As an example, look at an author who writes a novel a year for 20 years. The first 19 don't hit a market but the 20th sells like hotcakes. At that point there is a strong chance that his entire back catalog will start to sell in large numbers. If the copyrights have expired too early (s)he could lose out on profits from the majority of those books. Same applies to bands and to a lesser extent directors/actors.
So? Copyright is just a spur to get people to keep on creating. In your example, the author did keep on writing despite a lack of reward. Remember, no actual reward is necessary in copyright; only the possibility of one. I doubt that he would have decided not to write the 20th novel if the 1st one had entered the public domain by then, given that all his novels, to that date, hadn't sold. If he decided not to write it, it'd probably be because he'd consider himself to be a failure, with 19 novels no one bought.
Plus that's such an extreme -- most works are either going to sell right away, or never will. We should design the system to handle what usually happens, not bizarre happenings.
many creative works aren't an overnight success
Which is true, since many works aren't a success at all. But of the few that are a success, it is generally overnight, or close to it.
Most profits from books are made in the first couple of months. Most movie tickets are sold in the opening weekend. Most video rentals occur during the first week the movie is on shelves. It's extremely rare for success to come later. Sometimes it does, but it's the exception. I wouldn't plan around it.
The problems I can see with dividing into two classes of copyright (Artistic/technical) is that you get cross over in certain situations. While it seems pretty clear that a music CD is artistic and a word processing app is technical, where does a game like Myst sit? Or a book that explains how to use the aforementioned word processor?
Then maybe it's not a useful division.
I also see issues with copyright between individuals and companies. Although that could be resolved by legislating that all copyright (IP) remains with the individual creator and then relying on contractual law to license out the technology to the company. So effectively the Word processing app is owned by the team who wrote it, but the company has a license to produce it and profit from it.
Why, for God's sake? What possible reason is there for that?
First, as you appear to see, the same effect will be achieved in the end: employees will get no share of the profits from the work, the employer gets all profits, but now it's more expensive since you have to deal with the costs of setting up the contracts to do this.
Nor is it appropriate for employees to get any profits. When you bear a risk, then you should get a chance at the reward. The more risk, the greater the potential reward should be. Employees have no risk; they get a paycheck. All the risk here is borne by the company and its investors. They should get the big payoff given that they run the risk of losing everything.
Maybe there also needs to be some sort of "For the public good" provision as well. So inventions that improve quality of life (medicines and agricultural developments mainly) would have different copyright regulations to things like a better word processor or Britney's latest album.
Inventions are not copyrightable, they're patentable.
Copyright is granted automatically to you for anything that you produce.
Yes. I'm suggesting that we change this.
Remember that until quite recently, a minimal level of state protection was available for works between the period of creation and publication, and that upon publication, you either needed to have registered for a federal copyright, or the work would enter the public domain.
I'm essentially suggesting federalizing the whole deal, and providing a small amount of protection for unpublished works, for a short period of time (to avoid having manuscripts unauthorizedly republished before an author can, but not to let authors sit on their works for a long while whilst being protected), and that once you publish, you need to promptly register for a copyright, or lose your rights. It would not be dissimilar from the patent system, where if you don't file for a patent, you rapidly lose any right to get a patent at all.
If you had to do something to get it then anything you wrote could be ripped off without attribution.. say your posting on Slashdot, or an update on your blog, or any e-mails that you sent, or your company's home page.
Copyright is only tolerable where it provides an incentive to people to create what they otherwise would not have created, and even then, only to the minimum degree necessary, and even then, it must also serve the public interest in having works unencumbered.
I bet that people would post on/., update their blogs, and send email, regardless of whether their writings were copyrighted.
In fact, I suspect that businesses would often update their web sites without regard to copyright as well. Though if they wanted a copyright on a press release or something, no one would be stopping them from getting one. But it would be a business decision, and not automatic.
Think of the burden if every time an update to a webpage was made or an e-mail was sent or a blog was posted to if this required some process to get the copyright on.
Precisely -- the burden isn't big at all, but by requiring it, we don't give copyrights to authors that don't need them as an incentive, and we still make them available to authors that do. Basically it weeds out people that aren't serious.
I don't like adhesive contracts in this field, but I do like the GPL and its ilk. While it's tricky to get rid of one and not the other, I think it's possible with careful drafting.
The only people who are hindered in any way by copyrights are those who want to consume someone else's product.
No, since copyright holders are rent seekers, they will attempt to expand their copyright to cover the creators of other works, claiming infringement. This will not always be quite true, but sometimes it will work. (see e.g. some posts in this thread about independent creation and the difficulty in proving it)
But aside from that, ok.
The copyright owner is not hindered by copyrights, he can release his material to the public domain if he wants to.
Well, he's not hindered by HIS copyright. But basically, ok.
If he doesn't want to, he should have that option.
Yes -- assuming the existence of copyright to begin with. There's no reason why we have to have copyright; it's just that we may.
So, those who say "no copyrights" are in the position of trying to take things from other people.
Technically only with regards to existing copyrights; future copyrights would not be granted, and thus not taken away. Authors could never be required to create works or distribute them, but once they've done so, they'd be fair game for everyone else, and the authors would've known this in advance, at least for future works. So nothing is taken away from them -- they chose to create and distribute.
At any rate, I still fail to see where any of this is actually bad. Copyright is intended to maximize the satisfaction of the public interest. It is possible that the maximum satisfaction would occur with no copyright law, though I don't think this is presently true. It's also valid to just decline to pursue maximal satisfaction, provided that the law is minimally restrictive for whatever degree of satisfaction is sought, and that it never goes below the degree of satisfaction found when there is no copyright.
Copyright certainly does not exist to allow authors to make a reasonable return on investment! The mere possibility of this is the carrot in the system. Not the objective.
Besides, no one does it for a reasonable return, because the odds of any return, much less a reasonable one, are lower than you'd get from any other investment strategy, including gambling. Rather, very high returns are sought. Investing in creative works is a high risk for high return. It almost never helps the author financially.
Actually, what's worse is that they're not used that much. Disney hasn't made anything like as many Mickey Mouse cartoons as they used to. Putting it into the public domain would allow anyone interested in doing so to do so. This is a good thing too. There's nothing better or worse about original or derivative works.
(And copyright is significantly about money -- it's the means by which artists are manipulated into serving the public interest)
With regards to point 6; there needs to be a form of protection for those kind of things. For example, if someone makes a film of Macbeth, that interpretation is subject to copyrights, but the original work isn't and someone else can put on a play of it, make another film etc.
WE HAVE THIS. Check out 17 USC 103. In fact, the Constitution precludes going further; the author of a work can only get a copyright to that which he is the author of.
Using concepts from the film version in your production is a dodgy area.
Mere concepts probably aren't protectable. The more solid they are, the more likely they are protectable. It depends on whether you're looking at an idea, scene a faire, etc. or a real work.
We have this kind of repository in the US. We call it the Library of Congress. The problem is that due to, among other things, the Berne Convention, manditory deposit of best copies more or less died. Also the LoC doesn't get enough money to keep everything it gets, or to put all of its p.d. materials online (it doesn't lend to anyone other than Congressmen usually, so you need to go to DC -- which I recommend as they have a great reading room and library cards are free).
Better funding and a return to strict formalities would be greatly beneficial.
But it is a government library -- it should be public and free to use. Also, works should be as accessible as possible prior to term expiration, just as with a normal library.
So should the ability to make backup copies without the permission of the originator. (Selling or distributing them is something else. That would be clearly beyond the bounds if copyright law were anywhere near fair.)
Well, distributing the backups in conjunction with the original would seem fair, no? In fact, IIRC, we do that now in 117(b). This would be useful if, for example, the original became unusable.
I'm aware of how stupid the UK is with regards to Peter Pan.
But there is rather a default on/. of discussing US law, which is what I was doing with regards to copyrights and trademarks. I don't have a great interest in other country's copyright or trademark law.
However, if you try to put together a coherent theory of fair use outside of American legal history
Ah, that must be it. I don't care about other country's legal history with regards to copyright (save for most of them being good cautionary examples).
First Sale is a good foundational principle of copyright law, though, I agree.
You do realize that we're violating the unwritten rules of/. by trying to have a reasoned discussion, don't you?
I'd like to see the US abandon all copyright treaties, and adopt a policy of unilateral national treatment, but with substantive law that reflects what's best for the US.
It'd be fine with me for other countries to do likewise. The only possible international agreements with regards to copyright that I could stomach would be national treatment and a policy of not having two nations' copyright laws be so opposed that an author would have to pick one or the other.
We stayed out of Berne for a good hundred years. Too bad we got stupid about it.
I like your numbers, but I'd like to see a source for them.
At any rate, while I do agree that a blanket term is probably the best option, we might break it down into several renewable terms -- those who feel they can still wring some profit from a work would pay the costs involved with renewing. Those who think they've got as much as it's worth to get will not do so. (If renewal passes unnoticed, then it's a fair bet that the work didn't have any material value to them; it wasn't even worth docketing in a calendar)
This was not uncommon in the pre-1978 era.
It's software in particular that I think might benefit from not being renewable, given that it decays unusually rapidly. Other kinds of work might be too, of course.
Outside of perhaps 102(b), Congress really hasn't bothered with merger. Most copyright doctrines arise judicially. So I suppose the best way to do it would be to keep pushing for it in infringement suits where it's viable, and to try to get the courts to go for it.
Why not require the effort up front? If the effort is at the end, the author will no longer care. After all, what are you going to do if they ignore this? If it's a condition of getting a copyright to begin with, however, then there's an incentive to comply.
Well, actually, if a work doesn't make money within about a year, it probably never will. And it probably never will make money at all, in fact.
Why not combine these: 5 year terms, renewable, up to a certain limit. This provides a reasonable maximum length, but also provides granularity if a copyright holder is more rapidly discouraged. The granularity is not so great, though, that you have to re-up annually, which would be perhaps a bit of a hassle. Requiring an application for a copyright within a certain timeframe (cf. the 1 year bar in patent law) also would prevent works from being copyrighted where the author doesn't care at all. Only a minimal effort would be required to get a copyright, but it would separate out people who were really serious. We don't need to grant these things left and right.
What you've done is cap the amount that a producer can get. Not a smart idea for big-ticket productions.
So?
Copyright as it stands now doesn't really provide me with the profit opportunities it would take to rearrange the stars themselves into creative patterns. And no one cares.
If we lose big-ticket productions, but still benefit overall more than we would otherwise, it's worth it. There's no rule that says that it has to be even potentially reasonable to spend a lot of money creating a work.
Trademarks cannot be used to attain copyright-like protection. When a work enters the public domain, that work becomes a generic good. Since a mark can only be protected where it indicates the source of the good, and now anyone can be the source of this good, the mark suffers genericide.
The Shredded Wheat case is a good example of this in the patent field (the trademark on that name died when the patent on shredded wheat expired).
There have been some examples of this in the copyright field, and some related copyright-trademark cases such as Dastar reinforce the point.
Mickey Mouse might remain a trademark for goods or services other than those involving creative works (see e.g. Peter Pan for buses and peanut butter doesn't affect the public domain status of the character generally) but Disney would still be pretty screwed.
This is why they want to lengthen terms. If they didn't need to (the market for the black and white cartoon shorts of the 20's and 30's being fairly limited) they'd just rely on trademark.
I really loathe the idea of adhesive licenses. Better, IMO, to have a good set of standard laws, where personally executed licenses are the only deviation from them (other than placing stuff in the public domain).
Problem is that if you have heard his work once, the court will assume that you based your work on his, whether you intended to or not. This precedent of strict liability for subconscious copying (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music) could easily lead to a chilling effect on composition of new music.
Quite true. I didn't say that independent creation was a particularly viable defense to infringement, just that it was one. OTOH, you must agree that it's difficult to determine, where someone had access to the allegedly infringed work, whether they copied or just happened to independently create. The odds do seem in favor of the former. The courts are applying Occam's razor a bit too harshly, IMO, but they're not unjustified in applying it at all.
The problem is that a work doesn't need "moderate length and complexity" to earn a copyright. For instance, "He's So Fine" is just one three note pattern repeated four times, followed by a five note pattern repeated four times. Read it and weep.
I have read it before. But we're not talking about the necessary modicum of creativity; we're talking about the likelihood of independent creation. I think there should be a higher standard for works where there are outside concerns constraining available permutations of the elements the work is comprised of -- there's only so many combinations of notes that people can play and which sound good on ordinary instruments. Thus longer arrangements would be what would indicate copying since there are a lot of permutations of how you can string various passages together. (I'm probably misusing some music terminology here, but I think you get the idea) This is just line drawing, though. Poetry or a very few kinds of visual art or architecture might also get this. Software frequently would. It's vaguely similar to the merger doctrine.
You'll notice that this doesn't include any right to make copies for friends and family. That's not fair use
Well, by your own post, that depends on whether it competes with the copyright holder.
It probably is fair use for me to videotape a TV show for my Mom and to send her the tape.
But then, the great advantage of fair use is that it's so vague -- it can be adapted to any circumstance, even unforeseen ones.
Incidentally, you're thinking of 1008. However 1) you don't understand it -- 1008 only permits making copies, but does not permit distributing them. In fact, due to the precise wording involved, distribution of 1008 copies is infringing, unless such distribution is fair use. 2) It only applies to a narrow range of works. 3) It was, in part, created because it was thought that fair use does apply to home taping, but that this was insufficiently clear.
IMHO the most important part of "fair use" stems from application of the doctrine of first sale.
That's a little interesting, given that Fair Use dates back to 1841, and First Sale dates back to 1908, IIRC.
Life or 50 years from publication, whichever is longer.
That's awfully long.
I'm not keen to be told I have to let other people make crap versions of my work while I'm alive
Would you not create that work if you had to put up with it? If you'd still create, then you clearly don't need the extra incentive.
Plus, this isn't so much of a concern for you, specifically, but to artists generally. I think that most artists would still create their works even if terms were significantly shorter. Thus, if you declined, that'd be sad, but probably not important in the grand scheme of things.
And of course, shorter terms could result in an increase in derivative work creation. So while we might lose your one work due to shorter terms, perhaps those terms could result in a dozen works getting created that otherwise wouldn't be. Copyright is quantitative, not qualitative, since there's no objective way to determine quality anyway (and it has never worked whenever it's tried). Some people think that The Lion King is a crap version of Hamlet. OTOH, Shakespeare's Hamlet was an unauthorized derivative of an earlier play. Derivatives are just as likely to be good or bad as original works are, and good and bad are subjective anyhow. (Plus authors usually aren't good judges of the quality of works derived from their own)
Plus, copyright is about more than mere creation anyway. There is an equal interest in getting works into the public domain as rapidly as possible, and in minimal copyright in the meantime.
if I die just after publishing something I want my kids to have a chance to make some of the inheritance I didn't get a chance to build up for them.
Then what the fuck are you thinking, that copyright will provide them with a penny? The odds of creating a work with economic value, much less value for more than a year or so, are tremendously low. If you were a responsible parent, you'd have gotten life insurance, supported social welfare programs that could help orphaned children, etc. These actually do benefit your survivors. Copyright virtually never does (and generally if it does, you're probably already an established author, and could have invested wisely earlier)
Frankly, leaving your kids a pile of lotto tickets probably has better odds of supporting them -- and at a lower cost to the public.
I really don't get why people so frequently resort to the widow and orphans argument -- the numbers just do not work.
Anyway, it's a valid position. There's no rule that says that we have to have these things. If someone is okay with the result of not having copyright, then what's the big deal?
I mean, people here often think we should not have software patents, because we don't need them -- we'd get software inventions anyway; possibly more of them, and probably used to better effect.
If I thought this were true with regards to copyrighted works, I'd advocate abolishing copyright. As it stands, I do think it's true that we'd all be better off with less copyright, and so I advocate that.
In the US at least, we already have #6. And in fact, you generally can't get trademarks on public domain material, since trademarks cannot be used as a poor man's copyright.
However, with regards to silence, you may misunderstand how copyright works. Copyright cares about what your source was, not whether your work is identical to another.
If John Cage makes a musical work consisting of silence, and you make one which is identical to it, but without copying from it, then your work is not infringing and is copyrightable to you. OTOH, if you based your work on his, then that would be infringing.
As a rule of thumb, since it's improbable that works of even moderate length and complexity will happen to be independently created, it's likely that there has been infringement. After all, what are the odds that I would write War and Peace, word for word, without reference to the other one? But if I can show that that's what happened, there's no infringement and grounds for an independent copyright on what I wrote (which doesn't preclude other people from using the other, identical work).
It's patents that require novelty, i.e. uniqueness. Copyrights just require that the author be the origin of the work, regardless of whether or not it's unique.
What happens if a person copyrights something that he does not have the capital to go-live in the first five years (which is a relatively short time frame)? Do they get screwed? Maybe five years in technology is a long time (i.e. Is counterstrike really gonna be that hot in five years?)....but this is a law that will affect other things such as books, music, etc.
Why? I've been thinking 5 year terms from a more broadly defined publication, where the terms can be renewed in their last year, four times. (i.e. 25 year maximum) But no renewals for works consisting of, or to the degree that they consist of, software.
We can optimize things for different kinds of works, you know. God knows, most of the statutory exemptions already only apply for particular kinds of subject matter already.
What happens if a person copyrights something that he does not have the capital to go-live in the first five years
Then I guess they won't bother. Right now the copyright system is just as uncaring towards people that need a few centuries or more. Who cares?
We want to encourage the creation of works in order to benefit the public, and we want to get those works into the public domain as rapidly as possible, again to benefit the public.
Whenever a work is not in the public domain, there is a cost to the public -- their liberty is restrained. This cost may be acceptable if the benefit is greater than the cost. But at a certain point, we get into the realm of diminishing returns. Eventually, the harm caused by having something copyrighted outweighs the benefit of having it exist in the first place.
So look for how we can get the best deal for the public overall, rather than mindlessly trying to encourage creation (which, btw, doesn't keep increasing as terms do, and may even start going down, since established authors don't like competition)
I kind of like "until the publishing author dies +10 years.
I don't. That's too long and the length is highly unpredictable. Fixed spans are superior. And it should be the minimum length to get the greatest return in creation. Any longer is wasteful. Since virtually all profits from copyrighted works are made in the first days to months of publication, and virtually never beyond the first year, even very short terms will still result in lots of stimulus of creation. After all, that's where the money is, and copyright only deals with that one stimulus.
If the author dies abruptly (i.e. 5 years after the copyright was made) then it is XX years for the survivors of the copyright" XX is a double digit number.
Why do you care about them? Virtually no works have any economic value with regards to copyright anyway. Of the fraction of a percent that do, it's virtually all up front as mentioned. Only the teeniest tiniest few works have continuing value.
For those works, the author is likely already quite wealthy (or had their chance), and could provide for their survivors. For most, a copyright won't help the survivors anyway, but still hurts the public.
If you want to help survivors, I suggest using systems that EVERYONE can take advantage of -- life insurance, social welfare systems, etc. To even imagine copyright as a way to provide for survivors is reprehensible. You have better odds betting junior's college fund at the track!
Some may disagree - but then again, why should *my* works be subject to *your* whims?
Well, you have no natural right to a copyright. I OTOH have a natural right of free speech and press, encompassing repeating what you said.
So if you want me -- by which I mean everyone else in the world (we outnumber you, n.b.) -- to be very kind and deign to give you a copyright, i.e. to voluntarily refrain from doing things we have every right to do, then you're going to make us want to do so.
You want a copyright because you're self interested -- you want to make money from the work. Well, we don't want to give you a copyri
Slashdot Mirror
As an example, look at an author who writes a novel a year for 20 years. The first 19 don't hit a market but the 20th sells like hotcakes. At that point there is a strong chance that his entire back catalog will start to sell in large numbers. If the copyrights have expired too early (s)he could lose out on profits from the majority of those books. Same applies to bands and to a lesser extent directors/actors.
So? Copyright is just a spur to get people to keep on creating. In your example, the author did keep on writing despite a lack of reward. Remember, no actual reward is necessary in copyright; only the possibility of one. I doubt that he would have decided not to write the 20th novel if the 1st one had entered the public domain by then, given that all his novels, to that date, hadn't sold. If he decided not to write it, it'd probably be because he'd consider himself to be a failure, with 19 novels no one bought.
Plus that's such an extreme -- most works are either going to sell right away, or never will. We should design the system to handle what usually happens, not bizarre happenings.
many creative works aren't an overnight success
Which is true, since many works aren't a success at all. But of the few that are a success, it is generally overnight, or close to it.
Most profits from books are made in the first couple of months. Most movie tickets are sold in the opening weekend. Most video rentals occur during the first week the movie is on shelves. It's extremely rare for success to come later. Sometimes it does, but it's the exception. I wouldn't plan around it.
The problems I can see with dividing into two classes of copyright (Artistic/technical) is that you get cross over in certain situations. While it seems pretty clear that a music CD is artistic and a word processing app is technical, where does a game like Myst sit? Or a book that explains how to use the aforementioned word processor?
Then maybe it's not a useful division.
I also see issues with copyright between individuals and companies. Although that could be resolved by legislating that all copyright (IP) remains with the individual creator and then relying on contractual law to license out the technology to the company. So effectively the Word processing app is owned by the team who wrote it, but the company has a license to produce it and profit from it.
Why, for God's sake? What possible reason is there for that?
First, as you appear to see, the same effect will be achieved in the end: employees will get no share of the profits from the work, the employer gets all profits, but now it's more expensive since you have to deal with the costs of setting up the contracts to do this.
Nor is it appropriate for employees to get any profits. When you bear a risk, then you should get a chance at the reward. The more risk, the greater the potential reward should be. Employees have no risk; they get a paycheck. All the risk here is borne by the company and its investors. They should get the big payoff given that they run the risk of losing everything.
Maybe there also needs to be some sort of "For the public good" provision as well. So inventions that improve quality of life (medicines and agricultural developments mainly) would have different copyright regulations to things like a better word processor or Britney's latest album.
Inventions are not copyrightable, they're patentable.
Copyright is granted automatically to you for anything that you produce.
/., update their blogs, and send email, regardless of whether their writings were copyrighted.
Yes. I'm suggesting that we change this.
Remember that until quite recently, a minimal level of state protection was available for works between the period of creation and publication, and that upon publication, you either needed to have registered for a federal copyright, or the work would enter the public domain.
I'm essentially suggesting federalizing the whole deal, and providing a small amount of protection for unpublished works, for a short period of time (to avoid having manuscripts unauthorizedly republished before an author can, but not to let authors sit on their works for a long while whilst being protected), and that once you publish, you need to promptly register for a copyright, or lose your rights. It would not be dissimilar from the patent system, where if you don't file for a patent, you rapidly lose any right to get a patent at all.
If you had to do something to get it then anything you wrote could be ripped off without attribution.. say your posting on Slashdot, or an update on your blog, or any e-mails that you sent, or your company's home page.
Copyright is only tolerable where it provides an incentive to people to create what they otherwise would not have created, and even then, only to the minimum degree necessary, and even then, it must also serve the public interest in having works unencumbered.
I bet that people would post on
In fact, I suspect that businesses would often update their web sites without regard to copyright as well. Though if they wanted a copyright on a press release or something, no one would be stopping them from getting one. But it would be a business decision, and not automatic.
Think of the burden if every time an update to a webpage was made or an e-mail was sent or a blog was posted to if this required some process to get the copyright on.
Precisely -- the burden isn't big at all, but by requiring it, we don't give copyrights to authors that don't need them as an incentive, and we still make them available to authors that do. Basically it weeds out people that aren't serious.
I don't like adhesive contracts in this field, but I do like the GPL and its ilk. While it's tricky to get rid of one and not the other, I think it's possible with careful drafting.
The only people who are hindered in any way by copyrights are those who want to consume someone else's product.
No, since copyright holders are rent seekers, they will attempt to expand their copyright to cover the creators of other works, claiming infringement. This will not always be quite true, but sometimes it will work. (see e.g. some posts in this thread about independent creation and the difficulty in proving it)
But aside from that, ok.
The copyright owner is not hindered by copyrights, he can release his material to the public domain if he wants to.
Well, he's not hindered by HIS copyright. But basically, ok.
If he doesn't want to, he should have that option.
Yes -- assuming the existence of copyright to begin with. There's no reason why we have to have copyright; it's just that we may.
So, those who say "no copyrights" are in the position of trying to take things from other people.
Technically only with regards to existing copyrights; future copyrights would not be granted, and thus not taken away. Authors could never be required to create works or distribute them, but once they've done so, they'd be fair game for everyone else, and the authors would've known this in advance, at least for future works. So nothing is taken away from them -- they chose to create and distribute.
At any rate, I still fail to see where any of this is actually bad. Copyright is intended to maximize the satisfaction of the public interest. It is possible that the maximum satisfaction would occur with no copyright law, though I don't think this is presently true. It's also valid to just decline to pursue maximal satisfaction, provided that the law is minimally restrictive for whatever degree of satisfaction is sought, and that it never goes below the degree of satisfaction found when there is no copyright.
Copyright certainly does not exist to allow authors to make a reasonable return on investment! The mere possibility of this is the carrot in the system. Not the objective.
Besides, no one does it for a reasonable return, because the odds of any return, much less a reasonable one, are lower than you'd get from any other investment strategy, including gambling. Rather, very high returns are sought. Investing in creative works is a high risk for high return. It almost never helps the author financially.
Actually, what's worse is that they're not used that much. Disney hasn't made anything like as many Mickey Mouse cartoons as they used to. Putting it into the public domain would allow anyone interested in doing so to do so. This is a good thing too. There's nothing better or worse about original or derivative works.
(And copyright is significantly about money -- it's the means by which artists are manipulated into serving the public interest)
With regards to point 6; there needs to be a form of protection for those kind of things. For example, if someone makes a film of Macbeth, that interpretation is subject to copyrights, but the original work isn't and someone else can put on a play of it, make another film etc.
WE HAVE THIS. Check out 17 USC 103. In fact, the Constitution precludes going further; the author of a work can only get a copyright to that which he is the author of.
Using concepts from the film version in your production is a dodgy area.
Mere concepts probably aren't protectable. The more solid they are, the more likely they are protectable. It depends on whether you're looking at an idea, scene a faire, etc. or a real work.
No one's going to kill authors to shorten terms.
We have this kind of repository in the US. We call it the Library of Congress. The problem is that due to, among other things, the Berne Convention, manditory deposit of best copies more or less died. Also the LoC doesn't get enough money to keep everything it gets, or to put all of its p.d. materials online (it doesn't lend to anyone other than Congressmen usually, so you need to go to DC -- which I recommend as they have a great reading room and library cards are free).
Better funding and a return to strict formalities would be greatly beneficial.
But it is a government library -- it should be public and free to use. Also, works should be as accessible as possible prior to term expiration, just as with a normal library.
So should the ability to make backup copies without the permission of the originator. (Selling or distributing them is something else. That would be clearly beyond the bounds if copyright law were anywhere near fair.)
Well, distributing the backups in conjunction with the original would seem fair, no? In fact, IIRC, we do that now in 117(b). This would be useful if, for example, the original became unusable.
I'm aware of how stupid the UK is with regards to Peter Pan.
/. of discussing US law, which is what I was doing with regards to copyrights and trademarks. I don't have a great interest in other country's copyright or trademark law.
But there is rather a default on
However, if you try to put together a coherent theory of fair use outside of American legal history
/. by trying to have a reasoned discussion, don't you?
Ah, that must be it. I don't care about other country's legal history with regards to copyright (save for most of them being good cautionary examples).
First Sale is a good foundational principle of copyright law, though, I agree.
You do realize that we're violating the unwritten rules of
Natalie Portman?
Read it. Don't like it.
I'd like to see the US abandon all copyright treaties, and adopt a policy of unilateral national treatment, but with substantive law that reflects what's best for the US.
It'd be fine with me for other countries to do likewise. The only possible international agreements with regards to copyright that I could stomach would be national treatment and a policy of not having two nations' copyright laws be so opposed that an author would have to pick one or the other.
We stayed out of Berne for a good hundred years. Too bad we got stupid about it.
I like your numbers, but I'd like to see a source for them.
At any rate, while I do agree that a blanket term is probably the best option, we might break it down into several renewable terms -- those who feel they can still wring some profit from a work would pay the costs involved with renewing. Those who think they've got as much as it's worth to get will not do so. (If renewal passes unnoticed, then it's a fair bet that the work didn't have any material value to them; it wasn't even worth docketing in a calendar)
This was not uncommon in the pre-1978 era.
It's software in particular that I think might benefit from not being renewable, given that it decays unusually rapidly. Other kinds of work might be too, of course.
Outside of perhaps 102(b), Congress really hasn't bothered with merger. Most copyright doctrines arise judicially. So I suppose the best way to do it would be to keep pushing for it in infringement suits where it's viable, and to try to get the courts to go for it.
Why not require the effort up front? If the effort is at the end, the author will no longer care. After all, what are you going to do if they ignore this? If it's a condition of getting a copyright to begin with, however, then there's an incentive to comply.
Well, actually, if a work doesn't make money within about a year, it probably never will. And it probably never will make money at all, in fact.
Why not combine these: 5 year terms, renewable, up to a certain limit. This provides a reasonable maximum length, but also provides granularity if a copyright holder is more rapidly discouraged. The granularity is not so great, though, that you have to re-up annually, which would be perhaps a bit of a hassle. Requiring an application for a copyright within a certain timeframe (cf. the 1 year bar in patent law) also would prevent works from being copyrighted where the author doesn't care at all. Only a minimal effort would be required to get a copyright, but it would separate out people who were really serious. We don't need to grant these things left and right.
What you've done is cap the amount that a producer can get. Not a smart idea for big-ticket productions.
So?
Copyright as it stands now doesn't really provide me with the profit opportunities it would take to rearrange the stars themselves into creative patterns. And no one cares.
If we lose big-ticket productions, but still benefit overall more than we would otherwise, it's worth it. There's no rule that says that it has to be even potentially reasonable to spend a lot of money creating a work.
This is an incorrect statement of trademark law.
Trademarks cannot be used to attain copyright-like protection. When a work enters the public domain, that work becomes a generic good. Since a mark can only be protected where it indicates the source of the good, and now anyone can be the source of this good, the mark suffers genericide.
The Shredded Wheat case is a good example of this in the patent field (the trademark on that name died when the patent on shredded wheat expired).
There have been some examples of this in the copyright field, and some related copyright-trademark cases such as Dastar reinforce the point.
Mickey Mouse might remain a trademark for goods or services other than those involving creative works (see e.g. Peter Pan for buses and peanut butter doesn't affect the public domain status of the character generally) but Disney would still be pretty screwed.
This is why they want to lengthen terms. If they didn't need to (the market for the black and white cartoon shorts of the 20's and 30's being fairly limited) they'd just rely on trademark.
I really loathe the idea of adhesive licenses. Better, IMO, to have a good set of standard laws, where personally executed licenses are the only deviation from them (other than placing stuff in the public domain).
Problem is that if you have heard his work once, the court will assume that you based your work on his, whether you intended to or not. This precedent of strict liability for subconscious copying (Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music) could easily lead to a chilling effect on composition of new music.
Quite true. I didn't say that independent creation was a particularly viable defense to infringement, just that it was one. OTOH, you must agree that it's difficult to determine, where someone had access to the allegedly infringed work, whether they copied or just happened to independently create. The odds do seem in favor of the former. The courts are applying Occam's razor a bit too harshly, IMO, but they're not unjustified in applying it at all.
The problem is that a work doesn't need "moderate length and complexity" to earn a copyright. For instance, "He's So Fine" is just one three note pattern repeated four times, followed by a five note pattern repeated four times. Read it and weep.
I have read it before. But we're not talking about the necessary modicum of creativity; we're talking about the likelihood of independent creation. I think there should be a higher standard for works where there are outside concerns constraining available permutations of the elements the work is comprised of -- there's only so many combinations of notes that people can play and which sound good on ordinary instruments. Thus longer arrangements would be what would indicate copying since there are a lot of permutations of how you can string various passages together. (I'm probably misusing some music terminology here, but I think you get the idea) This is just line drawing, though. Poetry or a very few kinds of visual art or architecture might also get this. Software frequently would. It's vaguely similar to the merger doctrine.
You'll notice that this doesn't include any right to make copies for friends and family. That's not fair use
Well, by your own post, that depends on whether it competes with the copyright holder.
It probably is fair use for me to videotape a TV show for my Mom and to send her the tape.
But then, the great advantage of fair use is that it's so vague -- it can be adapted to any circumstance, even unforeseen ones.
Incidentally, you're thinking of 1008. However 1) you don't understand it -- 1008 only permits making copies, but does not permit distributing them. In fact, due to the precise wording involved, distribution of 1008 copies is infringing, unless such distribution is fair use. 2) It only applies to a narrow range of works. 3) It was, in part, created because it was thought that fair use does apply to home taping, but that this was insufficiently clear.
IMHO the most important part of "fair use" stems from application of the doctrine of first sale.
That's a little interesting, given that Fair Use dates back to 1841, and First Sale dates back to 1908, IIRC.
Life or 50 years from publication, whichever is longer.
That's awfully long.
I'm not keen to be told I have to let other people make crap versions of my work while I'm alive
Would you not create that work if you had to put up with it? If you'd still create, then you clearly don't need the extra incentive.
Plus, this isn't so much of a concern for you, specifically, but to artists generally. I think that most artists would still create their works even if terms were significantly shorter. Thus, if you declined, that'd be sad, but probably not important in the grand scheme of things.
And of course, shorter terms could result in an increase in derivative work creation. So while we might lose your one work due to shorter terms, perhaps those terms could result in a dozen works getting created that otherwise wouldn't be. Copyright is quantitative, not qualitative, since there's no objective way to determine quality anyway (and it has never worked whenever it's tried). Some people think that The Lion King is a crap version of Hamlet. OTOH, Shakespeare's Hamlet was an unauthorized derivative of an earlier play. Derivatives are just as likely to be good or bad as original works are, and good and bad are subjective anyhow. (Plus authors usually aren't good judges of the quality of works derived from their own)
Plus, copyright is about more than mere creation anyway. There is an equal interest in getting works into the public domain as rapidly as possible, and in minimal copyright in the meantime.
if I die just after publishing something I want my kids to have a chance to make some of the inheritance I didn't get a chance to build up for them.
Then what the fuck are you thinking, that copyright will provide them with a penny? The odds of creating a work with economic value, much less value for more than a year or so, are tremendously low. If you were a responsible parent, you'd have gotten life insurance, supported social welfare programs that could help orphaned children, etc. These actually do benefit your survivors. Copyright virtually never does (and generally if it does, you're probably already an established author, and could have invested wisely earlier)
Frankly, leaving your kids a pile of lotto tickets probably has better odds of supporting them -- and at a lower cost to the public.
I really don't get why people so frequently resort to the widow and orphans argument -- the numbers just do not work.
We don't protect ideas with copyright or patents.
Anyway, it's a valid position. There's no rule that says that we have to have these things. If someone is okay with the result of not having copyright, then what's the big deal?
I mean, people here often think we should not have software patents, because we don't need them -- we'd get software inventions anyway; possibly more of them, and probably used to better effect.
If I thought this were true with regards to copyrighted works, I'd advocate abolishing copyright. As it stands, I do think it's true that we'd all be better off with less copyright, and so I advocate that.
In the US at least, we already have #6. And in fact, you generally can't get trademarks on public domain material, since trademarks cannot be used as a poor man's copyright.
However, with regards to silence, you may misunderstand how copyright works. Copyright cares about what your source was, not whether your work is identical to another.
If John Cage makes a musical work consisting of silence, and you make one which is identical to it, but without copying from it, then your work is not infringing and is copyrightable to you. OTOH, if you based your work on his, then that would be infringing.
As a rule of thumb, since it's improbable that works of even moderate length and complexity will happen to be independently created, it's likely that there has been infringement. After all, what are the odds that I would write War and Peace, word for word, without reference to the other one? But if I can show that that's what happened, there's no infringement and grounds for an independent copyright on what I wrote (which doesn't preclude other people from using the other, identical work).
It's patents that require novelty, i.e. uniqueness. Copyrights just require that the author be the origin of the work, regardless of whether or not it's unique.
What happens if a person copyrights something that he does not have the capital to go-live in the first five years (which is a relatively short time frame)? Do they get screwed? Maybe five years in technology is a long time (i.e. Is counterstrike really gonna be that hot in five years?)....but this is a law that will affect other things such as books, music, etc.
Why? I've been thinking 5 year terms from a more broadly defined publication, where the terms can be renewed in their last year, four times. (i.e. 25 year maximum) But no renewals for works consisting of, or to the degree that they consist of, software.
We can optimize things for different kinds of works, you know. God knows, most of the statutory exemptions already only apply for particular kinds of subject matter already.
What happens if a person copyrights something that he does not have the capital to go-live in the first five years
Then I guess they won't bother. Right now the copyright system is just as uncaring towards people that need a few centuries or more. Who cares?
We want to encourage the creation of works in order to benefit the public, and we want to get those works into the public domain as rapidly as possible, again to benefit the public.
Whenever a work is not in the public domain, there is a cost to the public -- their liberty is restrained. This cost may be acceptable if the benefit is greater than the cost. But at a certain point, we get into the realm of diminishing returns. Eventually, the harm caused by having something copyrighted outweighs the benefit of having it exist in the first place.
So look for how we can get the best deal for the public overall, rather than mindlessly trying to encourage creation (which, btw, doesn't keep increasing as terms do, and may even start going down, since established authors don't like competition)
I kind of like "until the publishing author dies +10 years.
I don't. That's too long and the length is highly unpredictable. Fixed spans are superior. And it should be the minimum length to get the greatest return in creation. Any longer is wasteful. Since virtually all profits from copyrighted works are made in the first days to months of publication, and virtually never beyond the first year, even very short terms will still result in lots of stimulus of creation. After all, that's where the money is, and copyright only deals with that one stimulus.
If the author dies abruptly (i.e. 5 years after the copyright was made) then it is XX years for the survivors of the copyright" XX is a double digit number.
Why do you care about them? Virtually no works have any economic value with regards to copyright anyway. Of the fraction of a percent that do, it's virtually all up front as mentioned. Only the teeniest tiniest few works have continuing value.
For those works, the author is likely already quite wealthy (or had their chance), and could provide for their survivors. For most, a copyright won't help the survivors anyway, but still hurts the public.
If you want to help survivors, I suggest using systems that EVERYONE can take advantage of -- life insurance, social welfare systems, etc. To even imagine copyright as a way to provide for survivors is reprehensible. You have better odds betting junior's college fund at the track!
Some may disagree - but then again, why should *my* works be subject to *your* whims?
Well, you have no natural right to a copyright. I OTOH have a natural right of free speech and press, encompassing repeating what you said.
So if you want me -- by which I mean everyone else in the world (we outnumber you, n.b.) -- to be very kind and deign to give you a copyright, i.e. to voluntarily refrain from doing things we have every right to do, then you're going to make us want to do so.
You want a copyright because you're self interested -- you want to make money from the work. Well, we don't want to give you a copyri