This is correct, but half-assed. The First Amendment establishes rights to copy material. Title 17 can interfere with that legitimately, but Fair Use, as a statute or as a constitutional doctrine (it's basically both) can put a halt to that interference, letting your natural rights shine through.
While I'll agree that authors shouldn't have to make it easy just because, I do think that copyright statutes should force them to make it easy, and it is arguable that Fair Use prevents them from making it too hard.
And it's not fundemental either. It's in there for the same reason the post office is -- states were screwing it up, and it's one of those things that works better with a central authority.
Why? If it benefits you directly, okay, I can understand that. But it doesn't convince _me_. You want copyrights. Which is to say, you want ME to respect your copyrights. Which is to say, you want me to not copy stuff which I am perfectly capable and may be interested in doing. Which is to say, you want me to give up something to help you out. And multiply that by everyone. You want everyone to give you something to help you out.
Why not just ask for everyone in the country to give you a dollar. You'd end up a very wealthy person!
But we won't all give you a dollar. Because it isn't worth it to US.
You want me to support your having copyrights? Tell me what's in it for me if I do. It needs to be more than what's in it for me if I don't. Appeal to MY self-interest as a schmoe who isn't planning to develop my own works.
And then I'd support it. I'd be a fool not to.
But as it is, you think the world owes you a living. And it doesn't. Any copyright not granted out of self-interest by the GRANTOR, i.e. the public at large, is at most charity. And of dubious constitutionality at that.
No, but I know several people who did have that experience. I managed to make a living as an artist, but it was in the way that many artists manage to survive -- getting paid for labor or hard product; not royalties.
Frankly, I'm in the middle of changing professions right now. Out of interest, not money, but getting paid more will be nice, I'll admit.
Don't discount what I'm saying as sour grapes. Rather, it's the truth. Most artists of any variety will never have success. I wish it weren't so.
If you don't believe me, go look up some figures on the ratio of rejected to accepted manuscripts by publishers. Or see how many musicians there are making a living off of sales of their music, not performances, which are labor and not relevant for copyrights. Etc.
No, they're both forms of the public domain. Public real property -- also called commons -- are in the public domain. So are uncopyrighted works.
This is just a clash between the copy of the work (copies are tangible things) being in the public domain, but the work itself (the intangible creative item embodied within the copy) is not.
Don't read the DMCA. Read the federal copyright law, which the DMCA is a part of. It's 17 USC 512 that's relevant here. I.e. the DMCA was invoked against the ISP, not the actual defendant.
Just as an FYI -- you're totally 'round the bend with regards to this 'licensing' crap.
Most copyrighted works are not licensed to the public. In fact it is a hotly disputed thing as to whether virtually any ever are.
Books, movies, CDs, etc.... they're just sold. Like you'd buy anything else at the store. You don't license that stuff. You buy it outright.
This discussion revolves more around property law than contract law, at least as long as we're considering the liability of the reseller, and not the initial distributor.
Any ancient dictionary disagrees too. The use of piracy in this sense goes back to the 17th century, and actually predates copyrights! Given that there were plenty of the 'arr matey' type of pirates around at the time, if authors were only just now getting around to coin such a word, they'd probably call them 'terrorists.'
Also 'arr matey' pirates weren't all that bad. Certainly not great, but their reputation is worse than they deserve. Some pirates got along fine without having to fire a shot.
But the owner did abandon the property. They wanted it destroyed. That's abandonment. It's unfortunate that their agent didn't follow through on that, and they can get in some trouble, but it was still abandoned.
If I blew up my car, and you found an intact piece of it, you can keep it. I abandoned that sucker. I just didn't do a good job of rendering it into little pieces.
Because the bookstore is destroying it on orders from the owner (assuming the bookstore isn't the owner -- which depends on their arrangements with publishers), that action is imputed to the owner.
You'd be right if it was something that was done independently, but it's not in this case it seems.
Basically this is a matter of state property law. I.e. what rules do the relevant states have for how property is abandoned; who can do it, and do they have to do it correctly. I suggest you look it up and report back. IANAL, but I think I'm probably in the right ballpark.
The DMCA is a PART of US copyright law, but most copyright law dates back to the 1976 Copyright Act, which was the most recent rewriting of the law, replacing the 1909 Copyright Act.
It is by no means the whole of US copyright law. Just a part of it.
It seems difficult to avoid federal courts with regards to copyright. They have exclusive jurisdiction over that subject matter. State courts cannot ordinarily hear copyright cases.
Naw, this is a DMCA takedown notice. Remember, both 17 USC 512 and Chapter 12 are parts of the DMCA. You're thinking of the latter, but they're using the former.
Copyright law needs to be favourable enough to authors to pursuade them to write.
Yes. Not for the benefit of authors, however, but for the benefit of the public that want's the books.
BUT that's not enough of a policy. Pursuing that goal, without any governor on it, will result in perpetual copyrights, since they pursuade authors the most. (even though in actuality they don't, since earlier authors will fight to exclude later authors, and it ignores the value of derivative works, but you get the idea)
So you have to couple that with the fact that copyright law needs to be favorable enough to the public to make them happy. Even if it means authors will not be as happy as possible.
Then we can have copyright laws that ramp up from the baseline already discussed, increasingly making authors and the public happy. But stopping at the point where the public cannot get any happer.
This WILL mean that some authors have not been sufficiently pursuaded to write yet.
Oh well. Some things come at too high a price. I would rather maximize the public benefit than try to wring out a work that requires a billion-year copyright to produce.
Besides which, copyright extensions suffer from diminishing returns. Most copyrights that had value EVER have no value after just a few years. Only a handful of works -- a fraction of one percent of works created -- have lasting substantial value.
So long terms won't motivate authors anyway. An extra hundred years means they get an extra nickel. If they're lucky. Most authors won't care. A few will, but they're rich and vocal enough to push for what THEY want and damn the rest of us. Disney is foremost among them.
No, the DMCA does several things. ONE of the things it does regards copy/access protection.
One of the OTHER things that it does is to remove liability from certain ISPs if they take down allegedly infringing materials when the copyright holder makes a proper request. If the person who put the materials up requests that it go back up, then it goes back up. Either way, the ISP doesn't get sued.
The substance of this case has nothing to do with the DMCA. But it does provide a method of pursuing some infringers.
Here, I doubt there's any infringement going on, so the materials will likely go back up, and then there'll be legal proceedings.
The teacher's family will get some money. The family of "almost any working professional" will get some money.
The author's family will, 9 times out of 10, get nothing because the copyrights are not worth anything and never will be. You're trying to pay them in lottery tickets. I'm pointing out that most people lose the lottery. The odds are terrible.
That's why I advocated life insurance, savings, social welfare -- ANYTHING that has a decent chance of getting cash into the family's hands.
Long copyrights have almost no chance of helping them out.
Remember, for every Stephen King, there are hundreds, thousands of authors who do just as much hard work writing, but get rejected from everyplace. Copyright royalties cannot be relied upon to produce a red cent.
If you want the copyright to survive the author, you're going to need a different reason. Telling me that it's to provide for widows and orphans doesn't gibe with the reality that it almost never will manage to provide for widows and orphans. Frankly, that's cruel.
Re:Sure. As of yesterday even.
on
Copyright Defeats?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The original post was not meant to say that one should altruistically support all orphans and widows, (not he/she didn't say widows, just family, so spouse might not be infered). Just the AUTHOR'S family.
I know. That's what I was talking about. And I'm saying that it will NOT WORK. The authors' family will NOT be supported in 99.44% of cases. So your proposal is already an abject failure. There's a reason why the 'starving artist' stereotype exists, you know. Most artists are not Picasso. Most artists will never make money from their art in any decent quantity. People who want to make money should be investment bankers. It's possible to do it by being an author, but it's far less likely.
But as for inheritance from their father/mother whatever, that should be purely based on what they did, and the rights to the proceeds from whatever work a parent did to support a child in life are sacrosanct, at least in my opinion.
I agree. The existing estate should go to the family. I'm not seeking to overturn estate or intestacy law.
BUT that doesn't mean the copyright should go on and on for ages.
Far better would be a fixed term of years. For example, the copyright would last 20 years from when the author first created the work. Whether they die the next day, or live for a hundred more years.
There would NOT be any extension in order to benefit his survivors. That would be an attempt to get NEW income; not to merely split up the EXISTING money.
If I wrote the World's Greatest Novel and died, I would want my orphans and family to be filthy theiving rich because I worked for it, damnit.
Good for you. I couldn't give a rat's ass what you want. It absolutely doesn't concern me.
And in fact, it is almost irrelevant in terms of copyright policy. Authors are NOT important. It seems weird, but that's the truth.
Copyright is intended to benefit the public. There are two types of public benefit possible: 1) the benefit of having works created, be they original or derivative; 2) the benefit of being able to do anything with those works, e.g. use them, copy them, distribute them, base new works upon them, not pay anything, etc.
The ideal copyright law is the one that satisfies both of those types of goals the most overall. There is a baseline that you can measure things against, and that is the state of the world with no copyright law. There, the 1st goal is partially satisfied, and the 2d goal is totally satisfied.
An ideal law then would have to satisfy the 1st goal more. And if the 2d goal couldn't be satisfied 100%, the drop in its satisfaction would have to be exceeded by a corresponding gain in the 1st goal.
As for public harm -- that's what happens when goals are not optimally met. Because the public is less well off than they ought to be. It is at its worst when the copyright law causes society to drop below the baseline; i.e. if everyone would be better off just abandoning copyright law altogether.
That's the basic policy.
It's very capitalistic, really, if that's important to you. Because it sort of boils down to having an author propose to each person in the country that that person should not copy the author's book. The people will say, "Why? It's in my best interests to copy that book and not pay you, because it's cheap for me." And authors HAVE to respond by saying that to not copy the book is in the people's best interests, since otherwise there wouldn't be a book. But it HAS to be framed in terms of self-interest. And you have to convince people!
Authors fit into this ONLY tangentally. No one really cares about authors. I used to make my living as an artist, and I don't care about artists. As you noted, people are self-interested! So authors can go fly a kite as far as everyone is concerned. What's important is the OUTPUT of the authors. Authors' WORKS satisfy the 1st goal. And since those works are available, the 2d goal is at least partially satisfied, and after a time tha
And this is basically why I don't have a Tivo. I think the idea is great, but it costs too much, it's too intrusive, and it doesn't do enough. I don't think it'll be long before the DIY crowd beats them.
Re:Sure. As of yesterday even.
on
Copyright Defeats?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
The primary claim behind getting extensions to copyright is that if I write the Worlds Greatest Novel, get it published tomorrow, then get hit by a bus next Monday, my kids and family should be provided for.
Ok, I buy that, however I really think that once my kids reach the age of maturity, they should make their own way in life. As a result, I think that copyrights should have a lifetime of 30 years, or the lifetime of the author plus 18 years 9 months. (Which ever comes first.)
Actually, that's a terrible motive for copyright extensions.
Because it ALMOST NEVER HELPS PEOPLE.
The vast majority of copyrighted works have no economic value on day one. Of those that are left, only a minute fraction have economic value after a few years.
Your widows and orphans will be amazingly fortunate to ever be supported off of your work, because most authors are not successful authors. In fact, hardly any authors are successful. Being a successful author is about as typical as winning the lottery.
Besides which, aren't you basically saying 'fuck you' to equally unfortunate widows and orphans that have no involvement with authors at all?
If you want to support widows and orphans, some sort of life insurance and social welfare system is going to be a ZILLION times more effective.
So I suggest you find a better rationale. The one you've latched upon is almost never accomplished, is terribly unfair, and causes serious harm to the public for no real benefit.
Paying for services is great, but not if they're unwanted services.
If someone doesn't want to pay Tivo for guide data and instead legally acquires other guide data elsewere, why should Tivo see a thin dime from that person ever again?
The fact that Tivo wants to be successful doesn't guarantee it. They have to earn it. And there's nothing wrong if they fail.
Slashdot Mirror
This is correct, but half-assed. The First Amendment establishes rights to copy material. Title 17 can interfere with that legitimately, but Fair Use, as a statute or as a constitutional doctrine (it's basically both) can put a halt to that interference, letting your natural rights shine through.
While I'll agree that authors shouldn't have to make it easy just because, I do think that copyright statutes should force them to make it easy, and it is arguable that Fair Use prevents them from making it too hard.
Yeah, but if the claims are true, you're screwed. Truth is an absolute defense.
And it's not fundemental either. It's in there for the same reason the post office is -- states were screwing it up, and it's one of those things that works better with a central authority.
Okay, so you want to have copyrights anyway.
Why? If it benefits you directly, okay, I can understand that. But it doesn't convince _me_. You want copyrights. Which is to say, you want ME to respect your copyrights. Which is to say, you want me to not copy stuff which I am perfectly capable and may be interested in doing. Which is to say, you want me to give up something to help you out. And multiply that by everyone. You want everyone to give you something to help you out.
Why not just ask for everyone in the country to give you a dollar. You'd end up a very wealthy person!
But we won't all give you a dollar. Because it isn't worth it to US.
You want me to support your having copyrights? Tell me what's in it for me if I do. It needs to be more than what's in it for me if I don't. Appeal to MY self-interest as a schmoe who isn't planning to develop my own works.
And then I'd support it. I'd be a fool not to.
But as it is, you think the world owes you a living. And it doesn't. Any copyright not granted out of self-interest by the GRANTOR, i.e. the public at large, is at most charity. And of dubious constitutionality at that.
No, but I know several people who did have that experience. I managed to make a living as an artist, but it was in the way that many artists manage to survive -- getting paid for labor or hard product; not royalties.
Frankly, I'm in the middle of changing professions right now. Out of interest, not money, but getting paid more will be nice, I'll admit.
Don't discount what I'm saying as sour grapes. Rather, it's the truth. Most artists of any variety will never have success. I wish it weren't so.
If you don't believe me, go look up some figures on the ratio of rejected to accepted manuscripts by publishers. Or see how many musicians there are making a living off of sales of their music, not performances, which are labor and not relevant for copyrights. Etc.
No, they're both forms of the public domain. Public real property -- also called commons -- are in the public domain. So are uncopyrighted works.
This is just a clash between the copy of the work (copies are tangible things) being in the public domain, but the work itself (the intangible creative item embodied within the copy) is not.
No need to get snotty.
Don't read the DMCA. Read the federal copyright law, which the DMCA is a part of. It's 17 USC 512 that's relevant here. I.e. the DMCA was invoked against the ISP, not the actual defendant.
Really? How do you ignite the fuel without sparkplugs? Or is it steam-powered or something?
Just as an FYI -- you're totally 'round the bend with regards to this 'licensing' crap.
... they're just sold. Like you'd buy anything else at the store. You don't license that stuff. You buy it outright.
Most copyrighted works are not licensed to the public. In fact it is a hotly disputed thing as to whether virtually any ever are.
Books, movies, CDs, etc.
This discussion revolves more around property law than contract law, at least as long as we're considering the liability of the reseller, and not the initial distributor.
Any ancient dictionary disagrees too. The use of piracy in this sense goes back to the 17th century, and actually predates copyrights! Given that there were plenty of the 'arr matey' type of pirates around at the time, if authors were only just now getting around to coin such a word, they'd probably call them 'terrorists.'
Also 'arr matey' pirates weren't all that bad. Certainly not great, but their reputation is worse than they deserve. Some pirates got along fine without having to fire a shot.
It does not give the right to control the use of those copies once created and sold.
There are actually a couple of extremely minor exceptions to this, but you're basically on target.
But the owner did abandon the property. They wanted it destroyed. That's abandonment. It's unfortunate that their agent didn't follow through on that, and they can get in some trouble, but it was still abandoned.
If I blew up my car, and you found an intact piece of it, you can keep it. I abandoned that sucker. I just didn't do a good job of rendering it into little pieces.
Because the bookstore is destroying it on orders from the owner (assuming the bookstore isn't the owner -- which depends on their arrangements with publishers), that action is imputed to the owner.
You'd be right if it was something that was done independently, but it's not in this case it seems.
Basically this is a matter of state property law. I.e. what rules do the relevant states have for how property is abandoned; who can do it, and do they have to do it correctly. I suggest you look it up and report back. IANAL, but I think I'm probably in the right ballpark.
The DMCA is a PART of US copyright law, but most copyright law dates back to the 1976 Copyright Act, which was the most recent rewriting of the law, replacing the 1909 Copyright Act.
It is by no means the whole of US copyright law. Just a part of it.
It seems difficult to avoid federal courts with regards to copyright. They have exclusive jurisdiction over that subject matter. State courts cannot ordinarily hear copyright cases.
Naw, this is a DMCA takedown notice. Remember, both 17 USC 512 and Chapter 12 are parts of the DMCA. You're thinking of the latter, but they're using the former.
Copyright law needs to be favourable enough to authors to pursuade them to write.
Yes. Not for the benefit of authors, however, but for the benefit of the public that want's the books.
BUT that's not enough of a policy. Pursuing that goal, without any governor on it, will result in perpetual copyrights, since they pursuade authors the most. (even though in actuality they don't, since earlier authors will fight to exclude later authors, and it ignores the value of derivative works, but you get the idea)
So you have to couple that with the fact that copyright law needs to be favorable enough to the public to make them happy. Even if it means authors will not be as happy as possible.
Then we can have copyright laws that ramp up from the baseline already discussed, increasingly making authors and the public happy. But stopping at the point where the public cannot get any happer.
This WILL mean that some authors have not been sufficiently pursuaded to write yet.
Oh well. Some things come at too high a price. I would rather maximize the public benefit than try to wring out a work that requires a billion-year copyright to produce.
Besides which, copyright extensions suffer from diminishing returns. Most copyrights that had value EVER have no value after just a few years. Only a handful of works -- a fraction of one percent of works created -- have lasting substantial value.
So long terms won't motivate authors anyway. An extra hundred years means they get an extra nickel. If they're lucky. Most authors won't care. A few will, but they're rich and vocal enough to push for what THEY want and damn the rest of us. Disney is foremost among them.
No, the DMCA does several things. ONE of the things it does regards copy/access protection.
One of the OTHER things that it does is to remove liability from certain ISPs if they take down allegedly infringing materials when the copyright holder makes a proper request. If the person who put the materials up requests that it go back up, then it goes back up. Either way, the ISP doesn't get sued.
The substance of this case has nothing to do with the DMCA. But it does provide a method of pursuing some infringers.
Here, I doubt there's any infringement going on, so the materials will likely go back up, and then there'll be legal proceedings.
No, you are.
The teacher's family will get some money. The family of "almost any working professional" will get some money.
The author's family will, 9 times out of 10, get nothing because the copyrights are not worth anything and never will be. You're trying to pay them in lottery tickets. I'm pointing out that most people lose the lottery. The odds are terrible.
That's why I advocated life insurance, savings, social welfare -- ANYTHING that has a decent chance of getting cash into the family's hands.
Long copyrights have almost no chance of helping them out.
Remember, for every Stephen King, there are hundreds, thousands of authors who do just as much hard work writing, but get rejected from everyplace. Copyright royalties cannot be relied upon to produce a red cent.
If you want the copyright to survive the author, you're going to need a different reason. Telling me that it's to provide for widows and orphans doesn't gibe with the reality that it almost never will manage to provide for widows and orphans. Frankly, that's cruel.
The original post was not meant to say that one should altruistically support all orphans and widows, (not he/she didn't say widows, just family, so spouse might not be infered). Just the AUTHOR'S family.
I know. That's what I was talking about. And I'm saying that it will NOT WORK. The authors' family will NOT be supported in 99.44% of cases. So your proposal is already an abject failure. There's a reason why the 'starving artist' stereotype exists, you know. Most artists are not Picasso. Most artists will never make money from their art in any decent quantity. People who want to make money should be investment bankers. It's possible to do it by being an author, but it's far less likely.
But as for inheritance from their father/mother whatever, that should be purely based on what they did, and the rights to the proceeds from whatever work a parent did to support a child in life are sacrosanct, at least in my opinion.
I agree. The existing estate should go to the family. I'm not seeking to overturn estate or intestacy law.
BUT that doesn't mean the copyright should go on and on for ages.
Far better would be a fixed term of years. For example, the copyright would last 20 years from when the author first created the work. Whether they die the next day, or live for a hundred more years.
There would NOT be any extension in order to benefit his survivors. That would be an attempt to get NEW income; not to merely split up the EXISTING money.
If I wrote the World's Greatest Novel and died, I would want my orphans and family to be filthy theiving rich because I worked for it, damnit.
Good for you. I couldn't give a rat's ass what you want. It absolutely doesn't concern me.
And in fact, it is almost irrelevant in terms of copyright policy. Authors are NOT important. It seems weird, but that's the truth.
Copyright is intended to benefit the public. There are two types of public benefit possible: 1) the benefit of having works created, be they original or derivative; 2) the benefit of being able to do anything with those works, e.g. use them, copy them, distribute them, base new works upon them, not pay anything, etc.
The ideal copyright law is the one that satisfies both of those types of goals the most overall. There is a baseline that you can measure things against, and that is the state of the world with no copyright law. There, the 1st goal is partially satisfied, and the 2d goal is totally satisfied.
An ideal law then would have to satisfy the 1st goal more. And if the 2d goal couldn't be satisfied 100%, the drop in its satisfaction would have to be exceeded by a corresponding gain in the 1st goal.
As for public harm -- that's what happens when goals are not optimally met. Because the public is less well off than they ought to be. It is at its worst when the copyright law causes society to drop below the baseline; i.e. if everyone would be better off just abandoning copyright law altogether.
That's the basic policy.
It's very capitalistic, really, if that's important to you. Because it sort of boils down to having an author propose to each person in the country that that person should not copy the author's book. The people will say, "Why? It's in my best interests to copy that book and not pay you, because it's cheap for me." And authors HAVE to respond by saying that to not copy the book is in the people's best interests, since otherwise there wouldn't be a book. But it HAS to be framed in terms of self-interest. And you have to convince people!
Authors fit into this ONLY tangentally. No one really cares about authors. I used to make my living as an artist, and I don't care about artists. As you noted, people are self-interested! So authors can go fly a kite as far as everyone is concerned. What's important is the OUTPUT of the authors. Authors' WORKS satisfy the 1st goal. And since those works are available, the 2d goal is at least partially satisfied, and after a time tha
And this is basically why I don't have a Tivo. I think the idea is great, but it costs too much, it's too intrusive, and it doesn't do enough. I don't think it'll be long before the DIY crowd beats them.
The primary claim behind getting extensions to copyright is that if I write the Worlds Greatest Novel, get it published tomorrow, then get hit by a bus next Monday, my kids and family should be provided for.
Ok, I buy that, however I really think that once my kids reach the age of maturity, they should make their own way in life. As a result, I think that copyrights should have a lifetime of 30 years, or the lifetime of the author plus 18 years 9 months. (Which ever comes first.)
Actually, that's a terrible motive for copyright extensions.
Because it ALMOST NEVER HELPS PEOPLE.
The vast majority of copyrighted works have no economic value on day one. Of those that are left, only a minute fraction have economic value after a few years.
Your widows and orphans will be amazingly fortunate to ever be supported off of your work, because most authors are not successful authors. In fact, hardly any authors are successful. Being a successful author is about as typical as winning the lottery.
Besides which, aren't you basically saying 'fuck you' to equally unfortunate widows and orphans that have no involvement with authors at all?
If you want to support widows and orphans, some sort of life insurance and social welfare system is going to be a ZILLION times more effective.
So I suggest you find a better rationale. The one you've latched upon is almost never accomplished, is terribly unfair, and causes serious harm to the public for no real benefit.
Paying for services is great, but not if they're unwanted services.
If someone doesn't want to pay Tivo for guide data and instead legally acquires other guide data elsewere, why should Tivo see a thin dime from that person ever again?
The fact that Tivo wants to be successful doesn't guarantee it. They have to earn it. And there's nothing wrong if they fail.
Surely you don't mean I have to turn off all of my PDP-11's! Just a few, right?
Well, you could sue individual products actually, but it wouldn't really be helpful here.
If you patent A, then I come up with A on my own time, for use in my own company, you can still tell me to stop using it?
Yes, during the life of the patent. Independent creation is a good defense against suits predicated on trade secret and copyright claims, however.