If you want people to follow a rule, that rule has to be seen as reasonable. However, an increasing amount of people are seeing the current copyright regime as unreasonable, and not worth following. Those people will likely get in habits of ignoring these unreasonable laws, and many will continue to do so even if the laws were changed to become reasonable. It's not an easy pattern to reverse, and the media conglomerates seem intent on stubbornly pushing further restrictions that will only further entrench those patterns. To put it simply, if copyright law doesn't bend, it's going to break.
I am advocating doing away with copyright altogether, but shorter duration would be a step in the right direction. In regards to your fair argument, 10 or 20 years is going to be the same as life of the author for the vast majority of works, at least as far as the author's bank account is concerned, and the outliers that continue to make significant amounts of money make enough money in the early years that they've easily recouped their expenses. A fixed term means that it doesn't matter when the author dies, so the average copyright length will be absolute.
I'm talking about the systems currently used in the world. US copyright was never 70 years. It was: 14+14, 28+14, 28+28, life of the author+50 or 75 years (for works for hire, anonymous works, and pseudonymous works), and life of the author+70 years of 95 years. To reiterate, the latter two laws don't go with which number is higher, but rather, are dependent upon a few factors of the work in question. See http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm for details. Your proposed situation may have been the case in other countries, but I can't claim familiarity with them, and they aren't relevant to the system in question and the system I am addressing. Practically speaking, the system you are mentioning is a fixed term with an unusual exception for long-lived authors. There is not good reason for that exception, but it's not going to make a difference in most cases.
First the law would only favor people that live more then 70 years past the time they created whatever it was... basically you'd have to live beyond 90.
No. If a 20 year white woman writes a book today and a 70 year old black man write a book today, they have drastically different terms under life of the author+. Let's assume the white woman would statistically live to be 80, and the black man would live to be 75. Under the current regime, the white woman gets 130 years of copyright protection (60 years of life remaining+70 years), while the black man gets 75 years of protection (5 years of life remaining+70 years). Why should the law protect the white woman more than the black man?
The point is that if you create something like a book or a song you should own that for the rest of your life.
WHY? You haven't presented an explanation for why the author should receive a handout via legal monopoly for their lifetime.
The only reason to want it to end sooner is because you want it for free... again... the looter mentality is impossible to condone.
Can you please quit being an idiot for this conversation? Copyright infringement isn't looting or stealing.
As to why it shouldn't last longer then 20 years. Consult Mark Twain's opinion on the matter. He wrote extensively on copyright law in his day.
While a great writer, he was off on that matter, mostly relying on the broken fruit of labor argument and contending that the only reason to have a limit was because the constituion required it. Perhaps because he was too close to it to speak objectively.
As for your lack of proofreading, it's just at such a bad level that it's very annoying. For example, you spell 'patent' as 'patient' over and over again. It's hard to think of you as anything other than a drooling moron when you make that mistake even after you've been corrected multiple times. I might have some sympathy if English is not your first language, but I find it disrespectful to not put in at least SOME effort.
A lot of money is still made through channels that aren't purely digital. For example, movie theaters. Most people don't have movie theaters in their homes, so if you want the full experience of a film, you need to go through a commercial channel, and said channel would be protected by copyright.
Proprietary software is restricted by EULAs, not just by copyright, and the users don't have the source code. Even if copyright permits noncommercial sharing, the EULA may forbid it.
I think this is addressed by not letting EULAs forbid this behavior in the first place.
Except the new works would be covered under a new copyright. Also, a lot of the remasters look worse. I recall seeing a commercial for the Peter Pan remaster, and it made the animation tricks they used horribly transparent. And we have some stuff like Han shooting first.
Data seems to suggest that authors often do better without a copyright system. Royalties are in practice a false hope that non-superstars will never see any significant money from. Lump sums are generally better. We have data from Germany and England when the former had no effective copyright and the latter did. Germany had lots of books printed cheaply, with the authors getting decent lump sum payments, because their concern was to sell as many copies as they could before competitors had a chance to. England sold fewer books at higher margins, and led authors on with the allure of royalties.
Of course, a lot of Stallman's concerns and hypothetical were rooted in EULAs. While I often find myself in agreement with him, I think it's simpler to just make certain elements of EULAs unenforceable. Another alternative might be that copyright degrades over time. For example, you only get 5 years for the right to prevent derivative works, 10 years for outright copies.
American IP principles? That's a good one. The US had much weaker laws than most of Europe for over a century (Berne convention was 1886, and the US joined in 1988, and we didn't really pass Europe up until the DMCA in 1996). During that period, global demand for US entertainment media rose dramatically. Perhaps some Europeans were paying attention and realized if they had a more permissive culture, they might get their own Hollywood.
Copyright should last at least as long as the life time of the person that made it.
Why? That's a horrible policy, as it add unnecessary discrimination and uncertainty based upon age, gender, race, and many other factors. Why make a law bigoted when we can make a law that treats all people the same? Fixed terms treat everyone the same, and are a hell of a lot easier to figure out.
If I wrote something I want copyright on it for my life time. Furthermore, there is an argument for having the term last no less then 70 or so years.
If I wrote something, I want a big mansion filled with beautiful women, but you can't always get what you want. Also, you might want to elaborate on how there is an argument for having the term last no less than 70 years. I've yet to see an even remotely competent argument for copyright past 20 years.
By the way, I really hope English is not your first language, as your posts are riddled with errors.
Disney would generally fall under masterpieces. They are already highly profitable within 5 years, so we don't need to give them more than 5 years to convince them that it's a worthwhile investment.
True, but media conglomerates winning those battles may end up causing them to lose the war. The Pirate Party and its momentum are arguably due to backlash, and if Big Content hadn't been so oppressive, we likely wouldn't have had so much backlash.
Perhaps you should actually read the summary. The founder of the pirate party is talking about something much larger green party has taken a position on.
No, it is not stealing. It is infringement. They are treated differently by law, and they have drastically different underlying economic arguments.
My solution is not anarchy. My solution is competition. Competition is what we've shifted towards in all but a few areas, with the lone exception being utilities. Utilities are pretty much the textbook example of natural monopolies, while published information is by its nature incredibly resistant to monopolization.
If the system cannot go away, the solution is less protection, with closer to zero being generally better. Within that, Lawrence Lessig's separated things into a matrix of professional/amateur and copies/remix. He holds that amateur remixes would be the freest, and professional copying fitting the closest to traditional contours of copyright. Amateur copying and professional remix would be somewhere in between. His priorities are quite apt IMO.
You are correct that it would be a radical shift, and for that, I've said a transitional period would be appropriate to avoid a great disturbance. However, there needs to be the end goal in rooting out a backwards system that has never worked, being neutral at its best and harmful at its worst.
Again, you make comparisons to theft. Copyright infringement IS NOT THEFT.
And I already told you a better system: doing nothing. It's quite similar to how doing nothing is better than shooting yourself in the foot. You seem to be of the "Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it" mindset. However, that's a poor policy, and if doing something is harmful, which it appears to be in regards to copyright, than doing nothing is better because it is neutral. If you really want to 'do something' to promote the progress, let's add five dollars more to PBS funding. it will have very little effect, but it'd probably be on the helpful side, and thus a better system than copyright.
The alternative is to do nothing, and let things be. Doing nothing is better than having a copyright system, so it is a superior option. I won't say that an even better option can't exist, but that's a different matter entirely.
The root of your problem seems to be your repeated insistence that copying is 'stealing.' It isn't, and realizing that fact is important to having a real conversation on the matter.
And I'm saying we DON'T need something, and IF we find we actually do need something, legal monopolies are NOT the route to take. I'm not saying that we should ditch the copyright and patent systems because we have bits of corruption. I'm saying we should ditch them because they are ass backwards ideas that don't make sense in the modern world. Now, one concern is that we've built a lot of our infrastructure around this medieval practice, so killing it instantly may cause short term problems while a replacement infrastructure emerges. However, that only excuses weaning us off of this outdated practice over a brief period that would allow a decent alternative infrastructure to arise.
That's operating under the assumption that legal monopolies are helpful to creative people and creativity, when the reality seems to be that it results in greater consolidation of big firms that are hindrances to ordinary people aspiring to fit creative roles.
Also, China is a horrible example, and thinking for a second that it makes for a valid comparison shows gross incompetence. They have very little protections for the civil liberties, they have a very different culture and governance, and their GDP per capita is a fraction of most western nations. These factors are orders of magnitude more important than patent policies.
That is the case in practice, although I'm not entirely sure the letter of the law is that way. You would never lose a lawsuit over a chord progression if you had a lawyer that was awake. However, I've heard of threats over just as much by ASCAP towards small venues (who couldn't afford to be caught in a lawsuit even if they won). I see ASCAP as little more than a protection racket these days, and such thugs often don't care too much about the realities of the law.
I'd be pretty impressed by someone who could make four different chords with two sticks, although such an instrument may exist. Also, practically speaking, chord progressions aren't protected by copyright, although that's probably not going to stop the RIAA or ASCAP from threatening to file a frivolous lawsuit if you don't pay into their protection racket.
I'll agree, but this is not the issue covered in this instance. Also, protecting intelligence sources doesn't do much good when said information is already publicly available on a popular website.
The information that needs to remain a state secret is more or less limited to details of ongoing or planned military operations, scientific details of weapons, maybe schematics of sensitive vehicles and buildings. This doesn't fit in those categories, and seems to be simply egg on our face for bad actions. And besides, this information is by no means secret anymore.
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If you want people to follow a rule, that rule has to be seen as reasonable. However, an increasing amount of people are seeing the current copyright regime as unreasonable, and not worth following. Those people will likely get in habits of ignoring these unreasonable laws, and many will continue to do so even if the laws were changed to become reasonable. It's not an easy pattern to reverse, and the media conglomerates seem intent on stubbornly pushing further restrictions that will only further entrench those patterns. To put it simply, if copyright law doesn't bend, it's going to break.
I am advocating doing away with copyright altogether, but shorter duration would be a step in the right direction. In regards to your fair argument, 10 or 20 years is going to be the same as life of the author for the vast majority of works, at least as far as the author's bank account is concerned, and the outliers that continue to make significant amounts of money make enough money in the early years that they've easily recouped their expenses. A fixed term means that it doesn't matter when the author dies, so the average copyright length will be absolute.
I'm talking about the systems currently used in the world. US copyright was never 70 years. It was: 14+14, 28+14, 28+28, life of the author+50 or 75 years (for works for hire, anonymous works, and pseudonymous works), and life of the author+70 years of 95 years. To reiterate, the latter two laws don't go with which number is higher, but rather, are dependent upon a few factors of the work in question. See http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm for details. Your proposed situation may have been the case in other countries, but I can't claim familiarity with them, and they aren't relevant to the system in question and the system I am addressing. Practically speaking, the system you are mentioning is a fixed term with an unusual exception for long-lived authors. There is not good reason for that exception, but it's not going to make a difference in most cases.
No. If a 20 year white woman writes a book today and a 70 year old black man write a book today, they have drastically different terms under life of the author+. Let's assume the white woman would statistically live to be 80, and the black man would live to be 75. Under the current regime, the white woman gets 130 years of copyright protection (60 years of life remaining+70 years), while the black man gets 75 years of protection (5 years of life remaining+70 years). Why should the law protect the white woman more than the black man?
WHY? You haven't presented an explanation for why the author should receive a handout via legal monopoly for their lifetime.
Can you please quit being an idiot for this conversation? Copyright infringement isn't looting or stealing.
While a great writer, he was off on that matter, mostly relying on the broken fruit of labor argument and contending that the only reason to have a limit was because the constituion required it. Perhaps because he was too close to it to speak objectively. As for your lack of proofreading, it's just at such a bad level that it's very annoying. For example, you spell 'patent' as 'patient' over and over again. It's hard to think of you as anything other than a drooling moron when you make that mistake even after you've been corrected multiple times. I might have some sympathy if English is not your first language, but I find it disrespectful to not put in at least SOME effort.
A lot of money is still made through channels that aren't purely digital. For example, movie theaters. Most people don't have movie theaters in their homes, so if you want the full experience of a film, you need to go through a commercial channel, and said channel would be protected by copyright.
Yeah, Lucas was off his meds when he released that version.
I think this is addressed by not letting EULAs forbid this behavior in the first place.
Except the new works would be covered under a new copyright. Also, a lot of the remasters look worse. I recall seeing a commercial for the Peter Pan remaster, and it made the animation tricks they used horribly transparent. And we have some stuff like Han shooting first.
Data seems to suggest that authors often do better without a copyright system. Royalties are in practice a false hope that non-superstars will never see any significant money from. Lump sums are generally better. We have data from Germany and England when the former had no effective copyright and the latter did. Germany had lots of books printed cheaply, with the authors getting decent lump sum payments, because their concern was to sell as many copies as they could before competitors had a chance to. England sold fewer books at higher margins, and led authors on with the allure of royalties.
Of course, a lot of Stallman's concerns and hypothetical were rooted in EULAs. While I often find myself in agreement with him, I think it's simpler to just make certain elements of EULAs unenforceable. Another alternative might be that copyright degrades over time. For example, you only get 5 years for the right to prevent derivative works, 10 years for outright copies.
American IP principles? That's a good one. The US had much weaker laws than most of Europe for over a century (Berne convention was 1886, and the US joined in 1988, and we didn't really pass Europe up until the DMCA in 1996). During that period, global demand for US entertainment media rose dramatically. Perhaps some Europeans were paying attention and realized if they had a more permissive culture, they might get their own Hollywood.
Why? That's a horrible policy, as it add unnecessary discrimination and uncertainty based upon age, gender, race, and many other factors. Why make a law bigoted when we can make a law that treats all people the same? Fixed terms treat everyone the same, and are a hell of a lot easier to figure out.
If I wrote something, I want a big mansion filled with beautiful women, but you can't always get what you want. Also, you might want to elaborate on how there is an argument for having the term last no less than 70 years. I've yet to see an even remotely competent argument for copyright past 20 years.
By the way, I really hope English is not your first language, as your posts are riddled with errors.
Disney would generally fall under masterpieces. They are already highly profitable within 5 years, so we don't need to give them more than 5 years to convince them that it's a worthwhile investment.
True, but media conglomerates winning those battles may end up causing them to lose the war. The Pirate Party and its momentum are arguably due to backlash, and if Big Content hadn't been so oppressive, we likely wouldn't have had so much backlash.
Perhaps you should actually read the summary. The founder of the pirate party is talking about something much larger green party has taken a position on.
No, it is not stealing. It is infringement. They are treated differently by law, and they have drastically different underlying economic arguments.
My solution is not anarchy. My solution is competition. Competition is what we've shifted towards in all but a few areas, with the lone exception being utilities. Utilities are pretty much the textbook example of natural monopolies, while published information is by its nature incredibly resistant to monopolization.
If the system cannot go away, the solution is less protection, with closer to zero being generally better. Within that, Lawrence Lessig's separated things into a matrix of professional/amateur and copies/remix. He holds that amateur remixes would be the freest, and professional copying fitting the closest to traditional contours of copyright. Amateur copying and professional remix would be somewhere in between. His priorities are quite apt IMO.
You are correct that it would be a radical shift, and for that, I've said a transitional period would be appropriate to avoid a great disturbance. However, there needs to be the end goal in rooting out a backwards system that has never worked, being neutral at its best and harmful at its worst.
Again, you make comparisons to theft. Copyright infringement IS NOT THEFT.
And I already told you a better system: doing nothing. It's quite similar to how doing nothing is better than shooting yourself in the foot. You seem to be of the "Something must be done. This is something, therefore we must do it" mindset. However, that's a poor policy, and if doing something is harmful, which it appears to be in regards to copyright, than doing nothing is better because it is neutral. If you really want to 'do something' to promote the progress, let's add five dollars more to PBS funding. it will have very little effect, but it'd probably be on the helpful side, and thus a better system than copyright.
The alternative is to do nothing, and let things be. Doing nothing is better than having a copyright system, so it is a superior option. I won't say that an even better option can't exist, but that's a different matter entirely.
The root of your problem seems to be your repeated insistence that copying is 'stealing.' It isn't, and realizing that fact is important to having a real conversation on the matter.
And I'm saying we DON'T need something, and IF we find we actually do need something, legal monopolies are NOT the route to take. I'm not saying that we should ditch the copyright and patent systems because we have bits of corruption. I'm saying we should ditch them because they are ass backwards ideas that don't make sense in the modern world. Now, one concern is that we've built a lot of our infrastructure around this medieval practice, so killing it instantly may cause short term problems while a replacement infrastructure emerges. However, that only excuses weaning us off of this outdated practice over a brief period that would allow a decent alternative infrastructure to arise.
That's operating under the assumption that legal monopolies are helpful to creative people and creativity, when the reality seems to be that it results in greater consolidation of big firms that are hindrances to ordinary people aspiring to fit creative roles.
Also, China is a horrible example, and thinking for a second that it makes for a valid comparison shows gross incompetence. They have very little protections for the civil liberties, they have a very different culture and governance, and their GDP per capita is a fraction of most western nations. These factors are orders of magnitude more important than patent policies.
If he's legit, then he could bring the economy to a different level. Thinking about the money you could make is very short sighted.
That is the case in practice, although I'm not entirely sure the letter of the law is that way. You would never lose a lawsuit over a chord progression if you had a lawyer that was awake. However, I've heard of threats over just as much by ASCAP towards small venues (who couldn't afford to be caught in a lawsuit even if they won). I see ASCAP as little more than a protection racket these days, and such thugs often don't care too much about the realities of the law.
I'd be pretty impressed by someone who could make four different chords with two sticks, although such an instrument may exist. Also, practically speaking, chord progressions aren't protected by copyright, although that's probably not going to stop the RIAA or ASCAP from threatening to file a frivolous lawsuit if you don't pay into their protection racket.
I'll agree, but this is not the issue covered in this instance. Also, protecting intelligence sources doesn't do much good when said information is already publicly available on a popular website.
The information that needs to remain a state secret is more or less limited to details of ongoing or planned military operations, scientific details of weapons, maybe schematics of sensitive vehicles and buildings. This doesn't fit in those categories, and seems to be simply egg on our face for bad actions. And besides, this information is by no means secret anymore.