... the creative people... did not see royalties from the original show. None. An entire franchise worth millions has been built by Paramount/Viacom/CBS/whoever they are these days but the money isn't going to the people who created the work. Roddenberry himself was "kicked upstairs" then edged out the door. How many of those millions do you think his kids are getting?
Think about the effect this would have on book publishers too. They would be forced to look for new talent more vigorously then they have because eventually the copy write for older works will be unmanageable. This would give more opportunity for younger artists trying to make a living. This would be a good thing all around.
You're living in a fantasy world. Once a book publisher had a work such as the Harry Potter series, they'd never have to bother with another author again. They're already not interested in new talent unless they think it'll result in billions of copies sold. They're becoming less and less interested in anything but derivatives of successful works. And this is just under a system giving copyright that outlasts the creator by half a century to a century.
If they can sell you Star Trek books, Star Wars books, and Harry Potter books until the end of time, why bother taking risks with new authors?
Further, you're talking about endless lawsuits. We already had the case where "The Wind Done Gone"--a parody of "Gone with the Wind"--having to go to the Supreme Court to establish the work could be published. How old is "Gone with the Wind" now? 70 years? More? And yet it took a multimillion dollar, Supreme Court fight to parody the work?
Where are you going to get new works if every time something new comes along that might be taken by some corporation as an "infringement" of a perpetual copyright is going to mean fighting
So you're saying the US Founders were aware of the concept and rejected it?
By pure fiat, sure, but that's how all "property" is created.
Maybe in your country but that's not the theory of rights on which this one was based. I have quibbles with the "natural law" approach but it at least takes into account the way humans have organized their societies for thousands of years. "Property" is quite tangible. And the taking of same is a definite loss. People have killed each other over the taking of tangibles for as long as there's been a human species.
Property is nothing but a legally exclusive right, whether the subject matter is your wallet (tangible personal property), your house and the land it sits on (real property), a share of stock (intangible personal property), or your copyright in a work you create (also intangible personal property, of the narrower class known as intellectual property).
Nonsense. If you take my wallet, it makes sense to demand:
"Give me my wallet back!"
But you also have "taken" my (by default under the Berne Convention) copyrighted words so:
"Give me my words back!"
If there's a parallel to be found here, you should be able to "unread" my post and "give back" my words. So do it. Right now.
Ideas probably can't (in that it is literally impossible to do so) be treated as property, but no class of intellectual property can properly be said to apply to "ideas", as such.
And yet, that's exactly what the aim of the concept is. Such as we now allow patents on "processes". Such as the "one click button" to buy something. That's an idea, not an expression of an idea. Are you aware that there's a bill in Congress that essentially aims at eliminating the "problem" of prior art and obviousness by allowing first to file over first to create? I have to go check whether there are patents on TCP/IP. If not, and the bill passes, I'll never have to work again.
Applications or particular expressions of ideas can be treated as property, and have been for quite some time. Whether they should be is, of course, a matter of legitimate debate, but one that is not best approached by inaccuracy and hyperbole.
No, we as a society have granted limited monopolies over things that cannot be treated as property and for which the property model clearly cannot apply because it benefits the public good. It's an exchange. We reward creative people with temporary monopolies and we get a steady stream of creativity going, mind you, into the public domain. The public domain was the point.
Hyperbole my hindquarters. Read what the US Founders had to say on the matter. Disagree with them if you will but it's not "hyperbole" to assert they were right the first time and the system is being subverted by corporations. The big "intellectual property" push is not benefiting the creative among us but the corporations which didn't create anything to begin with. Take a look at Disney. They rammed through that massive extension of copyright to "protect" Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney didn't benefit from that. He's what call dead. And don't tell me about his family either, they weren't only pushed out of the corporation years ago, they don't hold the copyrights.
The subjects of intellectual property, which are not "ideas", are plainly different from tangible personal property. But so is real property. That is why most societies distinguish quite strongly between the kind of rights associated with real property and those associated with tangible personal property--to the extent where some societies (such as many Native American groups) and some groups in other society (Georgists being a common modern example) argue against permanent property interests in real property.
Somehow, I just knew Indians would end up being drug into this one at some point. They always are. Usually
He says that anything less is essentially an unfair public taking of property: "No good case exists for the inequality of real and intellectual property, because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind." This community can surely supply a plethora of arguments for the public domain, words which don't appear in the op-ed. Actually, the real argument lies in debunking the myth of "intellectual property". Simply put, there's no such thing. Corporations are trying to create the concept by pure fiat. I notice he glosses over the quote from Jefferson, ignoring that it torpedoes his baldfaced, baseless assertion that there's a property right involved.
Jefferson is right. As right now as he was then. Ideas cannot be treated as property. If I take your car, you lose something. That's property. If I "take" your idea, you still have it. Jefferson's thinking applies quite well to today though he could never have imagined the computer nor the Internet. Ideas obviously not the same thing as property. If you copy a program, the owner doesn't "lose" anything. She or he still has their copy.
Ideas are plainly not property. They are something wholly other. The Founders did not acknowledge a "property right" in ideas. They allowed for limited monopolies to be granted to encourage "the useful arts and sciences." Their entire point was an exchange that would be in the public good. Create short term monopolies to people who create and allow them to exclusively market their ideas for a limited time. But only a limited time.
Copyright and patent are monopoly grants and Jefferson was actually quite ambivalent about having them at all. His later commentary on the new Constitution was that he believed the term of the monopoly grant given by the Federal government be specified explicitly. And that the grants be narrowed by language in the section in question. He conceded that the public good would likely benefit from the limited monopoly grants but wanted to ensure that the grants were, indeed, strictly limited in term and scope.
It's unfortunate his suggestion wasn't included in the Constitution.
But with limited grants and with a constant flow of ideas into the public domain (the first copyright law, for example, granted a total of 14 years and that was all), we went from horse drawn buggies to me sitting here, bouncing packets off a geosync satellite to communicate over a global network.
If the Founders were so off base as Helprin seems to believe, why are we living in the most technically advanced society in all of human history? How did we go from an agrarian society to lunar landings in two centuries?
More, why does he want to return to the glory days of feudalism? That was the last period "perpetual copyright" existed (along with other perpetual grants by the monarch of things we'd now call "patents"). Which system advanced more quickly? Feudalism with perpetual grants or the democracy created by the Founders who insisted on limited grants aimed at a balance that would benefit the public good?
When the commercials start: go to the bathroom, get a snack/drink, perform small errands, talk to other people in the room. You're violating your contract, don'cha know?
And doncha just love this part?
"When asked if he considers people who go to the bathroom during a commercial to be thieves, he responded: 'I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom.'"
He guesses? A certain amount of tolerance?
Next up: motion senors in TVs!
FBI Warning: Leaving your seat during this commercial break is a federal crime!
is there really anything in the kernel that could be patented? wouldnt only single projects be affected (ie samba) not Linux itself?
The tactic so often used is "file narrowly, interpret broadly." Even with our very broken patent office, you have to be fairly specific as to your claims. But on obtaining the patent, you turn around and claim that anything remotely similar is "infringement". Most companies will give in and pay you licensing fees to avoid a lengthly court fight even if they believe your patent doesn't apply or is even invalid.
There's a word for it: extortion. Unfortunately, it's legal...
Now, Linux users might hate to hear this, but I think it's a good thing (tm) for this to happen. Otherwise it is mayhem and eventually Linux will be treated by the courts as some kind of "pirate" operating system. Best to cut the illegal parts out earlier than later.
Maybe. But how much bogus drivel laughingly called "patent" are we talking about here? Such as, from the article:
The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims.
How much you wanna bet those include attempts to patent things such as double-clicking a folder to display a directory?
Funny how they're being coy about the patents (shades of SCO). They've seen just how fast the GNU/Linux/(everybody-else-there-are-too-many-to-na me) communities move when faced with similar problems. How long did it take the kernel developers to dump the proprietary software management system (who got snotty) and write their own? A week?
But maybe it is time. The FOSS community has been piling up examples of prior art to beat sixty. And now there are enough corporate patrons of Linux (et al) to make it worth their while to fire back (as in how many patents has MS violated and shall we start counting them now?).
It doesn't seem all that long ago that scientists were merely *inferring* the presence of planets in other solar systems, now we are able to derive a map of one from IR data? Thats an amazing amount of progress for so short a time period.
More than that, it hasn't been all that long since we were debating how common extra-solar planets might be as we had no data at all. For that matter, it's been all of 77 years since the discovery of Pluto, roughly the range of a human lifespan.
Maybe it's me but, some days, you just have to sit back and think... wow...
Wrong. Any time you have someone claiming you have to buy their product or service because it is the law (true or not), that's statism, not capitalism.
Erm... ya may wanna get the doc to check your irony level...
I think it's about the right time for me to file suit against Media Rights Technologies for not employing me at a salary of $10,000,000/year to refill their coke machines. Because of their unwillingness to hire me as a coke machine filler, their machines are dreadfully low, who knows how many people could become thirsty as a direct result..!!
Good idea, let's all sue them!
Lessee... I've done tech writing and they didn't use me to do their documentation...
I forget who wrote the book, "The End of History" but apparently he really meant was "nobody knows any".
The clown who wrote the opinion pierce clearly doesn't have any understanding of the history of the monopoly grants we call "copyrights" and "patents." We need to be clear on this, they are grants of monopoly given by "we the people" to creators of works to, as the Constitution says, encourage the useful arts and sciences.
There is no such thing as "intellectual property". That's a fiction created by corporate lawyers. It doesn't exist, it never existed, they're trying to create it by fiat. Our founders explicitly rejected the property model for ideas and inventions. Over two centuries ago, they already knew that if you lock everything up in a "property right", innovation and creativity die.
Their whole point was to provide economic incentive so people would create new works of art and inventions. Give them a short term grant of monopoly during which time they could make what money they could. Then the work would pass into the public domain so society in general could benefit. That is, the actual point was the end product: a steady stream of creative work entering the public domain. Not fortresses built around works to lock things up until the end of time. We've slid back toward feudalism. The monopoly grants originally were handed out by the king and lasted long as he said so.
As example, believe or not, the King James Version of the Bible is still under copyright. The monopoly grant was made in perpetuity. The only reason the KJV is public domain here in the US is we thumbed our nose at the whole idea of perpetual copyright.
Conversely, the first copyright law passed by the actual founders themselves under our brand, spanking new government allowed for a total of all of 14 years. That was it. It was later extended to a total of 28 and that's where it stood for generations. Now it's stretching endlessly into the future and the public domain is being choked out of existence. Last I read, nothing has entered the public domain since about WWII. Certainly not one work has entered the public domain in the lifetime of the bulk of people reading this website.
Oh, I was particularly amused by the comment of the idiot who wrote the piece when he wrote:
"Everyone likes to think that studio execs are evil incarnate. But when you steal movies, you're also whittling down the royalty checks for some old lady who had to make out with William Shatner in a bit role on Star Trek."
I hate to tell him this but there are no such royalty checks. Bit players are paid once. Period. Actors get paid when they work. Period. Unless an actor rises to one of the hyphenated positions such as actor-director or actor-producer and can demand a contract with royalties (which is rare and only the very few, very in demand actors), there are no royalties. Shatner himself hasn't seen a check from the original series in decades now.
The whole point of the studios is to get past that initial window of having to pay actors and writers and such. They want to get past those few payments and then the property is paid for and any sale (DVD, reruns, etc.) are pure profit.
I hate to burst anybody's bubbles but the reason the secondary actors of Star Trek such as Doohan or Takei or such showed up at all those conventions is...
They needed the money.
Some 40 years of profits have accrued to the corporations because ST was such a long running "cult" show. But actors and writers and such who did the work did NOT share in the money. Paramount got it all.
And the corporations are still not happy. I forget the exact details but there was a relatively recent push to declare entire libraries of music to be "work for hire" so the corporations could start selling them without giving a dime to the artists. The music artists (Don Henley of the Eagles was one of the big ones involved as I recall) fought back. And hard (t
That is which not permitted is forbidden, that which is permitted is mandatory.
I think that was Orwell.
Either way, how Soviet. The greatest enemy of the capitalism these days are the... capitalists...
Slashdot Mirror
This entire matter has been stood on its head by greedy corporate bastards who produce nothing. The artists are not be protected nor benefiting any more than the public is. It's time we realize that we grant copyrights.
And we can take them away.
Even my step-dad, die hard Windows geek for years on end, suddenly needs a Mac. Why? Customers demanding support and he can't help them because he doesn't know OS X at all.
Something's up. I catch myself telling people, "Didn't I tell you this more than a decade ago?" You have to wonder if Vista will someday be known as MS' Waterloo.
Poland repeals the law of gravity!
(Video at 11)
And then there's the legacy of SouthWestern Bell (now SBC, now AT&T, now "We're baaaaaaaack") where you can live thirty minutes outside the capitol of the state of Texas and have phone lines and equipment last worked on by your grandfather. Or my personal favorite; there are actual phone numbers I cannot dial. Dial 1+, area code, and number, you get "you do not have to dial a one or the area code" message (okay, but which is it, the one or the area code or both?). Dial sans the 1+ (which some numbers in that same area code require) and you get "your call cannot be completed as dialed." So you try 1+ sans area code. You get "cannot be completed as dialed" So you try just the seven digit number but get interrupted three digits in with "cannot be completed as dialed".
To call my mom, I have to remember that one number in her house requires 1+ dialing but the other requires the area code but NOT the 1+. In the same freaking house. And her husband's number is one of the ones I cannot dial at all. Not just same area code, same house.
SWB was known for letting equipment go for as long as they could manage to duct tape it together but charging for everything in site. Now, years later, the Texas telephone infrastructure is only barely better than the old Soviet Union's.
Though growing up under the SWB monopoly was at least entertaining. Dialing a number was a lot like playing slots or something. You never quite knew what was going to happen or who you'd be connected to. Great way to meet the neighbors I suppose as, quite often, two people dialing at the same time were connected together for no apparent reason...
How could you be so cruel???
Face it, English is a kludge so confusing and contradictory, it's amazing it works at all.
I've always thought it was weirdly fascinating how the gigantic consumer electronics and computer industry didn't just squash the RIAA and MPAA like bugs in the "piracy" fight. In terms of money, there's just no way the entertainment industry could have kept up. Even today, they could go after the RIAA for all kinds of obvious anti-trust issues. Such as the obliteration of the "CD single" to force everybody to buy entire albums, not just single songs. Or keeping the prices of CDs from falling (instead, they often rise) even when production costs were plummeting.
Of course, the consumer electronics giants (like Sony) bought up most of the studios. Considering that sales of music (and movies and what not) are tiny compared to the sales of consumer electronics, I still don't understand why the giants don't run the music industry as a "loss leader". Cut the price of the entertainment to "the bone", keeping just a small margin, and use that to entice people into buying more widgets.
I dunno. I remember once, when Valenti was running the MPAA, him bragging about the collective revenues of the movie industry. I don't remember the exact figure, and sure it was in the billions, but only just. My thought at the time was "it's like looking at the total toilet paper budget for the electronics industry."
The whole thing is like watching one of those old cartoons with an elephant jumping into a chair and screaming in fear as he's threatened by a mouse.
But "voluntary" anything in the entertainment industry? Doesn't exist. The RIAA companies are screwing the artists over as hard or harder than they're screwing the public. Even big name, wealthy artists have tried fighting the corrupt contracts the RIAA forces on musicians and most haven't made any real headway. The industry is rife with stories of acts that had big, successful albums only to end up almost broke and in debt under their contracts. Fact is, part of the "piracy" fight is a struggle to maintain a monopoly. If Internet distribution is allowed to succeed, it could undermine the RIAA's draconian power.
See, they're just getting started. Going after more obvious "unauthorized distribution" was just a first step. Not the last. Notice that now they're taking aim at radio stations?
Not to defend either side (or any sides) in all of this. The entire system is busted and if we had a responsible government, instead of passing every law the RIAA/MPAA hands them, they'd wipe the RIAA and MPAA off the face of the Earth and tell the industry to act like real capitalists for a change instead of some Soviet Ministry of Entertainment. But that's a big if...
I believe the author of this article is right. I think its fair to have perpetual Copy write. The work that that artist went through to create the work needs to be recognized. Its a compilation of words yes but words are his tool for creating his art. Would you deny a painter or his decedents the right to make money just because he didn't make the paint he used. Its the same thing. Furthermore I feel that copy write has had a bad shake recently with all the piracy going on today. Music, movies, computer programs, and books are being copied all the time. Not enough is being done to stop it. I feel people have a right to make a living off their work if they so choose to do so. So do their children and grand children if their work goes beyond their life.
People who didn't do anything in the creation of the work have a "right" to milk it until the sun explodes? Why? And how does that create incentives for people to do creative work? And why are you excluding other creative people? Plumbers are creative. Should they have "rights" to the plumbing in your house and royalty payments in perpetuity?
And in case you haven't noticed, it's not the creators of works nor their families who are benefiting from the current push. Take the Disney example. They rammed through a massive extension of copyright that granted themselves 95 years after death of the creator (creators of works get 20 years less mind you). Walt is dead. He's not getting any money. His family was pushed out of the corporation. They don't hold the copyrights, the corporation does. Perpetual copyright will result in the Disney corporation "owning" Mickey Mouse forever. The actual Disney family is being pushed out into the cold.
In recent history, very recent, music corporations tried to have all works over about 35 years old declared "work for hire." Which would strip all rights from the actual artists and transfer them to the music corporations who then would have rights to the works until 95 years after the death of the artist. The artist would receive no royalties ever again.
How about the Star Trek folks? The actors, directors, writers... the creative people... did not see royalties from the original show. None. An entire franchise worth millions has been built by Paramount/Viacom/CBS/whoever they are these days but the money isn't going to the people who created the work. Roddenberry himself was "kicked upstairs" then edged out the door. How many of those millions do you think his kids are getting?
Think about the effect this would have on book publishers too. They would be forced to look for new talent more vigorously then they have because eventually the copy write for older works will be unmanageable. This would give more opportunity for younger artists trying to make a living. This would be a good thing all around.
You're living in a fantasy world. Once a book publisher had a work such as the Harry Potter series, they'd never have to bother with another author again. They're already not interested in new talent unless they think it'll result in billions of copies sold. They're becoming less and less interested in anything but derivatives of successful works. And this is just under a system giving copyright that outlasts the creator by half a century to a century.
If they can sell you Star Trek books, Star Wars books, and Harry Potter books until the end of time, why bother taking risks with new authors?
Further, you're talking about endless lawsuits. We already had the case where "The Wind Done Gone"--a parody of "Gone with the Wind"--having to go to the Supreme Court to establish the work could be published. How old is "Gone with the Wind" now? 70 years? More? And yet it took a multimillion dollar, Supreme Court fight to parody the work?
Where are you going to get new works if every time something new comes along that might be taken by some corporation as an "infringement" of a perpetual copyright is going to mean fighting
No, it was created centuries ago.
So you're saying the US Founders were aware of the concept and rejected it?
By pure fiat, sure, but that's how all "property" is created.
Maybe in your country but that's not the theory of rights on which this one was based. I have quibbles with the "natural law" approach but it at least takes into account the way humans have organized their societies for thousands of years. "Property" is quite tangible. And the taking of same is a definite loss. People have killed each other over the taking of tangibles for as long as there's been a human species.
Property is nothing but a legally exclusive right, whether the subject matter is your wallet (tangible personal property), your house and the land it sits on (real property), a share of stock (intangible personal property), or your copyright in a work you create (also intangible personal property, of the narrower class known as intellectual property).
Nonsense. If you take my wallet, it makes sense to demand:
"Give me my wallet back!"
But you also have "taken" my (by default under the Berne Convention) copyrighted words so:
"Give me my words back!"
If there's a parallel to be found here, you should be able to "unread" my post and "give back" my words. So do it. Right now.
Ideas probably can't (in that it is literally impossible to do so) be treated as property, but no class of intellectual property can properly be said to apply to "ideas", as such.
And yet, that's exactly what the aim of the concept is. Such as we now allow patents on "processes". Such as the "one click button" to buy something. That's an idea, not an expression of an idea. Are you aware that there's a bill in Congress that essentially aims at eliminating the "problem" of prior art and obviousness by allowing first to file over first to create? I have to go check whether there are patents on TCP/IP. If not, and the bill passes, I'll never have to work again.
Applications or particular expressions of ideas can be treated as property, and have been for quite some time. Whether they should be is, of course, a matter of legitimate debate, but one that is not best approached by inaccuracy and hyperbole.
No, we as a society have granted limited monopolies over things that cannot be treated as property and for which the property model clearly cannot apply because it benefits the public good. It's an exchange. We reward creative people with temporary monopolies and we get a steady stream of creativity going, mind you, into the public domain. The public domain was the point.
Hyperbole my hindquarters. Read what the US Founders had to say on the matter. Disagree with them if you will but it's not "hyperbole" to assert they were right the first time and the system is being subverted by corporations. The big "intellectual property" push is not benefiting the creative among us but the corporations which didn't create anything to begin with. Take a look at Disney. They rammed through that massive extension of copyright to "protect" Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney didn't benefit from that. He's what call dead. And don't tell me about his family either, they weren't only pushed out of the corporation years ago, they don't hold the copyrights.
The subjects of intellectual property, which are not "ideas", are plainly different from tangible personal property. But so is real property. That is why most societies distinguish quite strongly between the kind of rights associated with real property and those associated with tangible personal property--to the extent where some societies (such as many Native American groups) and some groups in other society (Georgists being a common modern example) argue against permanent property interests in real property.
Somehow, I just knew Indians would end up being drug into this one at some point. They always are. Usually
Jefferson is right. As right now as he was then. Ideas cannot be treated as property. If I take your car, you lose something. That's property. If I "take" your idea, you still have it. Jefferson's thinking applies quite well to today though he could never have imagined the computer nor the Internet. Ideas obviously not the same thing as property. If you copy a program, the owner doesn't "lose" anything. She or he still has their copy.
Ideas are plainly not property. They are something wholly other. The Founders did not acknowledge a "property right" in ideas. They allowed for limited monopolies to be granted to encourage "the useful arts and sciences." Their entire point was an exchange that would be in the public good. Create short term monopolies to people who create and allow them to exclusively market their ideas for a limited time. But only a limited time.
Copyright and patent are monopoly grants and Jefferson was actually quite ambivalent about having them at all. His later commentary on the new Constitution was that he believed the term of the monopoly grant given by the Federal government be specified explicitly. And that the grants be narrowed by language in the section in question. He conceded that the public good would likely benefit from the limited monopoly grants but wanted to ensure that the grants were, indeed, strictly limited in term and scope.
It's unfortunate his suggestion wasn't included in the Constitution.
But with limited grants and with a constant flow of ideas into the public domain (the first copyright law, for example, granted a total of 14 years and that was all), we went from horse drawn buggies to me sitting here, bouncing packets off a geosync satellite to communicate over a global network.
If the Founders were so off base as Helprin seems to believe, why are we living in the most technically advanced society in all of human history? How did we go from an agrarian society to lunar landings in two centuries?
More, why does he want to return to the glory days of feudalism? That was the last period "perpetual copyright" existed (along with other perpetual grants by the monarch of things we'd now call "patents"). Which system advanced more quickly? Feudalism with perpetual grants or the democracy created by the Founders who insisted on limited grants aimed at a balance that would benefit the public good?
Hm...
And doncha just love this part?
"When asked if he considers people who go to the bathroom during a commercial to be thieves, he responded: 'I guess there's a certain amount of tolerance for going to the bathroom.'"
He guesses? A certain amount of tolerance?
Next up: motion senors in TVs!
FBI Warning: Leaving your seat during this commercial break is a federal crime!
You really DONT want to open that can of worms. Trust me you really dont.
Did Xerox's ears just perk up?
The tactic so often used is "file narrowly, interpret broadly." Even with our very broken patent office, you have to be fairly specific as to your claims. But on obtaining the patent, you turn around and claim that anything remotely similar is "infringement". Most companies will give in and pay you licensing fees to avoid a lengthly court fight even if they believe your patent doesn't apply or is even invalid.
There's a word for it: extortion. Unfortunately, it's legal...
(entering article text)
(selecting "FUD --> English")
(clicking "Translate" button)
Huh. It came back...
"Vista's tanking."
Maybe. But how much bogus drivel laughingly called "patent" are we talking about here? Such as, from the article:
The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims.
How much you wanna bet those include attempts to patent things such as double-clicking a folder to display a directory?
Funny how they're being coy about the patents (shades of SCO). They've seen just how fast the GNU/Linux/(everybody-else-there-are-too-many-to-na me) communities move when faced with similar problems. How long did it take the kernel developers to dump the proprietary software management system (who got snotty) and write their own? A week?
But maybe it is time. The FOSS community has been piling up examples of prior art to beat sixty. And now there are enough corporate patrons of Linux (et al) to make it worth their while to fire back (as in how many patents has MS violated and shall we start counting them now?).
More than that, it hasn't been all that long since we were debating how common extra-solar planets might be as we had no data at all. For that matter, it's been all of 77 years since the discovery of Pluto, roughly the range of a human lifespan.
Maybe it's me but, some days, you just have to sit back and think... wow...
(Checking for press release announcing Google Space)
Erm... ya may wanna get the doc to check your irony level...
Good idea, let's all sue them!
Lessee... I've done tech writing and they didn't use me to do their documentation...
Yes! I am now going to sue you because you didn't use my cipher in your post!
However, I'm going to sue everybody who doesn't read my post!
The clown who wrote the opinion pierce clearly doesn't have any understanding of the history of the monopoly grants we call "copyrights" and "patents." We need to be clear on this, they are grants of monopoly given by "we the people" to creators of works to, as the Constitution says, encourage the useful arts and sciences.
There is no such thing as "intellectual property". That's a fiction created by corporate lawyers. It doesn't exist, it never existed, they're trying to create it by fiat. Our founders explicitly rejected the property model for ideas and inventions. Over two centuries ago, they already knew that if you lock everything up in a "property right", innovation and creativity die.
Their whole point was to provide economic incentive so people would create new works of art and inventions. Give them a short term grant of monopoly during which time they could make what money they could. Then the work would pass into the public domain so society in general could benefit. That is, the actual point was the end product: a steady stream of creative work entering the public domain. Not fortresses built around works to lock things up until the end of time. We've slid back toward feudalism. The monopoly grants originally were handed out by the king and lasted long as he said so.
As example, believe or not, the King James Version of the Bible is still under copyright. The monopoly grant was made in perpetuity. The only reason the KJV is public domain here in the US is we thumbed our nose at the whole idea of perpetual copyright.
Conversely, the first copyright law passed by the actual founders themselves under our brand, spanking new government allowed for a total of all of 14 years. That was it. It was later extended to a total of 28 and that's where it stood for generations. Now it's stretching endlessly into the future and the public domain is being choked out of existence. Last I read, nothing has entered the public domain since about WWII. Certainly not one work has entered the public domain in the lifetime of the bulk of people reading this website.
Oh, I was particularly amused by the comment of the idiot who wrote the piece when he wrote:
"Everyone likes to think that studio execs are evil incarnate. But when you steal movies, you're also whittling down the royalty checks for some old lady who had to make out with William Shatner in a bit role on Star Trek."
I hate to tell him this but there are no such royalty checks. Bit players are paid once. Period. Actors get paid when they work. Period. Unless an actor rises to one of the hyphenated positions such as actor-director or actor-producer and can demand a contract with royalties (which is rare and only the very few, very in demand actors), there are no royalties. Shatner himself hasn't seen a check from the original series in decades now.
The whole point of the studios is to get past that initial window of having to pay actors and writers and such. They want to get past those few payments and then the property is paid for and any sale (DVD, reruns, etc.) are pure profit.
I hate to burst anybody's bubbles but the reason the secondary actors of Star Trek such as Doohan or Takei or such showed up at all those conventions is...
They needed the money.
Some 40 years of profits have accrued to the corporations because ST was such a long running "cult" show. But actors and writers and such who did the work did NOT share in the money. Paramount got it all.
And the corporations are still not happy. I forget the exact details but there was a relatively recent push to declare entire libraries of music to be "work for hire" so the corporations could start selling them without giving a dime to the artists. The music artists (Don Henley of the Eagles was one of the big ones involved as I recall) fought back. And hard (t
That is which not permitted is forbidden, that which is permitted is mandatory. I think that was Orwell. Either way, how Soviet. The greatest enemy of the capitalism these days are the... capitalists...