Some things are useless after a few years, some things cost megabucks to make and payoff slowly.
To be honest, in 99.44% of cases, you're going to make the vast majority of all the money you will ever make from a work, almost immediately. For example, most ticket sales for a movie occur within the first week or two of its release in theathers. Most DVD sales of that movie occur within the first week or two of its release in stores. And by most, I mean 80-90%. The remaining years and years and years are just to wring out the small amount that's left. IIRC, the average value for a given author of the CTEA extension in the US from life+50 to life+70 (or 75 to 95) was a nickel.
Some works, of course, and I mean a very very rare few, are worth incredible amounts for very long spans of time. But making one of those works is about as common as winning the lottery. While the lottery winners might like their situation, I think it's more important to deal with the big picture, and that means with a hell of a lot of works that are worthless, and a small amount that are reasonable valuable, but still not super-valuable.
better enforcement
Against whom? I for one would like to see copyright no longer be applied against ordinary people acting noncommercially. It's not as though it's respected in that field anyway. Businesses and commercial contexts would still be relevant, though.
It is equally reasonable to set the copyright period for 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, 50 years. They all are someone arbitrary. It's clearly unreasonable to set it for 0 years and clearly unreasonable to set it to "forever and one day". (Well.. at least most people would agree to that- there are folks on both ends who feel 0 years or "forever" are emminantly reasonable).
The problem is there is no obvious way to measure this and pick a rational value where we get the most creative work of the highest quality for the lowest price.
First, copyright isn't meant to be reasonable. It's a utilitarian system, that's simply meant to provide the greatest benefit to the public. Who else might happen to benefit, and how much, and whether they might benefit more or less under some other system, is totally irrelevant, save for how it affects the goal of providing the greatest benefit to the public.
Second, it is measurable, in that copyright only works as an economic incentive. Copyrights won't make you famous, or satisfy your artistic desires -- they will only let you monopolize the economic value of the work. This is pretty quantifiable as it happens. We can study the costs and profits of works en masse and work out just how rapidly they turn a profit, how much of a profit, etc. We can also see efficient uses of the works that are desirable, but which don't generate enough of a profit to be worth it to the copyright holder, or which he dislikes for other reasons. We can limit the scope of the monopoly to account for this so that these beneficial uses can still go on even without the copyright holder.
IIRC, the way it turns out, we end up with a term length of somewhere around 15 years from publication, formalities, and extensive exceptions and fair use provisions. There have actually been some nice academic studies documenting this, and as copyright increasingly becomes an interesting subject, there are more and more of them.
Literacy has nothing to do with it. If you're writing books, then whether the market of literate people is large or small, competitors will affect you. If you're writing plays, then literacy isn't relevant, since the market has more to do with the audience than the performers.
I agree that it's silly to be disdainful of artists who want to make money, but OTOH, if an artist is willing to work for free (i.e. he isn't in it for the money), then I am fully prepared to let him. And why shouldn't I be? Artists who are in it for the money are exhibiting greed. The public who wants things for free exhibit the exact same greed. Neither is morally superior to the other.
It's not even to encourage the artists to create. Never, during the whole of human history, has there been difficulty in getting people to participate in creative works. There are going to be people who want to make music, paintings, movies, and books, even if there's no reward but fame.
Well, no. It is an encouragement. It's just not the only encouragement. Copyright doesn't function as an incentive in the realm of fame, only economic value. If fame is enough of an incentive for a given author, then it's wasteful to give him the unnecessary incentive of a copyright as well. If it is not enough of a reward, then a copyright would be appropriate (though it should be limited so that it isn't overly large and thus also wasteful in part). It's tough to make this determination, but system such as formalities do a decent job, and should be readopted in order to avoid public waste and make the copyright system more efficient.
The real question, I think, is whether it's actually a problem at all. In November 1933, alcohol was a problem in the US. The next month, Prohibition was repealed, and it wasn't a problem any more.
The current situation is pretty analagous. Almost no one had respect for Prohibition, that disrespect for one stupid law led to disrespect for other laws, widespread corruption, powerful criminal organizations, etc. Well, pretty much no one now has respect for copyright law, at least in certain contexts (e.g. P2P downloading). This will have, and I think is having, a corrosive effect on other laws which are more desirable. If copyright were really all that important, then it might be worth fighting for. For example, enforcing civil rights laws despite their unpopularity in the 50's and 60's. But copyright is hardly on that level. While I don't think that copyright abolition is called for, getting rid of copyright laws that are ignored anyway, would be a good start. So, for example, make it legal for natural persons to do anything noncomercially that would otherwise be infringing. Then copyright is only left as being useful against those who want to make money, and organizations and corporate entities. Since social norms haven't gotten to the point where they're not expected to respect these laws either, voluntary compliance will be a lot easier. But in the areas where people feel that the law isn't relevant or just or applicable, why should they be wrong? The law is the servant of the people after all, and again, this isn't some civil rights issue. Copyright is a utilitarian monopoly meant to serve the people.
My biggest argument for this lies in the fact that different forms of intellectually property are not treated fairly and equally. Why should the author (and heirs) of copyrighted song benefit for 70 years after his death (and in perpetuity through renewals), while the author (and heirs) of a patent for a fusion reactor containment system only be allowed to profit for a total of 20 years after the filing of the patent???
Well that's just idiotic.
Why don't we allow people to buy uranium just as easily as we allow them to buy copper? They're both just elements, after all.
The reason is because they're radically different. Patents and copyrights do not overlap; they pertain to totally different things. Giving them a stupid and misleading collective name (i.e. 'intellectual property') does not change the fact that they are different. The subject matters are different, the scope of the right is different, the requirements to get the right are different. They are very difficult to compare at all, in fact. This is unavoidable, because it's in the nature of the thing.
Pretty much the only similarity is in the most fundamental purpose, which in both cases is to promote the public good. Of course, other forms of IP don't even share that. Trademarks only partially do, and trade secrets or publicity rights don't have the public good in mind at all.
Really, your whole suggestion there, it's just really stupid. (And incidentally, you can't author a fusion reactor, but you can invent one. You even got that wrong.)
Setting aside that everyone would just use exclusive licenses as a condition of employment, achieving exactly the same result as assignments or works made for hire, you really are underestimating the importance of publishers. Music labels finance musicians, investing in a work that the musicians couldn't afford to create on their own. They can provide useful help for musicians in the form of constructive criticism (c.f. the relationship between authors and editors, where the former really does need the help of the latter). They can help provide skills and contacts for musicians that the musicians haven't got on their own. And they do help promote songs and albums, which is important, because they don't sell themselves as a rule.
Stop being such an ass. Creators need publishers in order to live up to their full potential as creators. Otherwise they're stuck doing two jobs, neither one of them as well as they could if they concentrated on one. They are both important lines of work, and neither should automatically be disrespected.
It sounds awful. Limited copyrights are no substitute for the public domain, which is superior in every way.
Specifically responding to your points:
1. If an author doesn't care about his work enough to comply with applicable formalities, then he should get no rights at all, and the work should be in the public domain. Copyright is meant to serve the public interest in part by providing an artificial economic incentive to authors. An author who doesn't care about his work enough to take simple but significant steps to get a copyright is very likely one who isn't incentivized by a copyright. Thus, there's no reason to give him anything at all, since he pretty certainly would have created the work regardless, because the other, natural, incentives were sufficient.
2. This fails for basically the same reason; when a copyright isn't an incentive, it should never be granted. Formalities are the best system we've got for determining when copyright is or isn't an incentive.
3-5. Price controls are pretty dumb, especially since a work might have a variety of prices for different markets. For example, a DVD of a movie might retail for $20, but the right to broadcast that movie on TV might be worth a small fortune.
6. Again, since only the initial term is likely to provide any incentive to the author at all, that's all that is needed. There's nothing inherently desirable about 'copyleft,' and I can't imagine why you think it would be some sort of panacea.
7. Awful. Terms should be as short as possible, highly granular (i.e. many very short terms are better than few longer terms, even if the maximum overall term length is the same for both), and of known length so that they can be planned around by the author (who knows how long he's got) and third parties (who know when they can start using a particular work).
Is one that only allows copyrights to be owned by people, not corporations.
I don't really see what good that does.
Personally, I have a simpler definition. The ideal copyright law is the one that best serves the public interest by promoting the progress of science. Whether it should include this exception or that one, or last for a term of so many years, or some other amount, or whatever, should be based on how well it serves the public interest in as quantifiable a way as possible.
I hope you get burglerized tonight. Since a thief could obviously think that why buy a stereo system when I can just jack this guys house... You are scary indeed.
Certainly a thief could think that. But then, the entire notion of property (beyond what you can personally maintain control of in a 'might makes right' sort of way) is artificial too. It's backed up by the idea of mutual respect for property (i.e. it behooves you to respect others' property in order to avoid having widespread disrespect for property that could work against you if others followed your lead) and organized systems to defend it (e.g. a police force, courts, prisons, etc. which follow certain rules with regard to property rights). So a would-be thief has to decide which is more in his interests: stealing or not. Generally the system is weighed to discourage the former and encourage the latter.
But none of this makes property rights generally any sort of an inherent right, just as copyrights are not an inherent right. It's all artificial. And it's all well and good, so long as it generally serves the public good. Of course, even in the world of real property, what ultimately serves the public good, and what is the law, may conflict with what uneducated sorts such as yourself, apparently, think about how things work. For example, if I had a plot of land, and someone came along and tried to take it from me, then the law will support that person under the right circumstances, the police will escort me off of what I might still think of as my own land, etc.
Honestly, how you can misread my posts all the time is beyond me. I've never said I was against the idea of copyright, or against particular implementations of it. I'm just debunking the silly idea that authors are naturally entitled to copyrights or naturally have copyrights. The truth is that they only get copyrights at all when it serves the public interest to give them copyrights, and this will not always be the case, either for copyrights generally or a specific degree of copyright compared with another.
That is that you have a slight break with the realities of the value prospect of a persons work, talent, time, and investment to produce a product that while not physical in form, still has significant value none the less.
Oh, I know it has value. If a work was valueless, as most are, then no one would want to make unauthorized copies of it in the first place. What I'm saying is that in the case of creative works, the creator does not have an inherent right to monopolize that value merely because he's the creator. He may have an artificial right to do so, but that's something he has to be given, rather than something he naturally has.
SO what if your neighbor's house went up in value?
It means that when you spent money, it not only increased the value of your house, but also the value of the house next door. Since that increase in value is attributable to you, not the neighbor, if there was a natural right to that value by the person responsible for it, you would have a right to to get money from your neighbor if he sold his house. But in the real world, you don't. This casts great doubt on your apparent position that creating value goes hand in hand with a natural right to it in all circumstances.
If you want access to it any time you want it, you pay for it.
Having already pointed out that the artist's right to get paid isn't a natural right, but an artificial one that can be removed, imposed, or altered arbitrarily, the question then is this: Why should I pay for it? What's in it for me? How am I better off paying for it than just downloading it for free? Since I'll always do whatever is best for me (just as artists will always do what is best for them), all you have to do is show me how I am left better off paying for it.
If you're going to be scared, be scared for the right reasons.
I don't care that creative works are intangible. That has nothing to do with anything. The reason that I don't think that artists have an inherent right to their creations is because they're nonrivalrous, because I think that it can't coexist with the inherent freedom of speech, and because such a right would conflict with how creative works behave and are treated naturally. OTOH, those are reasons why there is no such thing as an inherent copyright. I have no qualms with giving artists artificially created copyrights, so long as it serves the public interest to do so.
The bakery isn't selling smells, they are selling bread.
They would if they could. Similarly, if I had a really nice house, and increased the property values of my neighbors' houses simply due to their proximity to my house, I can't demand a share of it. The truth of the matter is that merely causing something to increase in value, or creating something valuable, is not enough, by itself, to always result in your having rights to that new value.
I wish I could interpret your post some other way. But I can't.
Clearly you could have, since you didn't interpret it correctly to begin with.
Copyrights aren't patents. You don't have to enforce them.
And you don't have to enforce patents either. I think you were thinking of trademarks, but even there, there is a point at which being aggressive doesn't really help you and isn't necessary in order to preserve the mark.
Even if you think it's not stealing, why is it so hard to say that you should compensate someone for making stuff you like?
I like the works of Shakespeare. Do you think I should be obligated to pay his estate? I don't. This is not to say that I'm opposed to copyright; I'm for it, given the right circumstances and the right laws. But I disagree that people inherently owe artists anything merely because they created something. This morning, I walked past a bakery, and I enjoyed the smell of baking bread, but I'm not about to give them any money for it.
For a start, you imply that copyright creates a public expense. This in itself is questionable. Certainly it creates no financial expense, since the public is under no obligation to pay for copyrighted works if they don't want them. Any expense must therefore be in terms of "lost art" that is protected by copyright, but as you yourself imply later in your post, it is likely that without copyright much of that art would never be created/distributed in the first place.
The cost of a copyright system to the public is a cost in freedom. Freedom of speech and of the press is an inherent human right. It encompasses not only the right to publish one's own works, but also to republish the works of others. For example, if I put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet, I exercise my freedom of speech in order to do so. Shakespeare did not give me a right to do that, and neither did the government. Nor do authors have a natural right to prevent others from engaging in free speech, which is what a copyright is, after all. But I am willing to temporarily limit my free speech, provided that it benefits me to do so. That is, I am willing to grant a copyright to authors when I benefit even after accounting for the burden it places on me.
Not being able to enjoy my freedoms fully is a cost to me. Having to pay monopolistic prices in order to do what I could have done for free is a cost to me. And while, yes, some art might not be created if the incentive of copyright is not present, or not great enough, I am only interested in providing that incentive if having that art is worth more than being free without it. For example, if you wanted to incentivize trillion-dollar movies, the copyright might have to be so broad as to last forever and require payment whenever someone even mentioned the movie in question. That strikes me as a work that would cost more than it would be worth, and so a work that we will never incentivize the creation of. Since we're better off without it than with it, it's for the best.
You then effectively claim that copyright's only value is financial. That's an odd claim on a forum full of GPL supporters, to be sure. Perhaps I'm missing something, or the law in the US is particularly unusual here, but as far as I'm aware there's nothing inherent in copyright law that says you can only use it to make profit.
That's the only incentive it provides. There are many incentives which can get authors to create a work. If an author would become famous, that's an incentive, but copyright doesn't guarantee fame. Art for art's sake is another, but again, copyright doesn't help with that. The money an author can get for his services is an incentive, but copyright has nothing to do with that either; this incentive is just being paid for your time and effort, in the same way that one pays anyone to do a task. The money an author can get from specific copies is another incentive, but again, one that copyright is unrelated to; the Mona Lisa is worth a fortune (a specific copy), but a poster of the Mona Lisa is worth very little.
There is money in making many copies of a work, in performing a work, etc. Copyright causes that money -- the mass market money -- to flow to the author, whether it's a lot or a little. For many artists, copyright is irrelevant, since they make their money selling actual paintings (rather than prints), or selling their time, etc. Many other artists also find it irrelevant if they create art primarily for reasons other than money.
In fact, copyright can often prove to be a disincentive for artists if they are derivative artists. This is rather bad, actually, since there's no more artistic merit in original works than derivative ones merely on the basis of originality. Whether a work is good or not hinges on other factors.
With the GPL, people who use the GPL are often not motivated by the idea that they'll be flush with cash, but they still have an economic motive in that they may be rich with derivative works which also have to be GPLed and are avail
so we can debate the "greatest benefit at least cost" motivation
I think you'll have a much more difficult time with that. To argue against it, you basically have to say that the public has an obligation to support artists at the public expense, even when there's no public benefit from doing so. While that's pretty nice if you're an artist, it makes no sense at all for the public who will have to pay for it. And why should it be limited to artists? I'd like to be given free government money too. Social welfare programs exist to keep the poor from being absolutely destitute, and ideally to give them a helping hand so that they can better their circumstances. Are the RIAA or MPAA members in danger of dying on the street, homeless and penniless? What about superstars in their fields, like Stephen King, or Annie Leibovitz? After all, they are the ones that really benefit from copyrights. The vast majority of authors don't benefit all that much. This is because a copyright is only a right to exploit whatever economic value a work has; if a work has no economic value, the copyright is worthless too.
After all, if a law isn't meant to be fair, why is it a good law and why should we keep it?
In the case of copyright, it isn't meant to be fair, it is meant to be totally one-sided in serving the public interest. It is very much like a cable TV monopoly. A municipality does not give a cable company a monopoly in order to be fair. Instead, it gives out the monopoly based on whichever company will provide the best services to the people in the affected area for the least cost to those people. The municipality doesn't care about the cable tv company for its own sake, though it does care about it only to the minimum degree necessary in order to get the best deal for the town. (i.e. the cable provider won't work for free, so you have to offer it something, but you don't offer a penny more than you absolutely have to)
Now, regardless of whether any of us agree with that particular view, as an ethical perspective, it's a perfectly valid and reasonable view to take.
I disagree, actually. I don't think that ethics or morality has anything to do with copyright. It's chiefly an amoral, utilitarian field. If you're thinking about ethics together with copyright, you're probably thinking wrongly. Especially since, if there is any ethical component involved at all, it surely must be against the idea of copyright. Actually using creative works, spreading that knowledge freely to anyone who wants it, preserving it, and freely altering it, is ethically superior to trying to restrict it to only those who will pay. But as I said, copyright really isn't something that ethics is related to. It's utilitarian and nothing else.
one could make an argument that the voice of someone who is contributing works should be heard louder than the voice of someone who is a mere consumer.
No, because the government is the servant of all the people equally. If you are going to create a monopoly at the expense of the public, it had damn well better benefit the public more than any alternative (including not having the monopoly, or alternative monopolies) or else the government is not acting in a legitimate fashion at all.
In other words, I don't think your blanket statement about one thing being the "only acceptable choice" is at all valid.
Then I guess you don't think about copyright matters much. As for myself, it's not only my favorite subject, but my livelihood, both from when I was an artist, and now that I'm a copyright lawyer. I think about copyright all the time, and I can assure you, that blanket statement is right on target.
t's only the only acceptable choice if we take as an axiom that the motivation for copyright law is to further the distribution of works at any price, and there are no other considerations, such as compensating artists.
Copyright has never been about compensating artists, because if it was, it wouldn't be so terrible at it
In the form of copyright, yes. It's very reminiscent of the infamous playing card monopoly. If you want to give them extra money, then give them money out of the general fund, or give them money that isn't dependent on how popular a specific play happens to be on a particular year, which could vary significantly.
It's an idea worth fighting for, along with reducing term lengths, getting rid of the Berne Convention, etc. Giving up on reform is what would ensure that the idea dies. That's why we mustn't do that.
Incidentally, I wouldn't call the US a minor jurisdiction as far as copyright goes. We're one of the most important ones.
Copyrights are all national. There's no such thing as an international copyright. There are, OTOH, agreements between countries where if a person gets a copyright in Country A, he will automatically also get one in Country B.
So yes, it is possible for Mickey Mouse to go out of copyright in the UK but still be in copyright in the US. In fact, for Peter Pan, the inverse situation exists; here in the US, it's in the public domain, but in the UK it's (very stupidly) still copyrighted.
I'm under the impression there's no formal paperwork that needs to occur for copyright like there is a patent.
Of course, that's a huge mistake. The paperwork needn't be complex or costly, but it is important that it exists so that we can limit copyright to only those works where the creator bothered to ask for one. If he is unwilling to ask, I'm unwilling to have the government give him one. Why should anyone else care if he apparently doesn't?
I disagree, but in any case, so? Copyright isn't meant to be fair. It's meant to get the greatest benefit for the public at the least cost to the public. If 10 year copyright is just as much of an incentive to artists in terms of them actually creating works as 100 year copyright is, then the former is the only acceptable choice. And often the difference can be just that stark, since the vast majority of copyrights are worthless, and of the tiny fraction that have any value ever, the vast majority of those only have value for a few years. E.g. if you have a movie, most of your profit will come in the first few weeks that it is open in theaters, in the first few weeks it is on pay per view, in the first few weeks it is available for rental, etc. Very very little comes from the movie years down the road.
Given that trying to support your family with copyrights is like buying lottery tickets instead of putting money into a 401(k), with similarly bad odds, we ought to discourage it really. Copyrights simply do not work the way you seem to think they do. If you really are concerned with supporting artists' families, then you need to look at what actually will do that. As it turns out, safe investments, life insurance, social welfare programs, etc. are what actually works, and better yet, anyone can use those strategies, instead of just artists. Copyright is stupid as far as the widows and orphans argument goes. The only times it ever works are for the copyright equivalent of lottery winners -- people who make that one in a billion work that has lasting significant economic value derived from the copyright -- and those people already had a lot of money that they should have invested wisely to begin with. To give them even more copyright is like giving spendthrift lottery winners extra money at public expense. Sure, they want it, but it's idiotic to give it to them.
Actually, a lot of the original settlers were not fundamentalists (being Catholics or fairly mainstream Protestants), and didn't come here for religious reasons (e.g. as slaves, other indentured workers, prisoners, fortune-hunters, etc.).
In any event, even most of the real hard-assed religious groups didn't last that long, and would've been pissed off to have seen what their descendants were doing within only a few generations. Plus, your main fundamentalist religious group that went to the Americas were the Puritans, and they stopped coming over once they controlled England, and were repressive enough that not only are they a terrible role model, but several other colonies sprung up so that people who were not religious fundamentalists could get away from them.
That there were a lot of Christian groups of importance in our early history is interesting and all, but doesn't matter worth a crap for our policies, and doesn't make this a 'Christian country' regardless of even current demographics. This is a secular country because we got smart enough to see that religious strife was always bad for both church and state, no matter who was on top.
All told, I'd say you don't seem to know a great deal about our history.
rather than force those businesses to act in a prescribed manner against the owner's will, let's instead let them conduct business in the manner they see fit (exceptions for pollution, noise, excess water usage, and other similar *quantifiable* problems)
Discrimination is perfectly quantifiable by the courts, who are used to dealing with such problems and who would ultimately have to help enforce this sort of thing anyway. (E.g. can you put a dollar amount on the pain caused by seeing a loved one die in front of you? Yes, and in fact, it's pretty common) Besides, discrimination on proscribed bases is pretty easy to detect.
I don't think the government has any business telling business owners who their customers can be
Why not? The government has a strong interest in having the market operate efficiently, and discriminatory business owners by definition act irrationally and thus inefficiently. In seeking to have commerce run smoothly and well, keeping such practices from hampering the economy is precisely the sort of thing that is government's business, just like keeping monopolies from causing harm to the market, or enforcing contracts. Government also has an interest in discouraging discriminatory behavior, which is harmful to civil order, and in seeing that people within its territory have decent lives, if possible.
Discrimination isn't a thought crime. It's not illegal to think that group x is bad and group y is good, based on irrational reasons like skin color, religion, gender, etc. What's illegal is to actually discriminate in the course of running a business.
It's kind of like how it is perfectly legal to fantasize about killing someone, but murder to go through with it.
No, it has nothing to do with their views. Someone can be as bigoted as they like, they can hate me merely for the color of my skin, or my religion, or whatever. I don't care, and I'll defend their right to hold and even espouse those beliefs, even though I find them vile.
But engaging in business activities is a highly regulable area. Polluters don't have a right to pollute that trumps environmental laws. Restaurants don't have a right to be unsanitary that trumps health laws. And businesses open to the public generally don't have a right to discriminate that trumps antidiscriminatory commercial regulations. They can still want to, and can still believe in it, they just can't actually do it.
Even setting aside the strong governmental policy in eliminating discrimination for its own sake as an evil in the world, discriminatory practices are economically inefficient and harm the economy. While you might argue that the market will eventually correct for this on its own (despite some evidence to the contrary), the government is hardly required to sit back and wait for the market; it can take an active role, and this is certainly one area in which it ought to. It might not be perfect, but it's resulted in things being a hell of a lot better than they were. I sure don't see you offering any better solutions given the panoply of measures (not just commercial regulation) that the government uses to discourage and/or eliminate discrimination in various fields.
Actually, from my understanding, they don't make much money from these suits. They're more interested in stopping infringement, scaring people so they don't infringe to begin with, and covering costs.
Slashdot Mirror
Some things are useless after a few years, some things cost megabucks to make and payoff slowly.
To be honest, in 99.44% of cases, you're going to make the vast majority of all the money you will ever make from a work, almost immediately. For example, most ticket sales for a movie occur within the first week or two of its release in theathers. Most DVD sales of that movie occur within the first week or two of its release in stores. And by most, I mean 80-90%. The remaining years and years and years are just to wring out the small amount that's left. IIRC, the average value for a given author of the CTEA extension in the US from life+50 to life+70 (or 75 to 95) was a nickel.
Some works, of course, and I mean a very very rare few, are worth incredible amounts for very long spans of time. But making one of those works is about as common as winning the lottery. While the lottery winners might like their situation, I think it's more important to deal with the big picture, and that means with a hell of a lot of works that are worthless, and a small amount that are reasonable valuable, but still not super-valuable.
better enforcement
Against whom? I for one would like to see copyright no longer be applied against ordinary people acting noncommercially. It's not as though it's respected in that field anyway. Businesses and commercial contexts would still be relevant, though.
It is equally reasonable to set the copyright period for 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, 50 years. They all are someone arbitrary. It's clearly unreasonable to set it for 0 years and clearly unreasonable to set it to "forever and one day". (Well.. at least most people would agree to that- there are folks on both ends who feel 0 years or "forever" are emminantly reasonable).
The problem is there is no obvious way to measure this and pick a rational value where we get the most creative work of the highest quality for the lowest price.
First, copyright isn't meant to be reasonable. It's a utilitarian system, that's simply meant to provide the greatest benefit to the public. Who else might happen to benefit, and how much, and whether they might benefit more or less under some other system, is totally irrelevant, save for how it affects the goal of providing the greatest benefit to the public.
Second, it is measurable, in that copyright only works as an economic incentive. Copyrights won't make you famous, or satisfy your artistic desires -- they will only let you monopolize the economic value of the work. This is pretty quantifiable as it happens. We can study the costs and profits of works en masse and work out just how rapidly they turn a profit, how much of a profit, etc. We can also see efficient uses of the works that are desirable, but which don't generate enough of a profit to be worth it to the copyright holder, or which he dislikes for other reasons. We can limit the scope of the monopoly to account for this so that these beneficial uses can still go on even without the copyright holder.
IIRC, the way it turns out, we end up with a term length of somewhere around 15 years from publication, formalities, and extensive exceptions and fair use provisions. There have actually been some nice academic studies documenting this, and as copyright increasingly becomes an interesting subject, there are more and more of them.
Literacy has nothing to do with it. If you're writing books, then whether the market of literate people is large or small, competitors will affect you. If you're writing plays, then literacy isn't relevant, since the market has more to do with the audience than the performers.
I agree that it's silly to be disdainful of artists who want to make money, but OTOH, if an artist is willing to work for free (i.e. he isn't in it for the money), then I am fully prepared to let him. And why shouldn't I be? Artists who are in it for the money are exhibiting greed. The public who wants things for free exhibit the exact same greed. Neither is morally superior to the other.
It's not even to encourage the artists to create. Never, during the whole of human history, has there been difficulty in getting people to participate in creative works. There are going to be people who want to make music, paintings, movies, and books, even if there's no reward but fame.
Well, no. It is an encouragement. It's just not the only encouragement. Copyright doesn't function as an incentive in the realm of fame, only economic value. If fame is enough of an incentive for a given author, then it's wasteful to give him the unnecessary incentive of a copyright as well. If it is not enough of a reward, then a copyright would be appropriate (though it should be limited so that it isn't overly large and thus also wasteful in part). It's tough to make this determination, but system such as formalities do a decent job, and should be readopted in order to avoid public waste and make the copyright system more efficient.
The real question, I think, is whether it's actually a problem at all. In November 1933, alcohol was a problem in the US. The next month, Prohibition was repealed, and it wasn't a problem any more.
The current situation is pretty analagous. Almost no one had respect for Prohibition, that disrespect for one stupid law led to disrespect for other laws, widespread corruption, powerful criminal organizations, etc. Well, pretty much no one now has respect for copyright law, at least in certain contexts (e.g. P2P downloading). This will have, and I think is having, a corrosive effect on other laws which are more desirable. If copyright were really all that important, then it might be worth fighting for. For example, enforcing civil rights laws despite their unpopularity in the 50's and 60's. But copyright is hardly on that level. While I don't think that copyright abolition is called for, getting rid of copyright laws that are ignored anyway, would be a good start. So, for example, make it legal for natural persons to do anything noncomercially that would otherwise be infringing. Then copyright is only left as being useful against those who want to make money, and organizations and corporate entities. Since social norms haven't gotten to the point where they're not expected to respect these laws either, voluntary compliance will be a lot easier. But in the areas where people feel that the law isn't relevant or just or applicable, why should they be wrong? The law is the servant of the people after all, and again, this isn't some civil rights issue. Copyright is a utilitarian monopoly meant to serve the people.
Also, not all downloading is a crime, even now.
My biggest argument for this lies in the fact that different forms of intellectually property are not treated fairly and equally. Why should the author (and heirs) of copyrighted song benefit for 70 years after his death (and in perpetuity through renewals), while the author (and heirs) of a patent for a fusion reactor containment system only be allowed to profit for a total of 20 years after the filing of the patent???
Well that's just idiotic.
Why don't we allow people to buy uranium just as easily as we allow them to buy copper? They're both just elements, after all.
The reason is because they're radically different. Patents and copyrights do not overlap; they pertain to totally different things. Giving them a stupid and misleading collective name (i.e. 'intellectual property') does not change the fact that they are different. The subject matters are different, the scope of the right is different, the requirements to get the right are different. They are very difficult to compare at all, in fact. This is unavoidable, because it's in the nature of the thing.
Pretty much the only similarity is in the most fundamental purpose, which in both cases is to promote the public good. Of course, other forms of IP don't even share that. Trademarks only partially do, and trade secrets or publicity rights don't have the public good in mind at all.
Really, your whole suggestion there, it's just really stupid. (And incidentally, you can't author a fusion reactor, but you can invent one. You even got that wrong.)
Setting aside that everyone would just use exclusive licenses as a condition of employment, achieving exactly the same result as assignments or works made for hire, you really are underestimating the importance of publishers. Music labels finance musicians, investing in a work that the musicians couldn't afford to create on their own. They can provide useful help for musicians in the form of constructive criticism (c.f. the relationship between authors and editors, where the former really does need the help of the latter). They can help provide skills and contacts for musicians that the musicians haven't got on their own. And they do help promote songs and albums, which is important, because they don't sell themselves as a rule.
Stop being such an ass. Creators need publishers in order to live up to their full potential as creators. Otherwise they're stuck doing two jobs, neither one of them as well as they could if they concentrated on one. They are both important lines of work, and neither should automatically be disrespected.
It sounds awful. Limited copyrights are no substitute for the public domain, which is superior in every way.
Specifically responding to your points:
1. If an author doesn't care about his work enough to comply with applicable formalities, then he should get no rights at all, and the work should be in the public domain. Copyright is meant to serve the public interest in part by providing an artificial economic incentive to authors. An author who doesn't care about his work enough to take simple but significant steps to get a copyright is very likely one who isn't incentivized by a copyright. Thus, there's no reason to give him anything at all, since he pretty certainly would have created the work regardless, because the other, natural, incentives were sufficient.
2. This fails for basically the same reason; when a copyright isn't an incentive, it should never be granted. Formalities are the best system we've got for determining when copyright is or isn't an incentive.
3-5. Price controls are pretty dumb, especially since a work might have a variety of prices for different markets. For example, a DVD of a movie might retail for $20, but the right to broadcast that movie on TV might be worth a small fortune.
6. Again, since only the initial term is likely to provide any incentive to the author at all, that's all that is needed. There's nothing inherently desirable about 'copyleft,' and I can't imagine why you think it would be some sort of panacea.
7. Awful. Terms should be as short as possible, highly granular (i.e. many very short terms are better than few longer terms, even if the maximum overall term length is the same for both), and of known length so that they can be planned around by the author (who knows how long he's got) and third parties (who know when they can start using a particular work).
Is one that only allows copyrights to be owned by people, not corporations.
I don't really see what good that does.
Personally, I have a simpler definition. The ideal copyright law is the one that best serves the public interest by promoting the progress of science. Whether it should include this exception or that one, or last for a term of so many years, or some other amount, or whatever, should be based on how well it serves the public interest in as quantifiable a way as possible.
I hope you get burglerized tonight. Since a thief could obviously think that why buy a stereo system when I can just jack this guys house... You are scary indeed.
Certainly a thief could think that. But then, the entire notion of property (beyond what you can personally maintain control of in a 'might makes right' sort of way) is artificial too. It's backed up by the idea of mutual respect for property (i.e. it behooves you to respect others' property in order to avoid having widespread disrespect for property that could work against you if others followed your lead) and organized systems to defend it (e.g. a police force, courts, prisons, etc. which follow certain rules with regard to property rights). So a would-be thief has to decide which is more in his interests: stealing or not. Generally the system is weighed to discourage the former and encourage the latter.
But none of this makes property rights generally any sort of an inherent right, just as copyrights are not an inherent right. It's all artificial. And it's all well and good, so long as it generally serves the public good. Of course, even in the world of real property, what ultimately serves the public good, and what is the law, may conflict with what uneducated sorts such as yourself, apparently, think about how things work. For example, if I had a plot of land, and someone came along and tried to take it from me, then the law will support that person under the right circumstances, the police will escort me off of what I might still think of as my own land, etc.
Honestly, how you can misread my posts all the time is beyond me. I've never said I was against the idea of copyright, or against particular implementations of it. I'm just debunking the silly idea that authors are naturally entitled to copyrights or naturally have copyrights. The truth is that they only get copyrights at all when it serves the public interest to give them copyrights, and this will not always be the case, either for copyrights generally or a specific degree of copyright compared with another.
That is that you have a slight break with the realities of the value prospect of a persons work, talent, time, and investment to produce a product that while not physical in form, still has significant value none the less.
Oh, I know it has value. If a work was valueless, as most are, then no one would want to make unauthorized copies of it in the first place. What I'm saying is that in the case of creative works, the creator does not have an inherent right to monopolize that value merely because he's the creator. He may have an artificial right to do so, but that's something he has to be given, rather than something he naturally has.
SO what if your neighbor's house went up in value?
It means that when you spent money, it not only increased the value of your house, but also the value of the house next door. Since that increase in value is attributable to you, not the neighbor, if there was a natural right to that value by the person responsible for it, you would have a right to to get money from your neighbor if he sold his house. But in the real world, you don't. This casts great doubt on your apparent position that creating value goes hand in hand with a natural right to it in all circumstances.
If you want access to it any time you want it, you pay for it.
Having already pointed out that the artist's right to get paid isn't a natural right, but an artificial one that can be removed, imposed, or altered arbitrarily, the question then is this: Why should I pay for it? What's in it for me? How am I better off paying for it than just downloading it for free? Since I'll always do whatever is best for me (just as artists will always do what is best for them), all you have to do is show me how I am left better off paying for it.
If you're going to be scared, be scared for the right reasons.
I don't care that creative works are intangible. That has nothing to do with anything. The reason that I don't think that artists have an inherent right to their creations is because they're nonrivalrous, because I think that it can't coexist with the inherent freedom of speech, and because such a right would conflict with how creative works behave and are treated naturally. OTOH, those are reasons why there is no such thing as an inherent copyright. I have no qualms with giving artists artificially created copyrights, so long as it serves the public interest to do so.
The bakery isn't selling smells, they are selling bread.
They would if they could. Similarly, if I had a really nice house, and increased the property values of my neighbors' houses simply due to their proximity to my house, I can't demand a share of it. The truth of the matter is that merely causing something to increase in value, or creating something valuable, is not enough, by itself, to always result in your having rights to that new value.
I wish I could interpret your post some other way. But I can't.
Clearly you could have, since you didn't interpret it correctly to begin with.
Copyrights aren't patents. You don't have to enforce them.
And you don't have to enforce patents either. I think you were thinking of trademarks, but even there, there is a point at which being aggressive doesn't really help you and isn't necessary in order to preserve the mark.
Even if you think it's not stealing, why is it so hard to say that you should compensate someone for making stuff you like?
I like the works of Shakespeare. Do you think I should be obligated to pay his estate? I don't. This is not to say that I'm opposed to copyright; I'm for it, given the right circumstances and the right laws. But I disagree that people inherently owe artists anything merely because they created something. This morning, I walked past a bakery, and I enjoyed the smell of baking bread, but I'm not about to give them any money for it.
For a start, you imply that copyright creates a public expense. This in itself is questionable. Certainly it creates no financial expense, since the public is under no obligation to pay for copyrighted works if they don't want them. Any expense must therefore be in terms of "lost art" that is protected by copyright, but as you yourself imply later in your post, it is likely that without copyright much of that art would never be created/distributed in the first place.
The cost of a copyright system to the public is a cost in freedom. Freedom of speech and of the press is an inherent human right. It encompasses not only the right to publish one's own works, but also to republish the works of others. For example, if I put on a performance of Romeo and Juliet, I exercise my freedom of speech in order to do so. Shakespeare did not give me a right to do that, and neither did the government. Nor do authors have a natural right to prevent others from engaging in free speech, which is what a copyright is, after all. But I am willing to temporarily limit my free speech, provided that it benefits me to do so. That is, I am willing to grant a copyright to authors when I benefit even after accounting for the burden it places on me.
Not being able to enjoy my freedoms fully is a cost to me. Having to pay monopolistic prices in order to do what I could have done for free is a cost to me. And while, yes, some art might not be created if the incentive of copyright is not present, or not great enough, I am only interested in providing that incentive if having that art is worth more than being free without it. For example, if you wanted to incentivize trillion-dollar movies, the copyright might have to be so broad as to last forever and require payment whenever someone even mentioned the movie in question. That strikes me as a work that would cost more than it would be worth, and so a work that we will never incentivize the creation of. Since we're better off without it than with it, it's for the best.
You then effectively claim that copyright's only value is financial. That's an odd claim on a forum full of GPL supporters, to be sure. Perhaps I'm missing something, or the law in the US is particularly unusual here, but as far as I'm aware there's nothing inherent in copyright law that says you can only use it to make profit.
That's the only incentive it provides. There are many incentives which can get authors to create a work. If an author would become famous, that's an incentive, but copyright doesn't guarantee fame. Art for art's sake is another, but again, copyright doesn't help with that. The money an author can get for his services is an incentive, but copyright has nothing to do with that either; this incentive is just being paid for your time and effort, in the same way that one pays anyone to do a task. The money an author can get from specific copies is another incentive, but again, one that copyright is unrelated to; the Mona Lisa is worth a fortune (a specific copy), but a poster of the Mona Lisa is worth very little.
There is money in making many copies of a work, in performing a work, etc. Copyright causes that money -- the mass market money -- to flow to the author, whether it's a lot or a little. For many artists, copyright is irrelevant, since they make their money selling actual paintings (rather than prints), or selling their time, etc. Many other artists also find it irrelevant if they create art primarily for reasons other than money.
In fact, copyright can often prove to be a disincentive for artists if they are derivative artists. This is rather bad, actually, since there's no more artistic merit in original works than derivative ones merely on the basis of originality. Whether a work is good or not hinges on other factors.
With the GPL, people who use the GPL are often not motivated by the idea that they'll be flush with cash, but they still have an economic motive in that they may be rich with derivative works which also have to be GPLed and are avail
so we can debate the "greatest benefit at least cost" motivation
I think you'll have a much more difficult time with that. To argue against it, you basically have to say that the public has an obligation to support artists at the public expense, even when there's no public benefit from doing so. While that's pretty nice if you're an artist, it makes no sense at all for the public who will have to pay for it. And why should it be limited to artists? I'd like to be given free government money too. Social welfare programs exist to keep the poor from being absolutely destitute, and ideally to give them a helping hand so that they can better their circumstances. Are the RIAA or MPAA members in danger of dying on the street, homeless and penniless? What about superstars in their fields, like Stephen King, or Annie Leibovitz? After all, they are the ones that really benefit from copyrights. The vast majority of authors don't benefit all that much. This is because a copyright is only a right to exploit whatever economic value a work has; if a work has no economic value, the copyright is worthless too.
After all, if a law isn't meant to be fair, why is it a good law and why should we keep it?
In the case of copyright, it isn't meant to be fair, it is meant to be totally one-sided in serving the public interest. It is very much like a cable TV monopoly. A municipality does not give a cable company a monopoly in order to be fair. Instead, it gives out the monopoly based on whichever company will provide the best services to the people in the affected area for the least cost to those people. The municipality doesn't care about the cable tv company for its own sake, though it does care about it only to the minimum degree necessary in order to get the best deal for the town. (i.e. the cable provider won't work for free, so you have to offer it something, but you don't offer a penny more than you absolutely have to)
Now, regardless of whether any of us agree with that particular view, as an ethical perspective, it's a perfectly valid and reasonable view to take.
I disagree, actually. I don't think that ethics or morality has anything to do with copyright. It's chiefly an amoral, utilitarian field. If you're thinking about ethics together with copyright, you're probably thinking wrongly. Especially since, if there is any ethical component involved at all, it surely must be against the idea of copyright. Actually using creative works, spreading that knowledge freely to anyone who wants it, preserving it, and freely altering it, is ethically superior to trying to restrict it to only those who will pay. But as I said, copyright really isn't something that ethics is related to. It's utilitarian and nothing else.
one could make an argument that the voice of someone who is contributing works should be heard louder than the voice of someone who is a mere consumer.
No, because the government is the servant of all the people equally. If you are going to create a monopoly at the expense of the public, it had damn well better benefit the public more than any alternative (including not having the monopoly, or alternative monopolies) or else the government is not acting in a legitimate fashion at all.
In other words, I don't think your blanket statement about one thing being the "only acceptable choice" is at all valid.
Then I guess you don't think about copyright matters much. As for myself, it's not only my favorite subject, but my livelihood, both from when I was an artist, and now that I'm a copyright lawyer. I think about copyright all the time, and I can assure you, that blanket statement is right on target.
t's only the only acceptable choice if we take as an axiom that the motivation for copyright law is to further the distribution of works at any price, and there are no other considerations, such as compensating artists.
Copyright has never been about compensating artists, because if it was, it wouldn't be so terrible at it
In the form of copyright, yes. It's very reminiscent of the infamous playing card monopoly. If you want to give them extra money, then give them money out of the general fund, or give them money that isn't dependent on how popular a specific play happens to be on a particular year, which could vary significantly.
It's an idea worth fighting for, along with reducing term lengths, getting rid of the Berne Convention, etc. Giving up on reform is what would ensure that the idea dies. That's why we mustn't do that.
Incidentally, I wouldn't call the US a minor jurisdiction as far as copyright goes. We're one of the most important ones.
That doesn't stop it from being stupid.
Copyrights are all national. There's no such thing as an international copyright. There are, OTOH, agreements between countries where if a person gets a copyright in Country A, he will automatically also get one in Country B.
So yes, it is possible for Mickey Mouse to go out of copyright in the UK but still be in copyright in the US. In fact, for Peter Pan, the inverse situation exists; here in the US, it's in the public domain, but in the UK it's (very stupidly) still copyrighted.
I'm under the impression there's no formal paperwork that needs to occur for copyright like there is a patent.
Of course, that's a huge mistake. The paperwork needn't be complex or costly, but it is important that it exists so that we can limit copyright to only those works where the creator bothered to ask for one. If he is unwilling to ask, I'm unwilling to have the government give him one. Why should anyone else care if he apparently doesn't?
I disagree, but in any case, so? Copyright isn't meant to be fair. It's meant to get the greatest benefit for the public at the least cost to the public. If 10 year copyright is just as much of an incentive to artists in terms of them actually creating works as 100 year copyright is, then the former is the only acceptable choice. And often the difference can be just that stark, since the vast majority of copyrights are worthless, and of the tiny fraction that have any value ever, the vast majority of those only have value for a few years. E.g. if you have a movie, most of your profit will come in the first few weeks that it is open in theaters, in the first few weeks it is on pay per view, in the first few weeks it is available for rental, etc. Very very little comes from the movie years down the road.
Given that trying to support your family with copyrights is like buying lottery tickets instead of putting money into a 401(k), with similarly bad odds, we ought to discourage it really. Copyrights simply do not work the way you seem to think they do. If you really are concerned with supporting artists' families, then you need to look at what actually will do that. As it turns out, safe investments, life insurance, social welfare programs, etc. are what actually works, and better yet, anyone can use those strategies, instead of just artists. Copyright is stupid as far as the widows and orphans argument goes. The only times it ever works are for the copyright equivalent of lottery winners -- people who make that one in a billion work that has lasting significant economic value derived from the copyright -- and those people already had a lot of money that they should have invested wisely to begin with. To give them even more copyright is like giving spendthrift lottery winners extra money at public expense. Sure, they want it, but it's idiotic to give it to them.
Actually, a lot of the original settlers were not fundamentalists (being Catholics or fairly mainstream Protestants), and didn't come here for religious reasons (e.g. as slaves, other indentured workers, prisoners, fortune-hunters, etc.).
In any event, even most of the real hard-assed religious groups didn't last that long, and would've been pissed off to have seen what their descendants were doing within only a few generations. Plus, your main fundamentalist religious group that went to the Americas were the Puritans, and they stopped coming over once they controlled England, and were repressive enough that not only are they a terrible role model, but several other colonies sprung up so that people who were not religious fundamentalists could get away from them.
That there were a lot of Christian groups of importance in our early history is interesting and all, but doesn't matter worth a crap for our policies, and doesn't make this a 'Christian country' regardless of even current demographics. This is a secular country because we got smart enough to see that religious strife was always bad for both church and state, no matter who was on top.
All told, I'd say you don't seem to know a great deal about our history.
rather than force those businesses to act in a prescribed manner against the owner's will, let's instead let them conduct business in the manner they see fit (exceptions for pollution, noise, excess water usage, and other similar *quantifiable* problems)
Discrimination is perfectly quantifiable by the courts, who are used to dealing with such problems and who would ultimately have to help enforce this sort of thing anyway. (E.g. can you put a dollar amount on the pain caused by seeing a loved one die in front of you? Yes, and in fact, it's pretty common) Besides, discrimination on proscribed bases is pretty easy to detect.
I don't think the government has any business telling business owners who their customers can be
Why not? The government has a strong interest in having the market operate efficiently, and discriminatory business owners by definition act irrationally and thus inefficiently. In seeking to have commerce run smoothly and well, keeping such practices from hampering the economy is precisely the sort of thing that is government's business, just like keeping monopolies from causing harm to the market, or enforcing contracts. Government also has an interest in discouraging discriminatory behavior, which is harmful to civil order, and in seeing that people within its territory have decent lives, if possible.
Discrimination isn't a thought crime. It's not illegal to think that group x is bad and group y is good, based on irrational reasons like skin color, religion, gender, etc. What's illegal is to actually discriminate in the course of running a business.
It's kind of like how it is perfectly legal to fantasize about killing someone, but murder to go through with it.
No, it has nothing to do with their views. Someone can be as bigoted as they like, they can hate me merely for the color of my skin, or my religion, or whatever. I don't care, and I'll defend their right to hold and even espouse those beliefs, even though I find them vile.
But engaging in business activities is a highly regulable area. Polluters don't have a right to pollute that trumps environmental laws. Restaurants don't have a right to be unsanitary that trumps health laws. And businesses open to the public generally don't have a right to discriminate that trumps antidiscriminatory commercial regulations. They can still want to, and can still believe in it, they just can't actually do it.
Even setting aside the strong governmental policy in eliminating discrimination for its own sake as an evil in the world, discriminatory practices are economically inefficient and harm the economy. While you might argue that the market will eventually correct for this on its own (despite some evidence to the contrary), the government is hardly required to sit back and wait for the market; it can take an active role, and this is certainly one area in which it ought to. It might not be perfect, but it's resulted in things being a hell of a lot better than they were. I sure don't see you offering any better solutions given the panoply of measures (not just commercial regulation) that the government uses to discourage and/or eliminate discrimination in various fields.
Actually, from my understanding, they don't make much money from these suits. They're more interested in stopping infringement, scaring people so they don't infringe to begin with, and covering costs.