Probably not; a sub's reactor would likely depend on the presence of the ocean for part of its cooling system (cooling is always a big problem in space -- basically it can only be done with radiators, which isn't very efficient), and is surely way overpowered for most missions.
The US and Russia have sent up actual reactors before. The US had SNAP and the USSR had BES.
But you really don't need nuclear power sources at all unless you're either far from the sun (beyond the orbit of Mars, usually), have serious power needs that modern solar power isn't sufficient for (the recently landed Curiosity rover on Mars uses an RTG for main power), or need heat to keep systems from getting too cold (the solar powered Mars rovers had small RTGs in them for heating purposes, IIRC).
same idea that the cost of production is somehow the fault of the creators and not relevant to what they want to ask you to pay to consume it
No, the cost of production is highly relevant to the asking price; they're going to try to set the price so that they make a profit if their prediction as to the number of customers is basically right.
For a good example of this not working out, see the Atari version of Pac-Man: there were an estimated 10 million Atari VCS consoles thought to be in use, so management had 12 million copies of Pac-Man made on the assumption that people would buy the console just to play it. But as things happened, only 7 million copies were sold, and the game was so lousy that many of those were returned. The Pac-Man debacle is seen as one of the factors causing the Videogame Crash of 1983 as well as a reported loss by Atari of half a billion dollars.
Anyway, what I was trying to say was not that there is no connection between production costs and ticket prices / retail cost (there is), but that production values themselves, which is what incur the production costs, are fairly arbitrary. Films don't require hundreds of millions of dollars of budget in order to tell a story; the story can be told just as well by less expensive means. And in fact, a lot of special effects are used to keep the budget down: it's cheaper to blow up a plastic model of a spaceship than it is to build a real one just to blow it up. Of course it's cheaper still to tell the story so in a way that you don't have to show it getting blown up, or to rely more on the audience's imagination rather than a convincing pyrotechnic display.
If filmmakers and other creators spend less making works -- which may involve lower quality standards, but that's alright -- then they can better withstand smaller numbers of paying customers.
For example, the recent Lone Ranger film had a budget of $225 million, worldwide revenues of $244 million in theaters, hasn't yet hit other venues such as home video, and is already viewed as a massive, massive flop. Had the movie been made for a budget of about $8.5 million (which is how much, adjusted for inflation, it took to film the popular western epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), it would've been a gigantic success with ticket sales of that magnitude. Hell, you could chop the ticket sales by 75% and it would still be a big hit. The vast majority of the money spent on The Lone Ranger was just wasted, and that's the fault of the filmmakers. Even if it had been produced cheaply and flopped, at least it could've been more tolerable.
So get it right: I am arguing in favor of responding to piracy by having authors and publishers spend less up front, so as to better be able to tolerate making less money.
the vast majority actually prefer giant productions with big CGI budgets
No, that's just what gets made and promoted the most. It's a risky all the eggs in one basket strategy and it doesn't work as well as you'd think. In the last few posts I've pointed out several examples of huge successes that were made relatively cheaply (Beauty and the Beast, The Wrath of Khan, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and you could add films like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity (horror has an edge in that it's scary to not see things), Mad Max, Rocky, American Graffiti, or Napoleon Dynamite.
Your analogies to prohibition make no sense
The analogy to Prohibition was to point out that the government should not prohibit the public from engaging in behavior that is commonplace and generally seen as inoffensive, unless there is a damn good reason for doing so.
People really thought, back then, that drinking ought to be banned, but it was a common activity, no one felt that their own drinking was wrong, and the attempt to go against our social norms and force people to dry out failed utterly.
Well, now copyright infringement is commonplace, and most people don't s
it is literally impossible to have a small budget for a modern CGI-heavy action or animated movie
That depends on what you're trying to make. Disney's Beauty and the Beast has excellent animation, was well written and performed, got nominated for a Best Picture (which was such a shock that animated movies soon got pushed into their own category, away from the serious live action films), and was produced for what would be in today's dollars, a $41 million budget. A few years ago, Disney released Tangled, which has excellent animation, was well written and performed, and did get some awards although not best animated feature, and was produced for what would be in today's dollars, a $273 million budget.
Both are good movies. But Tangled, which cost over six and a half times as much as Beauty and the Beast, after adjusting for inflation, is not six and a half times better. You can make perfectly good movies on lower budgets.
The special effects for something like Avatar, Star Trek, The Avengers, etc, for $100M+ alone.
And yet, everyone loved Star Trek when it was on TV, and had such a low budget that they had to use the backlot for the Nazi, Gangster, and Roman planets, and the villain of the week was the giant floating head of Zsa Zsa Gabor! And everyone still loves The Wrath of Khan the most, and adjusted for inflation, it was made on a $26 million budget.
You know what would've been a better use of my time instead of seeking ST:ID? Seeing Trek in the Park.
Arguing that "if someone spent too much creating their content that's their problem, everyone should still be able to consume it for free" or "expensive movies are sometimes worse than cheap ones, and I should be able to watch bad movies for free" make no sense either. If it's bad don't watch it. If you watch it you apparently thought it was worth watching so compensate the creators.
I'm not arguing the latter, but I am arguing something close to the former. If it were legal for people to make and distribute copies of works on a strictly non-commercial basis (no charge for copies, nor for the media, nor bandwidth, no tip jars, no ads, not used as a draw for something else, no donations -- all completely at a loss), then that would simply be a factor for producers to take account of in budgeting films. Just think about how happy Hollywood would be if going to the movies was mandatory, and that you'd commit a felony if you didn't buy a ticket once a week. If maximizing their income is our priority, why don't we force people to go? If not, then why should it bother us if their income is not maximized, or even if it is less than what it happens to be now? They might make less than they do now, but they'll cope, I'm sure.
And comparing copyright issues from today and 300 years ago doesn't make sense, as copying was limited by technology or skill
I have news for you: that's still true. The technology has gotten better, and some of the skills, like literacy, are more widespread, but pirates do not have magic wands.
Today 1000 people can put 2 years of work into a movie, and it can be copied in 10 minutes using cheaply available hardware.
And the movie studios are free to use whatever equipment best serves their interests for making their own copies. They are not at a technological disadvantage. A huge movie studio can afford the same gear that the average basement-dwelling nerd can. In fact, usually legitimate publishers have the upper hand, being able to act openly, serve larger audiences, and use better, faster equipment which is nevertheless has lower marginal costs. At most there might be parity, but pirates never have the upper hand unless publishers are doing something stupid to handicap themselves.
or legal threats (debatable as to whether it really works
You are right, we can only speculate what a world without copyright would be like. But I think it would be a fairly boring place.
Well, copyright didn't exist until the 18th century, and then didn't become widespread until the 19th and 20th centuries (in many places, due to colonialism, rather than because the local population liked the idea).
So now you have a pretty good idea of what it would be like.
Of course, you'd have to factor in differences unrelated to copyrights: many places have less censorship than they once did; they have higher literacy rates; they have publishing technologies that are far more efficient than what was available when they adopted copyright laws, including the ability to publish sounds and moving pictures, which had not been possible; we have artificial lighting, inexpensive and widely available means of telecommunication, and data capture, editing, and storage technologies; improvements in agriculture, manufacturing, and labor law provide somewhat more leisure time than once may have been available; the population has increased (thus increasing the number of actual and potential authors); etc.
Wile I think that we're better off with some degree of copyright than none at all (though probably less than we've got now), I think that a world without copyright would be okay; not optimal, but okay.
I enjoy watch movies that were made on a $100 million dollar budget. They tend to be better than movies made on a $10,000 budget.
I think that what matters is the writing and the performance, not the budget. I saw the play version of Driving Miss Daisy before the movie came out. The play had three actors, and usually the third wasn't on stage. The set consisted of a couple of chairs and nothing else. The actor playing Hoke (the driver) had to hold his arms in front of him and pretend that he was steering the car. It worked fine, and everyone enjoyed it. The movie added real sets, real cars, location filming, a number of additional actors, and wa fine too, but it didn't need to. It would've been just as good had they filmed the black box stage performance, like the movie Dogville.
Also IIRC, there was a low budget (I mean really low budget: http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2008/12/19/star-wars-live-on-stage/ ) that went over well. While multi hundred million dollar movies with bad writing and bad acting like this year's The Lone Ranger, get to go directly to the trash. Big budgets are not necessary.
Well, I don't think that copyright infringement should be a crime; let it be a civil matter so that if copyright holders care, they can go to court, and if they don't care so much as to spend their own money on enforcement, the bill is not passed to taxpayers. A purely civil copyright system worked fine for a long time, as it did for trademarks, and still does afaik for patents.
(That said, if they were defrauding customers who thought they were getting legitimate copies, that might justify the involvement of law enforcement)
OTOH, I do think that commercial piracy of this sort ought to be illegal. Sure, there's plenty of currently infringing behavior that ought to be legalized, but this is too far. But I'm not surprised to see that copyright maximalism has gone so far as to sour many people on the whole idea, such that they call for the abolition of copyright, rather than simple reform. Had the publishing industries not acted greedily at every turn, they wouldn't have engendered so much opposition.
what are you talking about? The federal government can't force states to engage in interstate commerce. All it can do is say that if interstate transactions occur, then they must comply with federal law. Good thing you aren't a lawyer, or maybe you are. That would explain much.
What the previous poster was talking about is called the Dormant (or Negative) Commerce Clause doctrine: That even in the absence of federal legislation regulating interstate commerce, the Constitution forbids states from improperly acting to impair or discriminate against interstate commerce, such as by trying to protect local businesses from out of state competition.
And in this case, a law that said that plates legal for use on cars registered in California must be made in California probably would be unconstitutional.
What should also be legal, is for publishers to say "you cannot sell my book for less than $X". Amazon can sell books for any price they like, down to $0, and the publisher cannot complain. Does that sound right to you? It means if a publisher irks Amazon, they can send book profits spiraling down.
No, it's fine. The publishers set a wholesale price they were happy with, and which they turned them a profit. Amazon paid it, then sold at a lower retail price than the publishers wanted. Ebook profits for publishers were never in jeopardy.
[T]he owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.
Of course, it might not be the best business plan. There aren't a lot of video rental stores left. But if you can make it work, go for it.
Got a case on that? AFAIK everything except phonorecords (that is, audio recordings, such as CDs) and non-console software falls squarely under first sale for rental purposes. Boilerplate notices of dubious accuracy printed on a DVD label are no EULAs.
Well, in the US, at least, it's perfectly legal to rent ordinary retail DVDs. There are good reasons to go with a distributor, such as early access to copies so that they can be on shelves and ready to go ASAP, but if you're not getting prices lower than if you just got discs retail, and worse if you're locked into a requirements contract which precludes you from shopping around, I don't know if its worth it.
In any event, it seems to be a mostly moot point now.
Well why not go back to the old system of granting copyrights for a fixed term of years? Then the copyright lasts as long as it lasts, whether the author dies or not. This means that everyone knows when the work can be expected to be in the public domain straight away, and can plan for it; authors, publishers, and third parties all.
Well, this case is taking place in the UK, and I don't know anything about their law (other than that they have wigs, which seem neat). My analysis is more or less how it would work out in the US.
In the US, a derivative work is not the same thing as a compilation. (Although I suppose it is possible to have a compilation which is itself derivative of a preexisting compilation)
Here are the relevant bits of the statute:
17 USC 101
A âoecompilationâ is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term âoecompilationâ includes collective works.
A âoederivative workâ is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a âoederivative workâ.
17 USC 103
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully. (b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
If the compiler has the right to make the compilations at all, which they apparently do (or is someone arguing that Ministry of Sound is itself a pirate?), then they'd automatically get a copyright on the compilation if the compilation meets the requirements for copyrightability, the main one for compilations typically being whether there was sufficient creativity in the selection and arrangement of the material compiled.
Now, it's possible that a condition for including a particular recording might be to assign the compilation copyright back to the licensor of the recording, so that they end up with the compilation copyright. But barring that, the law says that the copyright in the compilation automatically subsists in the author, i.e. the compiler. Permission is required to make the compilation, but that doesn't change the law.
Again, of course, that's how it would be in the US. In the UK, who knows?
No, in the US they have a good argument. The issue is whether there was sufficient creativity in the selection of which tracks to include, and which order to arrange them in, as to justify a copyright.
The white pages in a phone book could be copyrightable. But so long as the selection of information is merely the name of the telephone subscriber, their address, and their number, and the order is merely alphabetical, in last name order, it's not creative; all the white pages are like that, and the reason is to make them useful.
A phone book that only included certain people arbitrarily chosen by the compiler, and which arranged them in an arbitrary, creative way, could be protected. (The individual names, numbers, and addresses could still be copied; they're unprotectable facts, but they'd have to be rearranged, and ideally mixed with the information of people who were not included). But a phone book like this would be useless as a general purpose directory. A specialty directory, sure -- e.g. a phone book of places a tourist should see in a foreign city -- but this isn't usually what people want.
Here, unless the authorized compilation albums include everything (or everything that could be included subject to some non-creative constraint, such as all the recordings to which the issuer of the compilation has rights), and unless they're arranged in some uncreative order, such as chronological order, or alphabetical order, it sounds worthy of a copyright to me.
It also comes into play with "functional" items like relatively short blocks of computer code where there may be very little "flexibility" in how you code something. For example, if I come up with a 5-line sorting algorithm and describe it in text (not code) form, two readers may independently implement the algorithm in the same language, call the function "sort," and use "a, b, c, etc" or even "i, j, k, etc." as variable names, not do any comments, etc. and result in exactly the same implementation. Both have a copyright on the implementation, just as much as if they had named the variables after their children's pets and called the function "newsortireadinabooksomewhere()".
Assuming, that is, that it is copyrightable at all. This is the filtration step of the abstraction-filtration-comparison test from the Altai case. Copyrights don't protection functionality; only creative aspects of software. Actual usefulness has to go under patents instead. Thus, the algorithm used isn't copyrightable. If there are a limited number of ways to implement that algorithm, particularly if external constraints like efficiency are involved, the implementation merges with the noncopyrightable functionality, and both are uncopyrightable. Further, commonplace bits of code, especially if they're functionally necessary in order to make it work on a particular machine, fall under the scenes a faire doctrine, which allows the free use of stock elements (e.g. in a horror story, the wolves howling at the moon, the remote and spooky castle in Transylvania, the superstitious peasants who know what's going on, etc.).
Creativity for copyright purposes requires the ability to make creative choices. Strip away the ability to choose, and you lose the creativity required for a copyright to subsist.
Only once we've determined what is copyrightable in the first place, and whether the allegedly infringing work is substantively similar, can we then proceed to the question of copying or independent creation.
But you know what the beauty is? If you think something isn't worth the price, you don't buy it. If enough people agree with you that it's overpriced, the price will go down.
And if even more people agree with you, you can modify copyright laws, impose price controls, and generally regulate the market. If authors think they're getting a raw deal, they can always wait tables. Of course it's unlikely authors will take their ball and go home; relatively few independent authors make a living solely from writing now -- lots of them have day jobs or rely on outside support. The money's nice to get, no question, but for many authors it is not the only reason to write and often not the most important reason.
It's worthwhile in the long run just to move heavy industry and mining off world. They're just not good things to do in our environment. It would take a long while and a lot of work to make it cost effective, but it's probably better that we do it instead of giving up right off the bat.
(Plus the more that we can make useful things in space, for use in space, without having to launch them from the Earth's surface, the lower the costs will be)
you know the reason it is only sometimes enforced or even pursued Justice is not Free in the USA. Some justice costs more then others depending on the lawyer or depending on how much money can be taken by said lawyer.
I take that to mean that you are upset that in the US, civil legal services are not provided free of cost to all parties that request them. And that instead, we have a system whereby if a party wants legal representation in a civil matter (which would generally be wise to have), they must find a way to pay for it, which or may not be difficult depending on the specific matter at hand, and the costs may vary considerably from one attorney to another.
I sympathize, but it's difficult to see a good solution to this.
Should we prohibit anyone from hiring legal counsel? Should the government subsidize lawyers in civil practice? Should lawyers be obligated to take any client that requests their services? (Currently, in the US, we don't have to as a general rule) Should we return to trial by combat, and build a series of municipal thunderdomes across the land?
The current system is far from ideal, but I don't know of any solutions that seem to be practical and which don't simply introduce new problems. If you've got an idea, please tell us.
Thomas Jefferson was a salve owner, hardly worthy of being quoted in this century as far as anything related to ownership.
Yes, I'm sure he owned many salves. Balms and ointments too. But the fact that he did some bad things does not invalidate his argument as made in the earlier post. You're actually making an ad hominem argument.
Your land argument is again Rubbish.
You've yet to say why.
The only people who can afford Copyright protection in the whole world is people with enough money to protect it.
This seems to be a tautology, but it doesn't seem out of place with the "rubbish" argument I was making earlier. I said that people have copyrights only to the extent that they can either personally defend them (which doesn't apply to published works, unless you start killing people) or can convince others to respect them and help in their defense. That some people might want to be paid before helping to defend them fits right in.
I have a 360 and it's offline only. I have no interest in online multiplayer games or anything else that a paid account offers. Coop split screen is okay, if the screen is big enough, but that's it.
First learn what Copyright is because what you have said is...Pure rubbish
Property law....Rubbish
Well, I'm a lawyer, I've taken a number of courses concerning copyright law (as well as the usual 1L property class), I've got an LL.M (a law master's degree) in IP, and I specialize in copyright and trademark law.
I think I have some idea of what I'm talking about.
As you seem to think otherwise, perhaps you'll enlighten me as to these things in at least as much detail as I have given in my earlier post.
You are free to do as you want but remember dont cry when the cops lock your ass up and take your freedom away because you feel you got some god give right to take things that dont belong to you without permission or pay.
Yes; that's exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. There are arbitrary rules which are enforced. Sometimes you can do what you want by working within the rules (eg buying and selling used copies without permission from or payment to copyright holders -- all legal as per 17 USC 109), sometimes you can change the rules (eg unlawfully making copies of certain sound recordings, whilst following the odd but usable rules in 17 USC 1008 and getting away with it, even in cases where you wouldn't've gotten away with it prior), and sometimes you just have enough force at your disposal that you can ignore the old rules and impose your own (eg the US having an official policy of piracy of foreign works for about a century).
Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this quote from former President Thomas Jefferson:
It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
Humans would quickly die of radiation poisoning on the surface of Europa if they didn't have lots of shielding. Jupiter has massive radiation belts that basically make everything inside of the orbit of Callisto off limits to us.
That's right, the sole reason copyright exists is so the author/owners of creative works get paid handsomely.
If that were true, why aren't I getting paid handsomely for writing posts on Slashdot?
No. Copyright doesn't guarantee payment for authors and frankly isn't intended to primarily benefit authors (if at all).
Copyright is intended to benefit the public by encouraging authors to create and publish works which they otherwise would not have created and published, and also by placing as few restrictions as possible on the public, and even then for as short of a time as possible.
why is copyright limited to only a few decades?
It probably should be less. It certainly shouldn't be a very long time, or forever, as this would harm the public interest in having the work be in the public domain, which is the state in which the work is most useful for the public.
Frankly, we don't have to have copyright at all. We did fine without it for all of human history up until a very short while ago, comparatively. It's outlandish arguments like yours that strengthen the abolitionist movement. You should be grateful for whatever everyone else deigns to give you, as it's better than nothing.
Why do you beleave you have a right to anything others make using their own resources.
Why wouldn't you?
Let's look at real property law: if you claim to own a parcel of land, and no one disputes your claim, then while you certainly have possession of it, we don't really know that you own it because we aren't putting your claim to the test. It's like if I claimed to own the M78 nebula; I can say what I want, but no one would care. When there is a dispute, it boils down to force. If you can defend your parcel from a trespasser, you do own it. If not, then the trespasser owns it (and is now in a superior position to make such claims, being able to repel you). And since in practice there's always someone out there who is stronger than you, everyone who is on their own is in a precarious situation. Eventually the idea of an alliance comes about: you and your neighbor will ally to repel trespassers against your parcel. But why would your neighbor do this? Could be altruism, but probably in exchange for your assistance defending his parcel. The trespassers form alliances and the owners form alliances, and they all create various rules under which the alliance will operate.
For example, in the US, we have all agreed that the state has the right to tax property. (Not all places may do this, but this is a valid state power) If you're unable to pay, the state may seize your property to cover the payment. If you resist with force, you're considered the trespasser, few if any members of the alliance help you, and are subdued or maybe even killed. OTOH if you can raise enough of an alliance to help you, you could perhaps win, and change the rules to better suit yourself.
It's all artificial and grounded in consensus. Copyright is no different, except that it was created recently enough that there is no argument about its artificiality.
So no one seems to be arguing that you can be forced to create works if you don't want to, and no one seems to be arguing that if you have created a work, that you must share it with others. But if you have created and shared a work, you no longer have any ability to personally defend it from others. How could you? People have the inherent ability to reproduce the work and publish it themselves, once they have become aware of it. The only way to get them not to is to convince them to respect your wishes. And no one is likely to do that except out of altruism, or more likely, because there's something in it for them; something in it for them that is better than ignoring you and doing what they want right away.
Copyright attempts to be a system where the public will enjoy a greater benefit if they respect it than if they don't. If this stops holding true, why would it be respected? And even if it is true, why shouldn't it be reformed somewhat to make the benefit for the public the greatest possible benefit overall? Why should they settle for less? And these benefits for the public are not only in incentivizing the creation and publication of works which otherwise would not be created and published, but also in having as few (or no) restrictions on what the public can do, as rapidly as possible, if not immediately.
The way this system works is changing and Ansel Adams today could still charge money for prints of his photographs. Most likely he couldn't make the enormous amount of money he made in the past because once a picture had reached a wide enough level of distribution someone would scan it and let fly a free copy of it. Right, wrong, I'm the one with the wide-format scanner. What could Adams do to offset this? That's what we're figuring out in the present.
No, this is pretty well figured out.
In the fine arts, what matters most is the provenance of copies, not copyrights. An Adams print that Adams actually made is worth more than an identical print made by some guy. The work is the same and the quality of the image is the same; the difference comes from Adams having interacted with one copy and not the other.
Likewise, this is why an original Van Gogh can go for many millions of dollars at auction, but a poster, or even a perfectly accurate copy painted on canvas is worth but a tiny fraction of that.
This doesn't work for everyone; a DVD of a big summer action movie is not really worth more to me if it comes from a numbered, limited edition signed by the director. But it does work for some.
Even under copyright there was never a one-size-fits-all solution to incentivizing authors to create and publish works. I suggest using anything that has some overall positive effect, and having lots of alternatives so that odds are good that something will stick.
Slashdot Mirror
It might help if we figured out how to make a working fusion reactor on Earth first. The problem with an 3He reactor is not simply a shortage of 3He.
Probably not; a sub's reactor would likely depend on the presence of the ocean for part of its cooling system (cooling is always a big problem in space -- basically it can only be done with radiators, which isn't very efficient), and is surely way overpowered for most missions.
The US and Russia have sent up actual reactors before. The US had SNAP and the USSR had BES.
But you really don't need nuclear power sources at all unless you're either far from the sun (beyond the orbit of Mars, usually), have serious power needs that modern solar power isn't sufficient for (the recently landed Curiosity rover on Mars uses an RTG for main power), or need heat to keep systems from getting too cold (the solar powered Mars rovers had small RTGs in them for heating purposes, IIRC).
same idea that the cost of production is somehow the fault of the creators and not relevant to what they want to ask you to pay to consume it
No, the cost of production is highly relevant to the asking price; they're going to try to set the price so that they make a profit if their prediction as to the number of customers is basically right.
For a good example of this not working out, see the Atari version of Pac-Man: there were an estimated 10 million Atari VCS consoles thought to be in use, so management had 12 million copies of Pac-Man made on the assumption that people would buy the console just to play it. But as things happened, only 7 million copies were sold, and the game was so lousy that many of those were returned. The Pac-Man debacle is seen as one of the factors causing the Videogame Crash of 1983 as well as a reported loss by Atari of half a billion dollars.
Anyway, what I was trying to say was not that there is no connection between production costs and ticket prices / retail cost (there is), but that production values themselves, which is what incur the production costs, are fairly arbitrary. Films don't require hundreds of millions of dollars of budget in order to tell a story; the story can be told just as well by less expensive means. And in fact, a lot of special effects are used to keep the budget down: it's cheaper to blow up a plastic model of a spaceship than it is to build a real one just to blow it up. Of course it's cheaper still to tell the story so in a way that you don't have to show it getting blown up, or to rely more on the audience's imagination rather than a convincing pyrotechnic display.
If filmmakers and other creators spend less making works -- which may involve lower quality standards, but that's alright -- then they can better withstand smaller numbers of paying customers.
For example, the recent Lone Ranger film had a budget of $225 million, worldwide revenues of $244 million in theaters, hasn't yet hit other venues such as home video, and is already viewed as a massive, massive flop. Had the movie been made for a budget of about $8.5 million (which is how much, adjusted for inflation, it took to film the popular western epic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), it would've been a gigantic success with ticket sales of that magnitude. Hell, you could chop the ticket sales by 75% and it would still be a big hit. The vast majority of the money spent on The Lone Ranger was just wasted, and that's the fault of the filmmakers. Even if it had been produced cheaply and flopped, at least it could've been more tolerable.
So get it right: I am arguing in favor of responding to piracy by having authors and publishers spend less up front, so as to better be able to tolerate making less money.
the vast majority actually prefer giant productions with big CGI budgets
No, that's just what gets made and promoted the most. It's a risky all the eggs in one basket strategy and it doesn't work as well as you'd think. In the last few posts I've pointed out several examples of huge successes that were made relatively cheaply (Beauty and the Beast, The Wrath of Khan, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) and you could add films like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity (horror has an edge in that it's scary to not see things), Mad Max, Rocky, American Graffiti, or Napoleon Dynamite.
Your analogies to prohibition make no sense
The analogy to Prohibition was to point out that the government should not prohibit the public from engaging in behavior that is commonplace and generally seen as inoffensive, unless there is a damn good reason for doing so.
People really thought, back then, that drinking ought to be banned, but it was a common activity, no one felt that their own drinking was wrong, and the attempt to go against our social norms and force people to dry out failed utterly.
Well, now copyright infringement is commonplace, and most people don't s
it is literally impossible to have a small budget for a modern CGI-heavy action or animated movie
That depends on what you're trying to make. Disney's Beauty and the Beast has excellent animation, was well written and performed, got nominated for a Best Picture (which was such a shock that animated movies soon got pushed into their own category, away from the serious live action films), and was produced for what would be in today's dollars, a $41 million budget. A few years ago, Disney released Tangled, which has excellent animation, was well written and performed, and did get some awards although not best animated feature, and was produced for what would be in today's dollars, a $273 million budget.
Both are good movies. But Tangled, which cost over six and a half times as much as Beauty and the Beast, after adjusting for inflation, is not six and a half times better. You can make perfectly good movies on lower budgets.
The special effects for something like Avatar, Star Trek, The Avengers, etc, for $100M+ alone.
And yet, everyone loved Star Trek when it was on TV, and had such a low budget that they had to use the backlot for the Nazi, Gangster, and Roman planets, and the villain of the week was the giant floating head of Zsa Zsa Gabor! And everyone still loves The Wrath of Khan the most, and adjusted for inflation, it was made on a $26 million budget.
You know what would've been a better use of my time instead of seeking ST:ID? Seeing Trek in the Park.
Arguing that "if someone spent too much creating their content that's their problem, everyone should still be able to consume it for free" or "expensive movies are sometimes worse than cheap ones, and I should be able to watch bad movies for free" make no sense either. If it's bad don't watch it. If you watch it you apparently thought it was worth watching so compensate the creators.
I'm not arguing the latter, but I am arguing something close to the former. If it were legal for people to make and distribute copies of works on a strictly non-commercial basis (no charge for copies, nor for the media, nor bandwidth, no tip jars, no ads, not used as a draw for something else, no donations -- all completely at a loss), then that would simply be a factor for producers to take account of in budgeting films. Just think about how happy Hollywood would be if going to the movies was mandatory, and that you'd commit a felony if you didn't buy a ticket once a week. If maximizing their income is our priority, why don't we force people to go? If not, then why should it bother us if their income is not maximized, or even if it is less than what it happens to be now? They might make less than they do now, but they'll cope, I'm sure.
And comparing copyright issues from today and 300 years ago doesn't make sense, as copying was limited by technology or skill
I have news for you: that's still true. The technology has gotten better, and some of the skills, like literacy, are more widespread, but pirates do not have magic wands.
Today 1000 people can put 2 years of work into a movie, and it can be copied in 10 minutes using cheaply available hardware.
And the movie studios are free to use whatever equipment best serves their interests for making their own copies. They are not at a technological disadvantage. A huge movie studio can afford the same gear that the average basement-dwelling nerd can. In fact, usually legitimate publishers have the upper hand, being able to act openly, serve larger audiences, and use better, faster equipment which is nevertheless has lower marginal costs. At most there might be parity, but pirates never have the upper hand unless publishers are doing something stupid to handicap themselves.
or legal threats (debatable as to whether it really works
You are right, we can only speculate what a world without copyright would be like. But I think it would be a fairly boring place.
Well, copyright didn't exist until the 18th century, and then didn't become widespread until the 19th and 20th centuries (in many places, due to colonialism, rather than because the local population liked the idea).
So now you have a pretty good idea of what it would be like.
Of course, you'd have to factor in differences unrelated to copyrights: many places have less censorship than they once did; they have higher literacy rates; they have publishing technologies that are far more efficient than what was available when they adopted copyright laws, including the ability to publish sounds and moving pictures, which had not been possible; we have artificial lighting, inexpensive and widely available means of telecommunication, and data capture, editing, and storage technologies; improvements in agriculture, manufacturing, and labor law provide somewhat more leisure time than once may have been available; the population has increased (thus increasing the number of actual and potential authors); etc.
Wile I think that we're better off with some degree of copyright than none at all (though probably less than we've got now), I think that a world without copyright would be okay; not optimal, but okay.
I enjoy watch movies that were made on a $100 million dollar budget. They tend to be better than movies made on a $10,000 budget.
I think that what matters is the writing and the performance, not the budget. I saw the play version of Driving Miss Daisy before the movie came out. The play had three actors, and usually the third wasn't on stage. The set consisted of a couple of chairs and nothing else. The actor playing Hoke (the driver) had to hold his arms in front of him and pretend that he was steering the car. It worked fine, and everyone enjoyed it. The movie added real sets, real cars, location filming, a number of additional actors, and wa fine too, but it didn't need to. It would've been just as good had they filmed the black box stage performance, like the movie Dogville.
Also IIRC, there was a low budget (I mean really low budget: http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2008/12/19/star-wars-live-on-stage/ ) that went over well. While multi hundred million dollar movies with bad writing and bad acting like this year's The Lone Ranger, get to go directly to the trash. Big budgets are not necessary.
Well, I don't think that copyright infringement should be a crime; let it be a civil matter so that if copyright holders care, they can go to court, and if they don't care so much as to spend their own money on enforcement, the bill is not passed to taxpayers. A purely civil copyright system worked fine for a long time, as it did for trademarks, and still does afaik for patents.
(That said, if they were defrauding customers who thought they were getting legitimate copies, that might justify the involvement of law enforcement)
OTOH, I do think that commercial piracy of this sort ought to be illegal. Sure, there's plenty of currently infringing behavior that ought to be legalized, but this is too far. But I'm not surprised to see that copyright maximalism has gone so far as to sour many people on the whole idea, such that they call for the abolition of copyright, rather than simple reform. Had the publishing industries not acted greedily at every turn, they wouldn't have engendered so much opposition.
what are you talking about? The federal government can't force states to engage in interstate commerce. All it can do is say that if interstate transactions occur, then they must comply with federal law. Good thing you aren't a lawyer, or maybe you are. That would explain much.
What the previous poster was talking about is called the Dormant (or Negative) Commerce Clause doctrine: That even in the absence of federal legislation regulating interstate commerce, the Constitution forbids states from improperly acting to impair or discriminate against interstate commerce, such as by trying to protect local businesses from out of state competition.
And in this case, a law that said that plates legal for use on cars registered in California must be made in California probably would be unconstitutional.
What should also be legal, is for publishers to say "you cannot sell my book for less than $X". Amazon can sell books for any price they like, down to $0, and the publisher cannot complain. Does that sound right to you? It means if a publisher irks Amazon, they can send book profits spiraling down.
No, it's fine. The publishers set a wholesale price they were happy with, and which they turned them a profit. Amazon paid it, then sold at a lower retail price than the publishers wanted. Ebook profits for publishers were never in jeopardy.
If you're in the US, yes.
The relevant part of 17 USC 109:
[T]he owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.
Of course, it might not be the best business plan. There aren't a lot of video rental stores left. But if you can make it work, go for it.
Got a case on that? AFAIK everything except phonorecords (that is, audio recordings, such as CDs) and non-console software falls squarely under first sale for rental purposes. Boilerplate notices of dubious accuracy printed on a DVD label are no EULAs.
Well, in the US, at least, it's perfectly legal to rent ordinary retail DVDs. There are good reasons to go with a distributor, such as early access to copies so that they can be on shelves and ready to go ASAP, but if you're not getting prices lower than if you just got discs retail, and worse if you're locked into a requirements contract which precludes you from shopping around, I don't know if its worth it.
In any event, it seems to be a mostly moot point now.
Well why not go back to the old system of granting copyrights for a fixed term of years? Then the copyright lasts as long as it lasts, whether the author dies or not. This means that everyone knows when the work can be expected to be in the public domain straight away, and can plan for it; authors, publishers, and third parties all.
Well, this case is taking place in the UK, and I don't know anything about their law (other than that they have wigs, which seem neat). My analysis is more or less how it would work out in the US.
In the US, a derivative work is not the same thing as a compilation. (Although I suppose it is possible to have a compilation which is itself derivative of a preexisting compilation)
Here are the relevant bits of the statute:
17 USC 101
A âoecompilationâ is a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. The term âoecompilationâ includes collective works.
A âoederivative workâ is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a âoederivative workâ.
17 USC 103
(a) The subject matter of copyright as specified by section 102 includes compilations and derivative works, but protection for a work employing preexisting material in which copyright subsists does not extend to any part of the work in which such material has been used unlawfully.
(b) The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material.
If the compiler has the right to make the compilations at all, which they apparently do (or is someone arguing that Ministry of Sound is itself a pirate?), then they'd automatically get a copyright on the compilation if the compilation meets the requirements for copyrightability, the main one for compilations typically being whether there was sufficient creativity in the selection and arrangement of the material compiled.
Now, it's possible that a condition for including a particular recording might be to assign the compilation copyright back to the licensor of the recording, so that they end up with the compilation copyright. But barring that, the law says that the copyright in the compilation automatically subsists in the author, i.e. the compiler. Permission is required to make the compilation, but that doesn't change the law.
Again, of course, that's how it would be in the US. In the UK, who knows?
No, in the US they have a good argument. The issue is whether there was sufficient creativity in the selection of which tracks to include, and which order to arrange them in, as to justify a copyright.
The white pages in a phone book could be copyrightable. But so long as the selection of information is merely the name of the telephone subscriber, their address, and their number, and the order is merely alphabetical, in last name order, it's not creative; all the white pages are like that, and the reason is to make them useful.
A phone book that only included certain people arbitrarily chosen by the compiler, and which arranged them in an arbitrary, creative way, could be protected. (The individual names, numbers, and addresses could still be copied; they're unprotectable facts, but they'd have to be rearranged, and ideally mixed with the information of people who were not included). But a phone book like this would be useless as a general purpose directory. A specialty directory, sure -- e.g. a phone book of places a tourist should see in a foreign city -- but this isn't usually what people want.
Here, unless the authorized compilation albums include everything (or everything that could be included subject to some non-creative constraint, such as all the recordings to which the issuer of the compilation has rights), and unless they're arranged in some uncreative order, such as chronological order, or alphabetical order, it sounds worthy of a copyright to me.
It also comes into play with "functional" items like relatively short blocks of computer code where there may be very little "flexibility" in how you code something. For example, if I come up with a 5-line sorting algorithm and describe it in text (not code) form, two readers may independently implement the algorithm in the same language, call the function "sort," and use "a, b, c, etc" or even "i, j, k, etc." as variable names, not do any comments, etc. and result in exactly the same implementation. Both have a copyright on the implementation, just as much as if they had named the variables after their children's pets and called the function "newsortireadinabooksomewhere()".
Assuming, that is, that it is copyrightable at all. This is the filtration step of the abstraction-filtration-comparison test from the Altai case. Copyrights don't protection functionality; only creative aspects of software. Actual usefulness has to go under patents instead. Thus, the algorithm used isn't copyrightable. If there are a limited number of ways to implement that algorithm, particularly if external constraints like efficiency are involved, the implementation merges with the noncopyrightable functionality, and both are uncopyrightable. Further, commonplace bits of code, especially if they're functionally necessary in order to make it work on a particular machine, fall under the scenes a faire doctrine, which allows the free use of stock elements (e.g. in a horror story, the wolves howling at the moon, the remote and spooky castle in Transylvania, the superstitious peasants who know what's going on, etc.).
Creativity for copyright purposes requires the ability to make creative choices. Strip away the ability to choose, and you lose the creativity required for a copyright to subsist.
Only once we've determined what is copyrightable in the first place, and whether the allegedly infringing work is substantively similar, can we then proceed to the question of copying or independent creation.
But you know what the beauty is? If you think something isn't worth the price, you don't buy it. If enough people agree with you that it's overpriced, the price will go down.
And if even more people agree with you, you can modify copyright laws, impose price controls, and generally regulate the market. If authors think they're getting a raw deal, they can always wait tables. Of course it's unlikely authors will take their ball and go home; relatively few independent authors make a living solely from writing now -- lots of them have day jobs or rely on outside support. The money's nice to get, no question, but for many authors it is not the only reason to write and often not the most important reason.
It's worthwhile in the long run just to move heavy industry and mining off world. They're just not good things to do in our environment. It would take a long while and a lot of work to make it cost effective, but it's probably better that we do it instead of giving up right off the bat.
(Plus the more that we can make useful things in space, for use in space, without having to launch them from the Earth's surface, the lower the costs will be)
Book clubs become dens of iniquity full of felons
All the best book clubs already were that.
you know the reason it is only sometimes enforced or even pursued Justice is not Free in the USA. Some justice costs more then others depending on the lawyer or depending on how much money can be taken by said lawyer.
I take that to mean that you are upset that in the US, civil legal services are not provided free of cost to all parties that request them. And that instead, we have a system whereby if a party wants legal representation in a civil matter (which would generally be wise to have), they must find a way to pay for it, which or may not be difficult depending on the specific matter at hand, and the costs may vary considerably from one attorney to another.
I sympathize, but it's difficult to see a good solution to this.
Should we prohibit anyone from hiring legal counsel? Should the government subsidize lawyers in civil practice? Should lawyers be obligated to take any client that requests their services? (Currently, in the US, we don't have to as a general rule) Should we return to trial by combat, and build a series of municipal thunderdomes across the land?
The current system is far from ideal, but I don't know of any solutions that seem to be practical and which don't simply introduce new problems. If you've got an idea, please tell us.
Thomas Jefferson was a salve owner, hardly worthy of being quoted in this century as far as anything related to ownership.
Yes, I'm sure he owned many salves. Balms and ointments too. But the fact that he did some bad things does not invalidate his argument as made in the earlier post. You're actually making an ad hominem argument.
Your land argument is again Rubbish.
You've yet to say why.
The only people who can afford Copyright protection in the whole world is people with enough money to protect it.
This seems to be a tautology, but it doesn't seem out of place with the "rubbish" argument I was making earlier. I said that people have copyrights only to the extent that they can either personally defend them (which doesn't apply to published works, unless you start killing people) or can convince others to respect them and help in their defense. That some people might want to be paid before helping to defend them fits right in.
I have a 360 and it's offline only. I have no interest in online multiplayer games or anything else that a paid account offers. Coop split screen is okay, if the screen is big enough, but that's it.
First learn what Copyright is because what you have said is...Pure rubbish
Property law....Rubbish
Well, I'm a lawyer, I've taken a number of courses concerning copyright law (as well as the usual 1L property class), I've got an LL.M (a law master's degree) in IP, and I specialize in copyright and trademark law.
I think I have some idea of what I'm talking about.
As you seem to think otherwise, perhaps you'll enlighten me as to these things in at least as much detail as I have given in my earlier post.
You are free to do as you want but remember dont cry when the cops lock your ass up and take your freedom away because you feel you got some god give right to take things that dont belong to you without permission or pay.
Yes; that's exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. There are arbitrary rules which are enforced. Sometimes you can do what you want by working within the rules (eg buying and selling used copies without permission from or payment to copyright holders -- all legal as per 17 USC 109), sometimes you can change the rules (eg unlawfully making copies of certain sound recordings, whilst following the odd but usable rules in 17 USC 1008 and getting away with it, even in cases where you wouldn't've gotten away with it prior), and sometimes you just have enough force at your disposal that you can ignore the old rules and impose your own (eg the US having an official policy of piracy of foreign works for about a century).
Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this quote from former President Thomas Jefferson:
It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
Humans would quickly die of radiation poisoning on the surface of Europa if they didn't have lots of shielding. Jupiter has massive radiation belts that basically make everything inside of the orbit of Callisto off limits to us.
Lets stick with unmanned probes for now.
That's right, the sole reason copyright exists is so the author/owners of creative works get paid handsomely.
If that were true, why aren't I getting paid handsomely for writing posts on Slashdot?
No. Copyright doesn't guarantee payment for authors and frankly isn't intended to primarily benefit authors (if at all).
Copyright is intended to benefit the public by encouraging authors to create and publish works which they otherwise would not have created and published, and also by placing as few restrictions as possible on the public, and even then for as short of a time as possible.
why is copyright limited to only a few decades?
It probably should be less. It certainly shouldn't be a very long time, or forever, as this would harm the public interest in having the work be in the public domain, which is the state in which the work is most useful for the public.
Frankly, we don't have to have copyright at all. We did fine without it for all of human history up until a very short while ago, comparatively. It's outlandish arguments like yours that strengthen the abolitionist movement. You should be grateful for whatever everyone else deigns to give you, as it's better than nothing.
Why do you beleave you have a right to anything others make using their own resources.
Why wouldn't you?
Let's look at real property law: if you claim to own a parcel of land, and no one disputes your claim, then while you certainly have possession of it, we don't really know that you own it because we aren't putting your claim to the test. It's like if I claimed to own the M78 nebula; I can say what I want, but no one would care. When there is a dispute, it boils down to force. If you can defend your parcel from a trespasser, you do own it. If not, then the trespasser owns it (and is now in a superior position to make such claims, being able to repel you). And since in practice there's always someone out there who is stronger than you, everyone who is on their own is in a precarious situation. Eventually the idea of an alliance comes about: you and your neighbor will ally to repel trespassers against your parcel. But why would your neighbor do this? Could be altruism, but probably in exchange for your assistance defending his parcel. The trespassers form alliances and the owners form alliances, and they all create various rules under which the alliance will operate.
For example, in the US, we have all agreed that the state has the right to tax property. (Not all places may do this, but this is a valid state power) If you're unable to pay, the state may seize your property to cover the payment. If you resist with force, you're considered the trespasser, few if any members of the alliance help you, and are subdued or maybe even killed. OTOH if you can raise enough of an alliance to help you, you could perhaps win, and change the rules to better suit yourself.
It's all artificial and grounded in consensus. Copyright is no different, except that it was created recently enough that there is no argument about its artificiality.
So no one seems to be arguing that you can be forced to create works if you don't want to, and no one seems to be arguing that if you have created a work, that you must share it with others. But if you have created and shared a work, you no longer have any ability to personally defend it from others. How could you? People have the inherent ability to reproduce the work and publish it themselves, once they have become aware of it. The only way to get them not to is to convince them to respect your wishes. And no one is likely to do that except out of altruism, or more likely, because there's something in it for them; something in it for them that is better than ignoring you and doing what they want right away.
Copyright attempts to be a system where the public will enjoy a greater benefit if they respect it than if they don't. If this stops holding true, why would it be respected? And even if it is true, why shouldn't it be reformed somewhat to make the benefit for the public the greatest possible benefit overall? Why should they settle for less? And these benefits for the public are not only in incentivizing the creation and publication of works which otherwise would not be created and published, but also in having as few (or no) restrictions on what the public can do, as rapidly as possible, if not immediately.
I hope you can put the rest together from there.
The way this system works is changing and Ansel Adams today could still charge money for prints of his photographs. Most likely he couldn't make the enormous amount of money he made in the past because once a picture had reached a wide enough level of distribution someone would scan it and let fly a free copy of it. Right, wrong, I'm the one with the wide-format scanner. What could Adams do to offset this? That's what we're figuring out in the present.
No, this is pretty well figured out.
In the fine arts, what matters most is the provenance of copies, not copyrights. An Adams print that Adams actually made is worth more than an identical print made by some guy. The work is the same and the quality of the image is the same; the difference comes from Adams having interacted with one copy and not the other.
Likewise, this is why an original Van Gogh can go for many millions of dollars at auction, but a poster, or even a perfectly accurate copy painted on canvas is worth but a tiny fraction of that.
This doesn't work for everyone; a DVD of a big summer action movie is not really worth more to me if it comes from a numbered, limited edition signed by the director. But it does work for some.
Even under copyright there was never a one-size-fits-all solution to incentivizing authors to create and publish works. I suggest using anything that has some overall positive effect, and having lots of alternatives so that odds are good that something will stick.