So to protect yourself from your own potential stupidity cameras and video recorders would be effectively illegal in public for anyone who can't afford a legal team.
The vast majority of people I know who run open wireless networks are fully aware they're open- coffee shop owners, or techies who think it will give them an excuse when they're caught torrenting stuff.
detailed logs? since when were google pulling the logs off the routers?
Oh I do care a little about linking my online anon pseudonyms to my actual identity since I take (minor) measures to avoid strong links.
But I have no problem posting that info online. hell if selling a car online it would be a given that that info would go up. because it is not private information.
you seem to love the uncertainty line *YOU HAVE NOOOOOOO IDEA WHAT EVIL PLANS THEY WERE HATCHING!!!!111!!!!* but can you actually think of any serious malicious uses because I can't really see google having an interest in stealing peoples forum logins.
Hell the simplest way I can think of to grab the wireless ID's to build a map vs time would be to throw up cain and able or similar in logging mode and record the timestamps for each network which would probably also capture packets off open wireless networks.
There's sensible paranoid and then there's insane paranoid. sensible paranoid means encrypting data and being sensible with security. insane paranoid is ranting about anyone who looks at you funny in the street because looking at your face is a violation of your privacy.
Personally I don't give a shit about facebook and twitter because I actually care about my privacy a little and simply don't use them.
On a related note how do you know I actually intended to share anything on an FTP server I set up? it's quite easy to share folders you didn't intend to share so by that logic browsing any open FTP directory is immoral until you contact the owner, double check with them that they only shared what they intended to share.
in other words whatever you think is wrong is wrong and no consistent or solid justification is needed. If you don't like it then it's wrong and should be punished!
If I freely offer to give you directions to the gas station down the street, and then record the make, model, license plate and VIN number of your car without your knowledge would you have an issue with that? That information is available, right? But most would consider it an invasion of privacy.
the only person I know who I'm sure would consider your example a "violation of privacy" is also a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.
the the make, model, license plate and VIN number of your car which you are driving on the public street is not private information.
where did anyone say they have no right to view a public profile? firing someone for a trivial offhand joke on a public facebook page on the other hand is a different matter.
the little lock symbol you see when connecting to a secure wireless is a clue as is it's conspicuous lack.
In your world cheap walkie talkies would be illegal because someone might be using a pair and be too stupid to understand that anyone else with a similar walkie talkie could be listening in.
with the old phones you had no real options. the devices couldn't be used otherwise.
Wireless routers with the exception of stunningly ancient ones have a handy little dropdown menue where you can select an open or secure setup.
And to add the icing to the cake the "specialized radio scanners" in your example were unusual equipment. My cell phone can listen in to nearby open wireless networks just like pretty much any 10 dollar wireless card in any bog standard laptop.
You have as much privacy on an open wireless network as you have when using a childs toy walkie talkie. if someone else picks up the signal its your own damned fault.
it's not someone spying on you through a peep-hole in your wall. it's you freely choosing to broadcast a live feed of yourself to everyone out on the street.
being too ignorant to realize it doesn't give you the right to brand everyone you broadcast too a peeping tom.
I'm curious- are there any limits on what an employer can require in a contract? particularly when the employer is the government.
could your boss slip it in to the fine print that you can't campaign for the democrats on pain of dismissal?
can they include that you give up your right to be protected from unreasonable search an seizure so that they have the right to have the police search your home periodically?
can they have you sign away your right to a fair trial?
can they have you sign away your right to talk publicly about things they don't approve of?
and if someone publishes a web page you shouldn't be able to just waltz right in and view whatever's on it!
If someone watches you walk around naked while you're in the bathroom that's a violation of your privacy. If someone watches you walk around naked in the middle of the street then they have done nothing to violate your privacy.
people shouldn't be required to secure their communications *effectively* but some kind of symbolic security should be required to expect any kind of privacy.
it works if the target of bullying can inflict any damage and unless you're a quadriplegic that's always possible.
And quit with the bullshit about "staying alive long enough" children don't generally kill each other and if they're the kind of rare psycho who will then curling up into a ball and crying will only make it more likely.
Inflicting damage on the bully will deter them after a handful of attempts. They may keep going long enough to not lose face but after that they'll look for targets which don't bite a chunk out of their arm every time.
Any physical damage inflicted on the target of the bullying in fighting back will happen at most a handful of times, physical damage inflicted due to the target of the bullying curling into a ball and sobbing in a spineless manner will continue to be inflicted indefinitely.
Pussies who stand there and take it crying get picked on forever. The scrawny little guy who reacts to being attacked by going nuts and tearing a strip of skin from the side of his tormentors face will get picked on once and only once.
Back when I was in highschool there was quite a scene after the ambulance arrived one day for the dickhead in the above scenario, he'd tried to pick on someone slightly more than half his height and a quarter his weight, there was quite a spray of blood on the wall. fortunately the teachers knew that the big fucker had earned what happened to him and while the little guy got branded as a psycho nobody ever messed with him ever again.
unless you're physically paralyzed you can always inflict damage of some kind unless you're an idiot who tries to play by Queensberry rules.
The point isn't to win. The point is to make sure that every time someone messes with you they go away from it with a black eye, a broken nose or some other painful or slow to heal injury.
It doesn't matter if you "lose" any particular encounter. If you make sure you hurt them back every single time the bullying stops in no time at all.
As a child standing up to bullies is always the right thing to do.
It doesn't matter if you get hurt, it doesn't matter if you lose.
So you want to send a copy of an image to someone and then force them to destroy that copy? You know what would be easier? Not sending it to them if you're so intent on keeping people from seeing your work.
Their only mistake was to make the archive publicly accesible.
They have every right to keep an archive. If you put your work up on your server and have it send copies to anyone with a web browser then you have no right to stop them from archiving what you send them.
We can only wish that people in decades past had archived works so that we wouldn't have lost so many early films,shows and other parts of our culture.
Who proposed abolishing anything? Saying a system has massive serious problems is very different from saying it should be done away with.
It's pretty easy to prove a negative: "is this persons arm not broken" X-ray it and see.
"Is this person sane?" Have a third party(doctors who have not had previous contact with the patient) assess patients periodically and to ensure reasonable assesment randomly insert subects from a test set who are sane or who are intentionally exibiting symptoms and require a reasonably low false positive/ false negative rate.
The massive problem shown was that once they had decided on their diagnosis everything the sane person did was seen through the lense of that diagnosis. Keeping a diary was seen as "writing behavior" and considered pathological.
During their initial psychiatric assessment, they claimed to be hearing voices of the same sex as the patient which were often unclear, but which seemed to pronounce the words "empty", "hollow", "thud" and nothing else. These words were chosen as they vaguely suggest some sort of existential crisis and for the lack of any published literature referencing them as psychotic symptoms. No other psychiatric symptoms were claimed. If admitted, the pseudopatients were instructed to "act normally," report that they felt fine and no longer heard voices.
The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology
That is the problem right there.
of course there was also the slightly less serious matter of lack of respect for patients.
Rosenhan and the other pseudopatients reported an overwhelming sense of depersonalization, severe invasion of privacy, and boredom while hospitalized. Their possessions were searched randomly, and they were sometimes observed while using the toilet. They reported that though the staff seemed to be well-meaning, they generally objectified and dehumanized the patients, often discussing patients at length in their presence as though they were not there, and avoiding direct interaction with patients except as strictly necessary to perform official duties. Some attendants were prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when other staff were not present. A group of bored patients waiting outside the cafeteria for lunch early were said by a doctor to his students to be experiencing "oral-acquisitive" psychiatric symptoms.
and just as a bit of icing on the cake he tried another one after that
For this experiment, Rosenhan used a well-known research and teaching hospital, whose staff had heard of the results of the initial study but claimed that similar errors could not be made at their institution. Rosenhan arranged with them that during a three month period, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to gain admission and the staff would rate every incoming patient as to the likelihood they were an impostor.Out of 193 patients, 41 were considered to be impostors and a further 42 were considered suspect. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients and all patients suspected as impostors by the hospital staff were genuine patients. This led to a conclusion that "any diagnostic process that lends itself too readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one".
If the staff, once considering the posibility that patients could be fine, could believe that so many regular patients might be completely sane (people who might otherwise have been stuck their indefinitely) then their diagnosis and assesment techniques have some serious serious problems that need to be fixed.
Funnily enough the few psychology grads I've talked to seem to think that what Rosenhan did was somehow "unfair" despite it being a perfectly fair experiment.
cancer is by it's very nature your own cells killing you. no apology is in order. Man up. NOW.
nukes? gasoline? people seem to have this belief that it's all modern things and technology which cause cancer. Radiation from randon from granite is responsible for the vast majority of the background radiation you recieve and the vast majority of cancers are more to do with perfectly natural carcinogens in our environments.
Actually it was a pretty mice proof that they they will refuse to believe you're sane even if you are.
If you walk into a hospital and complain of symptoms that match having a broken wrist but you don't actually have a broken wrist and they admit you with the diagnosis of having a broken wrist then that's no problem.
If they then refuse to believe that their initial diagnosis could be wrong and never correct the mistake, and put you through unpleasent treatments all because they refuse to consider that their initial diagnosis could have been wrong then the system is very very broken.
Oh I'm in comp sci now and we still have to do tests on paper. If anything we do use the computer labs for tests less than most of the rest of the science faculty.
Though to be fair we're also far more likely to figure out how to bork the system to cheat which would only be fair in a security exam.
So they don't have child porn but by that point nobody likes them and you can send them to jail for having the image from a popup in their temporary internet files.
fantasic! you know what would be easier? if we just did away with these court things. they're really just a hassel anyway.
another solution to your "Short extension" thing would be to only allow renewal for the next period. Period 0: can register any time between 0 and 5 years to extend to 10. Period 1: can register any time between 5 and 10 years to extend to 15. Period 2: can register any time between 10 and 15 years to extend to 20. etc
No need for some oddball system that penalizes people for being prompt and confiscates time they've paid for. After all the whole idea is to merely make sure they still have any interest in retaining copyright.
btw all this does incur a significant overhead since any body trying to handle these registrations would have to handle hundreds of millions of registrations and re-registrations every year along with challenges and complications.
1:Very short automatic copyright.(so that authors don't have to be ultra secretive for fear that a rough draft will be published before they can copyright it) 2:Register by sending a clean unencrypted copy to some official body like a deposit libray to get a 5 or 10 year copyright 3:Some time in the last year or 2 you need to pay a (very small) fee to extend the copyright if you still have any interest in it. 4:Every 5 years pay again with the fee increasing exponentialy so that it won't put someone out of pocket at all to hang on to something for a few decades but disney would have to pay billions to hang on to mickey after a century. (for example for a first time fee of 1 cent and an increase of (*10) each renewal it would cost you $11.11 bucks to hang on to the copyright for 25 years but over a billion to hang on to it for 60)
5:Treat copyright the same as any of those other imaginary things like pension funds or account balances and allow the owners to leave them to their widows and children. You've done the work, even if the check for work you've done arrives after your death it still belongs to your estate, your employers don't suddenly get to not pay because they delayed enough, similarly with copyright they've done the work, they earned the copyright already, it's not dependendent on them creating even more works. They're getting paid for what they've already done.
Upon his death he leaves the house to whoever he wants, but he cannot leave his income to that person because after he dies the company won't be paying him anymore.
Not true. If you die before you retire your pension fund will normally be paid to your beneficiaries. few authors actually retire at 65, many keep writing until they die. Copyright isn't very much like a pension though- there is no balance, only the time left on the copyright. With a pension your beneficiaries get the balance. And a pension isn't a real object either, it's nothing more than a set of written promises and imagination yet it is still an asset that can be given to someone. With a copyright why shouldn't they get the balance of time left?
Wether you die before or after the check arrived you still earned the money, why shouldn't you get to choose who it goes to?
So really this is just another "fuck authors" idea.
so a corporation cannot print and sell a 50 year old book without paying the author but someone can scan the book and put it online legally.
That could get messy, if I have ads on my blog and make 20 bucks a month profit and I post some scans am I making a profit by drawing more traffic and thus covered under commercial use? plus the line between what an individual is doing and a corporation is doing can get blurred when corps offer freebies etc to people to take certain actions.
As for your odd thing about only getting a short extension if you renew too soon and only the author being able to extend them you're still in "fuck authors" mode there. Just treat copyright like any of those other imaginary things like pensions, money owed to them and the numbers stored on the banks computer which tell people what their balance is and let them sell them, pass on their ownership or give them away how they choose.
Hell if you try any of your little plans all that will happen is that authors who are elderly or infirm will suddenly have amazingly tallented sons, daughters, husbands or wives and who is to say they can't "coach" their family members on how to write well or "offer style advice and editing" especially considering how many children of authors really do go on to be writers themselves.
watchmen: I got my copy new from the bookstore a couple of years ago, reprints.
Should someone get paid for life+70 years (which would probably mean the life of author + life of their children + most of the life of their grandchildren) for, say, 1 year of labor? Anyway, should a dead author be paid? Most of the dead people do not get salary or pension or any money at all, why should authors be different?
oh I agree that the current eternal copyright setup is stupid but so is a copyright term like 5 years that could very easily be shorter than the time it takes to create a decent work.
Should copyright last after death? if it didn't then it would lead to age discrimination- old or sick authors would only be able to get a pittance for publishing deals because if they keeled over too soon the publisher would lose their copyright immediately.
A term which ignores the current mortal status of the writer really does make sense.
And following on from that if the copyright still exists then it has to belong to someone, should it just revert to the publishing company, why? or should it be treated like any other asset and be passed on to whoever the owner wants it to go to?
Did you ever inherit a house, a car or anything else from anyone? If so: what did you ever do to earn them?
Why should copyright immediately revert to the public upon the owners death any more than ownership of a house? The spouse or children of the deceased didn't do any more to deserve the house than the spouse or child of a writer did to deserve the copyright. why should the former get the income from renting out the property?
5 year copyright with the ability to renew it, however, the renewal price would increase each time you renew it.
As long as the renewal fee starts small and goes exponential that sounds perfectly reasonable.
I agree that current copyright law is a bit insane and yet some of the knee jerk "what did they do to deserve anything" approach is even worse on here. Copyright reform, not "lets fuck the authors".
Also, how could big media rip off authors? I mean if the work enters public domain then the corporation cannot demand payment for the book, or rather it can, but I don't have to pay it.
EA games new release! The Wheel of Time! The game! Fox Studios new release, Watchmen, the movie, with no royalties paid to the authors! etc etc etc Also print books still sell quite well so they could of course just print a book and sell it without any royalties to pay.
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nowhere did I employ penguin logic.
If you create an open wifi hotspot then you create an open wifi hotspot.
seems pretty logical.
Ah so anything people make a fuss about is immoral.
gotcha.
This is all about open public WiFi hotspots because that's what you create when you set your wireless network to "open".
So to protect yourself from your own potential stupidity cameras and video recorders would be effectively illegal in public for anyone who can't afford a legal team.
Great.
The vast majority of people I know who run open wireless networks are fully aware they're open- coffee shop owners, or techies who think it will give them an excuse when they're caught torrenting stuff.
detailed logs?
since when were google pulling the logs off the routers?
Oh I do care a little about linking my online anon pseudonyms to my actual identity since I take (minor) measures to avoid strong links.
But I have no problem posting that info online.
hell if selling a car online it would be a given that that info would go up.
because it is not private information.
you seem to love the uncertainty line *YOU HAVE NOOOOOOO IDEA WHAT EVIL PLANS THEY WERE HATCHING!!!!111!!!!* but can you actually think of any serious malicious uses because I can't really see google having an interest in stealing peoples forum logins.
Hell the simplest way I can think of to grab the wireless ID's to build a map vs time would be to throw up cain and able or similar in logging mode and record the timestamps for each network which would probably also capture packets off open wireless networks.
There's sensible paranoid and then there's insane paranoid.
sensible paranoid means encrypting data and being sensible with security.
insane paranoid is ranting about anyone who looks at you funny in the street because looking at your face is a violation of your privacy.
Personally I don't give a shit about facebook and twitter because I actually care about my privacy a little and simply don't use them.
On a related note how do you know I actually intended to share anything on an FTP server I set up?
it's quite easy to share folders you didn't intend to share so by that logic browsing any open FTP directory is immoral until you contact the owner, double check with them that they only shared what they intended to share.
in other words whatever you think is wrong is wrong and no consistent or solid justification is needed.
If you don't like it then it's wrong and should be punished!
If I freely offer to give you directions to the gas station down the street, and then record the make, model, license plate and VIN number of your car without your knowledge would you have an issue with that? That information is available, right? But most would consider it an invasion of privacy.
the only person I know who I'm sure would consider your example a "violation of privacy" is also a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic.
the the make, model, license plate and VIN number of your car which you are driving on the public street is not private information.
where did anyone say they have no right to view a public profile?
firing someone for a trivial offhand joke on a public facebook page on the other hand is a different matter.
the little lock symbol you see when connecting to a secure wireless is a clue as is it's conspicuous lack.
In your world cheap walkie talkies would be illegal because someone might be using a pair and be too stupid to understand that anyone else with a similar walkie talkie could be listening in.
with the old phones you had no real options.
the devices couldn't be used otherwise.
Wireless routers with the exception of stunningly ancient ones have a handy little dropdown menue where you can select an open or secure setup.
And to add the icing to the cake the "specialized radio scanners" in your example were unusual equipment.
My cell phone can listen in to nearby open wireless networks just like pretty much any 10 dollar wireless card in any bog standard laptop.
You have as much privacy on an open wireless network as you have when using a childs toy walkie talkie.
if someone else picks up the signal its your own damned fault.
it's not someone spying on you through a peep-hole in your wall.
it's you freely choosing to broadcast a live feed of yourself to everyone out on the street.
being too ignorant to realize it doesn't give you the right to brand everyone you broadcast too a peeping tom.
I'm curious- are there any limits on what an employer can require in a contract?
particularly when the employer is the government.
could your boss slip it in to the fine print that you can't campaign for the democrats on pain of dismissal?
can they include that you give up your right to be protected from unreasonable search an seizure so that they have the right to have the police search your home periodically?
can they have you sign away your right to a fair trial?
can they have you sign away your right to talk publicly about things they don't approve of?
and if someone publishes a web page you shouldn't be able to just waltz right in and view whatever's on it!
If someone watches you walk around naked while you're in the bathroom that's a violation of your privacy.
If someone watches you walk around naked in the middle of the street then they have done nothing to violate your privacy.
people shouldn't be required to secure their communications *effectively* but some kind of symbolic security should be required to expect any kind of privacy.
it works if the target of bullying can inflict any damage and unless you're a quadriplegic that's always possible.
And quit with the bullshit about "staying alive long enough" children don't generally kill each other and if they're the kind of rare psycho who will then curling up into a ball and crying will only make it more likely.
Inflicting damage on the bully will deter them after a handful of attempts.
They may keep going long enough to not lose face but after that they'll look for targets which don't bite a chunk out of their arm every time.
Any physical damage inflicted on the target of the bullying in fighting back will happen at most a handful of times, physical damage inflicted due to the target of the bullying curling into a ball and sobbing in a spineless manner will continue to be inflicted indefinitely.
Pussies who stand there and take it crying get picked on forever.
The scrawny little guy who reacts to being attacked by going nuts and tearing a strip of skin from the side of his tormentors face will get picked on once and only once.
Back when I was in highschool there was quite a scene after the ambulance arrived one day for the dickhead in the above scenario, he'd tried to pick on someone slightly more than half his height and a quarter his weight, there was quite a spray of blood on the wall.
fortunately the teachers knew that the big fucker had earned what happened to him and while the little guy got branded as a psycho nobody ever messed with him ever again.
unless you're physically paralyzed you can always inflict damage of some kind unless you're an idiot who tries to play by Queensberry rules.
This is the error so many doormats make.
The point isn't to win.
The point is to make sure that every time someone messes with you they go away from it with a black eye, a broken nose or some other painful or slow to heal injury.
It doesn't matter if you "lose" any particular encounter.
If you make sure you hurt them back every single time the bullying stops in no time at all.
As a child standing up to bullies is always the right thing to do.
It doesn't matter if you get hurt, it doesn't matter if you lose.
So you want to send a copy of an image to someone and then force them to destroy that copy?
You know what would be easier?
Not sending it to them if you're so intent on keeping people from seeing your work.
Their only mistake was to make the archive publicly accesible.
They have every right to keep an archive.
If you put your work up on your server and have it send copies to anyone with a web browser then you have no right to stop them from archiving what you send them.
We can only wish that people in decades past had archived works so that we wouldn't have lost so many early films,shows and other parts of our culture.
Who proposed abolishing anything?
Saying a system has massive serious problems is very different from saying it should be done away with.
It's pretty easy to prove a negative:
"is this persons arm not broken"
X-ray it and see.
"Is this person sane?"
Have a third party(doctors who have not had previous contact with the patient) assess patients periodically and to ensure reasonable assesment randomly insert subects from a test set who are sane or who are intentionally exibiting symptoms and require a reasonably low false positive/ false negative rate.
The massive problem shown was that once they had decided on their diagnosis everything the sane person did was seen through the lense of that diagnosis.
Keeping a diary was seen as "writing behavior" and considered pathological.
During their initial psychiatric assessment, they claimed to be hearing voices of the same sex as the patient which were often unclear, but which seemed to pronounce the words "empty", "hollow", "thud" and nothing else. These words were chosen as they vaguely suggest some sort of existential crisis and for the lack of any published literature referencing them as psychotic symptoms. No other psychiatric symptoms were claimed. If admitted, the pseudopatients were instructed to "act normally," report that they felt fine and no longer heard voices.
The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology
That is the problem right there.
of course there was also the slightly less serious matter of lack of respect for patients.
Rosenhan and the other pseudopatients reported an overwhelming sense of depersonalization, severe invasion of privacy, and boredom while hospitalized. Their possessions were searched randomly, and they were sometimes observed while using the toilet. They reported that though the staff seemed to be well-meaning, they generally objectified and dehumanized the patients, often discussing patients at length in their presence as though they were not there, and avoiding direct interaction with patients except as strictly necessary to perform official duties. Some attendants were prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when other staff were not present. A group of bored patients waiting outside the cafeteria for lunch early were said by a doctor to his students to be experiencing "oral-acquisitive" psychiatric symptoms.
and just as a bit of icing on the cake he tried another one after that
For this experiment, Rosenhan used a well-known research and teaching hospital, whose staff had heard of the results of the initial study but claimed that similar errors could not be made at their institution. Rosenhan arranged with them that during a three month period, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to gain admission and the staff would rate every incoming patient as to the likelihood they were an impostor.Out of 193 patients, 41 were considered to be impostors and a further 42 were considered suspect. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients and all patients suspected as impostors by the hospital staff were genuine patients. This led to a conclusion that "any diagnostic process that lends itself too readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one".
If the staff, once considering the posibility that patients could be fine, could believe that so many regular patients might be completely sane (people who might otherwise have been stuck their indefinitely) then their diagnosis and assesment techniques have some serious serious problems that need to be fixed.
Funnily enough the few psychology grads I've talked to seem to think that what Rosenhan did was somehow "unfair" despite it being a perfectly fair experiment.
oh grow up you pussy.
cancer is by it's very nature your own cells killing you.
no apology is in order.
Man up. NOW.
nukes? gasoline? people seem to have this belief that it's all modern things and technology which cause cancer.
Radiation from randon from granite is responsible for the vast majority of the background radiation you recieve and the vast majority of cancers are more to do with perfectly natural carcinogens in our environments.
Actually it was a pretty mice proof that they they will refuse to believe you're sane even if you are.
If you walk into a hospital and complain of symptoms that match having a broken wrist but you don't actually have a broken wrist and they admit you with the diagnosis of having a broken wrist then that's no problem.
If they then refuse to believe that their initial diagnosis could be wrong and never correct the mistake, and put you through unpleasent treatments all because they refuse to consider that their initial diagnosis could have been wrong then the system is very very broken.
Oh I'm in comp sci now and we still have to do tests on paper.
If anything we do use the computer labs for tests less than most of the rest of the science faculty.
Though to be fair we're also far more likely to figure out how to bork the system to cheat which would only be fair in a security exam.
So they don't have child porn but by that point nobody likes them and you can send them to jail for having the image from a popup in their temporary internet files.
fantasic!
you know what would be easier?
if we just did away with these court things. they're really just a hassel anyway.
another solution to your "Short extension" thing would be to only allow renewal for the next period.
Period 0: can register any time between 0 and 5 years to extend to 10.
Period 1: can register any time between 5 and 10 years to extend to 15.
Period 2: can register any time between 10 and 15 years to extend to 20.
etc
No need for some oddball system that penalizes people for being prompt and confiscates time they've paid for.
After all the whole idea is to merely make sure they still have any interest in retaining copyright.
btw all this does incur a significant overhead since any body trying to handle these registrations would have to handle hundreds of millions of registrations and re-registrations every year along with challenges and complications.
1:Very short automatic copyright.(so that authors don't have to be ultra secretive for fear that a rough draft will be published before they can copyright it)
2:Register by sending a clean unencrypted copy to some official body like a deposit libray to get a 5 or 10 year copyright
3:Some time in the last year or 2 you need to pay a (very small) fee to extend the copyright if you still have any interest in it.
4:Every 5 years pay again with the fee increasing exponentialy so that it won't put someone out of pocket at all to hang on to something for a few decades but disney would have to pay billions to hang on to mickey after a century.
(for example for a first time fee of 1 cent and an increase of (*10) each renewal it would cost you $11.11 bucks to hang on to the copyright for 25 years but over a billion to hang on to it for 60)
5:Treat copyright the same as any of those other imaginary things like pension funds or account balances and allow the owners to leave them to their widows and children.
You've done the work, even if the check for work you've done arrives after your death it still belongs to your estate, your employers don't suddenly get to not pay because they delayed enough, similarly with copyright they've done the work, they earned the copyright already, it's not dependendent on them creating even more works.
They're getting paid for what they've already done.
Upon his death he leaves the house to whoever he wants, but he cannot leave his income to that person because after he dies the company won't be paying him anymore.
Not true.
If you die before you retire your pension fund will normally be paid to your beneficiaries.
few authors actually retire at 65, many keep writing until they die.
Copyright isn't very much like a pension though- there is no balance, only the time left on the copyright.
With a pension your beneficiaries get the balance.
And a pension isn't a real object either, it's nothing more than a set of written promises and imagination yet it is still an asset that can be given to someone.
With a copyright why shouldn't they get the balance of time left?
Wether you die before or after the check arrived you still earned the money, why shouldn't you get to choose who it goes to?
So really this is just another "fuck authors" idea.
so a corporation cannot print and sell a 50 year old book without paying the author but someone can scan the book and put it online legally.
That could get messy, if I have ads on my blog and make 20 bucks a month profit and I post some scans am I making a profit by drawing more traffic and thus covered under commercial use? plus the line between what an individual is doing and a corporation is doing can get blurred when corps offer freebies etc to people to take certain actions.
As for your odd thing about only getting a short extension if you renew too soon and only the author being able to extend them you're still in "fuck authors" mode there. Just treat copyright like any of those other imaginary things like pensions, money owed to them and the numbers stored on the banks computer which tell people what their balance is and let them sell them, pass on their ownership or give them away how they choose.
Hell if you try any of your little plans all that will happen is that authors who are elderly or infirm will suddenly have amazingly tallented sons, daughters, husbands or wives and who is to say they can't "coach" their family members on how to write well or "offer style advice and editing" especially considering how many children of authors really do go on to be writers themselves.
watchmen:
I got my copy new from the bookstore a couple of years ago, reprints.
Should someone get paid for life+70 years (which would probably mean the life of author + life of their children + most of the life of their grandchildren) for, say, 1 year of labor?
Anyway, should a dead author be paid? Most of the dead people do not get salary or pension or any money at all, why should authors be different?
oh I agree that the current eternal copyright setup is stupid but so is a copyright term like 5 years that could very easily be shorter than the time it takes to create a decent work.
Should copyright last after death?
if it didn't then it would lead to age discrimination- old or sick authors would only be able to get a pittance for publishing deals because if they keeled over too soon the publisher would lose their copyright immediately.
A term which ignores the current mortal status of the writer really does make sense.
And following on from that if the copyright still exists then it has to belong to someone, should it just revert to the publishing company, why?
or should it be treated like any other asset and be passed on to whoever the owner wants it to go to?
Did you ever inherit a house, a car or anything else from anyone?
If so: what did you ever do to earn them?
Why should copyright immediately revert to the public upon the owners death any more than ownership of a house?
The spouse or children of the deceased didn't do any more to deserve the house than the spouse or child of a writer did to deserve the copyright.
why should the former get the income from renting out the property?
5 year copyright with the ability to renew it, however, the renewal price would increase each time you renew it.
As long as the renewal fee starts small and goes exponential that sounds perfectly reasonable.
I agree that current copyright law is a bit insane and yet some of the knee jerk "what did they do to deserve anything" approach is even worse on here.
Copyright reform, not "lets fuck the authors".
Also, how could big media rip off authors? I mean if the work enters public domain then the corporation cannot demand payment for the book, or rather it can, but I don't have to pay it.
EA games new release! The Wheel of Time! The game! Fox Studios new release, Watchmen, the movie, with no royalties paid to the authors! etc etc etc
Also print books still sell quite well so they could of course just print a book and sell it without any royalties to pay.