According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... they start from 1912, some made by anonymous authors from other countries. So no, I don't have a reason to rethink my position. You also didn't address the fact that such a pastiche doesn't count as a derivative work due to its definition. Small elements like particular characters or concepts are explicitly non-copyrightable and thus complete work made from them that is not some kind of transformation of other work cannot be a derivative work. For example, Star Trek as a whole isn't a work. Particular Star Trek episode or movie is a work. If you assert something is a derivative work of Star Trek then you must show which episode or movie it's derivative work of. If there is no such episode or movie(or novel or whatever) then it cannot be a derivative work.
So please explain how using Enterprise makes it a derivative work while using entire Sherlock Holmes character doesn't? Derivative work clearly covers only transformation of existing work, rather than entirely new work in same universe. If third party authors are allowed to write own Sherlock Holmes stories then third party movie makers are allowed to make their own star trek episodes or entire movies set in the universe. If authors of Sherlock Holmes pastiches weren't forced to rename Holmes then why star trek pastiche authors should rename ships and characters? Using copyright to block third parties like this is definitely yet another abuse. Also since Gene Roddenberry is dead there's no reason to even consider Paramount's own works to be more deserving to reuse those characters than team Axanar's.
I don't think so. Label can exist without copyright(their work is marketing but they shouldn't interfere with artists too much), copyright merely prevents new entrants, so as to ensure that entrenched providers can always take it easy. They want copyright for this reason exactly. But it's harmful in general. For example, I don't see a rational reason against things like Star Trek: Axanar to be made, yet it was pursued based on copyright claim. It's clearly can be considered something like a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, so it wasn't forbidden in the past. Yet court now seriously entertains a copyright claim against it, even though it disregards proper definition of "derivative work", the same definition that allowed Sherlock Holmes pastiches to be made. If definition is so unclear then abolish is the only way, since there's absolutely no drive to improve the definition, or to prevent abuses. Only corporations make silly rules just to prevent new entrants to market. I think the move to pure self-policing is the only way here, without involvement of government or courts. Mind you I still think a trademark claim against star trek axanar is justified, but word copyright shouldn't even appear in court filings anywhere.
Label isn't same as copyright. True, it might let them earn more money, but it doesn't justify it. Face it, copyright is known as utopic dream based on medieval preconceptions for quite some time. And if it implies restrictions on what people do with bits of data on their own pcs then it's definitely case of "no, thank you". You may dream whatever you like, but such unimplementable flawed laws are just a source of corruption. They can turn it every way. For example, at its time Sherlock Holmes pastiches were freely allowed, while currently you may get sued something that even vaguely imitating a copyright work, or just set in same universe as a copyrighted work. And this wasn't result of legislature, but rather court decision, which strictly speaking is a violation of principle of separation of powers, since such major change should definitely come through legislature. Record labels and other business like that for sure have their place, but copyright creates perverse incentive that makes things worse for everyone if you try to maximize profits. Personally I think holding anything on faith is wrong and many aspects of copyright are in practice are held on basis of faith. This became possible because art is not necessary for survival of society, instead it's side effect of its existence. So any suboptimal decisions won't have too much noticeable societal harm and you can afford to be lazier in all aspects of managing it. But I'm opposed to nonsensical laws and institutions on principle.
I'm not pushing an idealogical utopia that depends upon people willingly supporting artists just because, and that completely neglects others stealing the results of their creativity so I don't need supporting studies. I have approximately 7000 years of history on my side. Outside the last 200 or so with active copyright, creative works were few and far between, and mostly made to please someone that wanted a specific thing. Charts, maps, books, music - all were relatively poor in comparison to what came after copyright. We can also see the results of your particular track on sites like YouTube and those served by the Creative Commons. While the creators of one hope to be discovered while the other appears to do it purely out of their own nobility, not much of worth has come from either.
No, it's not utopia. It's current status quo. Relative increase of creative works over centuries exists solely due to improving technology like printing press, radio, personal computing, internet, etc. And also by insanely increased human population that has more time for creative endeavours due to increased efficiency brought by industrialization. Copyright actually slows things down, if people(try to) respect it. Any more or less vigorous copyright enforcement affecting individuals will be extremely unpopular and logistically unimplementable. So I'd say copyright itself is actually an utopia, not its abolition.
I would like to see actual details. You also realize there are farmers paying to grow their crops, and that coders are working for less than $1 a day?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , also I remember reading many blog articles by artists detailing how they had trouble to make any profit. Lesser known artists are especially vulnerable because they're in very poor bargaining position and can be easily replaced. Then same practices are slowly extended to more important artists, because doing otherwise would be unfair, no? This exists only due to this nonsensical idea of art as "industry".
There are holes all over. You just refuse to see them. That doesn't make them any less present. My position, based on historical evidence is that with no copyright, there are no protections, and everything is a free for all. We've been there. It results in less works available and certainly nothing that has significant costs associated with it.
You failed to conclusively show any holes. And historical precedents either. There's this one book studying (lack of) copyright effects on availability of works: http://www.dklevine.com/genera... . Do you know any others studying same question?
I don't care about whether I am labeled an enemy of authors. It is irrelevant and nothing more than a smear campaign catering to a specific special interest group. I am concerned about constitutionality and the intent of the clause in the Constitution. That clause was not written to promote the welfare of authors et al, but to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. And don't begin by citing SC decisions over time that slowly warped the original intent, as the SC has been provably wrong in the past by their own contradictory rulings and nothing prevents them from reversing course on copyright and returning some semblance of constitutional intent to copyright law.
But how would you actually convince lawmakers to ease copyright excesses without having abolition as a fallback solution rather than status quo? So far extending copyright terms were seen by them as safer options.
Granted on the cycles, the cause is a different issue that would generate another cycle. I hold that without copyright artists can easily be ripped off by others and lose control of their works. I believe we largely agree that the length of term of the current law is objectionable as are the terms for transfer, inheritable or otherwise. We disagree on the solution.
Did you know that artists now are ripped off even more than before copyright? There is a lot of cases when their total income from their work is 0 or even negative, due to clever accounting practices and non-negotiable contracts from publishers. At least if only patronage exists their independently wealthy patrons don't have particular reason to rip them off. They just make art and get paid for making art and what is done with it after is irrelevant.
I'm guessing because that wasn't my position nor intent? To be clear, my intent was to show the holes in your position of "no copyright".
You didn't show any holes. Most of your responses are based on this connection existing. Since I question exactly this, they become circular reasoning aka begging the question.
While we agree on the current state and what the industry wants, we disagree on the solution. Since in the US current law exceeds the intent of the clause in the Constitution, it might be time to bring current law back into line with what that intent was. Note that anything with "life of the author" as a limit can be argued to be effectively non-limited violating the "for a limited time" portion of the clause (it's automatically unlimited for the author). Also, the infinite copyrights wanted by industry won't happen because that prevents the movement to the public domain, which is also required by said clause. If we go back to the intent and letter of the Constitution regarding this very specified enumerated ability of Congress and hold the law to be bound by the enabling clause, we would go a long way to addressing a host of complaints regarding copyright. Now if abuse of copyright was also legislated (Happy Birthday and Marvin Gaye's family come to mind as exhibits 1 and 2) for where someone should be held accountable for wrongly trying to profit off of copyrights. Then again, fixing the term length would have addressed both cases negating even the possibility of such nonsensical action.
Copyright like you said is pretty much virtually unlimited, and only reason it's tolerated is that it's not actually enforced. Its original conditions are now broken and it is not possible to really negotiate because it's impossible to come to more or less sensible compromise, because it's core is based in overbroad generalization of private property and built on contradictory ideas. If this can't be good enough reason to seriously consider abolition then I don't know what can. I don't see how could you ever argue for reducing copyright, say, from 75 years to 70 years without getting accused of being enemy of authors and progress. No argument for any sort of reduction can be made for this without getting debunked due to said contradictory nature of copyright. Also it's hard to agree on some particular term. Consequently people who pretend to favor shortening of copyright terms like you will never be able to actually get reduction from lawmakers. Only if an independent political force champions copyright abolition then shortening will become possible as compromise. After all the original US deal (copyright in exchange for allowing for public domain) came as alternative to not having a copyright law at all. In fact, Hollywood managed to get its position only due to lack of copyright enforcement in US at the time when it existed in Europe.
I feel that we're going in cycles due to you ignoring some points I made. I merely object to paying money for lifting restrictions which take no effort by itself and their market value is thus 0$. I object to inheritable rents which merely serve to make another worthless social stratum of aristocrats. I do not object for artists being paid for work they actually do. Nothing less and nothing more. You absolutely failed to establish that there is any connection between inheritable rents and state censorship copyright requires and letting authors getting paid. You didn't even try to. Copyright lobbies never were hiding that they actually want infinite copyright, which is in stark contrast to original deal: they get temporary monopoly in exchange for strong public domain. So pretty much everyone is in breach: publishers made it defacto infinite while rest of people don't consider infringing copyrights to be something unusual. The only solution is to legalize status quo: people pay on strictly donation basis, you don't even pretend that people buy something because it just leads to more conflicts and societal tension because both sides have violated their part of this deal for almost a century.
Let's assume that's true for the moment. Why do you suppose that is? Because publishers value the work themselves and wish to spend their money supporting the arts? Or, is it because publishers have a business model wherein they support n creative sources hoping to have a net positive cash flow? And they're successful enough that they wish to grow? And no, I don't like the situation that puts authors in, but facts are facts, and many creators can't afford to do what they do full time on their own.
Publishers don't value work at all. They value only rent. This results in cardinally different business strategy than if advancement of art was actually a goal.
And all girls are princesses and all boys are prince charmings, just waiting for twain to meet.
What a silly irrelevant non-sequitur.
Since most music and movies (the 2 most commonly pirated things) make it to airwaves or broadcast/cable TV, your argument falls flat on its face. Piracy is not needed to receive art stuff, only patience is. What piracy accomplishes is that people see/hear what they want when they want, which are what you get when you pay for something. Some will equate piracy with borrowing from the library or renting from a service. It's not.
It dampens your argument even more. If it's free on airwaves then why not let people do whatever they wish with it as long as they use only own resources, such as peer-to-peer networks?
Wow, just wow. Tell me, in your world, what's the difference in taking work from someone and freely distributing it and slavery? Or just down-right forcing them to create? Because your world view is a lot closer to what you're attempting to malign the current system with.
Comparing copyright to slavery doesn't serve to malign it. But merely to show that both involve over broad generalization of notion of property. Slavery is not inherently malign. In fact ancient Greeks would vehemently disagree that it's bad institution. But later it was shown to be counter-productive due to above needless overgeneralization leading to abuses and was abolished. Copyright is on same path.
I'd still say you lack rational thought regarding copyright. In fact, your arguments support copyright more than you realize. Take Kickstarter and Patreon for example. The most successful creative projects there are largely based on copyright's protections. People that have succeeded before and have copyrighted material can build on that for new projects, or build off their success with new projects. How many projects (purely in the creative areas) from total unknowns are successful? Note that I'm excluding projects that offer machines (items with a real or perceived use vs creative works that are meant to be enjoyed as they are)
How come they're based? People who actually care about this stuff only "buy" it to explicitly support creators, the rest pirate it. Exactly same situation would result if copyright were abolished.
But rather than just poke holes in your arguments all day, which is simple enough to do, there are some positions that could be taken to be helpful. Notably,
restricting copyright to a reasonable term (the original 14+14 seems perfect, IMNSHO)
making all copyrighted materials subject to registration within a year of publication/performance per the library of congress
after the previous, after 14 years from the original publication/performance, an extension of copyright must be filed and paid for
after 28 years, works enter the public domain
I personally think the entire "for life of author" clauses are semi-interesting and could be used to address some of the issues you may agree with. I do not agree with the "plus 50/70 years" addendum, although there should be a minimum length. My view is that both of these could be handled by 1 clause - should the original author sell (tr
They advertise it as purely means to prevent "accidental" copying, if you're determined to subvert expiration and copy it somewhere then not only you can do a screenshot but also use modified viewer that will net you original message in pristine form.
So you're fine with producing work and others copying it and selling it? So you're ok working for free? Those are the questions you must answer in the affirmative, or you're actually for copyright. And if you do, since you value your work so little, I have some that needs doing.
Abolishing copyright doesn't lead to work for free. Nonetheless much of creative work is already done based on non-monetary incentives. And most authors already work on strictly work-for-hire basis, with publishers serving as patrons. People are willing to pay for works of art even if access isn't restricted, either as pure donation or to services making access more convenient. And so called "piracy" is the only way of bringing some art stuff to people who can't afford it. If they use only own resources to enjoy it nothing is lost to society. Law must be pragmatic and only pursue issues relevant to society's survival and progress, and maintaining restricted access to some work of art is not a good use of judges' and law enforcement's time.
Copyright was actually a step away from medieval/religious controls.
In "one step forward two steps backwards" sort of way. Copyright is as wrongheaded as slavery. Tracking ownership of intellectual monopolies is about as useless as tracking ownership of people. It shouldn't exist, justification is irrelevant. Whether it's religious control or maintaining monopolies.
I'd claim that what you're saying lacks rational thought. What incentive is there for someone to pour a year's worth of thought into a work? Or how about several hundred or thousand people, such as occurs with movies? Or are you claiming that youtube videos are where we should head? How I hope not. I prefer well-written books that come out more than once a decade (pre 1900 novels were slow and few between) or a few movies a year. And no, I won't switch to youtube, twitch, nor anything similar. What you're advocating for is unrestricted copying and distribution meaning that the value of anything that can be digitized would effectively be 0. Of course you could be preferring live theater and performances, which would still be recorded and streamed, since in your world there's no restrictions on such actions.
In making a work of art the only incentive that works is the process of making it. There must be some logistical allowances in people to cooperate for large scale projects, but they don't require handing out inheritable rents. In fact it only hinders art. If decisions are made by rentier and VCs then only risk-reduced remakes of existing works will be made, no new grounds conquered. Kickstarter and patreon do work for amassing funding, and there you actually pay for the work to be made, not for easing of some restriction. Also, remember, you don't need works of arts for survival or production. So basically involving the state here with heavy handed institution of copyright contradicts Government's raison d'etre. Especially considering that in practice copyright only benefits only the most powerful and vocal artists and companies, and they are the only ones who don't need any help to succeed. They only need copyright to control new entrants so they could safely become lazy without risk of losing their power. This contradicts interests of society.
MacOS is based on Mach microkernel yet somehow its Darwin kernel is mostly monolithic. What gives? Perhaps microkernels made too many difficulties for practical use?
My base assumptions are that there is no logical justification for existence of copyright. And you didn't even try to prove that it does. There never was an attempt ever beside weakly asserting that "it protects authors", yet even that isn't actually proven but taken on faith. The only way such situation can exists is because it was actually rebranding of medieval institution of religious control. I simply don't believe that there is a reason for copyright to exist and to have a reasonable discussion we need to come from this point. Otherwise it's just religious argument. If you want to build things in rational way you can't have hidden base assumptions like "copyright exists to protect authors" or "restrictions on distribution are connected to author's rights" or that "infinite rent from owning copyrights should exist". Those things need to be proven and they weren't. In fact the way things are going are showing those things are not true.
This is incorrect. If interests of authors mattered then it would be impossible to transfer copyright, or at least it would be limited. Protecting interests of authors don't imply restrictions on redistribution, as well as ability to transfer it. In practice you are forced to transfer rights and it becomes strictly work for hire, so only publishers actually get to enjoy rent. Even royalties are eliminated by accounting practices known as "hollywood accounting". Basically it strictly creates rent, and even author himself will get sued for distributing it in some way someone doesn't like. I don't think people who originally drafted copyright laws were unaware of such consequences. To them it was not a bug but a feature, because it made access to culture and knowledge restricted to chosen few and allowed very few most popular authors to work less while earning more.
What those non-sequiturs mean? Fact remains that copyright is that just old medieval censorship institution which was originally meant to ensure that only religiously compliant works will get to be published. Later it got repurposed by publishers to ensure monopoly positions for themselves. I'm not convinced that we should base ANYTHING on this institution. People think it supposed promote arts and progress only due to propaganda by those publishers. Real essence of copyright never changed since medieval times, only branding changed.
Copyright is first and foremost monopoly and censorship institution. Calling it anything else would be misrepresentation. Promoting arts and sciences doesn't logically lead to restrictions on exchange of information while censorship and rent-seeking does.
Once again making a book is totally different kind of labor than writing prose for it. There was no connection there until that idea that some publishers should have monopoly to make books with particular content. Monopoly remains a monopoly, no matter the justification. And effort to write a book isn't proportional to number of readers either. Publishers acknowledge it by paying peanuts to most authors.
When you "buy" an app it merely allows you access to it which was artificially restricted before. Doing this costs nearly nothing. So it's basically money for nothing. Yes, development has costs but you're not selling your development effort, but restriction removals, totally different thing. There is no economic mechanism to ensure that compensation is adequate to effort. The app that is used by tens of people isn't necessarily takes 10000 more effort than app used by 100000 of people. As long as this disconnect exists people will always be leery to "buy" apps. From economic perspective sales of "wares" that take no effort or materials, like restriction removals, is almost as bad as unlicensed money printing machines.
Only outcome of natural progress of market would be move of all useful work to China since labor costs are cheaper there. Either that or equalize living costs in US and China, but nobody would actually let that happen. After all they'd prefer to have all costs higher in US just to show third world trash who is the boss, even though money is just abstraction and it results in weird situation when same amount of dollars can buy a lot better living in a "third world" country than in US.
Trading was always sort of gamble, any deterministic outcomes consistently are prosecuted as "insider trading". Lots of silly stuff affect stock prices and we can't expect people like Musk to be constantly self-conscious about affecting stock price in any way. I don't think forbidding Musk to share his plan to go private is in any way consistent with rule of law.
I think it should work in different way. Works should automatically go into public domain as soon as tax filings confirm that it brought the amount of revenue equal to its production cost + 30% profit. This will ensure that both creators are compensated and that there is no excessive restrictions once they got their fair payment.
Any success of Soviets is caused by Lenin promoting greater meritocracy than before him. Since Bolsheviks didn't discriminate on basis of belonging to "nobility" or whatever more leaders and other skilled cadres were available to them. They even were taking old imperial soldiers and government workers. While white movement apparently caught in old prejudices suffered lack of skilled people. Stalin later dismantled this system out of pure paranoia and ignorance. Similar processes played out for Napoleonic France, Muslim Caliphate and probably in many more cases.
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According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... they start from 1912, some made by anonymous authors from other countries. So no, I don't have a reason to rethink my position. You also didn't address the fact that such a pastiche doesn't count as a derivative work due to its definition. Small elements like particular characters or concepts are explicitly non-copyrightable and thus complete work made from them that is not some kind of transformation of other work cannot be a derivative work. For example, Star Trek as a whole isn't a work. Particular Star Trek episode or movie is a work. If you assert something is a derivative work of Star Trek then you must show which episode or movie it's derivative work of. If there is no such episode or movie(or novel or whatever) then it cannot be a derivative work.
So please explain how using Enterprise makes it a derivative work while using entire Sherlock Holmes character doesn't? Derivative work clearly covers only transformation of existing work, rather than entirely new work in same universe. If third party authors are allowed to write own Sherlock Holmes stories then third party movie makers are allowed to make their own star trek episodes or entire movies set in the universe. If authors of Sherlock Holmes pastiches weren't forced to rename Holmes then why star trek pastiche authors should rename ships and characters? Using copyright to block third parties like this is definitely yet another abuse. Also since Gene Roddenberry is dead there's no reason to even consider Paramount's own works to be more deserving to reuse those characters than team Axanar's.
I don't think so. Label can exist without copyright(their work is marketing but they shouldn't interfere with artists too much), copyright merely prevents new entrants, so as to ensure that entrenched providers can always take it easy. They want copyright for this reason exactly. But it's harmful in general. For example, I don't see a rational reason against things like Star Trek: Axanar to be made, yet it was pursued based on copyright claim. It's clearly can be considered something like a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, so it wasn't forbidden in the past. Yet court now seriously entertains a copyright claim against it, even though it disregards proper definition of "derivative work", the same definition that allowed Sherlock Holmes pastiches to be made. If definition is so unclear then abolish is the only way, since there's absolutely no drive to improve the definition, or to prevent abuses. Only corporations make silly rules just to prevent new entrants to market. I think the move to pure self-policing is the only way here, without involvement of government or courts. Mind you I still think a trademark claim against star trek axanar is justified, but word copyright shouldn't even appear in court filings anywhere.
Label isn't same as copyright. True, it might let them earn more money, but it doesn't justify it. Face it, copyright is known as utopic dream based on medieval preconceptions for quite some time. And if it implies restrictions on what people do with bits of data on their own pcs then it's definitely case of "no, thank you". You may dream whatever you like, but such unimplementable flawed laws are just a source of corruption. They can turn it every way. For example, at its time Sherlock Holmes pastiches were freely allowed, while currently you may get sued something that even vaguely imitating a copyright work, or just set in same universe as a copyrighted work. And this wasn't result of legislature, but rather court decision, which strictly speaking is a violation of principle of separation of powers, since such major change should definitely come through legislature. Record labels and other business like that for sure have their place, but copyright creates perverse incentive that makes things worse for everyone if you try to maximize profits. Personally I think holding anything on faith is wrong and many aspects of copyright are in practice are held on basis of faith. This became possible because art is not necessary for survival of society, instead it's side effect of its existence. So any suboptimal decisions won't have too much noticeable societal harm and you can afford to be lazier in all aspects of managing it. But I'm opposed to nonsensical laws and institutions on principle.
I'm not pushing an idealogical utopia that depends upon people willingly supporting artists just because, and that completely neglects others stealing the results of their creativity so I don't need supporting studies. I have approximately 7000 years of history on my side. Outside the last 200 or so with active copyright, creative works were few and far between, and mostly made to please someone that wanted a specific thing. Charts, maps, books, music - all were relatively poor in comparison to what came after copyright. We can also see the results of your particular track on sites like YouTube and those served by the Creative Commons. While the creators of one hope to be discovered while the other appears to do it purely out of their own nobility, not much of worth has come from either.
No, it's not utopia. It's current status quo. Relative increase of creative works over centuries exists solely due to improving technology like printing press, radio, personal computing, internet, etc. And also by insanely increased human population that has more time for creative endeavours due to increased efficiency brought by industrialization. Copyright actually slows things down, if people(try to) respect it. Any more or less vigorous copyright enforcement affecting individuals will be extremely unpopular and logistically unimplementable. So I'd say copyright itself is actually an utopia, not its abolition.
I would like to see actual details. You also realize there are farmers paying to grow their crops, and that coders are working for less than $1 a day?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , also I remember reading many blog articles by artists detailing how they had trouble to make any profit. Lesser known artists are especially vulnerable because they're in very poor bargaining position and can be easily replaced. Then same practices are slowly extended to more important artists, because doing otherwise would be unfair, no? This exists only due to this nonsensical idea of art as "industry".
There are holes all over. You just refuse to see them. That doesn't make them any less present. My position, based on historical evidence is that with no copyright, there are no protections, and everything is a free for all. We've been there. It results in less works available and certainly nothing that has significant costs associated with it.
You failed to conclusively show any holes. And historical precedents either. There's this one book studying (lack of) copyright effects on availability of works: http://www.dklevine.com/genera... . Do you know any others studying same question?
I don't care about whether I am labeled an enemy of authors. It is irrelevant and nothing more than a smear campaign catering to a specific special interest group. I am concerned about constitutionality and the intent of the clause in the Constitution. That clause was not written to promote the welfare of authors et al, but to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. And don't begin by citing SC decisions over time that slowly warped the original intent, as the SC has been provably wrong in the past by their own contradictory rulings and nothing prevents them from reversing course on copyright and returning some semblance of constitutional intent to copyright law.
But how would you actually convince lawmakers to ease copyright excesses without having abolition as a fallback solution rather than status quo? So far extending copyright terms were seen by them as safer options.
Granted on the cycles, the cause is a different issue that would generate another cycle. I hold that without copyright artists can easily be ripped off by others and lose control of their works. I believe we largely agree that the length of term of the current law is objectionable as are the terms for transfer, inheritable or otherwise. We disagree on the solution.
Did you know that artists now are ripped off even more than before copyright? There is a lot of cases when their total income from their work is 0 or even negative, due to clever accounting practices and non-negotiable contracts from publishers. At least if only patronage exists their independently wealthy patrons don't have particular reason to rip them off. They just make art and get paid for making art and what is done with it after is irrelevant.
I'm guessing because that wasn't my position nor intent? To be clear, my intent was to show the holes in your position of "no copyright".
You didn't show any holes. Most of your responses are based on this connection existing. Since I question exactly this, they become circular reasoning aka begging the question.
While we agree on the current state and what the industry wants, we disagree on the solution. Since in the US current law exceeds the intent of the clause in the Constitution, it might be time to bring current law back into line with what that intent was. Note that anything with "life of the author" as a limit can be argued to be effectively non-limited violating the "for a limited time" portion of the clause (it's automatically unlimited for the author). Also, the infinite copyrights wanted by industry won't happen because that prevents the movement to the public domain, which is also required by said clause. If we go back to the intent and letter of the Constitution regarding this very specified enumerated ability of Congress and hold the law to be bound by the enabling clause, we would go a long way to addressing a host of complaints regarding copyright. Now if abuse of copyright was also legislated (Happy Birthday and Marvin Gaye's family come to mind as exhibits 1 and 2) for where someone should be held accountable for wrongly trying to profit off of copyrights. Then again, fixing the term length would have addressed both cases negating even the possibility of such nonsensical action.
Copyright like you said is pretty much virtually unlimited, and only reason it's tolerated is that it's not actually enforced. Its original conditions are now broken and it is not possible to really negotiate because it's impossible to come to more or less sensible compromise, because it's core is based in overbroad generalization of private property and built on contradictory ideas. If this can't be good enough reason to seriously consider abolition then I don't know what can. I don't see how could you ever argue for reducing copyright, say, from 75 years to 70 years without getting accused of being enemy of authors and progress. No argument for any sort of reduction can be made for this without getting debunked due to said contradictory nature of copyright. Also it's hard to agree on some particular term. Consequently people who pretend to favor shortening of copyright terms like you will never be able to actually get reduction from lawmakers. Only if an independent political force champions copyright abolition then shortening will become possible as compromise. After all the original US deal (copyright in exchange for allowing for public domain) came as alternative to not having a copyright law at all. In fact, Hollywood managed to get its position only due to lack of copyright enforcement in US at the time when it existed in Europe.
I feel that we're going in cycles due to you ignoring some points I made. I merely object to paying money for lifting restrictions which take no effort by itself and their market value is thus 0$. I object to inheritable rents which merely serve to make another worthless social stratum of aristocrats. I do not object for artists being paid for work they actually do. Nothing less and nothing more. You absolutely failed to establish that there is any connection between inheritable rents and state censorship copyright requires and letting authors getting paid. You didn't even try to. Copyright lobbies never were hiding that they actually want infinite copyright, which is in stark contrast to original deal: they get temporary monopoly in exchange for strong public domain. So pretty much everyone is in breach: publishers made it defacto infinite while rest of people don't consider infringing copyrights to be something unusual. The only solution is to legalize status quo: people pay on strictly donation basis, you don't even pretend that people buy something because it just leads to more conflicts and societal tension because both sides have violated their part of this deal for almost a century.
Let's assume that's true for the moment. Why do you suppose that is? Because publishers value the work themselves and wish to spend their money supporting the arts? Or, is it because publishers have a business model wherein they support n creative sources hoping to have a net positive cash flow? And they're successful enough that they wish to grow? And no, I don't like the situation that puts authors in, but facts are facts, and many creators can't afford to do what they do full time on their own.
Publishers don't value work at all. They value only rent. This results in cardinally different business strategy than if advancement of art was actually a goal.
And all girls are princesses and all boys are prince charmings, just waiting for twain to meet.
What a silly irrelevant non-sequitur.
Since most music and movies (the 2 most commonly pirated things) make it to airwaves or broadcast/cable TV, your argument falls flat on its face. Piracy is not needed to receive art stuff, only patience is. What piracy accomplishes is that people see/hear what they want when they want, which are what you get when you pay for something. Some will equate piracy with borrowing from the library or renting from a service. It's not.
It dampens your argument even more. If it's free on airwaves then why not let people do whatever they wish with it as long as they use only own resources, such as peer-to-peer networks?
Wow, just wow. Tell me, in your world, what's the difference in taking work from someone and freely distributing it and slavery? Or just down-right forcing them to create? Because your world view is a lot closer to what you're attempting to malign the current system with.
Comparing copyright to slavery doesn't serve to malign it. But merely to show that both involve over broad generalization of notion of property. Slavery is not inherently malign. In fact ancient Greeks would vehemently disagree that it's bad institution. But later it was shown to be counter-productive due to above needless overgeneralization leading to abuses and was abolished. Copyright is on same path.
I'd still say you lack rational thought regarding copyright. In fact, your arguments support copyright more than you realize. Take Kickstarter and Patreon for example. The most successful creative projects there are largely based on copyright's protections. People that have succeeded before and have copyrighted material can build on that for new projects, or build off their success with new projects. How many projects (purely in the creative areas) from total unknowns are successful? Note that I'm excluding projects that offer machines (items with a real or perceived use vs creative works that are meant to be enjoyed as they are)
How come they're based? People who actually care about this stuff only "buy" it to explicitly support creators, the rest pirate it. Exactly same situation would result if copyright were abolished.
But rather than just poke holes in your arguments all day, which is simple enough to do, there are some positions that could be taken to be helpful. Notably,
I personally think the entire "for life of author" clauses are semi-interesting and could be used to address some of the issues you may agree with. I do not agree with the "plus 50/70 years" addendum, although there should be a minimum length. My view is that both of these could be handled by 1 clause - should the original author sell (tr
They advertise it as purely means to prevent "accidental" copying, if you're determined to subvert expiration and copy it somewhere then not only you can do a screenshot but also use modified viewer that will net you original message in pristine form.
So you're fine with producing work and others copying it and selling it? So you're ok working for free? Those are the questions you must answer in the affirmative, or you're actually for copyright. And if you do, since you value your work so little, I have some that needs doing.
Abolishing copyright doesn't lead to work for free. Nonetheless much of creative work is already done based on non-monetary incentives. And most authors already work on strictly work-for-hire basis, with publishers serving as patrons. People are willing to pay for works of art even if access isn't restricted, either as pure donation or to services making access more convenient. And so called "piracy" is the only way of bringing some art stuff to people who can't afford it. If they use only own resources to enjoy it nothing is lost to society. Law must be pragmatic and only pursue issues relevant to society's survival and progress, and maintaining restricted access to some work of art is not a good use of judges' and law enforcement's time.
Copyright was actually a step away from medieval/religious controls.
In "one step forward two steps backwards" sort of way. Copyright is as wrongheaded as slavery. Tracking ownership of intellectual monopolies is about as useless as tracking ownership of people. It shouldn't exist, justification is irrelevant. Whether it's religious control or maintaining monopolies.
I'd claim that what you're saying lacks rational thought. What incentive is there for someone to pour a year's worth of thought into a work? Or how about several hundred or thousand people, such as occurs with movies? Or are you claiming that youtube videos are where we should head? How I hope not. I prefer well-written books that come out more than once a decade (pre 1900 novels were slow and few between) or a few movies a year. And no, I won't switch to youtube, twitch, nor anything similar. What you're advocating for is unrestricted copying and distribution meaning that the value of anything that can be digitized would effectively be 0. Of course you could be preferring live theater and performances, which would still be recorded and streamed, since in your world there's no restrictions on such actions.
In making a work of art the only incentive that works is the process of making it. There must be some logistical allowances in people to cooperate for large scale projects, but they don't require handing out inheritable rents. In fact it only hinders art. If decisions are made by rentier and VCs then only risk-reduced remakes of existing works will be made, no new grounds conquered. Kickstarter and patreon do work for amassing funding, and there you actually pay for the work to be made, not for easing of some restriction. Also, remember, you don't need works of arts for survival or production. So basically involving the state here with heavy handed institution of copyright contradicts Government's raison d'etre. Especially considering that in practice copyright only benefits only the most powerful and vocal artists and companies, and they are the only ones who don't need any help to succeed. They only need copyright to control new entrants so they could safely become lazy without risk of losing their power. This contradicts interests of society.
MacOS is based on Mach microkernel yet somehow its Darwin kernel is mostly monolithic. What gives? Perhaps microkernels made too many difficulties for practical use?
My base assumptions are that there is no logical justification for existence of copyright. And you didn't even try to prove that it does. There never was an attempt ever beside weakly asserting that "it protects authors", yet even that isn't actually proven but taken on faith. The only way such situation can exists is because it was actually rebranding of medieval institution of religious control. I simply don't believe that there is a reason for copyright to exist and to have a reasonable discussion we need to come from this point. Otherwise it's just religious argument. If you want to build things in rational way you can't have hidden base assumptions like "copyright exists to protect authors" or "restrictions on distribution are connected to author's rights" or that "infinite rent from owning copyrights should exist". Those things need to be proven and they weren't. In fact the way things are going are showing those things are not true.
You can find some spoilers for making things work at appdb.winehq.org , if you want to cheat at that part of game :P
This is incorrect. If interests of authors mattered then it would be impossible to transfer copyright, or at least it would be limited. Protecting interests of authors don't imply restrictions on redistribution, as well as ability to transfer it. In practice you are forced to transfer rights and it becomes strictly work for hire, so only publishers actually get to enjoy rent. Even royalties are eliminated by accounting practices known as "hollywood accounting". Basically it strictly creates rent, and even author himself will get sued for distributing it in some way someone doesn't like. I don't think people who originally drafted copyright laws were unaware of such consequences. To them it was not a bug but a feature, because it made access to culture and knowledge restricted to chosen few and allowed very few most popular authors to work less while earning more.
What those non-sequiturs mean? Fact remains that copyright is that just old medieval censorship institution which was originally meant to ensure that only religiously compliant works will get to be published. Later it got repurposed by publishers to ensure monopoly positions for themselves. I'm not convinced that we should base ANYTHING on this institution. People think it supposed promote arts and progress only due to propaganda by those publishers. Real essence of copyright never changed since medieval times, only branding changed.
Copyright is first and foremost monopoly and censorship institution. Calling it anything else would be misrepresentation. Promoting arts and sciences doesn't logically lead to restrictions on exchange of information while censorship and rent-seeking does.
Once again making a book is totally different kind of labor than writing prose for it. There was no connection there until that idea that some publishers should have monopoly to make books with particular content. Monopoly remains a monopoly, no matter the justification. And effort to write a book isn't proportional to number of readers either. Publishers acknowledge it by paying peanuts to most authors.
It won't work because fair price for restriction removal is 0$. And sale is thus still disconnected from development effort.
When you "buy" an app it merely allows you access to it which was artificially restricted before. Doing this costs nearly nothing. So it's basically money for nothing. Yes, development has costs but you're not selling your development effort, but restriction removals, totally different thing. There is no economic mechanism to ensure that compensation is adequate to effort. The app that is used by tens of people isn't necessarily takes 10000 more effort than app used by 100000 of people. As long as this disconnect exists people will always be leery to "buy" apps. From economic perspective sales of "wares" that take no effort or materials, like restriction removals, is almost as bad as unlicensed money printing machines.
Also domestic output might not be high enough and everyone will have to pay 120$ and import anyway before domestic producers have time scale up.
Only outcome of natural progress of market would be move of all useful work to China since labor costs are cheaper there. Either that or equalize living costs in US and China, but nobody would actually let that happen. After all they'd prefer to have all costs higher in US just to show third world trash who is the boss, even though money is just abstraction and it results in weird situation when same amount of dollars can buy a lot better living in a "third world" country than in US.
Trading was always sort of gamble, any deterministic outcomes consistently are prosecuted as "insider trading". Lots of silly stuff affect stock prices and we can't expect people like Musk to be constantly self-conscious about affecting stock price in any way. I don't think forbidding Musk to share his plan to go private is in any way consistent with rule of law.
I think it should work in different way. Works should automatically go into public domain as soon as tax filings confirm that it brought the amount of revenue equal to its production cost + 30% profit. This will ensure that both creators are compensated and that there is no excessive restrictions once they got their fair payment.
Any success of Soviets is caused by Lenin promoting greater meritocracy than before him. Since Bolsheviks didn't discriminate on basis of belonging to "nobility" or whatever more leaders and other skilled cadres were available to them. They even were taking old imperial soldiers and government workers. While white movement apparently caught in old prejudices suffered lack of skilled people. Stalin later dismantled this system out of pure paranoia and ignorance. Similar processes played out for Napoleonic France, Muslim Caliphate and probably in many more cases.