I dunno, man. The Galaxy class ships struck me as a fairly lousy design. They're supposed to last for a century, and something like half of them get blown up in the first decade.
Then again, something similar happened to the Constitution class ships too.
Given that we see so many of them in active service over a long period of time, the Mirandas and Excelsiors seem to have worked out better.
Course the costs of building the models probably had something to do with this.;)
Yeah, I agree that reality shows are pretty loathsome. OTOH it's possible to do some pretty highbrow stuff on a similar budget -- especially if you don't go to some exotic locale, and don't have a big prize at the end.
Big budget work, it strikes me, is mostly when you need exceptionally high-priced talent, or a lot of visual effects (including locations). A lot of the time, I can manage without either. Maybe it would spell the end of long-running series in favor of shows designed to only run for a season (as is the case in a lot of the world) but I could cope with that.
TV shows might turn out to be economically unsupportable. If that's true, it's no reason to artificially prop them up with oppressive laws. I'd rather have reasonable laws, and whatever can thrive in those circumstances.
Certainly my plans for moving stars around to form a picture would produce some great artwork -- but is it really reasonable of me to demand that copyrights be changed so as to make it profitable to do? If not, then the same could be said of big-budget TV.
It doesn't bother me. Shakespeare had a stage, no lighting, no backdrops, a few props, costumes that were just ordinary clothing donated to the theater company, and he produced some of the best plays ever. If you're a good storyteller, you can always manage somehow on a low budget. If you suck, a big budget won't make your work any better.
the rights of the copyright holder, in section 106, they only cover DISTRIBUTION, NOT the receiving of copyrighted works
No, they cover reproduction, creation of derivatives, distribution, etc. You must realize this -- you quoted the law yourself and distribution is only but one of the exclusive rights mentioned.
The problem is, there is a decent amount of caselaw indicating that when you download a copy of a work, you are reproducing it. And this does seem to make some sense -- after all, there are more copies when you're done than before you started.
Alternatively, let's say you're right, and the blame would fall on the shoulders of the person at the other end. There is still an excellent argument that the downloader -- knowing the other guy is infringing, having asked for it, having the power to cancel the download -- is a contributory infringer, and thus liable for the other guy's actions.
Either way, downloading is against the law.
Let me suggest that you read the Napster case in the 9th circuit, and the Utah Lighthouse case, both of which have dealt with this subject, which disagree with you, and which seem to be more influential than you are, for good or ill.
Although if "others" are excluded, and copyright holder has rights to free speech, then copyright holder has exclusive rights to redistribute the work - which is what I said.
Sure. It's just that the copyright holder might in some cases lack the right to publish his works, even though he maintains the right to exclude others.
You see this more clearly in the realm of patents -- you can invent and patent a drug that never gets FDA approval, and might even be made illegal. You could invent a new superweapon but not get the chance to have one. But you can still, in both cases, stop other people from using 'em too, for the life of the patent. You get the idea.
Imagine if you go to a website and it starts playing copyrighted music and loads copyrighted images without having copyright holders' permissions, can you - the site visitor - be sued or prosecuted for copyright violations?
Yes. This has -- sort of -- already happened.
First, know that you cannot be sued for contributory or vicarious infringement unless there is an underlying direct infringement. So when Napster got sued, the RIAA had to prove (and they did) that the users were breaking the law.
In the Utah Lighthouse case the defendants encouraged people to look at copies of works that were put up on the net without authorization. The defendants didn't, at that time, have it up on the net themselves; other, unrelated sites did.
When users looked at it, the court held that the act of downloading the site, even into RAM, purely for the purposes of looking at it, as a necessary step, was infringement. Since the defendants had known it would infringe, and contributed to it, they were liable.
It's crazy, no?
The only reason the downloader doesn't typically get sued is because it's not worth it to the rights holder to go after him. If he was really out for blood though, there'd be no way to stop him.
if the downloader knowingly downloads a copyrighted work and has a reason to believe that the sharer has no rights to distribute the said work, only then should the downloader be violating.
Copyright is a strict liability statute. Your state of mind, your intent -- it's irrelevant. Even if you are as pure as the driven snow and infringed totally accidentally, it doesn't matter. At most it MIGHT lessen damages.
But I do agree -- reform is desperately needed. These laws are the acme of insanity. We've got to get rid of them and replace them with something better.
Rather I think of 'information wants to be free' as being similar to other aphorisms such as 'water seeks its own level.' Obviously water isn't actually seeking anything, it's just a way to describe what tends to happen.
Information tends to become widespread. Once it leaves your control, you typically can't get it back. So to put it another way, you might say 'secrets don't want to be kept.'
Whether the information is secret because it's scandalous, or slightly secret merely because you're expected to pay for admission to see it, eventually it'll escape from your control and tend to spread amongst those that are interested in it, and you'll never get it back.
copyright holders have exclusive rights to make copies and redistribute their "property" or their creative works.
This isn't actually correct. A copyright does not grant the copyright holder the right to do anything. Due to the operation of other laws (e.g. libel, national security) it might be illegal to distribute copies of the works.
All copyright is good for is excluding others. It doesn't allow distribution itself, though. Free speech is what does that.
Most of the times these actions involve making and distributing copies of copyrighted materials without copyright holder's permission. If you want to translate that to the P2P world, most of the times that would be P2P users who share these files.
Well, uploading is distribution, and distribution is an exclusive right per 17 USC 106. Downloading is reproduction, and that too is an exclusive right per the same statute. This was discussed in the 9th Circuit opinion on the Napster case. You don't have to share to break the law. The reason RIAA et al are concentrating on uploaders right now is the same as the reason they were concentrating on the P2P networks themselves earlier; it's more efficient to go after the head of the snake. Don't confuse that decision for an inability to strike anywhere.
This is woefully incorrect. There are numerous ways to infringe copyrights. While it is arguable that merely posessing an infringing copy isn't a seperate offense all by itself, making that copy by, e.g. having downloaded it, would be.
Just because you might not like the established copyright interests, that's no reason to delude yourself about what the law is.
This is incorrect. Only copyright laws can prohibit the creation of derivative works. Trademark laws cannot; they are AT MOST only able to prevent actual customer confusion or tarnishment.
Of the two, trademarks are the inferior right. Because they cannot act as a copyright substitute with regard to derivative works, the scope of a trademark on a public domain work or the characters therein in necessarily scaled back so as not to bar the public domain enjoyment of that work.
Disney is scared because they know that without a copyright, their trademark on Mickey Mouse is in dire jeopardy.
So, if car-jacking,rape or murder become popular enough, they should become legal?
Do you think that's likely to happen anytime soon?
P2P is a few years old, and actually goes against the tradition of rewarding people for their work.
Copying works is millennia old. I'm not married to P2P as a mechanism for it -- I honestly don't care what mechanism is used. But copyrights only date back a few centuries. Seriously oppressive copyrights only a few decades.
And incidentally, there is no tradition of rewarding people for their work. Copyright is intended to promote the public good, not to reward authors. If authors do benefit, it's purely incidental; a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
This is fairly evident if you look at the changes in the law over time. For the first century or so, we didn't even give copyrights to non-American authors. After all, why should Americans reward foreigners, it was thought. It didn't leave us any better off.
Enforcing (or strengthening) existing copyright laws are not going to give a boost to organized crime (unless you consider the RIAA and every independent musician criminals, but that's another issue).
I think that it will, though organized criminals will be of a distinctly geekier sort. I seem to recall an sf short story just recently about people setting up non-DRMed wireless networks in the US against the law. If you poke around you could probably find it.
Anyway, who cares about organized crime? I don't like the idea of making criminals out of millions of ordinary, everyday Americans. Especially when they are otherwise quite law-abiding. It indicates that copyright has gone too far.
Large scale infringement only picked up with P2P (>20 years after 1976, you might notice) because it became cheap and convenient.
You don't understand how broad copyright is. When a little kid plays with his Star Wars action figures he is, but _perhaps_ for fair use, a copyright infringer. Check out that case with the Teddy Ruxpin dolls.
Back then, everybody had personal mix tapes (which are protected under fair use), but you had to buy the cassettes and spend time recording to them.
Incidentally, they are not necessarily fair use. Fair use has to reconsidered each and every time. There are no categorical fair uses; only a test to see if a particular use is fair, under the circumstances. In fact, currently, it's generally illegal, and only the thin shield of the AHRA protects home taping (which is still illegal, just not actionable).
Besides -- technology is, and always has been, on the side of the publisher. Most infringers cannot manage to reproduce or distribute works as efficiently as the publisher can, due to economies of scale. In 1710, any idiot could copy out a book longhand and infringe copyrights, but publishers at least had presses.
There is nothing stopping publishers from using up-to-date techniques like P2P to reduce their costs.
Technology isn't a boogeyman. It does result in _some_ shifts in what the public accepts, but more due to the fact that they never had the opportunity before. And remember that copyright interests hated sound recordings, photography, xeroxes, computers, home taping equipment, VCRs, etc. They are the living embodiment of hidebound paranoids.
Sure, the RIAA is greedy. But so is everyone who wants free entertainment. The side with the greatest influence will win, because neither has a moral advantage.
I agree that both are greedy. That's fine, that's okay. I don't object to that. And I agree that copyright is a totally amoral field, so neither side has a moral advantage.
That said, it is imperative that the public win, since copyright is intended to serve them. Not copyright holders. That would be like making a farmer take orders from animals.
Even if it was in public -- so long as they're using your likeness to sell something.
We're not talking about news reporting, or incidental, inconsequential uses, though.
There's more to life than money.
Of course. But copyright is a lot more limited.
I think the 5 year limit more than takes care of this.
Absolutely not. If you grant copyright and don't mandate publication, you have just given away protections without getting anything back in return.
Given that uncopyrighted works are, by definition, going to be created even if there were no copyright, and no incentive to do so, there is no reason to reward those authors.
Copyright is what we use to stimulate the creation of that which otherwise would not be.
Well, I think this follows anyway. It's just not something that comes up a lot AFAICT. There was a case though... Comedy III Productions v. Miramax, I think it was. It's worth a read.
Still, this is a good point, and one that I'm aware of. I myself plan to -- in the next couple of years -- bring a suit for a declaratory judgment along these lines to try to clear up the law. I have no objection to trademarks being related to works so long as they don't bar derivative works -- Peter Pan bus lines or peanut butter don't impair my ability to make a movie or a play or a book or whatever. That is, it's okay to enforce a trademark so as to prevent customer confusion, but not so as to in effect have overlap with copyrights.
I am aware of one good example though, and that's the one my suit will be about.... at least when I can afford it and have the time to dedicate to it.
The public doesn't grant patents, the GOVERMENT does.
Well, remember that the government's sole source of authority and legitimacy spring directly from the people. It is the people who have empowered the government to grant patents in the first place, just as we had to empower it to do anything else it was going to do.
It has fuckall to do with the public until the time that it expires.
Well, it is obviously not in the best interests of business to have patents expire. All businesses aspire to permanent, profitable monopolies.
Why would it expire if not for a concern for the public good?
I still think you ought to be reading that Isaac McPherson letter. It'll help you out. Otherwise I'll have to dip into my quote file wherein founding fathers, Congress, and the courts, all talk about how copyrights (and patents) exist to help the public. And finding that file is a PITA right now, so I don't really want to have to do it.
At the moment, I imagine the main way to prevent this would be copyright (consider if someone takes a photo of you - *they* then own the copyright, and there's not much you can do about it).
No, if someone's taking photos of you so as to use your likeness commercially, that's a matter of publicity law _now_. Even if they took the photo.
Copyright would only be at most a half-assed substitute when you're talking about either a) photos that don't use your likeness, or b) that don't use it in a commercial sense, e.g. for news reporting, and in both cases where you took the photo, not them. And note that there is a matter of posession. How did others come to have copies of a work under your control in the first place? It isn't as though you're required to give away copies of p.d. works. And would copyright have worked? Something like news reporting is more prone to be fair use, you know.
often people who profit aren't the original creators
There's little to be done about that. The reason that happens today is because either the creators make the work subject to the work for hire provisions of the law, which are hardly a secret, or have signed assignment contracts (perhaps in advance) where they give up their rights in exchange for something.
It's not as though they didn't know what they were doing. They apparently profited enough to get them to give up their rights to someone else. Who are we to judge that that wasn't fair?
I can see requiring some formalities in the assignment contract or work for hire employment, etc. so that all parties know about this in advance, but I see little point in preventing it.
I'd be furious if The Sun or some other paper decided to publish them
But I just don't see why. Your failure to copyright them indicates that you didn't care about commercially exploiting them. If someone else is willing to take that chance, what's wrong about it?
Remember, copyright is publicly oriented, not privately. Copyright seeks to have works created, published, and freely available for the world to use in any way whatsoever. It's not something that's intended to help keep works locked up and hidden. That's totally contrary to its aims. See for example, deposit requirements to ensure that the work won't be lost to the public.
And even though my web page may be entirely public, there is a huge difference between that, and page 3 of the national newspaper.
Well, if you mean that sort of page 3, again remember that pictures of people -- regardless of who takes them -- may be subject to publicity rights.
If that's the sort of thing you're aiming to protect, that's fine, but don't try to stuff it into copyright is all. Develop a different regime that's better suited to your aims.
Well, there are of course still advantages to the first to market, and your invention might not be easily replicable. For example, if you invent a chemical compound and don't disclose what it's made of or how it's made, others may have difficulty replicating it. Historical examples of unpatented recipies include Coca-Cola and the Flaming Homer. Not every invention is a machine, you know.
Or you might not really care. Many inventors work for large companies. They do the work they're assigned to do, and won't benefit from any patents on their inventions anyway since they've signed away the rights in advance. If the company neglects to patent their invention, well, that's their decision to make. It might be a wise or foolish one, it might be deliberate or accidental. But the availability of patents might not be influencing them.
Plus of course, you might be altruistic. Salk rejected outright the idea of patenting the Polio vaccine. It was his gift to humanity.
Nevertheless, I generally agree with you. Without the possibility of a patent (n.b. that you can be motivated by patents but end up not being eligible for one for a variety of reasons) held out as a carrot, you very well might not invent something.
That is, you're only inventing because you are self-interested.
If I can understand your motives, why can't you understand that my (the public's) willingness to grant you a patent is ALSO determined by self-interest?
What incentive do I have to give you a patent unless I feel your invention benefits me? Unless I will retain the ability to ultimately use it freely because your patent will expire? Unless I force you to disclose all the details so that other people can make it and improve it?
Patents aren't granted to encourage you to create.
Patents are granted to encourage you to create BUT ALSO to ensure that the invention enters the public domain.
Because what I (the public) wants are a lot of public domain inventions. Encouraging you is just a way of getting those. I don't actually care about you for your own sake, just as you probably don't care about making me better off for free.
Both sides -- the inventor and the public -- must each have an incentive to assist the other.
Neither. Why'd you use English as an epithet, anyway? I can't say I've seen it used that way before.
If you wanted to twaddle your turnips you should have got off your lazy ass and invented your own fucking machine before I did.
Well, waiting for someone else to solve your problems is an old tradition. At its core, an invention is nothing more than a solution to a problem. If you want to sell your invention to me, doesn't that assume that you're expecting that I -- and others -- have not bothered to solve our own problems, and are instead waiting for someone to do it for us?
But you didn't, or didn't have the skills, so shut the fuck up and pay up if you want one.
Why? Seriously, isn't it easier for me to just copy what you did and not pay you? It seems pretty advantageous to me: you've solved my problem, and I can copy it for free, and I'm all set and not out a dime.
I'm certainly not going to pay unless it would be in my best interests to do so. And it very well might be, at least in the right circumstances.
why in the naming of flaming fuck should I let some moronic jackass steal my shit and fuck me out of profiting off of my work?
Ah! Now we get to the heart of the matter.
In short, it isn't up to you.
A patent can be thought of as being rather like a negative easement. When you get a patent, it does not give you any rights at all. Not one.
It does not give you the right to sell your invention, or to use your invention, or anything.
You may be allowed to do those things, but then again, you might not be. Regardless of whether or not it is patented. For example, if you invent a drug, and that drug isn't approved by the FDA, it is not legal to use it, sell it, or do any damn thing with it, basically.
You could get a patent on super heroin, which is a hundred times more addictive than the regular kind, but it won't be of much use to you, at least not legally.
No, what a patent is, is the right to exclude others from doing those things they can otherwise do.
Think about it.... It is really no different than if you came to my door one day and said to me 'pardon, but I'd like to ask you to not use or sell any Turnip Twaddlers without my permission.'
If I say yes, if I agree to not do those things -- THAT is basically what a patent is. You can hold me to that promise and stop me if I renege.
But what if I had said no? I mean, you've already made the damn thing, and you're going to want to sell them. Don't I benefit greatly if I tell you to forget about it? And not being bound by a promise, I can copy your invention at will?
Hell yes I benefit.
The only way, basically, that you're ever going to get me to agree to respect your interests; the only way that I will promise not to do the things that you alone want to do, is if that's what it takes to get you to invent in the first place.
Because I want the invention, without which the freedom isn't terribly useful. But I still won't agree to just anything because the invention without freedom isn't useful either. I can put up with it for a little while, but eventually I want both, and that's the most I'll promise you.
See -- the big thing you keep forgetting is that we're both exactly the same. You said: I designed it, I built it, why in the naming of flaming fuck should I let some moronic jackass steal my shit and fuck me out of profiting off of my work?
Well, in response, I say: You designed it, you built it, why in the naming of flaming fuck should I NOT steal my shit and fuck you out of taking my money?
We are both totally self interested. That doesn't stop us from coming to an agreement that'll satisfy us both, but you have to understand that you're basically in the worse bargaining position.
All you can do is threaten not to invent it.
If you already did, there's no reason for me [the public] to giv
Let's say I invent something and try to market it.
OK. We'll say it's the Ronco Turnip Twaddler.
I don't have much money so my marketing sucks.
I sympathize.
I can't lower my prices because I can't produce enough of my product to make a profit off of quantity.
Yeah, it's always tough to try to make it up with quantity.
There is nothing that precludes a larger company, most likely one that's already established in my field, from swiping my invention and using it.
If you haven't patented it (perhaps because patents don't exist), yes. That's right.
And not just using it, but making them and selling them to the customers you want to be doing business with.
THAT is why patents were brought around.
No.
As I said before, patents date back to 14th century Venice. Their system was remarkably similar to ours. The idea had been around long before -- the earliest example is a joke that ancient Greeks had been making about other ancient Greeks -- but it was still the same thing.
The joke was that this one city of ancient Greeks loved good food. They were real gourmands. So, it was said of them, jokingly, they wanted to encourage chefs to make great new dishes that had never before existed. The prize, when this was done, was the right to be the only person allowed to make them for a year.
That is precisely the idea behind our patent system today, and pretty much all of the ones in the meantime.
Frankly, while I sympathize with your desire to build a successful business making and selling Turnip Twaddlers, I really don't care that much about _you_. If you make a million dollars, that doesn't really affect me. If you end up lying in the gutter, that doesn't really affect me either, except that I'll have to step over you.
I don't give a fig whether you are successful or not. And I will not suffer the indignity of a patent -- a burden that _I_ would shoulder -- just to ensure your success. Because I couldn't care less about your personal fortunes. I'm not running a charity around here.
Nope, I'm looking out for number one. I'm totally self-interested. In fact, so are you, since you seem so hellbent on making money from your invention. Each of us basically just wants what is best for ourselves, wishing no good or ill for others.
What I _do_ care about is twaddling my turnips. I really want to twaddle 'em but good.
If you can help me do that, via your invention, THAT will make me start caring about you.
But only to a limited extent. You see, I am still a self-absorbed guy, just like you. You want to make money selling me turnip twaddlers. I, on the other hand, would prefer to twaddle turnips for free. If I can get away with it, I don't want to pay you.
This presents us with a bit of an impasse.
We settle it in the following manner.
I will encourage people to invent things (which they think are worth inventing -- if there's no market at all, they won't bother) by giving up certain of my rights; specifically my rights to do whatever the hell I please with their invention.
But since that would leave me in a lousy position, I will only give up those rights to a limited extent, and I will only do so for a limited time.
In the end, I fully expect to have encouraged people to invent some inventions that I like, and to be free to use 'em.
And I'm so self interested that I'm only going to do so where this practice of give up, encourage, take back leaves me better off ultimately than if I hadn't done it at all.
Remember those Greeks? They didn't give a rat's ass about the chefs. They didn't really care if the chefs lived the life of Rileyopolous or not. THE GREEKS WANTED THE RECIPIES.
The patent was just a sneaky way of getting the chefs to create the recipies and then make them well known so that after the year was up the whole island would be making that stuff.
Things like copyright application and fees are the sorts of things that businesses can handle as part of their day to day operations, but this would be more of a hassles for individuals, and if they're not likely to make money from their work, they're less likely to want to pay a fee - and if you ask why do they want copyright if they're not going to make money, you're forgetting that copyright has added benefits.
Well, while we can of course adopt a sliding scale for fees similar to that in the patent system so that small authors are subsidized somewhat by authors that register a lot of copyrights annually, I think it's still important.
1) It is a minor formalized hurdle. This prevents people from copyrighting silly things such as their/. posts or creative writing assignments in their schoolwork, but still allows them to copyright works if they desire it. Basically, this weeds out works that the author doesn't think are worth it. And if the author doesn't think it's worth it, would anyone else?
2) Copyrights really are just about money. Particularly given that per my proposal we'd be allowing a lot of noncommercial uses. AFAICT the only other thing copyrights might be used for is to deny other people the ability to enjoy a work. But by itself, this is spiteful, hence the requirement of publication. Copyright is intended to leave the public better off than they would be otherwise, and ought not be used to lock things up away from people for as long as possible.
So this could mean companies profiting from individuals who had not applied for copyright
Which was how things worked from 1710 through 1976, and there were precious few complaints about it. Obviously the author had the first chance to try to profit. He declined. Why should we then obstinately bar someone else from taking the risk?
You would seem content with letting perfectly viable works accumulate dust and do no good to no one because the author didn't care about getting it out there but perversely wouldn't allow others to do so in his place. That is miserly, greedy, and contrary to the public benefit that copyright seeks to establish. I don't see it as being what we want to have happen at all.
would companies be able to copyright their derivatives?
As is the case now, derivatives are only copyrightable to the degree that they are original. A derivative can never prevent someone else from making a different derivative from the same original source.
You'll have noticed this if you've ever seen those cheap-ass cartoon video tapes for sale which are of the same public domain fairy tales that Disney uses for its own cartoons. The idea is that inattentive parents will buy a non-Disney version of Cinderella by mistake.
Still, a lot of derivatives are good, and the existence of bad derivatives shouldn't turn us off to the idea in general any more than the existence of bad original works should turn us off to original works in general.
This could mean companies being able to use those family photos of yours for its advertising campaign, without permission.
Which would tend to involve rights of publicity, if they're using your persona to sell something. But it isn't a copyright issue. Let's keep different bodies of law seperate, shall we?
Copyright law is concerned solely with satisfying the public good. There are two ways of doing so -- promoting the creation of new original and derivative works, _and_ having said works be totally free for anyone to do anything with.
Don't use it for something it isn't meant to do.
If people are allowed to copy non-commercially anyway, why should someone jump through hoops to stop someone else profitting from their work?
Because 1) It is important for copies of the work to be preserved by the Library of Congress so that the work isn't lost. I _hate_ when works are lost. Not only are they valuable now, they might be even more valuable in the future.
Copyrights were instituted as a sort of compliment to patents.
Well patents have been around since 14th century Venice, IIRC, and the idea's been around even longer than that.
But the idea was always the same. Both are intended to benefit the public. It's a roundabout way of doing it, but the public is the ultimate beneficiary; it gets people creating or inventing, but lets everyone make use of the works or inventions.
It gives the inventor of a work a temporary monopoly on what may be done with their work.
Only to a limited extent.
But what I'm talking about is WHY WOULD WE DO THAT?
Give me a good reason for giving an author or inventor any exclusive rights at all with regards to their work or invention.
Since they don't inherently have that exclusivity, it must be artificially given to them. Why would we do that? I think there is a reason, but you haven't said what it is. It's obvious, though. It's because it benefits us to do so.
That is, when someone says that they need something from you -- something like the right to exclude you from their work -- the one question you must immediately ask, and which will determine your entire course of action is this: "What's in it for me?"
Organized crime would have boomed at that time whether Prohibition had occurred or not,
Well it had little to do with the economy. The 20's didn't boom until quite late, and then not for very long, IIRC.
It was because criminals deal in the illegal, and the entire country had a great demand for an illegal good.
Hell, in my hometown there were no mafioso, what with it being a southern backwater, so if you wanted illegal liquor, you called up the Sheriff. He was the one that was selling it. A deputy would deliver your order to your door.
My point is that people have a particular way of behavior. They'll tend to stick to it. Laws that interfere with this behavior can either be sensible or stupid. Speed limits are widely ignored, but people understand the reason for them, since it's sensible, and grumble but don't object to the entire concept. Prohibition (though welcomed initially) was just stupid. No one liked it and in fact ultimately fought against it.
When people are fighting a law, and are disrespecting a law, that's bad. But people are highly resistant to having their behavior changed from up on high. The government couldn't force people to think that Prohibition was a good idea again, and so the government lost that battle.
The prime example of the government succesfully forcing a change in behavior was the civil rights movement and ending segregation. That was a titanic battle with no end of blood and tears and strife.
I am not prepared to go through that over fucking copyrights. They're not worth it.
That means scaling back the law so that it's within the realm of what's sensible; the realm where people naturally wouldn't violate it anyway.
if the American distributers really wanted to put the DOJ up to protecting Japanese content.
1) Until the American distributors acquire rights in the work, they have no real position.
2) Prior to that, the Japanese companies tend to hold the rights in the US. They can pressure the DOJ, BUT -- and this is important -- the DOJ could decide to sue even if the American and Japanese companies begged them not to. The DOJ would have discretion to ignore it or file suit at their whim.
It didn't look those idiots know about sharing methods other than Kazaa or anonomizers either.
Depends on how much you trust those things. BT is great, but not at all secretive.
I think there are a few changes we ought to implement:
1) Copyright has a term of 5 years from first publication (where publication is any form of public accessibility to the work including performance). All types of works other than software (and chip masks, if we continue to allow them here) may be renewed for an additional 5 years, in the last year of their current term. No work can be copyrighted more than 25 years in sum. This is retroactive if possible, possibly on a sliding scale.
2) Strict formalities are required for all works. Notice, publication, deposit, and registration. Works cannot embody trade secrets, just as is the case with patents. Disclosure must be made so as to allow the meaningful use of the work in any way by later persons. Best edition copies must be deposited with the Library of Congress. Works must be published, i.e. available to the public. EULAs don't qualify. Copyrights must be applied for (a constructive copyright can apply to protect manuscripts et al prior to publication, but only where the author has ultimately copyrighted the work) expressly by the author. A fee is likely required to cover processing costs, the storage of the deposited works, etc.
3) Use of EULAs, encryption, DRM, etc. in a published work void copyrights and pending causes of action.
4) The only penalties for infringement are civil, have more modest fines, and can only be brought by the rights holder.
5) States are totally preempted from the field of copyright and related matters by virtue of the copyright and commerce clauses.
6) Natural persons acting noncommercially who would otherwise have infringed are not liable. Trading works for like isn't commercial; costs of reproduction, media, etc, are. Commercial P2P is as well.
7) We abandon all international copyright treaties and agreements -- foreign authors are to be treated identically with domestic authors, but must comply with our formalities, laws, etc.
8) Architectural works are out, moral rights are out, hulls are out, design copyrights are out, utility and merger doctrines are reemphasized.
9) MAI v. Peak is legislatively overturned. Volatile copies (rule of thumb: if the decay is equal to or less than that of speech, it's volatile) don't count as fixed.
Would this agenda result in fewer works being created? Sort of.
Some works would decline, but note that other works -- derivatives of those that would enter the public domain or where the derivatives are noninfringing per #6 -- would be on the rise! Since during the terms no _commercial_ exploitation of a work could occur legally w/o the rights holder's permission, it's still fairly viable. Their market is a bit less, but still exists.
More importantly, copyright would no longer be so hostile towards the public, and that is JUST AS IMPORTANT. HAVING WORKS CREATED IS NO GOOD IF WE CAN'T FREELY ENJOY THEM!
After all, what's the point of encouraging works being created other than that we want to enjoy them, inclusive of copying, distributing, making derivatives, etc.?
This is what I've come up with, anyway. I'd be greatly interested in what others think of it, or counterpropose.
N.b. that I _am_ aware of those who don't like rights to be defeasible, but I don't think it would matter in terms of the end results and it's dangerously like moral rights. So I've left it out deliberately.
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I dunno, man. The Galaxy class ships struck me as a fairly lousy design. They're supposed to last for a century, and something like half of them get blown up in the first decade.
;)
Then again, something similar happened to the Constitution class ships too.
Given that we see so many of them in active service over a long period of time, the Mirandas and Excelsiors seem to have worked out better.
Course the costs of building the models probably had something to do with this.
Yeah, I agree that reality shows are pretty loathsome. OTOH it's possible to do some pretty highbrow stuff on a similar budget -- especially if you don't go to some exotic locale, and don't have a big prize at the end.
Big budget work, it strikes me, is mostly when you need exceptionally high-priced talent, or a lot of visual effects (including locations). A lot of the time, I can manage without either. Maybe it would spell the end of long-running series in favor of shows designed to only run for a season (as is the case in a lot of the world) but I could cope with that.
the mere fact that an artist manages to make his things cheaply doesn't justify thefth of his work.
No, but it does justify reducing copyrights so that some behavior that's illegal now is once again made legal as it ought to be.
Copyright's gone too far. We need to scale it back.
TV shows might turn out to be economically unsupportable. If that's true, it's no reason to artificially prop them up with oppressive laws. I'd rather have reasonable laws, and whatever can thrive in those circumstances.
Certainly my plans for moving stars around to form a picture would produce some great artwork -- but is it really reasonable of me to demand that copyrights be changed so as to make it profitable to do? If not, then the same could be said of big-budget TV.
It doesn't bother me. Shakespeare had a stage, no lighting, no backdrops, a few props, costumes that were just ordinary clothing donated to the theater company, and he produced some of the best plays ever. If you're a good storyteller, you can always manage somehow on a low budget. If you suck, a big budget won't make your work any better.
So don't knock low-budget TV.
the rights of the copyright holder, in section 106, they only cover DISTRIBUTION, NOT the receiving of copyrighted works
No, they cover reproduction, creation of derivatives, distribution, etc. You must realize this -- you quoted the law yourself and distribution is only but one of the exclusive rights mentioned.
The problem is, there is a decent amount of caselaw indicating that when you download a copy of a work, you are reproducing it. And this does seem to make some sense -- after all, there are more copies when you're done than before you started.
Alternatively, let's say you're right, and the blame would fall on the shoulders of the person at the other end. There is still an excellent argument that the downloader -- knowing the other guy is infringing, having asked for it, having the power to cancel the download -- is a contributory infringer, and thus liable for the other guy's actions.
Either way, downloading is against the law.
Let me suggest that you read the Napster case in the 9th circuit, and the Utah Lighthouse case, both of which have dealt with this subject, which disagree with you, and which seem to be more influential than you are, for good or ill.
Although if "others" are excluded, and copyright holder has rights to free speech, then copyright holder has exclusive rights to redistribute the work - which is what I said.
Sure. It's just that the copyright holder might in some cases lack the right to publish his works, even though he maintains the right to exclude others.
You see this more clearly in the realm of patents -- you can invent and patent a drug that never gets FDA approval, and might even be made illegal. You could invent a new superweapon but not get the chance to have one. But you can still, in both cases, stop other people from using 'em too, for the life of the patent. You get the idea.
Imagine if you go to a website and it starts playing copyrighted music and loads copyrighted images without having copyright holders' permissions, can you - the site visitor - be sued or prosecuted for copyright violations?
Yes. This has -- sort of -- already happened.
First, know that you cannot be sued for contributory or vicarious infringement unless there is an underlying direct infringement. So when Napster got sued, the RIAA had to prove (and they did) that the users were breaking the law.
In the Utah Lighthouse case the defendants encouraged people to look at copies of works that were put up on the net without authorization. The defendants didn't, at that time, have it up on the net themselves; other, unrelated sites did.
When users looked at it, the court held that the act of downloading the site, even into RAM, purely for the purposes of looking at it, as a necessary step, was infringement. Since the defendants had known it would infringe, and contributed to it, they were liable.
It's crazy, no?
The only reason the downloader doesn't typically get sued is because it's not worth it to the rights holder to go after him. If he was really out for blood though, there'd be no way to stop him.
if the downloader knowingly downloads a copyrighted work and has a reason to believe that the sharer has no rights to distribute the said work, only then should the downloader be violating.
Copyright is a strict liability statute. Your state of mind, your intent -- it's irrelevant. Even if you are as pure as the driven snow and infringed totally accidentally, it doesn't matter. At most it MIGHT lessen damages.
But I do agree -- reform is desperately needed. These laws are the acme of insanity. We've got to get rid of them and replace them with something better.
I've never interpreted it like that.
Rather I think of 'information wants to be free' as being similar to other aphorisms such as 'water seeks its own level.' Obviously water isn't actually seeking anything, it's just a way to describe what tends to happen.
Information tends to become widespread. Once it leaves your control, you typically can't get it back. So to put it another way, you might say 'secrets don't want to be kept.'
Whether the information is secret because it's scandalous, or slightly secret merely because you're expected to pay for admission to see it, eventually it'll escape from your control and tend to spread amongst those that are interested in it, and you'll never get it back.
copyright holders have exclusive rights to make copies and redistribute their "property" or their creative works.
This isn't actually correct. A copyright does not grant the copyright holder the right to do anything. Due to the operation of other laws (e.g. libel, national security) it might be illegal to distribute copies of the works.
All copyright is good for is excluding others. It doesn't allow distribution itself, though. Free speech is what does that.
Most of the times these actions involve making and distributing copies of copyrighted materials without copyright holder's permission. If you want to translate that to the P2P world, most of the times that would be P2P users who share these files.
Well, uploading is distribution, and distribution is an exclusive right per 17 USC 106. Downloading is reproduction, and that too is an exclusive right per the same statute. This was discussed in the 9th Circuit opinion on the Napster case. You don't have to share to break the law. The reason RIAA et al are concentrating on uploaders right now is the same as the reason they were concentrating on the P2P networks themselves earlier; it's more efficient to go after the head of the snake. Don't confuse that decision for an inability to strike anywhere.
This is woefully incorrect. There are numerous ways to infringe copyrights. While it is arguable that merely posessing an infringing copy isn't a seperate offense all by itself, making that copy by, e.g. having downloaded it, would be.
Just because you might not like the established copyright interests, that's no reason to delude yourself about what the law is.
The version I heard involved the aroma from a resturant and the sound of coins clinking together.
But I wouldn't have put much faith in the judicial system of feudal Japan.
1984, actually. And IIRC, the Lisa did this too, and that was in 1983.
There are radioactive byproducts of fusion, actually. Perhaps somewhat less than fission, but there still are some.
This is incorrect. Only copyright laws can prohibit the creation of derivative works. Trademark laws cannot; they are AT MOST only able to prevent actual customer confusion or tarnishment.
Of the two, trademarks are the inferior right. Because they cannot act as a copyright substitute with regard to derivative works, the scope of a trademark on a public domain work or the characters therein in necessarily scaled back so as not to bar the public domain enjoyment of that work.
Disney is scared because they know that without a copyright, their trademark on Mickey Mouse is in dire jeopardy.
So, if car-jacking,rape or murder become popular enough, they should become legal?
Do you think that's likely to happen anytime soon?
P2P is a few years old, and actually goes against the tradition of rewarding people for their work.
Copying works is millennia old. I'm not married to P2P as a mechanism for it -- I honestly don't care what mechanism is used. But copyrights only date back a few centuries. Seriously oppressive copyrights only a few decades.
And incidentally, there is no tradition of rewarding people for their work. Copyright is intended to promote the public good, not to reward authors. If authors do benefit, it's purely incidental; a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
This is fairly evident if you look at the changes in the law over time. For the first century or so, we didn't even give copyrights to non-American authors. After all, why should Americans reward foreigners, it was thought. It didn't leave us any better off.
Enforcing (or strengthening) existing copyright laws are not going to give a boost to organized crime (unless you consider the RIAA and every independent musician criminals, but that's another issue).
I think that it will, though organized criminals will be of a distinctly geekier sort. I seem to recall an sf short story just recently about people setting up non-DRMed wireless networks in the US against the law. If you poke around you could probably find it.
Anyway, who cares about organized crime? I don't like the idea of making criminals out of millions of ordinary, everyday Americans. Especially when they are otherwise quite law-abiding. It indicates that copyright has gone too far.
Large scale infringement only picked up with P2P (>20 years after 1976, you might notice) because it became cheap and convenient.
You don't understand how broad copyright is. When a little kid plays with his Star Wars action figures he is, but _perhaps_ for fair use, a copyright infringer. Check out that case with the Teddy Ruxpin dolls.
Back then, everybody had personal mix tapes (which are protected under fair use), but you had to buy the cassettes and spend time recording to them.
Incidentally, they are not necessarily fair use. Fair use has to reconsidered each and every time. There are no categorical fair uses; only a test to see if a particular use is fair, under the circumstances. In fact, currently, it's generally illegal, and only the thin shield of the AHRA protects home taping (which is still illegal, just not actionable).
Besides -- technology is, and always has been, on the side of the publisher. Most infringers cannot manage to reproduce or distribute works as efficiently as the publisher can, due to economies of scale. In 1710, any idiot could copy out a book longhand and infringe copyrights, but publishers at least had presses.
There is nothing stopping publishers from using up-to-date techniques like P2P to reduce their costs.
Technology isn't a boogeyman. It does result in _some_ shifts in what the public accepts, but more due to the fact that they never had the opportunity before. And remember that copyright interests hated sound recordings, photography, xeroxes, computers, home taping equipment, VCRs, etc. They are the living embodiment of hidebound paranoids.
Sure, the RIAA is greedy. But so is everyone who wants free entertainment. The side with the greatest influence will win, because neither has a moral advantage.
I agree that both are greedy. That's fine, that's okay. I don't object to that. And I agree that copyright is a totally amoral field, so neither side has a moral advantage.
That said, it is imperative that the public win, since copyright is intended to serve them. Not copyright holders. That would be like making a farmer take orders from animals.
Not if it was in public.
Even if it was in public -- so long as they're using your likeness to sell something.
We're not talking about news reporting, or incidental, inconsequential uses, though.
There's more to life than money.
Of course. But copyright is a lot more limited.
I think the 5 year limit more than takes care of this.
Absolutely not. If you grant copyright and don't mandate publication, you have just given away protections without getting anything back in return.
Given that uncopyrighted works are, by definition, going to be created even if there were no copyright, and no incentive to do so, there is no reason to reward those authors.
Copyright is what we use to stimulate the creation of that which otherwise would not be.
Well, I think this follows anyway. It's just not something that comes up a lot AFAICT. There was a case though... Comedy III Productions v. Miramax, I think it was. It's worth a read.
Still, this is a good point, and one that I'm aware of. I myself plan to -- in the next couple of years -- bring a suit for a declaratory judgment along these lines to try to clear up the law. I have no objection to trademarks being related to works so long as they don't bar derivative works -- Peter Pan bus lines or peanut butter don't impair my ability to make a movie or a play or a book or whatever. That is, it's okay to enforce a trademark so as to prevent customer confusion, but not so as to in effect have overlap with copyrights.
I am aware of one good example though, and that's the one my suit will be about.... at least when I can afford it and have the time to dedicate to it.
The public doesn't grant patents, the GOVERMENT does.
Well, remember that the government's sole source of authority and legitimacy spring directly from the people. It is the people who have empowered the government to grant patents in the first place, just as we had to empower it to do anything else it was going to do.
It has fuckall to do with the public until the time that it expires.
Well, it is obviously not in the best interests of business to have patents expire. All businesses aspire to permanent, profitable monopolies.
Why would it expire if not for a concern for the public good?
I still think you ought to be reading that Isaac McPherson letter. It'll help you out. Otherwise I'll have to dip into my quote file wherein founding fathers, Congress, and the courts, all talk about how copyrights (and patents) exist to help the public. And finding that file is a PITA right now, so I don't really want to have to do it.
At the moment, I imagine the main way to prevent this would be copyright (consider if someone takes a photo of you - *they* then own the copyright, and there's not much you can do about it).
No, if someone's taking photos of you so as to use your likeness commercially, that's a matter of publicity law _now_. Even if they took the photo.
Copyright would only be at most a half-assed substitute when you're talking about either a) photos that don't use your likeness, or b) that don't use it in a commercial sense, e.g. for news reporting, and in both cases where you took the photo, not them. And note that there is a matter of posession. How did others come to have copies of a work under your control in the first place? It isn't as though you're required to give away copies of p.d. works. And would copyright have worked? Something like news reporting is more prone to be fair use, you know.
often people who profit aren't the original creators
There's little to be done about that. The reason that happens today is because either the creators make the work subject to the work for hire provisions of the law, which are hardly a secret, or have signed assignment contracts (perhaps in advance) where they give up their rights in exchange for something.
It's not as though they didn't know what they were doing. They apparently profited enough to get them to give up their rights to someone else. Who are we to judge that that wasn't fair?
I can see requiring some formalities in the assignment contract or work for hire employment, etc. so that all parties know about this in advance, but I see little point in preventing it.
I'd be furious if The Sun or some other paper decided to publish them
But I just don't see why. Your failure to copyright them indicates that you didn't care about commercially exploiting them. If someone else is willing to take that chance, what's wrong about it?
Remember, copyright is publicly oriented, not privately. Copyright seeks to have works created, published, and freely available for the world to use in any way whatsoever. It's not something that's intended to help keep works locked up and hidden. That's totally contrary to its aims. See for example, deposit requirements to ensure that the work won't be lost to the public.
And even though my web page may be entirely public, there is a huge difference between that, and page 3 of the national newspaper.
Well, if you mean that sort of page 3, again remember that pictures of people -- regardless of who takes them -- may be subject to publicity rights.
If that's the sort of thing you're aiming to protect, that's fine, but don't try to stuff it into copyright is all. Develop a different regime that's better suited to your aims.
Well, there are of course still advantages to the first to market, and your invention might not be easily replicable. For example, if you invent a chemical compound and don't disclose what it's made of or how it's made, others may have difficulty replicating it. Historical examples of unpatented recipies include Coca-Cola and the Flaming Homer. Not every invention is a machine, you know.
Or you might not really care. Many inventors work for large companies. They do the work they're assigned to do, and won't benefit from any patents on their inventions anyway since they've signed away the rights in advance. If the company neglects to patent their invention, well, that's their decision to make. It might be a wise or foolish one, it might be deliberate or accidental. But the availability of patents might not be influencing them.
Plus of course, you might be altruistic. Salk rejected outright the idea of patenting the Polio vaccine. It was his gift to humanity.
Nevertheless, I generally agree with you. Without the possibility of a patent (n.b. that you can be motivated by patents but end up not being eligible for one for a variety of reasons) held out as a carrot, you very well might not invent something.
That is, you're only inventing because you are self-interested.
If I can understand your motives, why can't you understand that my (the public's) willingness to grant you a patent is ALSO determined by self-interest?
What incentive do I have to give you a patent unless I feel your invention benefits me? Unless I will retain the ability to ultimately use it freely because your patent will expire? Unless I force you to disclose all the details so that other people can make it and improve it?
Patents aren't granted to encourage you to create.
Patents are granted to encourage you to create BUT ALSO to ensure that the invention enters the public domain.
Because what I (the public) wants are a lot of public domain inventions. Encouraging you is just a way of getting those. I don't actually care about you for your own sake, just as you probably don't care about making me better off for free.
Both sides -- the inventor and the public -- must each have an incentive to assist the other.
Are you English or retarded?
Neither. Why'd you use English as an epithet, anyway? I can't say I've seen it used that way before.
If you wanted to twaddle your turnips you should have got off your lazy ass and invented your own fucking machine before I did.
Well, waiting for someone else to solve your problems is an old tradition. At its core, an invention is nothing more than a solution to a problem. If you want to sell your invention to me, doesn't that assume that you're expecting that I -- and others -- have not bothered to solve our own problems, and are instead waiting for someone to do it for us?
But you didn't, or didn't have the skills, so shut the fuck up and pay up if you want one.
Why? Seriously, isn't it easier for me to just copy what you did and not pay you? It seems pretty advantageous to me: you've solved my problem, and I can copy it for free, and I'm all set and not out a dime.
I'm certainly not going to pay unless it would be in my best interests to do so. And it very well might be, at least in the right circumstances.
why in the naming of flaming fuck should I let some moronic jackass steal my shit and fuck me out of profiting off of my work?
Ah! Now we get to the heart of the matter.
In short, it isn't up to you.
A patent can be thought of as being rather like a negative easement. When you get a patent, it does not give you any rights at all. Not one.
It does not give you the right to sell your invention, or to use your invention, or anything.
You may be allowed to do those things, but then again, you might not be. Regardless of whether or not it is patented. For example, if you invent a drug, and that drug isn't approved by the FDA, it is not legal to use it, sell it, or do any damn thing with it, basically.
You could get a patent on super heroin, which is a hundred times more addictive than the regular kind, but it won't be of much use to you, at least not legally.
No, what a patent is, is the right to exclude others from doing those things they can otherwise do.
Think about it.... It is really no different than if you came to my door one day and said to me 'pardon, but I'd like to ask you to not use or sell any Turnip Twaddlers without my permission.'
If I say yes, if I agree to not do those things -- THAT is basically what a patent is. You can hold me to that promise and stop me if I renege.
But what if I had said no? I mean, you've already made the damn thing, and you're going to want to sell them. Don't I benefit greatly if I tell you to forget about it? And not being bound by a promise, I can copy your invention at will?
Hell yes I benefit.
The only way, basically, that you're ever going to get me to agree to respect your interests; the only way that I will promise not to do the things that you alone want to do, is if that's what it takes to get you to invent in the first place.
Because I want the invention, without which the freedom isn't terribly useful. But I still won't agree to just anything because the invention without freedom isn't useful either. I can put up with it for a little while, but eventually I want both, and that's the most I'll promise you.
See -- the big thing you keep forgetting is that we're both exactly the same. You said: I designed it, I built it, why in the naming of flaming fuck should I let some moronic jackass steal my shit and fuck me out of profiting off of my work?
Well, in response, I say: You designed it, you built it, why in the naming of flaming fuck should I NOT steal my shit and fuck you out of taking my money?
We are both totally self interested. That doesn't stop us from coming to an agreement that'll satisfy us both, but you have to understand that you're basically in the worse bargaining position.
All you can do is threaten not to invent it.
If you already did, there's no reason for me [the public] to giv
Let's say I invent something and try to market it.
OK. We'll say it's the Ronco Turnip Twaddler.
I don't have much money so my marketing sucks.
I sympathize.
I can't lower my prices because I can't produce enough of my product to make a profit off of quantity.
Yeah, it's always tough to try to make it up with quantity.
There is nothing that precludes a larger company, most likely one that's already established in my field, from swiping my invention and using it.
If you haven't patented it (perhaps because patents don't exist), yes. That's right.
And not just using it, but making them and selling them to the customers you want to be doing business with.
THAT is why patents were brought around.
No.
As I said before, patents date back to 14th century Venice. Their system was remarkably similar to ours. The idea had been around long before -- the earliest example is a joke that ancient Greeks had been making about other ancient Greeks -- but it was still the same thing.
The joke was that this one city of ancient Greeks loved good food. They were real gourmands. So, it was said of them, jokingly, they wanted to encourage chefs to make great new dishes that had never before existed. The prize, when this was done, was the right to be the only person allowed to make them for a year.
That is precisely the idea behind our patent system today, and pretty much all of the ones in the meantime.
Frankly, while I sympathize with your desire to build a successful business making and selling Turnip Twaddlers, I really don't care that much about _you_. If you make a million dollars, that doesn't really affect me. If you end up lying in the gutter, that doesn't really affect me either, except that I'll have to step over you.
I don't give a fig whether you are successful or not. And I will not suffer the indignity of a patent -- a burden that _I_ would shoulder -- just to ensure your success. Because I couldn't care less about your personal fortunes. I'm not running a charity around here.
Nope, I'm looking out for number one. I'm totally self-interested. In fact, so are you, since you seem so hellbent on making money from your invention. Each of us basically just wants what is best for ourselves, wishing no good or ill for others.
What I _do_ care about is twaddling my turnips. I really want to twaddle 'em but good.
If you can help me do that, via your invention, THAT will make me start caring about you.
But only to a limited extent. You see, I am still a self-absorbed guy, just like you. You want to make money selling me turnip twaddlers. I, on the other hand, would prefer to twaddle turnips for free. If I can get away with it, I don't want to pay you.
This presents us with a bit of an impasse.
We settle it in the following manner.
I will encourage people to invent things (which they think are worth inventing -- if there's no market at all, they won't bother) by giving up certain of my rights; specifically my rights to do whatever the hell I please with their invention.
But since that would leave me in a lousy position, I will only give up those rights to a limited extent, and I will only do so for a limited time.
In the end, I fully expect to have encouraged people to invent some inventions that I like, and to be free to use 'em.
And I'm so self interested that I'm only going to do so where this practice of give up, encourage, take back leaves me better off ultimately than if I hadn't done it at all.
Remember those Greeks? They didn't give a rat's ass about the chefs. They didn't really care if the chefs lived the life of Rileyopolous or not. THE GREEKS WANTED THE RECIPIES.
The patent was just a sneaky way of getting the chefs to create the recipies and then make them well known so that after the year was up the whole island would be making that stuff.
Likewise, the patent sys
Things like copyright application and fees are the sorts of things that businesses can handle as part of their day to day operations, but this would be more of a hassles for individuals, and if they're not likely to make money from their work, they're less likely to want to pay a fee - and if you ask why do they want copyright if they're not going to make money, you're forgetting that copyright has added benefits.
/. posts or creative writing assignments in their schoolwork, but still allows them to copyright works if they desire it. Basically, this weeds out works that the author doesn't think are worth it. And if the author doesn't think it's worth it, would anyone else?
Well, while we can of course adopt a sliding scale for fees similar to that in the patent system so that small authors are subsidized somewhat by authors that register a lot of copyrights annually, I think it's still important.
1) It is a minor formalized hurdle. This prevents people from copyrighting silly things such as their
2) Copyrights really are just about money. Particularly given that per my proposal we'd be allowing a lot of noncommercial uses. AFAICT the only other thing copyrights might be used for is to deny other people the ability to enjoy a work. But by itself, this is spiteful, hence the requirement of publication. Copyright is intended to leave the public better off than they would be otherwise, and ought not be used to lock things up away from people for as long as possible.
So this could mean companies profiting from individuals who had not applied for copyright
Which was how things worked from 1710 through 1976, and there were precious few complaints about it. Obviously the author had the first chance to try to profit. He declined. Why should we then obstinately bar someone else from taking the risk?
You would seem content with letting perfectly viable works accumulate dust and do no good to no one because the author didn't care about getting it out there but perversely wouldn't allow others to do so in his place. That is miserly, greedy, and contrary to the public benefit that copyright seeks to establish. I don't see it as being what we want to have happen at all.
would companies be able to copyright their derivatives?
As is the case now, derivatives are only copyrightable to the degree that they are original. A derivative can never prevent someone else from making a different derivative from the same original source.
You'll have noticed this if you've ever seen those cheap-ass cartoon video tapes for sale which are of the same public domain fairy tales that Disney uses for its own cartoons. The idea is that inattentive parents will buy a non-Disney version of Cinderella by mistake.
Still, a lot of derivatives are good, and the existence of bad derivatives shouldn't turn us off to the idea in general any more than the existence of bad original works should turn us off to original works in general.
This could mean companies being able to use those family photos of yours for its advertising campaign, without permission.
Which would tend to involve rights of publicity, if they're using your persona to sell something. But it isn't a copyright issue. Let's keep different bodies of law seperate, shall we?
Copyright law is concerned solely with satisfying the public good. There are two ways of doing so -- promoting the creation of new original and derivative works, _and_ having said works be totally free for anyone to do anything with.
Don't use it for something it isn't meant to do.
If people are allowed to copy non-commercially anyway, why should someone jump through hoops to stop someone else profitting from their work?
Because 1) It is important for copies of the work to be preserved by the Library of Congress so that the work isn't lost. I _hate_ when works are lost. Not only are they valuable now, they might be even more valuable in the future.
Copyrights were instituted as a sort of compliment to patents.
Well patents have been around since 14th century Venice, IIRC, and the idea's been around even longer than that.
But the idea was always the same. Both are intended to benefit the public. It's a roundabout way of doing it, but the public is the ultimate beneficiary; it gets people creating or inventing, but lets everyone make use of the works or inventions.
It gives the inventor of a work a temporary monopoly on what may be done with their work.
Only to a limited extent.
But what I'm talking about is WHY WOULD WE DO THAT?
Give me a good reason for giving an author or inventor any exclusive rights at all with regards to their work or invention.
Since they don't inherently have that exclusivity, it must be artificially given to them. Why would we do that? I think there is a reason, but you haven't said what it is. It's obvious, though. It's because it benefits us to do so.
That is, when someone says that they need something from you -- something like the right to exclude you from their work -- the one question you must immediately ask, and which will determine your entire course of action is this: "What's in it for me?"
Organized crime would have boomed at that time whether Prohibition had occurred or not,
Well it had little to do with the economy. The 20's didn't boom until quite late, and then not for very long, IIRC.
It was because criminals deal in the illegal, and the entire country had a great demand for an illegal good.
Hell, in my hometown there were no mafioso, what with it being a southern backwater, so if you wanted illegal liquor, you called up the Sheriff. He was the one that was selling it. A deputy would deliver your order to your door.
My point is that people have a particular way of behavior. They'll tend to stick to it. Laws that interfere with this behavior can either be sensible or stupid. Speed limits are widely ignored, but people understand the reason for them, since it's sensible, and grumble but don't object to the entire concept. Prohibition (though welcomed initially) was just stupid. No one liked it and in fact ultimately fought against it.
When people are fighting a law, and are disrespecting a law, that's bad. But people are highly resistant to having their behavior changed from up on high. The government couldn't force people to think that Prohibition was a good idea again, and so the government lost that battle.
The prime example of the government succesfully forcing a change in behavior was the civil rights movement and ending segregation. That was a titanic battle with no end of blood and tears and strife.
I am not prepared to go through that over fucking copyrights. They're not worth it.
That means scaling back the law so that it's within the realm of what's sensible; the realm where people naturally wouldn't violate it anyway.
if the American distributers really wanted to put the DOJ up to protecting Japanese content.
1) Until the American distributors acquire rights in the work, they have no real position.
2) Prior to that, the Japanese companies tend to hold the rights in the US. They can pressure the DOJ, BUT -- and this is important -- the DOJ could decide to sue even if the American and Japanese companies begged them not to. The DOJ would have discretion to ignore it or file suit at their whim.
It didn't look those idiots know about sharing methods other than Kazaa or anonomizers either.
Depends on how much you trust those things. BT is great, but not at all secretive.
I think there are a few changes we ought to implement:
1) Copyright has a term of 5 years from first publication (where publication is any form of public accessibility to the work including performance). All types of works other than software (and chip masks, if we continue to allow them here) may be renewed for an additional 5 years, in the last year of their current term. No work can be copyrighted more than 25 years in sum. This is retroactive if possible, possibly on a sliding scale.
2) Strict formalities are required for all works. Notice, publication, deposit, and registration. Works cannot embody trade secrets, just as is the case with patents. Disclosure must be made so as to allow the meaningful use of the work in any way by later persons. Best edition copies must be deposited with the Library of Congress. Works must be published, i.e. available to the public. EULAs don't qualify. Copyrights must be applied for (a constructive copyright can apply to protect manuscripts et al prior to publication, but only where the author has ultimately copyrighted the work) expressly by the author. A fee is likely required to cover processing costs, the storage of the deposited works, etc.
3) Use of EULAs, encryption, DRM, etc. in a published work void copyrights and pending causes of action.
4) The only penalties for infringement are civil, have more modest fines, and can only be brought by the rights holder.
5) States are totally preempted from the field of copyright and related matters by virtue of the copyright and commerce clauses.
6) Natural persons acting noncommercially who would otherwise have infringed are not liable. Trading works for like isn't commercial; costs of reproduction, media, etc, are. Commercial P2P is as well.
7) We abandon all international copyright treaties and agreements -- foreign authors are to be treated identically with domestic authors, but must comply with our formalities, laws, etc.
8) Architectural works are out, moral rights are out, hulls are out, design copyrights are out, utility and merger doctrines are reemphasized.
9) MAI v. Peak is legislatively overturned. Volatile copies (rule of thumb: if the decay is equal to or less than that of speech, it's volatile) don't count as fixed.
Would this agenda result in fewer works being created? Sort of.
Some works would decline, but note that other works -- derivatives of those that would enter the public domain or where the derivatives are noninfringing per #6 -- would be on the rise! Since during the terms no _commercial_ exploitation of a work could occur legally w/o the rights holder's permission, it's still fairly viable. Their market is a bit less, but still exists.
More importantly, copyright would no longer be so hostile towards the public, and that is JUST AS IMPORTANT. HAVING WORKS CREATED IS NO GOOD IF WE CAN'T FREELY ENJOY THEM!
After all, what's the point of encouraging works being created other than that we want to enjoy them, inclusive of copying, distributing, making derivatives, etc.?
This is what I've come up with, anyway. I'd be greatly interested in what others think of it, or counterpropose.
N.b. that I _am_ aware of those who don't like rights to be defeasible, but I don't think it would matter in terms of the end results and it's dangerously like moral rights. So I've left it out deliberately.